Youth Building the New Iraq: The 2020 Iraq Public Leadership Program. الشباب يبنون العراق الجديد: 2020 برنامج القيادة العامة في العراق

This month, I once again had the privilege of working with the participants in the Iraq Public Leadership Program (IPLP).  Now in its ninth year, the IPLP is a highly sophisticated program designed to train Iraqi youth professionals in social entrepreneurship. What role does the IPLP play in helping a new generation of young Iraqis contribute to developing and diversifying Iraq’s economy?

The IPLP reflects the best of the new Iraq. A highly competitive program, it draws upon the best participants from a large applicant pool. This year’s cohort reflects the spirit of a future Iraq in which all members of the country’s diverse ethnic and confessional tableau are represented. The IPLP members include Arabs and Kurds and almost half the group are women.

IPLP participants receive a very broad training from a wide variety of experts.  Under the excellent direction of Dr. Yass al-Khafaji, Professor of Business Administration at the American University of Sharjah and founder, CEO and Principal of Alkafaji and Associates (A&A), the IPLP has attracted many outstanding young Iraqis who have gone on to make numerous contributions to Iraqi society.

With Iraq facing an extended period of decline in oil prices and a the Covid-19 pandemic, the need to diversify its economy is a pressing concern.  Currently, Iraq relies on oil revenues for over 90% of its foreign currency reserves.  Already, the closing of Iraq’s borders with Iran and Turkey due to the corona virus has boosted Iraqi manufacturers, small businesses and farmers who had difficulty competing with foreign imports prior to the pandemic, suggesting tht Iraq's private sector has the opportunity to become more robust under more supportive circumstances.

What type of training did we engage in during the sessions on which I worked with this year’s IPLP members?  The training centered on 6 themes: democracy and civic engagement, women’s empowerment, environmental sustainability, improving public health, diversification of the economy and promoting social entrepreneurship.

First, participants are concerned with the ability of Iraqi youth to bring about change. Thus, they want Iraq’s political system to offer more opportunity for youth who seek to use their creative energies to develop social entrepreneurial ventures. to participate in civic affairs. In this regard, one of my presentation, “Democracy, Civil Society and Democratic Thought: Iraq’s Gift to the World,” was intended to remind us, Iraqi and non-Iraqis, that modern forms of democracy actually trace their lineages to ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

A slide from "Democracy, Civil Society and Democratic Thought

A slide from the "Democracy, Civil Society and Democratic Thought: Iraq's Gift to the World"

The presentation offered examples from ancient Mesopotamian civilizations, the Abbasid Empire (750-1258 CE) and the 20^th Iraqi nationalist movement to demonstrate Iraq’s historic contributions to modern notions of democracy and civil society. The presentation's purpose was threefold.

First. the goal was to document these contributions.  Second, the presentation sought to help to offset the negative feeling many Iraqi youth have towards their country based on repressive Ba^cthist rule (1968-2003), the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88) and Gulf War (1990), the March 1991 Intifada in which hundreds of thousands were killed, and sectarian violence following the US invasion and toppling of Saddam in 2003. The presentation shows that Iraq is not a country of dictatorship, wars and violence but has a history which gave the world much of its civilization, a fact of which Iraqis can be very proud.

Third, the presentation was intended to lay the basis for a social entrepreneurial venture. The proposed venture would have Iraqi youth create a website for secondary school teachers and university faculty which would contains lesson plans and instructional materials on democratic governance, citizenship, the rule of law, cultural and religious tolerance, gender equality, civil society and citizenship.

Iraq developed the first legal system in the form of Hammurabi’s Code in 1752 BCE. This code is still part of the legal system of 140 nation-states today. One reason for its centrality to the law over many centuries is its comprehensive structure and the concern Hammurabi showed for the less fortunate of society.

The word for freedom, as understood in its modern meaning, was first used in ancient Mesopotamia which can also boast not only of having the first parliament, but of a parliament which required the ruler to obtain its permission before he began a war against a neighboring kingdom.

