The President of the Council of Ministers Saad Hariri said today during the opening at the Grand Serail of the National Conference on Prevention of Violent Extremism through Education: "This program is very important for us. The Lebanese State sought to formulate a national strategy in which the Lebanese society participates in all its political, cultural and social components, starting with the participation of the government with 29 ministries, and the societal consultation with civil society organizations, research institutions and universities."

He added: "I wanted this strategy to be a national document with international standards. The process of developing and implementing the national strategy for the prevention of violent extremism, and the national consultation about it, is very important to us. It is necessary to develop a strategy, and I know that the work group worked a lot with the concerned ministries. It remains important to move to the implementation phase, which requires the cooperation of everybody. Violence is rejected by everyone, but how much violence and domination is there in the world? This requires education, and this only happens when we try to solve the issues in a scientific way.

We can say a lot against violence and find endless speeches about the rejection of violence. We can even find laws that reject violence, but if we actually look at our society we see that there is a lot of violence that needs to be fought."

He added: "This only happens through education, culture and implementation, which must be based on the nature of the life experienced by young men and women and the way they are raised and taught and this is the duty of the state. Just as there is national education, renouncing violence must be part of the education we provide them. Someone could be patriotic but violent. This is why we should implement what we write."

Premier Hariri concluded: "I have a great hope because we developed this strategy. Today we have to prepare the methods to apply it and this is only achieved with the cooperation of everyone. Everybody should be part of any work related to the state affairs, and I am confident that we will be able to implement this strategy

Source: NNA