http://q80dictator.blogspot.com/2006/05/orange-youth-demand-reform-kuwait.html
Just days prior to the shootings and the protests in Greece in early December 2008, I observed some 11th grade students in Kuwait holding a debate on the topic of age discrimination.
http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=293
The topic of age-discrimination is old-hat in many Western countries. In fact, age discrimination has definitely been debated, discussed and banned by law since the 1960s in the United States. However, what was fascinating for me a few weeks ago was that I was observing how Kuwaiti youth in high schools defined age discrimination differently than their western counterparts. For the Kuwaiti students debating the “banning of age discrimination”, age-discrimination was not against elderly people in their societies. Instead, age-discrimination as defined by youth in Kuwait was “discrimination in the work place and higher practice of people of their age-cohort”—that is, young people in Kuwait are being discriminated against by employers, oligarchies, and the status quo. Tradition and status quo mean that they have to always defer to their elders in the marketplace of work and advancement.
Skills are hardly ever under consideration in their hiring and advancement. Age is a determining factor. The older one is the more job prospects one has. Well-educated young people feel locked out of the job market and societal niches which their forefathers have patiently waited for year-after-year. However, young people are being told that there will be less and less government jobs for them and their children. So, like those in Greece, Kuwaitis are promised a job many years into the future—if they sit peaceably in school or university. Now, with the economy in question in the long-term, many youth are more disgruntled at their long-term prospects in Kuwait.
RESULT OF DECADES OF POPULATION BOOM
Would you believe that at the turn of the 20th Century, there were less than 20,000 residents in all of Kuwait? Now, the population is around 3 million.
http://www.prb.org/Datafinder/Geography/Summary.aspx?region=128®ion_type=2
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