The incentive for ancient Mesopotamians to develop the world’s first language was a response to the Fertile Crescent's prosperity and the extent of their trade which extended from southern Egypt to the Black Sea and to present day Myanmar (Burma). Traders needed a notational system to keep track of their long distance trade. At the same time, the ancient Mesopotamians developed the world's first system of accounting and first financial contracts.

During the Abbasid Empire, Iraq developed the first planned city, Baghdad, and made great contribution’s in the sciences and mathematics, inventing chemistry (al-kimiya) and algebra (al-jabr).  The Caliph al-Ma’mun (813-833 CE) was highly intellectual and established an important library-university, Bayt al-Hikma (The House of Wisdom). The Bayt al-Hikma sought to compile all the knowledge of the world that existed at the time.

Today, many in the West looks to classical Athens for the origins of Western civilization. However, it was al-Ma’mun who helped preserve Greek culture through having his advisers bring the writings of Plato, Aristotle and other intellectuals to Baghdad to be translated into Arabic by members of the Chaldean Christian community Even though many of the works of the Greeks were subsequently destroyed, those preserved in the Bayt al-Hikma would later be translated from the Arabic into Latin during the European Renaissance.

Youth at work on Iraq's large "blogosphere"

The second presentation I offered, “Empowering Iraqi Youth: Social and Generational Perspectives,” sought to document the contributions Iraqi youth have made to Iraqi society since the fall of Saddam Husayn’s regime.  It included many activities, such as creating a large and influential “blogosphere,” which advocates for the rights of women, the poor, and the marginalized, working in NGOs devoted to promoting conflict resolution, contributing anti-sectarian programing to Iraqi television, mentoring poor students and creating myriad new social entrepreneurial ventures. 

Most recently, Iraqi youth have organized the "October Revolution (Thawrat Tishreen). Peaceful demonstrations, which has been ongoing since October 2019, have demanded that the Iraqi government end its extensive corruption and nepotism and establish a true social democracy. Their vision is accountable governance, religious and cultural tolerance, anti-sectarianism, gender equality and sustainable development. 

Iraqi youth have been the vanguard fighting sectarianism since 2003

The purpose of the presentation of empowering youth was to stimulate a discussion among IPLP participants regarding the possibilities of using social entrepreneurship in the future as a central vehicle to bring about economic, political, social and cultural change in Iraq. The beauty of social entrepreneurship model is that it serves two critical functions simultaneously: it can offer its practitioners steady employment while simultaneously making an important contribution to society.

Following our sessions which discussed and analyzed the first two presentations, IPLP participants were asked to choose between 6 topics and develop, in small groups, a project related to the topic. The topics were: Promoting Democracy and Civic Engagement in Iraq;  Empowering Youth and Social Entrepreneurship in Iraq; Increasing the Contribution of Iraqi Women to Building the New Iraq; Promoting Environmental Sustainability in Iraq; and Improving the Capacity of Iraq’s Public Health Infrastructure.

Groups of 5-6 participants took a week to develop their projects. The outcome of the exercise was very impressive.  Each project was presented as a Power Point.  All projects were creative, innovative, and extremely well formulated and thought-through. Not just limited to the realm of ideas, each project offered concrete proposals of how it would be implemented.

Although space does not allow for a full review of the projects, a few examples of the concepts and ideas for developing them offer a sampling of the IPLP group’s creativity.  “Recycling Food Waste into Fertilizer” noted how Iraqi cities have grown rapidly from the 1950s to 2020 and the growth of material waste has likewise dramatically increased. Thus, this project continues a 4 part plan to reduce food waste through donating excess food to the poor, using food waste to feed animals, composting to transform food waste into fertilizer (and anaerobic digestion to produce biogas), and  home, community and commercial composting.

TEDx Nishtimani conference on women's role in Iraqi Kurdistan society

Another project, “Increasing the Contribution of Iraqi Women in Rebuilding the New Iraq,” addressed the pressing problem of empowering women and increasing their ability to participate in and contribute to the public sphere.  The problem identified by this project is the inability of educated women to translate the skill sets they have learned during their educational training into full-time employment and careers.  By providing them with pathways to employment, the project seeks to enhance the confidence of Iraqi women of their ability to contribute to Iraqi society. 

