National Action Plan

 
Since the national consultations, the PVE Unit has worked closely with its technical partners to detail the plan and develop its theory of change. The NAP classifies its 45 actions under all 9 pillars of the National Strategy, allocating a timeframe per action over the timeframe of the NAP (2021 – 2023). The NAP crosscuts with 2 principles: Consistency with the National Strategy as well as Agility and Responsiveness. The NAP covers 4 specific target segments while aligning to the standards of the strategy: “No category, group, region, or belief shall be stigmatized.” The NAP covers 8 areas: Capacity Building, Research and Evidence Development, Policy Reform, Early Warning, Rehabilitation and Deradicalization, National and Local-level Programmes, Modus Operandi, as well as Strategic Communication and Awareness.

National Consultations

 
The key objectives of the GoL for the post-strategy-endorsement phase were to formulate an action plan to transform the strategy’s objectives into concrete actions based on a whole-of-society approach; to form the National PVE Network (PVEN); to develop systems of early warning and monitoring and evaluation; and to commission research on violent extremism.

Preparing for the National Action Planning process, several activities have been implemented with key stakeholders. Mainly 8 preparatory meetings have been conducted with 59 organizations (Religious leaders, parliamentary committees, banks, ministries, the Strong Cities Network, international organizations, & international experts) represented by 192 participants. These meetings focused on the purpose and scope of the NAP.
Throughout the year 2019, nine consultative workshops were organized, each tackling one of the nine pillars of the PVE strategy. The workshops engaged 850 participants representing over 300 organizations from civil society, government entities, academia, private sector and international organizations. The workshops represented an opportunity for the application of a multi-agency approach in Lebanon.

While the strategy was developed through an extensive process of dialogue and engagement with the Whole of Government, (involving all twenty-nine government ministries in 2017-2018), the action plan was developed through a similar engagement and consultation exercise, only with the Whole of Society.

Scope & Target

 

A. NAP Scope

The scope of the national action plan focuses on the following 8 types of activities.


i. Capacity Building

NAP shall include capacity building opportunities for governmental, non-governmental and international actors on the necessary tools and concepts of PVE in the Lebanese context.


ii. Research and Evidence Development

NAP shall support scientific research and evidence development that focus on identifying and understanding the root causes of VE and impact analysis for potential PVE activities.


iii. Policy Reform

NAP shall include programs which aim to change policy and legislations necessary for achieving the designated outcomes.


iv. Early Warning

NAP shall include early warning instruments that help the government and the different stakeholders be informed about emerging factors and events which could potentially stimulate or otherwise precipitate violent extremism.


v. Rehabilitation and Disengagement

NAP shall step on specific grey areas between Counterterrorism (CT) and PVE. Particularly, NAP shall include programs and projects which are related to prisons rehabilitation and human rights respect in CT efforts.


vi. National and Local-level Programs

NAP shall aim at achieving its outcomes on the local and national levels taking into consideration the PVE strategy’s key standards concerning stigmatization and labelling of specific group with VE.


vii. Modus Operandi

NAP shall include programs and interventions which understand and utilize the tools, technologies, and spaces which the VE groups utilize in recruitment, indoctrination, and public communication for their cause.


viii. Strategic Communication and Awareness

The NAP shall include strategic communication programs which deal with the narratives component of the violent extremism system. The role of these programs is to counter the narratives spread by VE groups and introduce alternative ones which introduce social values and norms that support social cohesion and citizenship. In addition, NAP shall support the development of local and national networks among concerned actors.


