Ready for a second Arab Spring?

The U.N.’s latest Arab Development Report, published Nov. 29, showed younger Arabs are increasingly turning away from their respective governments and aligning their loyalties to religion and faith leaders.

Though the report doesn’t explicitly declare an imminent cultural upheaval like the one seen in 2011, the Economist makes a compelling argument that this is where things are headed.

In December 2010 Egypt’s cabinet discussed the findings of their National Youth Survey. Only 16% of 18-29-year-olds voted in elections, it showed; just 2% registered for volunteer work. An apathetic generation, concluded the ministers, who returned to twiddling their thumbs. Weeks later, Egypt’s youth spilled onto the streets and toppled President Hosni Mubarak.

The UN’s latest Arab Development Report … shows that few lessons have been learnt. Five years on from the revolts that toppled four Arab leaders, regimes are ruthlessly tough on dissent, but much less attentive to its causes.

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Horrifyingly, although home to only 5% of the world’s population, in 2014 the Arab world accounted for 45% of the world’s terrorism, 68% of its battle-related deaths, 47% of its internally displaced and 58% of its refugees….

The Arab youth population (aged 15-29) numbers 105m and is growing fast, but unemployment, poverty and marginalisation are all growing faster. The youth unemployment rate, at 30%, stands at more than twice the world’s average of 14%. Almost half of young Arab women looking for jobs fail to find them (against a global average of 16%).

Fourteen years ago, five Arab states were recognized by the U.N. as being in the midst of serious conflict. In 2016, that number is 11. In four years an estimated 75 percent of Arabs may be “living in countries vulnerable to conflict.”

It’s a recipe for revolution.

Younger generations of Arabs are, “the largest, the most well educated and the most highly urbanised in the history of the Arab region,” the U.N. report claimed.

The Economist added, “Thanks to social media, they are more in tune with the world than ever. If only their rulers knew what to do with them.”