The role of education in Preventing Violent Extremism in Lebanon (2-pager)

The hypothesis of this research, funded by the Knowledge Management Fund, is that offering education to children at risk will eventually lead to a more stable situation in the Middle East, which will also trickle down to Europe and the Netherlands (Ibid). Education is paramount from this perspective, since more than 3.5 million refugee children between 5 and 17 years old cannot attend schooling, and they are in danger of becoming “a lost generation” (MFA 2018, 44). In order to fulfil these goals, more than half of the €200 million that has been allocated to Lebanon between 2019-2022, is invested in educational and protection projects (MCSL 2019). Next to this, regionally €30 million a year is allocated to improve education and another €10 million a year is assigned to ‘preventing violent extremism’, both envisioned here as combatting root causes of instability (MFA 2018, 102). The increasing focus on education, loosely related to the notion of preventing violent extremism, triggered us to find out how these policies lead to educational interventions in practice. With this in mind, the research focus lies on the role of education within the wider PVE debate, and subsequently aims to answer the question: what are the effects of educational interventions subsidized by the Dutch government on school-going children in Lebanon, in relation to preventing violent extremism?

This publication is a 2-pager overview of the more in-depth report conducted by EMMA researchers, Laura van der Reijden and Marije Luitjens-Tol that can be found here.