UNESCO in collaboration with the Lebanese National Commission for UNESCO is organizing in cooperation with the Information for All Programme (IFAP), an International Conference on Youth and Information and Communication Technologies: Preventing violent extremism in cyberspace in Byblos, Lebanon from 17 to 19 May, 2017.
The Byblos Conference will bring together researchers, experts in sociology and social media, civil society representatives as well as government officials to explore ways of preventing youth extremism, violence, radicalization, discrimination and hatred on the internet. The conference will focus on the importance of engaging the youth in identifying the causes of the phenomenon, sharing good practices and in developing proposals to counter extremism in line with the UN Security Council Resolution 2250/2015.

This conference is part of a series of conferences organized by UNESCO and IFAP: the "Internet and the radicalization of youth: Preventing, Acting and Living together" international conference, organized by UNESCO and the Government of Quebec from October 30th to November 1st 2016 in Canada, and the first-ever “Youth and the Internet: Fighting Radicalization and Extremism” international conference, held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 16 and 17 June 2015. Both conferences focused on experiences on policy interventions, projects and processes to reduce the use of Internet as a tool for youth extremism and radicalization; and both sought to identify areas for UNESCO action, to improve the conditions that drive young people towards violent extremism, across UNESCO sectors and relevant youth programmes.