ISLAMABAD United Nations Association of Civilization (UNAOC) in collaboration with the Sri Lankan National Commission for UNESCO is holding a high level 7-days regional forum in Colombo on Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) that will critically unpack the problem of violent extremism in South Asia with a focus on chalking out effective strategies and approaches to curb it. From Pakistan,an Islamabad based 27 years old policy expert Ahsan Hamid Durrani was invited to speak at TAG Colombo, which is a tone-setting event of the forum, to present Pakistan’s case study on PVE. The 2nd day of the forum included ruminative workshops on understanding the patterns of violent extremism in region and devising effective strategies to deal with them. The forum has attracted high level officials from Sri Lankan government, academia, civil society, UNAOC, UNESCO, and FACEBOOK. Speaking to The Observer, Ahsan said that the South Asian countries are faced with the grave situation of violent extremism and therefore they need to come together to learn from each other’s best practices in dealing with them. However, it is also important to take into consideration the political factors involved in the driving extremism which are unique to every country, he added.—PR
