Najam Presents Research at Marlborough House

Commonwealth Secretariat, Marlborough House

“The youth of Pakistan hold the future of Pakistan – for good, or for bad – in their hands,” said Adil Najam , inaugural dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and one of the lead authors of the Pakistan National Human Development Report (NHDR). The report was published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Pakistan, and it focuses on “Unleashing the Potential of a Young Pakistan” in addition to devising and calculating a district-wise human development index (HDI) for Pakistan.

DeC31HiXcAAOBu-Najam was invited to give a lecture on his research for the Pakistan NHDR on May 25, 2018, at Marlborough House in London, UK, which houses the Commonwealth Secretariat. The lecture was attended by experts from the Commonwealth Secretariat and from London-based civil society and academia.

In presenting the findings of the 3-year research study, Najam highlighted that Pakistan is, and will remain, a predominantly young country from now till about 2040. The study estimates that about 1.5 million new jobs have to be created per year to accommodate this youth bulge and the rate of school enrollment growth has to increase four-fold if all children of school-going age are to be accommodated in schools. He suggested that on the one hand the space for the ‘young to be young’ is shrinking, on the other hand, the youth of Pakistan have high aspirations and, in fact, demand a better future for themselves.

Earlier, in 2016, Prof. Najam had been invited to provide expert advice in the preparation of the Global Youth Report and Index, which is developed and published by the Commonwealth. He had also contributed an invited commentary to that report on “Being Young in the Age of Climate Change.”

Adil Najam is the inaugural dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He has studied and been involved with the UN Human Development Reports since their initiation in the early 1990s. Read more about him here.