Category: EUKH EN

The Euro-Arab Foundation held this Friday the in-person phase of the second group of its Training Course on the Prevention of Radicalisation. The course is aimed at professionals of the Granada City Council who work with children and young people, as well as with groups vulnerable to the risk factors of radicalisation and violent extremism.

The initiative responds to growing processes of social polarisation and the rise of violent extremist groups of various kinds. In this context, the radicalisation of children and young people, whether around political ideologies, religious beliefs or other issues, is an increasingly worrying phenomenon. Although there is no single profile of radicalisation, childhood and adolescence are stages of particular vulnerability to recruitment or indoctrination. For that very reason, they are also the ideal time to build barriers that protect against these risks, and frontline professionals play a decisive role in this.

The course, developed from the ARMOUR project and based on empirical research and prevention practice, gives participants useful tools to incorporate prevention into their everyday work. The project has studied and developed seven sets of skills and competences capable of generating and consolidating protective factors and resilience. To work on them, workshops known as experiential labs have been designed, tested and validated, which professionals will be able to run with children and young people once they have completed the training.

A two-phase training programme

The 30-hour training is blended, with an in-person phase covering three blocks: radicalisation and violent extremism (concepts, risk and protective factors, explanatory models); the prevention of radicalisation (plans and strategies, multilevel and multi-agency approach, resilience-building programmes); and the identification of radicalisation processes (characteristics of radicalisation among minors, indicators and warning signs, with practical work on case studies).

This is followed by a second, online phase on the Euro-Arab Foundation’s virtual classroom, focused on intervention models with minors, psychosocial preventive approaches, the development of individual, psychosocial and institutional competences, resilience-building methodologies, and the design of workshops for working with children and young people.

A teaching team with experience in preventing radicalisation

The training was delivered by Javier Ruipérez Canales, Director of the Projects and Research Department at the Euro-Arab Foundation, where he is also Principal Investigator in the area of Prevention of Radicalisation and Violent Extremism. He is also Director of Strategic Communication of the European Commission’s EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation.

He was joined by Daniel F. Pérez García, researcher and project coordinator at the Foundation. His work focuses on research and on coordinating teams of EU-funded projects in the field of preventing radicalisation and violent extremism. He is also a researcher and strategic communication expert at the EU Knowledge Hub on Prevention of Radicalisation.

The team is completed by Eva Jiménez González, PhD in Psychology and forensic psychologist, with extensive international experience in the field of radicalisation and terrorism. She is a European Union Team Leader and Senior Key Expert on Radicalisation and Terrorism for the European Commission, the Council of Europe and the United Nations.

On Friday, 11 September, the Euro-Arab Foundation welcomed to its headquarters an Uzbek delegation led by Muzaffar Kamilov, Adviser to the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Religious and Educational Affairs and Rector of the International Islamic Academy of Uzbekistan. He was accompanied by the Ambassador of Uzbekistan to Spain, as well as the Deputy Chairman of the State Security Service of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Chairman of the Committee on Religious Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan, the Project Manager of the EU–UN Global Terrorism Threats Facility of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT), and the Officer-in-Charge of the Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism Section of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Centre (UNCCT).

The visit to the Euro-Arab Foundation is one of three study visits scheduled by the delegation in Europe, following earlier visits to Sweden and Belgium, and was carried out as part of UNOCT’s ongoing support to the International Islamic Academy of Uzbekistan in developing the institutional concept and operating model for a specialised Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) Centre within the Academy. The Euro-Arab Foundation operates as an academic and intercultural research platform, making its experience particularly relevant for exploring how research is translated into practical prevention, education, strategic communications and community engagement, with a view to identifying approaches that may be relevant and adaptable to the context of Uzbekistan.

