This is Saudi Arabia’s ‘Achilles’ Heel’
Business Insider
By: Elena Holodny
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In the aftermath of the 2003 terrorist attacks carried out by nationals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, then-Crown Prince Abdullah argued that youth unemployment was the Kingdom’s biggest challenge.
Fast forward thirteen years into the future, and the problem remains a pressing issue for the Arab state to this day.
“Abdullah singled out youth unemployment as Saudi Arabia’s number one security challenge — and it is,” Helima Croft, the head of commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, told Business Insider in an interview on Tuesday.
“That’s the ‘Achilles’ heel’ of Saudi Arabia — the question of how to deal with its young population.”
Approximately two-thirds of the Saudi population is under the age of 30, but about 30% of the population aged 15-24 is unemployed, according to a 2014 estimate from the International Labor Organization. Plus, about 27% of the population is under the age of 14, which implies that Saudi Arabia’s going to need to create a lot more jobs in the near future…
Notably, Saudis make up the second largest group of foreign fighter nationalities in ISIS, according to a December 2015 report by The Soufan Group…
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Download The Soufan Group’s updated report on Foreign Fighters here.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-arabia-achilles-heel-security-problem-2016-5