In Brief: UNDP Human Development Report for Somalia – Youth Empowerment Is Key

Aerial view of a typical homestead on the outskirts of the southern Somali port city of Kismayo – Credit: UN Photo/Stuart Price

The United Nation Development Programme released its Somalia Human Development Report 2012. The Report, the first since 2001, discusses the factors behind Somalia’s conflict and state collapse in the past 20 years, and focuses on the enormous potential that lies in empowering Somali youth to become an engine of peace-building and development.

Key data

• Somali development and humanitarian indicators are among the lowest in the world;

• Over 70 percent of Somalia’s population is under the age of thirty;

• The youth population in Somalia may continue to swell due to high fertility rates, estimated at 6.2 births per women between 2010 and 2015;

• Overall unemployment among people aged 15 to 64 is estimated at 54 percent in Somalia, up from 47 percent in 2002;

• The unemployment rate for youth aged 14 to 29 is 67 percent—one of the highest rates in the world; women lose out more, with unemployment rates at 74%, compared to men at 61%;

• Life expectancy in Somalia is 50 years, up from 47 in 2001;

• Over 60% of youth have intentions to leave the country for better livelihood opportunities;

• Somalia ranks as one of the worst countries worldwide for women. Gender-based violence and discrimination against Somali women is widespread.

In particular, the Report estimates that, since 1991, the international community, including the Somali diaspora, has collectively spent just over $55 billion in responding to Somalia’s conflict, of which Piracy accounts for about 40%, followed by humanitarian and development aid; remittances; peacekeeping and military responses, counter-terror initiatives; and costs associated with international crime and illicit financial flows.