Education, Identity and Rising Extremism: From Preventing Violent Extremism to Promoting Peace, Resilience, Equal Rights and Pluralism (PREP)

In November 2016, during ICAN’s fifth annual Women, Peace and Security forum, members of the Women’s Alliance for Security Leadership (WASL) and other women-led organizations in over 30 countries analyzed the role of formal and informal education in contributing to enabling conditions and mitigating extremist violence. They also highlighted their own practical experiences and lessons learnt in providing education to prevent violent extremism by fostering peace, resilience, equal rights and pluralism (PREP) in formal and informal spaces, including through the teachings of alternative religious narratives. Their experiences, combined with desk research on the state of current policy and practice, and the first multi-stakeholder Global Solutions Exchange (GSX) meeting on the nexus of education, gender and extremism held at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris in March 2017, inform the findings of this report.