Young people have travelled to Davos 2020

Everybody knows that Professor Klaus Schwab, the creator and the soul of the annual Davos conference, is a very sensible and intelligent person. This year he has given a lot of space to the very young. They participate as speakers in various forums at the Davos World Economic Forum 2020. And they are all over, in the rooms and corridors where key global issues are being discussed. The teenagers and the young people he invited are also very diverse in terms of ethnicity and place of origin. But they have a few common traits. They are seriously committed to their cause, they do not act for the limelight, meaning that they are genuinely interested in creating a mass movement and just be part of it, and they are very good at communicating their messages. In the end, beyond all the problems they raise, they carry a banner of hope. They value values, and that’s the way forward. That is a big change in international affairs. And the Davos meeting shows that political leaders are getting to realise that they better listen to these young activists.

Greta and her words

I am most impressed by Greta Thunberg’s brief speech at the Climate Summit today. I am convinced her address will join the list of the best speeches ever delivered. Greta came out as thoughtful, sincere, direct and challenging. And let me believe the new generations are ready to change the world. That’s a powerful message.

Romania´s street lessons

The people of Romania have been demonstrating on the streets for the least 15 days or so. The rallying cry is against official corruption, the abuse of power the elected authorities exert for their own advantage and enrichment. And there are plenty of cases: thousands of accusations have been made by the special prosecutor and her office since 2013. People want the current government, led by the Social Democrats to leave office. This government has tried to save from the justice quite a number of past politicians who have been accused of corruption.

As I see the masses on the streets, braving the extreme weather conditions, I come to the conclusion that a number of points should be underlined. They must make us think.

The prosecution is headed by a very brave woman, Laura Codruta Kovesi. She is in charge of the anti-corruption agency, which comprises a good number of young lawyers and prosecutors. Kovesi has shown that leadership, honesty and modesty can change a country.

The political parties have no role in the popular mobilization. They have been side-lined, overtaken. This is civil society in action. There are no stars, no street leaders. It´s citizen’s power at its best.

The traditional media has also been overtaken. The information is shared through social networks. It´s faster, free of charge, and much more creative and closer to the people´s concerns. The established press comes later, just to pick the information and report about the events. But plays no role in the heat of the action.

Many of those on the streets are young people with a good level of education and a higher level of social frustration. Their participation creates some hope that change might happen. 

Different worlds

To travel out of the Geneva airport to another rich destination in Europe, as I did last night, could make you believe that everything is well in our part of the world. The planes are full, including in business class, the passengers look like people with nice jobs, there is youth, modernity, wealth and knowledge in the air. And if you keep flying this type of routes you can easily end up by seeing society and the planet from a perspective that is decades away from the one that inspires the young Africans that travelled today over the border fence in Ceuta, in a vain attempt, for the majority of them, to get to a better life in the EU. 

Restoring hope

People want to feel safe. At home, on the streets and also in their jobs. Times of uncertainty, as we have today in many parts of the world, including in our more developed societies, make people feel fragile and vulnerable. They open the door, if not properly addressed, to all kinds of extremism.

The political discourse has to pay greater attention to these matters. Leaders need to reassure. And they should think again about the role of the State and its institutions, the value of predictability, stability and compromise, and keep in mind that younger generations require special attention. The future is always build on the conviction of progress for new wave, the newcomers. The future will be sombre if the youth believe they will be worst off, that they are the ones who will pay for the follies and the lack of values of today.

In the current circumstances, to restore hope to the young people is a major challenge the political leaders ignore at the peril of everyone. We cannot accept that type of political blindness. 

Illegal crossings and poor politics

The illegal crossing of the Mediterranean Sea by hundreds of African migrants is a daily occurrence. They sail off the Libyan coast and try to reach the Italian territory. But they have disappeared from the news. If one tries to read about these dramatic movements in any of the major European papers one just gets nowhere. The matter is being ignored anywhere outside Italy. And it has also disappeared from the discussions in the the EU fora. The issue, which is of course a common concern, is seen as an Italian matter. And then the Italians just let the migrants loose, in the hope they will move North and out of the country. Many of them will find indeed their way into the Calais area, in Northern France, just waiting for a chance to cross into the UK. Others will move into other EU countries. The issue is plainly out of control, all over the place, from the islands in Southern Italy to Brussels, London, Paris and elsewhere. Nobody cares. It is not in the news therefore does not exist...politically.  