To increase economic opportunities for women, the project proposes to improve their skills in obtaining and effectively using micro-grants to establish new social entrepreneurial ventures. One component of the plan is to establish an online company which would assist poor women to bring products to market such as handicrafts, food and sewn items.  A second idea is to create a women-owned and managed transportation company which would provide taxi and delivery services which meet the needs of Iraqi women.

Perhaps the most ambitious component of the project is to offer a series of 2-4 week courses, in cooperation with the Ministry of Labor, the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Oil and Gas, to train Iraqi women for positions in public agencies and private firms which require specific skill sets.  These short courses would be offered through the establishment of a new training institute which would benefit from Iraqi government and international support.

Tala - know as "Mother of the South" for helping Iraqi children with cancer

Another project, "Improving the Public Health Infrastructure in Iraq," developed a sophisticated public opinion survey to use in communities throughout Iraq where the local heath care system fails to provide adequate services. The questionnaire seeks to document the needs of local inhabitants with a view to developing hard data which could subsequently be used to improve health care delivery.

Developing  Iraq's Public Health Infrastructure 

This "bottom up" approach could provide local physicians, health care clinics and hospitals with badly needed information of what residents in the areas they serve are lacking in terms of health care. The data would also be useful to health care agencies in Iraq's provinces and to the Ministry of Health in Baghdad because it would allow them to target their services and funding in a more focused manner.

"Promoting Democracy and Civic Engagement in Iraq" grapples with the problem of political change in Iraq.  Without such change, this project argues, reducing violence and political instability can't be achieved. Nor can the rule of law and human rights become core components of Iraq's political culture.

What is particularly compelling about this project is the assertion that democracy must in fact take the form of social democracy.  Unless there is a more equitable distribution of income in Iraqi society and more opportunities for Iraqis from all socioeconomic sectors and ethno-confessional backgrounds of society, Iraq can't become a truly democratic country.

To promote democracy and civic engagement, this project proposes to develop new educational curricula.  One component of the educational process is teaching youth in elementary and secondary school about the many contributions of Iraq to world civilization and to encourage pride among them in Iraq's impressive cultural heritage.  

Promoting Democracy and Civic Engagement in Iraq's Active Learning Model

The learning model proposed by this project involves active learning.  Rather than merely write down what the instructor says in the classroom, students are encouraged to engage in simulations of the democratic process, such as elections, and meet with representatives f the Iraqi government who visit their classes.

The "Micro Lending Project" developed by another group of IPLP participants points to the large unemployment rate among Iraqi youth - currently 22% - and the degree to which the lack of jobs contributes to ability of terrorist and criminal organizations to recruit youth to their ranks. This project proposes to create a cooperative to help applicants go through the process of obtaining a loan as well as form a limited liability corporation to oversee the loans, their effective use and repayment.  

The proposed micro lending process in Iraq

Micro-finance and lending has already been used in others parts of the Arab world, such as by the  Egyptian financier, Sharif Samy, whose "Mashru'i" (My Project) offers groups of 4-5 women micro loans.  This project has been very successful since the group of borrowers makes sure the payments are made when required even if one borrower might have difficulty with making her part of the payment.  The default rate of Mr. Samy's fund is less than 1%. Given this success in Egypt, there is no reason why it couldn't be replicated successfully in Iraq.

These projects make clear the wide range of entrepreneurial talent which exists among Iraq's youth population.  Because youth constitutes 70% of the population under the age of 30, Iraq loses a huge amount of human resources by not enabling youth to contribute to society. 

Many Iraqi youth are keen to create social entrepreneurial projects but don't have access to investment capital. The critical question which remains is when the older generation of Iraqis will realize that the oil economy is in peril and diversification of Iraq's economy is a must. The inclusion of Iraq's younger generation is key to assuring the long-term economic growth and stability of the country. 

is a fundamental solution in stopping the cycle of violence in Iraq, ensuring political stability linked to the equitable distribution of wealth, opening new opportunities, and guaranteeing all human rights and individual freedoms