Morocco Launches Youth Training Program to Combat Online Extremism

Fully financed by Japan, these trainings aim to deepen knowledge on the risks related to online radicalization content, strengthen their skills and identify hate speech and promote alternative discourses, fully financed by the Japanese government based on the risk diagnosis report on online radicalization by Rabita experts.

40 young people involved in civil society initiatives will be trained over three days in order to become peer educators themselves.

On this occasion, the Secretary General of the Rabita, Ahmed Abbadi, stated that this workshop is an evaluation of the "fight against online radicalization" project which aims to immunize young people on the Internet, especially since they spend an average of 8 hours a day browsing websites and digital networks.

The workshops are structured around three main axes: "intellectual empowerment" to strengthen the capacities of analysis, selection, comparison and good understanding of religion. The second axis is related to the emotional dimension in which all forms of creativity reside, Abbadi added, explaining that "if the creative capacities of young people are released, they will move from mere consumers of digital content to real influencers able to identify and fight extremist and hateful discourses". The third axis concerns the technical aspect to ensure that the proposals and content produced by these young people on social networks are attractive, professional and creative.

The Japanese Ambassador to Morocco, Takashi Shinozuka, welcomed the launch of this workshop, praising the fruitful cooperation with the RMO and UNDP which aims to fight against online radicalization in Morocco, which he described as a "country of moderate Islam". However, he warned that "we are called upon to confront this new enemy on several fronts, particularly in the digital world".

For his part, the UNDP Resident Representative in Morocco, Edward Christow, stated that the fight against online radicalization is of crucial importance and that prevention against hate speech and violent extremism online is a "very complex" task that requires strengthening the capacities of the different actors.