Job Fair Offers Hope to Young Unemployed in Iraqi Province

An Iraqi vendor organizes his stall in Mosul, part of Nineveh province where unemployment is around 40 percent. (AFP)
An Iraqi vendor organizes his stall in Mosul, part of Nineveh province where unemployment is around 40 percent. (AFP)
TT

Job Fair Offers Hope to Young Unemployed in Iraqi Province

An Iraqi vendor organizes his stall in Mosul, part of Nineveh province where unemployment is around 40 percent. (AFP)
An Iraqi vendor organizes his stall in Mosul, part of Nineveh province where unemployment is around 40 percent. (AFP)

In an Iraqi province where unemployment is about 40 percent, a lucky few hoped to find work Sunday at a university job fair attended by French firms alongside local companies.

The three-day event is taking place at the University of Mosul in Iraq's war-ravaged second city, where reconstruction has been slow five years after the Iraqi army backed by US-led coalition air strikes pushed out ISIS extremists.

Laith Abdallah, 24, was among dozens of students wandering on the campus lawn among stands set up by about 40 companies, most of them locally-based but including Carrefour and Schneider Electric from France.

Abdallah said he'd been looking for work since 2019 when he graduated in petroleum engineering.

"Our number increases each day and the opportunities are rare," he said of the unemployed. "A young person has to get married and help his parents."

Statistics from Nineveh province, of which Mosul is the capital, say unemployment is around 40 percent generally and 20 percent for those aged 24-45.

Joblessness is similarly high elsewhere in the country which is trying to move past decades of war but is hobbled by corruption and other problems which sparked a youth-led protest movement in 2019.

"Unemployment is perhaps the ogre that devours the dreams of the young," said Qussay al-Ahmad, president of the University of Mosul.

Ahmad hoped that the job fair would lead to "employment opportunities for hundreds of young people."

Mustafa Aziz, 26, is among those fortunate to already be working. He hoped to recruit graduates with expertise in renewable energy or electrical engineering for his seven-member team at Mosul Solar.

"We need specific competence and expertise," he said.

The job fair is part of a project called Yanhad, financed by France and the European Union, Jeremie Pellet, director general of Expertise France, told AFP over the phone.

"This fits into our perspective of looking for future prospects and diversification of the private sector economy for Iraqi youth," said Pellet.

Yanhad had already supported a business "incubator" which has trained about 320 young people in entrepreneurship and financed a dozen start-ups, Pellet said.



Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
TT

Israel Orders Evacuation of Area Designated as Humanitarian Zone in Gaza

 A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)
A picture taken in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip shows smoke billowing during Israeli army operations in areas east of Khan Younis city on July 26, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. (AFP)

Israel’s military ordered the evacuation Saturday of a crowded part of Gaza designated as a humanitarian zone, saying it is planning an operation against Hamas militants in Khan Younis, including parts of Muwasi, a makeshift tent camp where thousands are seeking refuge.

The order comes in response to rocket fire that Israel says originates from the area. It's the second evacuation issued in a week in an area designated for Palestinians fleeing other parts of Gaza. Many Palestinians have been uprooted multiple times in search of safety during Israel's punishing air and ground campaign.

On Monday, after the evacuation order, multiple Israeli airstrikes hit around Khan Younis, killing at least 70 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, citing figures from Nasser Hospital.

The area is part of a 60-square-kilometer (roughly 20-square-mile) “humanitarian zone” to which Israel has been telling Palestinians to flee to throughout the war. Much of the area is blanketed with tent camps that lack sanitation and medical facilities and have limited access to aid, United Nations and humanitarian groups say. About 1.8 million Palestinians are sheltering there, according to Israel's estimates. That's more than half Gaza’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.

The war in Gaza has killed more than 39,100 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count. The UN estimated in February that some 17,000 children in the territory are now unaccompanied, and the number is likely to have grown since.

The war began with an assault by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took about 250 hostages. About 115 are still in Gaza, about a third of them believed to be dead, according to Israeli authorities.