When images of North London's gutted and burning buildings, broken shop windows and refuse-lined streets appeared on TV screens and front-page headlines during the four-day Tottenham riots last August, many dismissed the damage as the work of "hoodlums" and "delinquents".

What most media failed to mention – and continues to ignore – is that riots such as those that wracked England from Aug. 6-10 sprang largely from a deeper problem: a global youth unemployment epidemic that has left millions of young people jobless, excluded and increasingly frustrated.

According to the World Youth Report released Monday by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), worldwide youth participation in the labour force has been in relatively sharp decline, slipping from 54.7 percent in 1998 to just 50.8 percent a decade later.

The year 2009 saw the highest level of youth unemployment on record since the International Labour Organisation began collecting such data almost 20 years ago, with 75.8 million young job seekers without gainful employment.

In 2010, the global youth unemployment rate was 12.7 percent, dramatically overshadowing the adult unemployment rate of 4.8 percent.

The combined burden of a youth bulge and shrinking job market falls most heavily on the developing world, which is home to 87 percent of the world's youth, most of whom are often underemployed or working in the informal economy under poor conditions.

Today, about 152 million young workers live in households that are below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day, comprising 24 percent of the total working poor. For these young people – often heads of households – unemployment is more than a "social ill"; it is a matter of life and death.

Two-thirds of the Arab world is under the age of 30. A third of Africa's total population (roughly 331 million people) is between the ages of 15-25. Since 40 percent of Africa's population is under 15 years of age, this number will increase significantly in the coming decade.

Meanwhile 62 percent of the world's 1.2 billion youth live in Asian countries where at least a third of the population exists on less than two dollars a day.