Social Peace and cohesion

Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD) believes that social peace and cohesion can only be attained through public participation, and that peaceful democratic change can only be achieved through presenting alternative and participatory measures for the population to build social peace and reconciliation.

At this societal level, a desire for a dramatic change in the Arab world has led to small pockets of support for violent extremism, including support for terrorists’ groups. This needs to be addressed through radical solutions that provide accurate treatment and rapid response to these issues.

ARDD considers that the drying up the sources of violent extremism is a form of political participation and civic duty that enables citizens to fight extremism. We believe that public participation in efforts to prevent violent extremism is essential to its success. We also seek to engage women and men in facing extremism as a form of civic engagement in which participants help each other to overcome prejudice and counter-extremism.

Promoting political participation, ARDD engages women and men to contest extremism as a form of civic engagement whereby participants aid each other to overcome barriers of prejudice and counter-radicalization. ARDD offers tools and capacity building opportunities for dialogue between Civil Society, the government and academia to enhance PVE research through the provision of grassroots information such as public perceptions of violent extremism to policymakers and counter-terrorism organizations, as well as direct publications in both Arabic and English through ARDD’s AlNahda Thought Forum.