The report was prepared by the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV) under the leadership of Elsa Pilichowski, Director for Public Governance. It was developed under the strategic direction of Martin Forst, Head of the Governance Reviews and Partnerships Division in GOV, and of Miriam Allam, Head of the MENA-OECD Governance Programme. Moritz Ader, who co-ordinates the work on youth empowerment and intergenerational justice, provided guidance in the preparation of the report, with the support of Pietro Gagliardi.
Chapter 1 of the report was co-authored by Alexandra Robinson and Hanadi Al-Saidi; Chapter 2 by Alexandra Robinson and Pietro Gagliardi; Chapter 3 by Alexandra Robinson and Mai Hosny; Chapter 4 by Nada Berrada, Manon Epherre-Iriart, Stephanie Attil and Cynthia Saghir. Pietro Gagliardi and Alexandra Robinson were responsible for the final data collection and analysis, with support provided by Mai Hosny, Rimaz Abu-Zeyad, Stephanie Attil, Lamia Benhoummane, Caroline Mina, and Aichetou Taffa. Valuable feedback was received by Amr Soliman, Manon Epherre-Iriart, Guillaume Biganzoli, Rémy Roisnel and Yusuf Ashmawi in the OECD Governance Reviews and Partnerships Division. Ciara Muller with the support of Francesca Romani prepared the manuscript for publication and controlled the quality.
The report benefitted from the comments of colleagues from the OECD Public Governance Directorate, including Claire Mc Evoy, Emma Cantera, David Goessmann and Mauricio Mejia Galvan (Open and Innovative Government Division), Tatyana Teplova and Martyna Wanat (Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development Goals Division) and Laura Völker and Andrea Uhrhammer (Director’s Office). The authors are grateful to all colleagues for their inputs, as well as to Maurizio Mensi, Executive Director of the MENA-OECD Governance Programme Training Centre, and to Ji-Yeun Rim (OECD Development Centre) for the valuable feedback received.
The authors express their gratitude to all public officials who contributed to the report, notably from the public administrations of Egypt (Ministry of Ministry of Planning and Economic Development and National Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development), Jordan (Ministry of Youth, Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Ministry of Political and Parliamentary Affairs, and Ministry of Public Sector Development), Lebanon (Ministry of Youth and Sports), Mauritania (Ministry of Culture, Youth, Sports and Relations with Parliament), Morocco (Ministry of Ministry of Youth, Culture and Communication), the Palestinian Authority (High Council of Youth and Sports), Qatar (Ministry of Sports and Youth), Saudi Arabia (Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Ministry of Economy and Planning), Tunisia (Ministry of Youth and Sports, Ministry of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ministry of Vocational Training and Employment) and the United Arab Emirates (Ministry of Culture and Youth). They are also grateful to the public officials of MENA governments and OECD countries who actively contributed to the MENA-OECD Youth Conferences hosted by Morocco (2017), Tunisia (2018) and Jordan (2021), organised with the financial support of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, United Kingdom and United States of America) through the MENA Transition Fund of the G7 Deauville Partnership. The conferences provided valuable inputs for the report.
The authors would like to thank Tunisia and Italy for their leadership as Co-Chairs of the MENA-OECD Governance Programme and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Italy for the financial support provided through the regional project COVID-19 Response and Recovery in the MENA region. In particular, they are grateful to Ambassador Antonio Bernardini, Co-Chair of the MENA-OECD Governance Programme and Permanent Representative of Italy to the OECD, and Alessandra Pastorelli, First Counsellor at the Permanent Delegation of Italy to the OECD.