The critical role that Pakistan’s “youth bulge” will play in influencing that strategically important country’s internal and regional peace and security was analyzed by Pakistani and American specialists at an October 10 conference held at the U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP).

Pakistan’s overall population is about 180 million people, with more than 110 million of them under the age of 29; more than 50 million are classified as youth between the ages of 15 and 29. Their political preferences and role in national development are not well understood. USIP, with the School of Public Policy at George Mason University, organized the conference to consider those issues along with the possible role of education in promoting peace and other policy questions.

“If you’re really looking for a long-term relationship with Pakistan, then the upcoming generation is the most significant part of it,” USIP South Asia Advisor Moeed Yusuf told those watching at USIP and via a live webcast. Trying to understand the attitudes and expectations of Pakistan’s youth, he said, will be necessary “to understand where this country is going in the next 10 or 15 years.”

Abiodun Williams, the senior vice president at USIP’s Center for Conflict Management, said the Institute has been active in Pakistan since 2005, with peacebuilding programs on the ground, analytical work and the use of its “convening power” to bring key Pakistani officials and analysts to USIP for discussions. With young people acting as important agents of change, Williams said, “We at USIP see youth as central to peacebuilding around the world.”

George Mason University’s Mehtab Karim, a distinguished senior fellow and affiliated professor with the School of Public Policy, described the demographic factors behind Pakistan’s rising youth population but noted that the pattern does not endure: “This bulge doesn’t stay that way.” Karim said youths have wide access to information through the Internet and television, generally low levels of education and insufficient employment opportunities and face the risk of being “easily mobilized by insurgent organizations, leading to conflicts.” Karim also said that the Pakistani government lacks a national effort to involve youth in productive activities, adding, “There has been no proper youth policy.”

Asad Majid Khan, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Pakistan in Washington, D.C., gave the conference’s keynote address on the challenges and opportunities facing Pakistan’s youth. He said they include an economy hurt by the global economic downturn and price shocks, an education system set back by conflict and natural disasters and rapid population growth of just over 2 percent annually. These factors contribute to high youth unemployment that exposes young people to stress and makes crime and insecurity more likely, he said, but the Pakistani government is working to increase literacy and economic opportunity to help counter radicalization.

Khan cited Pakistan’s music, fashion, art, film and media industries as areas where youth are having an impact that resonates globally. He praised the role of youth as “the backbone of the robust civil society in Pakistan” as well as their increasing involvement in politics.

Khan said that this democratization of Pakistan is visible in the widespread condemnation of an October 9 attack by Taliban gunmen on a 14-year old education rights campaigner, Malala Yousafzai. “The attack on the child is one part of the story, but the reactions it has generated is the other part,” he said.

The themes of the October 10 conference reflect considerable USIP activity on youth-related issues in Pakistan. The Institute has been backing innovation projects and larger grants to support conflict-prevention activities, as well as research and analysis on the topic.

One area of USIP activity has been in what are called “Peace Innovation Projects.” “Benefiting from our on-ground presence, we are seeking to create a niche in supporting small-scale, innovative ideas relevant to peacebuilding,” said Yusuf. Most are pilot initiatives that need less than $30,000 in funding and of a sort that is often ignored by large donors, he said, but they have the potential of being developed on a larger scale. They include a series of peace speakers at a summer camp at a government school in Lahore that emphasizes critical thinking—an exercise that will result in a video that will be available on USIP’s website. Another initiative will have children from Lahore get involved in the clean-up of an important Hindu temple in the state of Punjab. The primarily Muslim participants will be briefed on Pakistan’s diversity and on the importance of inter-faith harmony and tolerance.

USIP also runs a Pakistan Priority Grant Program that aims to strengthen civil society capacities for conflict prevention and promote greater understanding of issues related to identity, tolerance, diversity and sectarian extremism in Pakistan through education, training, research and the media.

The program has a number of active youth-related grants. One will take 600 youth through a three-tiered process of training, dialogue and action to enhance their role in conflict prevention in Baluchistan. Another will help create a trained pool of young faculty members and youth activists at 20 universities across Pakistan.  The trained alumni of that project use mass and social media tools to inspire other youth to work against extremism.

Teachers in Pakistan’s Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas are also being empowered to become agents of change in school by providing them with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to think critically and promote tolerance and non-violence—creating a counter-narrative to pervasive extremist messaging. And funding has gone to a school certification program to incorporate compassion skills into curriculum and school policy with a supplementary curriculum, educator training program and an online web resource. That program is focused on 100 private and governmental schools in Karachi.

Through partnerships with local think tanks and universities, USIP is also conducting fieldwork, encouraging research papers and supporting initiatives that strengthen the capacity of institutions in Pakistan to conduct rigorous research and analysis on extremism and counter-extremism.

One effort is known as the “Framework for Youth Policy and De-radicalization.”  USIP is commissioning a research project that brings together existing research on de-radicalization, demography, employability, education and skills. It also conducts field research to collect qualitative information (youth education decisions, skills acquired, chances of employment, skills development through apprenticeship in the informal sector) that will allow assessments of policy implementation by Pakistan’s government and other stakeholder institutions.

Another program, titled “Pakistan’s Upcoming Generation—Hope or Despair,” will map youth perceptions and preferences for the country’s future and link the findings to policy options that could help Pakistan make progress on these issues. A USIP Special Report will examine the current state and views of Pakistani youth, the threat of radicalization among this demographic group and avenues for U.S. policy to positively influence their future.