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MENA Regional Hub

Middle East & North Africa

The MENA Regional Hub is working with local municipalities and governates to strengthen their role in preventing and responding to hate, extremism and polarisation as part of a whole-of-society approach. Often viewed as falling within the exclusive purview of national security actors, cities across the region are well placed to play an active role in prevention and response.

City Needs & Priorities

At the Regional Hub’s Inaugural Workshop in March 2023, stakeholders identified a number of priority needs, including: greater sensitisation to the role of cities in prevention and response; guidance on building trusted partnerships with hard-to-reach residents; ongoing challenges around the rehabilitation and reintegration of foreign fighters and their families; engaging with youth, women and marginalised communities; and maintaining social cohesion whilst supporting migrants and other new arrivals. Strengthening national-local cooperation and technical capacity-building on leveraging existing and/or establishing new infrastructure, including local prevention networks, before extremist- or hate-motivated violence manifests, were also identified as priorities.

Testimonails

Hear what cities are saying about our impact

Saida went through some challenges that pushed us towards a preventative approach. As a result, the mayor considered the Local Prevention Networks to be a priority for youth and for schools especially. Engagement with Strong Cities has had a very positive impact on the city’s practitioners and municipal officials. To be honest, we didn’t expect this result. It has exceeded our expectations.

Focal Point—Saida Municipality, Lebanon

About the MENA Regional Hub

Twenty-seven municipalities and governates from Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco and Tunisia participated in the Regional Hub’s inaugural event, working together to identify needs and priorities across the Regional Hub’s five pillars to drive forward engagement across the region.

The MENA Regional Hub is funded by the European Union’s STRIVE Cities Initiative, a three year project supporting Strong Cities’ efforts to provide cities and local authorities with context-driven, evidence-based, city-level extremism prevention policies, programmes and technical assistance within a human rights framework. The Regional Hub is catalysing the Strong Cities’ GLOBAL mission with LOCAL impact.

MENA REgional Hub

Connect

Zouhair Racheha

Head

Maria Sarkaz

Programmes Lead

DISCOVER THE NETWORK

Strong Cities in MENA

A global network of cities in different national and local contexts ensures that wherever a city is located, there will be other cities facing similar challenges and with similar capacities and needs.