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New Gulf policies to reduce domestic unemployment could impact countries like Sri Lanka, says the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).



New Gulf policies to reduce domestic unemployment could impact countries like Sri Lanka, says the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). The IOM’s World Migration Report 2005, that analyses the global movement of people, notes that recent Gulf policies are geared towards reducing the inflow of foreign workers.

The main reason is the regions extremely high unemployment.

On average, the Arab Middle East has the highest unemployment rate of all regions in the world at 15 percent.

Unemployment in Saudi Arabia, for example, is estimated at around 13 percent among men and as high as 35 percent among young people aged 20-24.

Saudi Arabia also has a very large youth population - 56 percent of its population is below 20 – which means the country needs to create around 100,000 new jobs every year, over the next 20 years, to find employment for these young people.

Now, many countries within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are trying to reduce their unemployment rate