[DoreenMichele]

Pakistan is a nation of children and refugees. It's not well positioned to self advocate on the world stage.

Pakistan is the world's fifth-most-populous country.

The population is young: in 2019 34.8% were thought to be 14 or younger

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_in_Pakistan

Pakistan has one of the world's youngest populations.

The country's population structure is relatively young, with a median age of 19.

Pakistan is also thought to have the world's fourth-largest refugee population, estimated at 1.4 million in mid-2021

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Pakistan

[kshacker]

Nation of Children - sure.

Nation of Refugees - now or always? Now due to floods I can understand. But if always, I do not understand. They have been a "stable" country for half a century. When I say "stable", I mean without any land being lost or won since 1971, which puts the last major change at almost 51 years and 51 years should be a long time for any refugees to be assimilate, no?

[abdullahkhalids]

The majority of the refugees in Pakistan are those from the two Afghanistan invasions by USSR/US, and at their peak were several times the current number.

There was also an internal operation in the last decade to remove the Taliban and such from their strongholds and that caused a lot of innocents to lose their homes.

There were large floods in 2010 and a strong earthquake in 2005 that also destroyed many towns and villages.

And as a historical tidbit, when Mao was in power, a small number of Chinese ran from there and settled in Pakistan.

[MichaelCollins]

50 years is nothing if you're talking about geo-engineering projects to stabilize your community. Dike construction in the Netherlands has been underway for well over a thousand years. 50 years probably isn't even enough time for the importance of such projects to truly permeate a culture.

[kshacker]

I am just trying to understand what the parent commenter meant by "nation of refugees".

[noSyncCloud]

>median age of 19.

This is wild. Google says the US is 38, Germany 45, Japan 48 for some random examples (the top search result for me says Pakistan median age is 22, which is still crazy).

[mistrial9]

some other (often Muslim) countries are like this right now; it is well known in demographic studies

[okdood64]

> Pakistan is a nation of children and refugees. It's not well positioned to self advocate on the world stage.

I don't understand. Why can't the government self advocate given it's a nation of children and refugees?

[Loughla]

Maybe I'm jaded, but I take it to mean that the country is poor for the reasons stated. It has neither the global pull, nor the connections to massive corporations to make it anything but a humanitarian issue. This is a harder sell to other countries than a business and industry issue.