Also taking part will be Hissa Abdullah A. Al Otaiba, the Ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, and Pedro Martínez-Avial, the General Director of Casa Árabe.

Since it was founded in 1971, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has spared no efforts to fight the scourge of terrorism and extremism. The country has enacted laws and regulations to fight against terrorism and violent extremism by collaborating in the field of international court cooperation not only in the Middle East region, but also at the international level. Within this context, at the initiative of the UAE’s President, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, in 2012 the International Centre of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism (Hedayah) was founded as a center associated with the “Action Group to Counter Violent Extremism” in the United Kingdom. Hedayah was created in response to the increasing will of the members of the Global Counter Terrorism Forum (GCTF) and the international community to set up an independent, multilateral center devoted to dealing with this strategic challenge in the long term. To achieve this, the entity works to design national strategies to fight violent extremism that include not only stemming the recruitment of new combatants, but also dismantling extremist ideologies. With this goal in mind, its experts uphold that it is necessary to work with communities, get religious leaders involved and build alternate narratives.

Ali Rashid Al-Nuaimi has a PhD in Education from Imam Mohammed Bin Saoud University in Saudi Arabia. Likewise, he earned his Master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Education at the University of Portland in the United States. At present, he heads the Department of Education and Knowledge of the Abu Dhabi Government, prior to which he was the general director of the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC). Since 2016, he has been a member of the Executive Board of Abu Dhabi, as well as presiding over the Board of Directors of Hedayah (International Center of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism). Al-Nuaimi is also the acting Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Elders, created in Abu Dhabi in July 2014. It is regarded as the top independent international entity whose purpose is to promote peace within the Muslim community.