Since 2011, the Arab region has been experiencing severe changes in the political, economic, and social environments. The uprisings, led by youth, called on a change in the static political systems that failed to improve the socioeconomic conditions of a large portion of marginalized social groups. Young women and men constitute one of the largest social groups that have been systematically excluded for decades. With the aim of avoiding previous mistakes, this paper looks into the situation of youth inclusion in the Arab region and presents positive initiatives and policy tools that can guide Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and decision‐makers in the future.

As the concepts in this paper are still young, the paper starts by defining the key concepts of social inclusion, social integration, social exclusion, social cohesion, civic engagement, and democratic participation. This is followed by a detailed assessment of the political and social context relating to youth inclusion in the Arab region. The assessment adopts the multi‐dimensional approach to social inclusion and takes into consideration groups suffering from multiple exclusions including young women, young People With Disabilities (PWD), young people living in marginalized areas, young migrants and refugees, and young people living in conflict situations.

The paper also looks at positive responses by CSOs and governments direct towards social inclusion by mapping out 22 initiatives across the region while elaborating on two case studies. The first case study looks into the recently adopted national youth policy in Lebanon while the second considers the role of young PWD within Disabled Persons Organizations (DPO) and service providing associations to increase the social inclusiveness of PWD.

The final section of the paper offers policy tools that tackle the use of youth inclusion research in policy analysis, the assessment of the level of inclusiveness of public policies, youth democratic participation, the rights‐based approach to social exclusion, and the development process of national youth policies.