ISD has worked with local communities and governments in Lebanon and Jordan to counter hate, extremism and disinformation through our flagship Strong Cities Network regional project, the Young Cities programme and the Youth Civic Action Academy.

The Strong Cities Network in Jordan and Lebanon

The Strong Cities regional programme in the Middle East supports municipalities in strengthening their abilities to coordinate and deliver local P/CVE strategies and activities. By providing municipalities with the knowledge and tools needed to identify and react to early signs of radicalisation, Strong Cities seeks to reduce the presence of violent extremism within Lebanese and Jordanian communities. This work is delivered through a model of Local Prevention Networks (LPNs).

Through a range of initiatives across the region, the Strong Cities Network has led various transformative efforts in:

• Tripoli: Our team developed a critical reintegration programme for ex-prisoners and those leaving the prison system, providing skills training, employment opportunities and professional psychosocial support. This ground-breaking pilot project tackled trauma, disenfranchisement, marginalisation and unemployment as key drivers of violent extremism.
• Saida: A dedicated Psychosocial Support Unit provided psychosocial support to parents concerned about vulnerable children, training them to recognise early warning signs of violence and manage and refer individual cases.
• Majdal Anjar: The LPN worked to counter stigmatisation of vulnerable communities, training young men and women from refugee as well as host communities with digital marketing skills while raising awareness around hate speech and disinformation on social media.
• Jordan: The LPNs in Irbid, Karak and Zarqa organised monthly Diwaneyat dialogue series on extremism-related issues, bringing together policymakers, academics, religious leaders, youth workers and civil society members. Our team compiled a dedicated library of Arabic training resources to support trainings on human security and preventing violent extremism.

The Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs began funding the programme in 2016, facilitating the establishment of six local prevention networks in Lebanon and Jordan. Continued funding from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2019 expanded these efforts. In addition to direct programming, our team facilitated exchanges between local policymakers in Lebanon and Jordan and their counterparts in the Netherlands to explore reintegration and rehabilitation strategies for returnees and detainees through the Dutch ‘Safety Houses’ model. The Strong Cities Network worked closely with the National PVE Unit at the Council of Ministers in Lebanon and with the Ministry of Local Administration in Jordan to implement these initiatives.

Young Cities in Lebanon

The long-running Strong Cities project Young Cities operates in Lebanon, Senegal, Kenya and North Macedonia. Young Cities collaborates with both young people and local government to enhance and support youth-led solutions to community challenges such as hate, polarisation, extremism and violence.

In Lebanon, Young Cities implemented ISD’s Youth Innovation Lab model with local partners and staff. This includes the delivery of training workshops to support the implementation of youth-led initiatives across three cities, tackling issues such as inter-faith relations in Tripoli and marginalisation of refugees in Saida. These activities were delivered with buy-in and support from Strong Cities’ Local Prevention Networks and key municipal focal points.

The Youth Civic Action Academy 

ISD’s Youth Civic Action Academy (YCAA) was designed to empower young Jordanians to take an active role in preventing violence and building social cohesion in their local communities. For the past two years, young people engaged through the YCAA project have worked with a diverse set of stakeholders to promote media literacy and tackle issues like hate speech, cyberbullying, dis/misinformation and violent extremism.

In its two rounds (2022-2023), the program worked with young people and local communities to:

• Enhance their understanding of civic processes and action, including sessions on civic responsibilities and offline and online citizenship;
• Raise awareness of hate, misinformation/disinformation and extremism online;
• Develop skills for campaign design, development and delivery with experts, civil society partners, youth multimedia hubs, including the largest Jordanian online production and dissemination platform in the country.

MENA-focused Research

ISD leads pioneering multilingual research into digital Salafi-jihadist ecosystems online, tracking and monitoring the tactics and trends of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), al-Qaeda, and their affiliates. Our researchers examine how these groups leverage interconnected networks of websites, social media accounts, and messaging applications, to galvanise and mobilise supporters. ISD’s MENA digital research team has brought down coordinated networks of ISIS supporters on Facebook; unearthed terabyte-large digital archives; and reported on cross-organisational learning between groups online. Our team has also discovered and reported on Arabic-language COVID-19 disinformation networks operating bogus think tanks, and ‘scientific collectives’ on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Our work has been featured in Wired, the BBC and the Daily Beast.