During the visit, the delegation met with the Executive Secretary of the Euro-Arab Foundation, Antonio Sánchez, who showed them the facilities and explained the work of the institution; with Isabel Pérez, Communications Director of the Euro-Arab Foundation, who detailed the Foundation’s active participation in the European Commission’s EU Knowledge Hub project, where they lead the Communications and Strategic Communications portfolios; and with José María González, Deputy Director of Projects at the Foundation, who elaborated on the institution’s areas of research specialisation. The meeting also included José Luis Salido, Project Coordinator, and Rascha Albaba, Researcher, both involved in projects on the protection of places of worship and combating hate speech.

The exchange covered eight thematic areas: the Foundation’s academic and applied institutional model, its positioning and comparative advantage between academia, policy and practice; the priorities, methods and quality of research on radicalization and violent extremism; the translation of findings into policies, programmes and prevention tools; strategic communications and the design of evidence-based prevention narratives; education and training for students, educators and practitioners; intercultural and interreligious dialogue and the strengthening of community resilience; the integration of human rights, gender equality and ethical safeguards; and, finally, partnerships, international cooperation and the institutional and financial sustainability of research and prevention work, with a view to possible future exchange between the Foundation and the Academy.

On February 27, the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies participated in the presentation of the Jihadist Terrorism Yearbook 2025, a benchmark publication edited by the International Observatory for Studies on Terrorism (OIET). This edition once again features the contribution of Daniel F. Pérez, researcher and project coordinator at the Euro-Arab Foundation.

The report, which consolidates monitoring data from the past year, reveals a significant transformation in radicalization dynamics and a shift in violence hotspots—with a particular impact on the African continent and the persistent threat within digital environments.

In this edition, Daniel F. Pérez-García provides a fundamental academic and strategic perspective, examining the complex relationship between Jihadism and the Far Right. The core of Pérez-García’s contribution focuses on the phenomenon of “reciprocal radicalisation,” where both extremisms operate as “rhetorical allies” that feed into each other in a vicious cycle of hatred. According to the researcher, although their ultimate goals are antagonistic, these movements converge through a shared architecture of nostalgia, existential threats, and utopias of purity.

The study highlights a concerning “mirror effect”:

• Supremacist racism is instrumentalised by Jihadism to denounce an alleged crusade against Islam.
• Radical Islamist rhetoric is used by the Far Right to justify a threat to national identity.

Ultimately, both ideologies target democratic institutions and social pluralism.

From Reaction to Resilience

As a response to this challenge, Pérez-García advocates for a transition from the current “culture of reaction” toward a “culture of resilience” based on strategic communication. He proposes an operational roadmap utilizing advanced tools, such as Artificial Intelligence for early detection and the creation of hyper-personalized counter-narratives.

“The goal is to connect emotionally with younger audiences in the digital environment before a cognitive fixation on extremist discourses occurs, thereby strengthening social cohesion against the polarization that defines the current geopolitical landscape,” states the Euro-Arab researcher.

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Yearbook Links:

• Full Yearbook (Spanish): Download here
• Executive Summary (Spanish): Download here

Within the framework of its participation in the EU Knowledge Hub, the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies took part in the MENA region study visit titled: “Preventing Radicalisation and Building Youth Resilience: Insights from Al-Azhar Observatory for Combating Extremism.”

The meeting, organized by the EUKH and the European Commission on 21 and 22 January, brought together policymakers and practitioners from EU Member States and MENA countries in the Egyptian capital to analyze successful models in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE).

The Egyptian model and the role of narratives

During the visit, the delegation gained in-depth insights into the Egyptian prevention model, with a particular focus on the work of the Al-Azhar Observatory. Experts, including Euro-Arab Foundation researcher Jusaima Moaid-azm, analysed how this center integrates constant monitoring, deep analysis, and the production of effective alternative narratives.

The visit provided first-hand knowledge of the Observatory’s communication strategies to dismantle extremist discourse—an area where the Euro-Arab Foundation has an extensive track record through its various research projects. This analysis was linked to a comparative study on youth vulnerability and resilience in the face of social, economic, and digital pressures in both Europe and the MENA region, based on the premise that prevention is not an isolated task, but rather a systemic challenge.