Guidelines for the Prevention of Violent Extremism Online and Offline: Findings from the Expert Conference and the Delphi Consensus Process

The Canadian Consensus Guidelines Committee (CCGC) aims to bring together 30 experts from different fields in order to ensure diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. The main responsibilities of the CCGC will be to participate in the formulations of guidelines with their peers of the International Consensus Guidelines Committee (ICGC), as well as in their adaptation to the specific Canadian context.

The first meeting of these committees was held in March 2019, in Ottawa Canada. This first meeting consisted of a two-day workshop for the development of evidence-based best practice guidelines for online and offline prevention and intervention in matters of violent radicalization. The guidelines issued from this meeting have been reviewed in consultation with the committee experts via a rigorous Delphi method.

Thus, the Delphi process took place, between 2019 and 2022, in three waves and led to the report below. This report contains practice guidelines that:

1) Are evidence-based (the findings of CPN-PREV’s systematic reviews on online radicalization and the effectiveness of primary and secondary prevention programs for violent radicalization); and

2) The results of the consensus of internationally recruited experts in the field, who evaluated and reviewed the recommendations of systematic reviews and proposed new guidelines.