A Gender Sensitive Approach to Returnees: Policy Priorities
Our Senior Fellow, El Mostafa Rezrazi will represent Morocco’s experience in terms of addressing gender and returnees across North Africa, at the third expert meeting of the Platform on Gender and Countering and Preventing Violent Extremism in North Africa from November 19-20 in Tunis, Tunisia. Organized by UN Women and the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), in collaboration with the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), this convening will seek to have a stronger focus on key thematic issues, as recommended by the experts in the second meeting, and will aim to generate concrete outcomes around best practices related to prevention and response on issues of gender and violent extremism.
The platform is a flexible space for knowledge exchange to address the gendered dimensions of countering and preventing violent extremism both at national and regional levels across North Africa. Participants are senior government and civil society experts as well as academics from the five North African countries. While they do not represent official views of their countries, they offer strong technical and policy expertise that is entrenched in their local and regional contexts.
Along Khaled Okasha, Egyptian Centre for Strategic Studies (ECSS) – Egypt ; Naila Fekih, National Counterterrorism Commission- Tunisia ; Hafida Benchehida, Human Rights Committee, Algerian Senate – Algeria and Amel Grami, Manouba Unveristy, Tunisia, El Mostafa Rezrazi will respond to the following questions, moderated by Sherine El Taraboulsi – McCarthy, ODI:
- What are the current policies addressing gender and returnees across North Africa? What are the successes, challenges and gaps?
- How does work on this topic across the five countries differ?
- Where is there potential for greater cross-regional dialogue?
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El Mostafa Rezrazi, Senior Fellow, Policy Center for the New South
Dr El Mostafa Rezrazi is a professor of Crisis Management, and Security Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Policy Center for the New South, previously known as OCP Policy Center, who focuses on Terrorism, Security and East Asia studies. His area of Expertise covers Afro-Asian Affairs, Strategic & Security Studies, Terrorism, Extremism and Deradicalization, mainly from the view of Criminal; Legal and Forensic Psychology.
He got his Ph.D. in Regional & International Affairs from the University of Tokyo in 1998, and later a Doctorate from the University of Mohammed V on the Psychological dynamisms of Suicide Bombers (2014).
He is the executive director of the Moroccan Observatory on Extremism and Violence, Director of the African Center for Asian Studies, Rabat. Currently, he is Visiting Professor at the University Mohammed V Rabat.In 2017, was appointed a Co-coordinator of the OBOR China-Morocco Research Group, and a member of the Advisory Board of The Euro-African Studies Institute, Hanyang University Seoul, South Korea.
Rezrazi is the president for the second term of the Moroccan Association for Asian Studies. Dr Rezrazi has served in the past as a distinguished professor in the school of law of Sapporo Gakuin University (Japan), a professor & Deputy Director of the Institute of International Relations in Hagoromo University in Osaka (Japan). A political Analyst at the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abou Dhabi, and was also a Visiting Fellow in Princeton University, USA.