In sub-Saharan Africa, “more than half of the men under the age of 35 do not know their [HIV] status and are not on treatment,” said Dr. Sean Cavanaugh of the Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator at a recent Wilson Center event on engaging the faith community in reaching young men and boys with HIV prevention services.  Consequently, men often don’t seek HIV services promptly, decreasing their rates of antiretroviral therapy and viral suppression, and increasing HIV mortality rates.

Are younger countries at higher risk of civil conflict? The International Crisis Group’s 2018 list of 10 conflicts to watch suggests they might be: Like last year, intra-state conflicts (civil and ethnic conflicts within states, rather than wars between states) dominate the list, and among those, about 70 percent are within youthful countries, or states with a median age of 25.5 years or younger. The only multi-state cluster mentioned in both 2017 and 2018 lists is the Sahel, the world’s most youthful region.

It should be an excellent time to be a young Iranian: High school and college enrollments in the Islamic Republic rank near the top of Muslim-majority countries. Women have only about two children on average, compared to 6.5 in the mid-1980s. And childhood mortality is projected to approach North American levels in the next 15 years. Yet, as the recent protests show, many young Iranians feel left out. Job growth—especially for young adults—has failed to keep pace with development, while persistently high rates of inflation steadily drive up the cost of living and cut deeply into Iranians’ savings.

“There is no healthcare delivery system for non-pregnant 15- to 24-year olds,” said the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, Ambassador Deborah Birx, at a recent Wilson Center event on efforts to reduce the prevalence of HIV/AIDS among adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) established the DREAMS program, which aims to create “a health care system where young people interact in a proactive and positive way,” said Birx.

Over the past 25 years, economic and political demographers have documented how declines in fertility rates have preceded improvements in state capacity, income, and political stability in much of East Asia, Latin America, and, most recently, in the Maghreb region of North Africa (Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria). Nonetheless, social scientists still debate over where and when this “demographic dividend” will occur in the youthful, low-income countries of sub-Saharan Africa.  Elizabeth Leahy Madsen of the Population Reference Bureau and I find that, for most youthful countries—like those in sub-Saharan Africa—changes in population age structure provide a means to gauge the timing of their future development.

“Resilience means the ability to cope and move ahead,” said Joan Dalton, the gender lead at THINK Liberia during the second session in a series of conversations on resilience and health at the Wilson Center. As conflicts, epidemics, and natural disasters increasingly leave global health systems vulnerable to devastation, it is important to build resilient health systems through interventions that support community resilience, agreed global health experts at the panel event co-hosted by CARE and the Maternal Health Initiative.

While attention in the United States is focused on the disasters in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, a crisis across the Atlantic is rapidly becoming one of the worst humanitarian disasters since World War II. In the Lake Chad basin of West Africa, about 17 million people are affected by the emergency, struggling with food insecurity, widespread violence, involuntary displacement, and the consequences of environmental degradation. An estimated 800,000 children suffer from acute malnutrition; and although international donors pledged $672 million in February, the famine and humanitarian misery continues unabated. Suicide bombings and attacks by Boko Haram, which have killed at least 381 civilians since April 2017, have forced many people to leave their homes and farmers to leave their lands, interrupting livelihoods and reducing food supplies.