Date: Jan 25, 2019
Source: The Daily Star
Workshops say ‘NO’ to violence on social media
Mohammed Zaatari & Jacob Boswall| The Daily Star
BEIRUT/SIDON: Dozens of children and adults took part in a three-day symposium titled “Say NO to violence on social media,” the first in a series of regional workshops addressing incitement to violence across social media.

The training workshops focused on ways of detecting and monitoring electronic violence, which in some cases can lead to murder, support of terrorist groups, and exploitation of adolescents in Lebanese society and Arab society in general, according to the statement carried by the state-run National News Agency.

The workshops, which took place Monday to Wednesday this week, hosted 163 children and adults from all over Lebanon and were organized by the International Relations Center and Research in the Middle East and the Say NO to Violence association, in Sidon and Beirut.

“Ensuring societal safety is one of the fundamental goals of the United Nations, and a principal criterion for realizing stability and development. We have all felt scared and concerned by incitement to violence across social media, especially when it targets the Arab world,” head of the Center for International Relations and Middle Eastern Research Amira Ibrahim al-Khaled said at the event.

The center is a newly named advisory center for Middle Eastern affairs and policy, based in London.

Khaled said she hoped that the awareness-raising workshops will continue in other Arab countries, after the initiative’s launch this week.

Tarek Abou Zeinab, a representative from Say NO to Violence, told The Daily Star that the workshops will continue next week: “We will take the training workshop to Jordan next week it is the first of many.”