PORDENONE, 28 November 2025 – The OSCE Parliamentary Assembly’s Ad Hoc Committee on Countering Terrorism (CCT) launched yesterday the first event of its new “School Dialogues” initiative, bringing together students, teachers, law enforcement, local authorities and civil society at Scuola Secondaria Don Bosco in Pordenone. The programme, developed to strengthen the role of education in preventing youth radicalization to violent extremism, focused on helping young people navigate digital spaces safely and thoughtfully while transforming their experiences into actionable insights for policymakers.
"School Dialogue" Initiative at Scuola Secondaria Don Bosco, Pordenone, 27 November 2025Speakers at the event included Vice-Chair of the OSCE PA CCT Emanuele Loperfido (Italy), Police Commissioner Giuseppe Solimene, Mayor of Pordenone Alessandro Basso, Deputy Commissioner Michela Sambuchi, School Principal Francesca Del Puppo, CEO of Next Wave, The International Center for Children and Global Security Cecilia Polizzi, and OSCE PA Senior Advisor Marco Bonabello.
In his exchange with 110 students, Vice-Chair of the CCT Emanuele Loperfido emphasized the importance of hearing directly from young people about how digital environments influence their perceptions, behaviours, and vulnerabilities. “Listening to youth is essential to understanding how online harm develops,” he said. “Across the world, we are seeing a worrying trend: more and more teenagers are being exposed to harmful ideas online. Extremist groups target young people not because they are weak, but because they are strong: digital natives who navigate online spaces with incredible speed.”
A student-generated mind map on cyberbullying, Pordenone, 27 November 2025“This School Dialogue in Pordenone is the first in an international series. Your voice today is not isolated – it is the beginning of a larger conversation across the OSCE region. Your ideas will help guide our work locally, nationally, and internationally,” he said to the students.
Loperfido stressed that prevention must be rooted in education, critical thinking, and digital awareness, noting that resolutions adopted by the OSCE PA must translate into practical initiatives on the ground.
The event encouraged open discussion on online safety, digital respect, hate speech, and the role of institutions in fostering positive and inclusive online environments. In collaboration with their teachers, students spent the day working in groups to reflect on their own digital experiences and to formulate concrete proposals aimed at strengthening protection mechanisms, enhancing critical thinking, and improving co-operation between schools, families and local authorities. Their ideas and suggestions were finally debated in plenary with local experts.
Emanuele Loperfido speaking to a class at Scuola Secondaria Don Bosco, Pordenone, 27 November 2025Cecilia Polizzi, CEO of Next Wave, highlighted the broader implications of online harm and youth exposure to manipulative digital content. “Words and actions online can wound deeply, create divisions, and make people feel lonely or excluded. Likewise, they can encourage, unite, and protect,” she said. “This is why digital education and media literacy today are not just about knowing how to use technology, but about understanding how it works, what it produces, and how we can use it consciously and responsibly – and about recognizing, understanding, and evaluating content before we react to it, or allow ourselves to be influenced by it.”
The Pordenone event marks the start of a broader OSCE PA effort that will continue with similar dialogues in The Netherlands, Montenegro, and other participating States. Insights collected from these sessions will be consolidated into a set of youth-driven recommendations to be presented to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, ensuring that the experiences of students directly inform parliamentary work on countering violent extremism and strengthening digital resilience.
For more information on the work of the Ad Hoc Committee on Countering Terrorism, please click here.