B. NAP Target

Although NAP shall target all sorts of social groups in Lebanon by national-level and local-level programs, it shall give specific attention to the following social groups.


i. Youth

The PVE Unit consider young people to be at the frontline of preventing and responding to violent extremism. Youth in the age brackets between (16-35) are among the key targets for radicalization in Lebanon. However, this does not suggest that youth should be labelled or stigmatized by violent extremism. Youth shall rather be approached as both targets and partners in the implementation of the NAP.


ii. Women

PVE is considered to be a highly gendered issue in which gender and women empowerment interventions are necessary for maintaining social peace. Even though there is no available evidence on the role of women in radicalization or deradicalization in Lebanon, “women-led and/or women- focused interventions that reflect the complex realities of women’s roles and relationships within their own families and communities, as well as their potential or actual roles in violent extremism itself, can play an important role.”


iii. Prisoners

NAP includes interventions in Lebanese prisons which aim at rehabilitation of prisoners with VE linkages and prisons system reform with the objective of preventing radicalization in prisons as well as helping the reintegration of prisoners in society.


iv. Vulnerable Communities

NAP includes activities that target communities which suffer from exclusion; face socioeconomic hardship and deprived from basic services, including host communities which suffered from the influx of refugees and host refugees’ camps. In addition, social reconciliation and cohesion activities are important to be conducted between segregated and polarized groups.



PVE Systems to be Installed:

 

The implementation of the National Action Plan and the institutionalization of PVE in Lebanon shall be supported by systems to be installed within the functions of the PVE National Unit. Those systems are particularly tackled through the scope, actions, and sections of the PVE National Action Plan.


i. Monitoring & Evaluation

At the core of the actions implementation is a Monitoring and Evaluation system, fully structured within the PVE Unit’s new structure upon NAP delivery. This includes the development of a dashboard of indicators for the implementation of each action of the NAP, within its allocated timeframe.


The PVE National Unit shall provide assistance to the development of a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework. The development of the framework will be accompanied with the support to ministries on the use of the framework through trainings as well as review and alignment of existing national systems. In parallel, a national dashboard system shall be developed to support the M&E Framework. The dashboard will be used for reporting on the status of implementation of the strategy and action plan and will be accessible to the wider public.


ii. Social Mechanism – Early Warning System

The NAP includes early warning instruments that help the government and the different stakeholders be informed about emerging factors and events which could potentially stimulate or otherwise precipitate violent extremism. The NAP also includes capacity building opportunities for governmental, non-governmental and international actors on the necessary tools and concepts of PVE in the Lebanese context.


Social Mechanism takes into account local specificities. In this unique context, it shall help setting up a coherent system that takes into account diversity while being perfectly coordinated. The overall objective of the social mechanism approach is monitoring social transformations. And as a result of the complex and cross-cutting nature of the challenge of violent extremism, a preventive and proactive response requires that its signals be monitored and considered within the context of social transformations occurring at national and local levels, by focusing on the interactions among the components of society and understanding their determinants, causes and effects. This should be done over an extended period of time, since such interactions occur in a cumulative way over time.


iii. Internet Referral System

Internet Referral System focuses on many aspects related to social media, detecting and investigating malicious content on the internet and social media. The Internet Referral System, enlisted in the NAP, focuses on many aspects related to social media. The NAP includes monitoring Social Media dynamics, messages, interactions with events, and sentiments, developing alternative narratives online and offline media campaigns with widespread geographical reach, coordinating the efforts between content creators, social media companies by creating the National Internet Forum to Prevent Hate Speech and Violent Extremism and working collaboratively with the private sector and search bodies to formulate a standardized strategic communication framework. In parallel, the NAP includes releasing of a new law to prohibit hate speech, misinformation, disinformation, mal-information, violent extremist, and violation of human rights propaganda online, engaging with the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) and its research bodies like the Tech Against Extremism Research Network as well as engaging the influencers and celebrities in spreading messages and narratives against extremist narrative.


iv. Public Transparency Tools

The PVE National Unit supports the NAP with a strategic communications plan, aimed at establishing a continuous national dialogue and at countering the narratives spread by VE groups and introducing alternative ones through social values and norms that support social cohesion and citizenship. The plan comes with a new and innovative communications platform, the National Exchange Platform, a virtual place where all Network members will come to share, inform, learn and converse about the NAP and PVE activity in Lebanon. The national network will be equipped with this interactive platform through which partners can engage with one another and communicate their PVE activities with the public. The platform will be accessible to all-of-society, as every citizen will have access to online resources and a live dashboard tracking the progress of the implementation of each action under the NAP. It will be a space for national dialogue and will provide for better inter-communication among national and international actors in the Lebanese PVE arena.


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