Khartoum Declaration calls for harnessing social media to counter terrorism

The Arab League Forum on the Role of Media in Combating Terrorism, concluded its session in Khartoum and issued a final declaration, dubbed the Khartoum Declaration on Combating Terrorism.

President of the Republic Field Marshal Omer Al-Bashir and the Assistant Secretary General of the Arab League, Ahmed Bin Heli attended the announcement of the declaration. Jamal Nasser Al Suwaider represented the National Media Council (NMC) in the event.

The declaration has recommended some measures, among others, such as: - Calling on the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organisation (ALECSO) to consider revision of Arab school curricula to ensure these are free of any material that could incite extremism ideas among students at any stage.

- Spreading lofty Islamic values, investing in cultural heritage of the nation as well as propagating curricula that encourage tolerance, justice, peace, incrimination of injustice and violence and observe sanctity of human blood.

- Calling on Arab media to disseminate the values of tolerance and virtue, and propagate rejection of violence, terrorism and extremism as essential Islamic values, and to highlight programmes that aim at drying up the sources of distorted thoughts.

- Asking all states to establish centres for qualifying the prayer leaders and preachers in a way that would bring religious discourse up to par with modern spirit.

- Calling all Arab League member states to make use of the Sudan experience in combating terrorism through intellectual dialogue.

- Putting into use the new social media for raising awareness among the youth against the dangers of navigating websites that encourage terrorism, raise finances for it or incite people to join its ranks - Establishing a joint Arab oversight entity to supervise the televised content to discourage shortcomings and maximise the advantages - Establishing a joint Arab production company and an Information Sciences Academy aimed to build an Arab common media industry to counter the western contents which are beamed at Arab audiences - Calling on Arab states to devise media curricula at various educational stages to enlighten youth and younger generation so that they can distinguishing between useful and useless material, while at the same time work to resolve problems related to unemployment, poverty alleviation and realizing equity and social justice.

The two-day workshop, hosted by Khartoum and organised under the supervision of the Arab League in cooperation with Sudan's Ministry of Information, came within framework of the Arab Forum on Terrorism set to reach abroad strategy on fighting terrorism in the Arab countries.

Source : WAM