Moving North

In the last few days, the number of illegal emigrants that have tried to cross the Mediterranean Sea to reach Italy and the EU has increased dramatically. This flow shows that spring has arrived and the waters are much calmer. It also shows that the trend to migrate to Europe through North Africa, particularly through Libya, has not gone down, notwithstanding the lack of suitable jobs in our part of the world. But for a young man from Niger or Senegal, from Pakistan or Bangladesh, the dream is clear: to come and work in Europe is the ambition.

Recently I was trying to discourage someone from getting into this kind of adventure. Based in Dakar, a city that has gone poorer and overcrowded during the last fifteen years or so, the young fellow couldn´t believe me when I told him that there is no job for a bricklayer in today´s Europe. For him and his friends the truth is very simple: where they live today there is no future. And if you are a person full of energy you just keep moving. 

A new ball game in town

The social media networks have become major tools when it comes to rallying people and bringing them to the streets. Twitter, Facebook, Whats App, blogs, and many others –the list is very vast –, have been used in the Arab Spring revolutions, in Turkey, and now in Brazil, to disseminate political messages and call for demonstrations.  All of them are free, easy to access, and very common among the young and the urban folks. These two categories of people are, by far, the main source of opposition to any government in the world. In addition, social media tools work better with very short messages, very direct and therefore very easy to apprehend and internalize. 

Brazil

Back home, after a three-week trek across Brazil. I should actually say, after visiting a couple of places because the country is so vast and diverse that in a few weeks one can only get a light grasp of a very rich, intense and dynamic nation such as Brazil. Three weeks is just enough to get a break off the pessimism and self-destruction that is gaining ground in Europe and breath a bit of the optimism and confidence in the future. And feel the sense of opportunity that is now so strong in that country. Were I young, I would move there, I thought, on my way back to “little” Europe! 

Uprooted and lost as a young man

In Western Europe, there are thousands of young men like the one that has been captured in Boston or his dead brother.

They are the children of immigrant families that came from afar. Most of those families just ran away from poverty. But many others have left behind violent conflict experiences, be it in the Middle East, in South Asia or in Africa. Or maybe closer by, in the Balkans or the Caucasus. Their sons – it’s indeed a boy’s problem – might have been born in Europe and raised in a peaceful and democratic context but some of them feel uprooted and excluded. They end up by aligning themselves with those who express extremist views about the West. For some, the war in Syria has been an opportunity to join what they believe to be a Cause. Others have been elsewhere, including in Pakistan. These fronts have made them harder and more willing to take action. As such, they represent a major security challenge to the Western European societies. And the experience has shown that this is a challenge that is difficult to match. 

Syria's impact in Europe

The Belgian political leadership sees with great concern a number of young men volunteering to fight side by side with the rebel groups in Syria. They are Belgian nationals with an immigrant background. They come from Muslim families that migrated to Belgium one or two generations ago. Their parents might be mosque-going people but are not extremists. The younger fellows, many of them in their early twenties, make contact with radical groups through informal clubs, sports associations, coffee shops and internet sites. As they feel relatively disconnected from the Belgian way of life and society they are fertile ground for the radical seeds to grow.

The authorities are trying to address the problem. But these informal networks of tiny cells are very difficult to spot and monitor. It is even difficult to have a realistic estimate of the numbers involved. But it is certainly a big issue, if one takes into account the political and security attention the matter is getting these days. 

The professor of futilities

Le Monde published yesterday several hundred words written by a university professor who is also the chairman of the French Cercle des Economistes. The text was supposed to make suggestions about youth employment promotion in a context of crisis, especially taking into account that Mr Hollande's government will have to cut public expenditure by Euro 60 billion in the next five years.

I read it twice and came to the conclusion that this economist and most of the academics are off mark. They can't make any valid set of proposals. The reason is very simple: they remain inside the box, they do not want to antagonise the established political establishment. They have not yet realised that the European world is changing fast and that many young people have not been prepared by the education systems to navigate in a different type of context.