Dr. Hossam Badrawi Official Website
Under the umbrella of the “Thoth Center for Strategic Studies”, the Association “Dreamers of Tomorrow and Those Who Work for It” hosted on its twentieth anniversary – in partnership with the “Union Party” – hearing sessions for youth representatives of political parties, NGOs, the private sector, and some people with experience in youth work, in addition to To some young researchers, and I proposed to them the structure of an initiative to support the state in its orientations towards youth in light of new social, cultural and political changes, where the war should not be repeated, without revision, waiting for different results.
Changing the ideological premises governing dealing with young people
The main pillars of the July 1952 Revolution depended on the state apparatus playing the role of guardian over the ideas and visions of the youth, and the intervention of the regime and its ruling popular organization, whatever its name, in defining the objectives of working with the youth, and marginalizing the role of youth belonging to any current or other opposition or even a different policy .
I have been associated with governance trends using young people to serve the political goals of the system at each stage, as in ahdy President Nasser and adoption of an event to organize youth organization of the vanguard of President Sadat and then to push the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic groups to counter Nasserism within universities and policy.
Attempts to reunite the youth were also made, and did not continue, during Mubarak’s era, the most important of which was the “Horus” experiment, which was adopted by the Supreme Council for Youth and Sports.
And then in the period of the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 regulation has adopted the Brotherhood on the young Brotherhood and the Salafis, to impose the ruling control system on the street from the village to the city, and crystallized movement in the besieged city of media production and control, and then besieged the court’s constitutional and prevent its members meeting, and in the use of The republican palace to confront the demonstrations, and the creation of a semi-regular army parallel to the police apparatus that imposes obedience and punishes those who differ from their ideology.
However, we think that this vision, which its proponents thought was valid during the ruling period, during the three eras of the July Revolution, then the Brotherhood’s era, the transition period has not yet begun. The sharp diversity of ideas and visions witnessed by society represents a serious challenge in itself, and an opportunity at the same time.
Therefore, it becomes necessary to formulate a new public policy for youth that state agencies are committed to, and the parties concerned with drawing and implementing this policy and the youth themselves participate in its formulation. Without elaboration of this policy becomes Egypt’s future experience of democracy in danger in light of a sense of sectors large youth marginalization and deprivation, and the absence of criteria of merit and competence in the selection of leaders, youth, and in the light of the neutrality of the state apparatus (except security, which I see him repeat the same experiences under the name of the new these days) in Confronting the increasing attractiveness of extremist and violent ideas for all groups, and the necessity of confronting and dealing with the severe political and religious polarization that exists in society.
The formulation of this policy collides with a set of obstacles and challenges, which is the topic of today’s article, leaving solutions initiatives for the next article.
Challenges facing the development of the state’s youth policy:
1- Who has the right to set state policy for youth?
We ask ourselves this question related to who has the right to change the existing culture, bearing in mind that national youth policies should not be unilateral, and that it is a multi-cultural duty of cultural ideas.
The origin is the creation of a natural base of young people that respects considerations of merit and competence to hold public office away from direct state interference in employment (except in the narrowest limits).
Empowering young people have a comprehensive sense is not limited only to the availability of discriminatory quotas but also to climate create opportunities (and the function of the state to create opportunities rather than employment), and open the doors of competition transparent among young people and to create the state of this climate and promote equality of opportunity and equality. The challenge is to bring stakeholders together. The invitation of the executive branch of the ruling with the participation of parliament and civil society in a broad sense of this gathering may be the best ways to be a youth policy with a minimum of compatibility and let each political expression party for privacy as long as it deems not inconsistent with the Constitution and the law.
Second challenge revolves around the lack of attractiveness of the subject of vision development and public policies for many youth groups, which hit the boredom of the large number of modern theoretical youth problems and the required solutions, especially in the absence of a guide simplified revenue arising from the application of this policy to all groups of young people, and simplified language compatible With the needs of each segment of them.
Some think that there is no need to develop state policies for young people, because they represent 60% of the people, so all state policies are directed at them anyway.
The third challenge is the rooting of a culture of dependence on the state, the father and the mother, which spends, supports, employs and guarantees, which has become impossible in all economies of the world, not to mention countries that spend more than they produce.
The fourth challenge is a bilateral challenge, represented in the small number of youth NGOs that are entrusted with discussing and implementing these policies, if they are developed, and the lack of confidence of the ruling regime, which allows them to participate in any of these problems.
This challenge also includes the lack of a framework for scrutiny
Internet activists and actors in youth initiatives are allowed to participate in an institutional capacity away from their personal selves.
The fifth challenge is the lack of sustainability of any policy in Egypt, a period sufficient to achieve its objectives even in the framework of the rule of a single system under governments changing in one system and are changing with it .. policy than necessary when developing youth policy, the development of the framework will ensure sustainability.
The sixth challenge is the extreme centralization of the Egyptian state, which prevents the state parties from decentralized organizations, associations and formations from effectively contributing to serving the youth, and from practicing any policy.
Seventh philosophy of the formation and includes challenging the government in Egypt, which makes various ministries islands isolated from each other often, so the youth policy may require the inclusion of education files, culture, media and youth in one crucible speak the same language and support each other in identifying children and young people and work to instill Positive values in them.
The eighth challenge is the difficulty of attracting and rallying young people around a vision that speaks of pluralism, respect for difference and the exchange of power in the face of visions that use ignorance and need to attract youthful ideology.
The challenge is not to society accustomed to this «boom of democracy» supposed stemming from the success of the two revolutions in the past 4 years as well as the presence of concrete for young people who belongs to the currents of liberalism and religious political, and left on the scene, whether Square popular, or cyberspace, which yard is filled with this presence. The danger also lies in the failure of the different parties to become accustomed to the presence of the other, and not to represent them in a party so that the people choose from among them, and their reliance on a lot of electronic fabrication to distort the other.
In the same context, there is a challenge that the state agencies concerned with youth and security are not accustomed to ideological pluralism and their attempts to limit their role to either managing the youth work themselves or imposing different ideas on the system and its ideology.
Ninth challenge: the lack of values in dealing societal and create irreconcilable dichotomies between religions and even within the framework of the same religion and the absence of the foundations of citizenship and choose not to believe the legitimacy of institutions and resorting to the street to take what he thought the right of violence and vandalism to express their demands and needs
