It aims to:

• Review the factors that currently shape dryland youths’ livelihood and work prospects and their trajectories as young adults;
• Highlights key knowledge and research gaps, including the need for more longitudinal research in the drylands, and more studies on pandemics and their impact on rural youths' access to work and vocational training;
• Examine the opportunities and provide recommendations for external actors to work with young people in drylands to broaden their ‘opportunity windows’ for decent work in a way that is fully gender-responsive and socially inclusive of young people in all their diversity.

The report provides a series of recommendations for:

• Strengthening young people’s educational foundations for decent work, in the drylands;
• Vocational training and guidance for young people in the rural drylands;
• Broadening young people’s sense of choice and access to wider economic opportunities in drylands, including through climate-resilient, low carbon vocations; and
• Addressing the enabling environment to support young people to access and secure decent work in dryland regions.

Authors: Mairi Dupar, Emma Lovell, Vidya Diwakar, Olivia Walmsley, Camille Balcou, Beza Tesfaye and Vaidehi Krishnan