Emulate Bahrain

Manama : Impressed by the initiatives  undertaken by Tamkeen to empower the youth, the United Nations seeks to promote Bahrain as a model for other countries in the Middle East, a senior UN official said yesterday.

Some of the initiatives aimed at economically empowering the youth could be a ‘model’ for other Arab countries, according to United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative Amin El Sharkawi. 

In an interview to DT News, he lauded some of Bahrain’s youth initiatives which he called “unique”. He said that some of the countries in the Middle East could greatly benefit from Bahrain’s successes and experiences and that the UN would support Bahrain in taking the initiatives to other countries. 

“Some of the initiatives by Bahrain could be taken to and shared with other countries because they are good practices. We, as United Nations, could support Bahrain in taking those programmes to other countries. Bahrain has these positive examples that the other countries can learn from,” he said. Explaining further, he singled out ‘Youth City’ as one of the most impressive youth initiatives in Bahrain. “Bahrain has demonstrated its expertise with some of the projects such as the Youth City, where students go to identify and develop their skills during the summer holidays. The initiative helps the youth to be updated about the technologies available and the kind of careers they can follow. It gives the youth an idea about their career that they would want to follow. So this kind of a summer programme is quite a unique example,”
he said. 

“The incorporation of the sustainable development goals which the Kingdom has endorsed last year is a good demonstration of Bahrain’s interest in diversifying its economy and its energy resource. Of course, in order to do that you need to develop the labour force with engineers, lawyers, doctors, finance professionals and others who will be able to support the diversification objectives. Bahrain again comes in front in that regard by having Tamkeen which works to cultivate such talents,” he added. Bahrain’s experiences could help other countries to implement the recommendations from UNDP sponsored Arab Youth Human Development Report 2016. 

“Bahrain has different examples of achievements, so it was interesting to understand the challenges in the Arab world as mentioned in the Arab Youth Human Development Report, because Bahrain can be, in some cases, a model for some of the solutions. Especially when it relates to economic empowerment, when it relates to skills development and such,” he said, adding, “we will continue to have discussions on development issues, these kind of discussions are very helpful to shape our thinking and to give us hope.”