Webinar: Youth Radicalisation and Inner Peace of Educational Institutions

Join the webinar “Youth Radicalisation and Inner Peace of Educational Institutions” on May 6, from 14:15 to 15:30, to explore the causes of youth radicalisation, what drives Estonian youth towards extremism, and how educational institutions can help prevent it.

In 2023, young adults and minors across the EU took part in planning attacks, creating terrorist propaganda, and encouraging violence. This increasing involvement of youth in terrorism and violent extremism spans all ideological backgrounds and raises growing concerns about their potential exploitation by terrorist groups. In Estonia, three young males (underage during persecution) were charged in January 2025 with belonging to and recruiting new members for a neo-Nazi terrorist organisation.

This webinar explores the causes of youth radicalisation and implications for schoolteachers and education employees, since the age of radicalised individuals is decreasing: for instance, in 2021, the largest proportion of referrals to the UK Prevent programme concerned persons of the age 15–20, while in Estonia, the youngest extremist offender has been 13 years of age.

In this webinar, we discuss why young people radicalise; what drives Estonian youth towards extremism; and how educational institutions can prevent, address, or tackle radicalisation. The main speakers include: Oksana Belova-Dalton, Research Fellow in International Relations (University of Tartu); Heidi Maiberg, Project Manager (University of Tartu) and Jana Laht-Ventmann, Advisor (Northern District Prosecutor’s Office of Estonia). The discussion will be moderated by Anna Beitane, Head of Digital Education Projects (University of Tartu).

To participate, please register by May 4 here.

The webinar is organized as part of the Erasmus+ Capacity building project "Triggering Resilience in Up-and-coming Security Threats" (TRUST).