As policymakers and practitioners in Southeast Asia increasingly recognize the importance of investing in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) measures, it is critical to integrate a gender analysis when developing related national action plans, strategies, and programs. This policy brief examines key challenges, gaps, and needs of national and regional stakeholders and concludes with recommendations for these actors to consider in advancing gender sensitive P/CVE policy and practice in the region. The brief draws on desk research and extensive consultations with a range of civil society actors, experts, policymakers, and practitioners from the region, including a regional workshop and gender-sensitive P/CVE projects undertaken by local civil society organizations, supported by the Global Center and the government of the Netherlands.
A Closer Look
This report provides good practices for the design and implementation of effective capacity development programs on anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT). It first reflects on the current AML/CFT landscape, including recent changes to AML/CFT evaluation methodologies, diverging responses to money laundering and terrorist financing, unintended consequences of AML/CFT measures, and the integration of financial inclusion objectives into AML/CFT efforts. Against this background, the report outlines good practices for the development of regional and national AML/CFT capacity development programs. It explores each stage of the program cycle: inception and design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation. The report concludes with reflections on how technical assistance providers can help reconcile international standards, existing policies, and practical implementation contexts.
As governments consider effective responses to violent extremism, they must also decide how best to deal with those who have committed acts of violent extremism, particularly with regard to their rehabilitation and reintegration. Though it is their mandate, governments cannot undertake the rehabilitation and reintegration challenge alone. Civil society organizations can be well-placed to assist with or lead on various components and should be involved in planning and implementation. This action agenda builds on a 30 month project funded by the U.S. Department of State to explore the role of civil society organizations in rehabilitation and reintegration in three broad regions: the Sahel, the Greater Horn of Africa, and Southeast Asia. The action agenda offers guiding principles, recommendations, and examples to help stakeholders shape rehabilitation and reintegration practices and better incorporate the experiences and knowledge of civil society organizations.
This policy brief establishes a framework to develop and evaluate National Action Plans (NAPs) on preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE). Based on the key good practice components identified in international literature on NAPs across policy fields ranging from sustainable development to tuberculosis control, this framework aims to improve approaches to P/CVE strategic planning by national authorities. It may enable a range of stakeholders to better assess the strengths and weaknesses of new or existing P/CVE NAPs, as well as provide basic guidelines to support and further improve their development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
Building on its previous analyses of the UN’s counterterrorism programs, the Global Center, with the generous support of the governments of Norway, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, has produced an independent report containing recommendations to support multilateral efforts to address terrorism and violent extremism in advance of the sixth review of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) in June. In addition to identifying ways to improve the development, coordination, delivery, and impact of the UN’s efforts, the report looks at what can be done to ensure that the sixth review can be used to more systematically assess the effectiveness of the UN efforts to support the implementation of the Strategy at headquarters, on the ground, and, importantly, between the two. The aim, therefore, is to lay the ground work during the sixth review to ensure that the seventh review in 2020 and subsequent ones can more rigorously take stock of the progress made by member states and by the United Nations to further the implementation of the GCTS.
Based on his experience policing during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and supporting the police reform process following the Good Friday Agreement, Stephen White offers a practitioner’s perspective on how police-community relations eventually were moved from a place of distrust in certain sections of society to one of wider acceptance and partnership. The policy brief highlights how implementing a comprehensive community policing strategy can serve as a means and an end in itself when dealing with drivers of intercommunal violence and violent extremism. The brief concludes to offer a cause for optimism along with an evidence-based template for reforms that others may wish to consider when undertaking comprehensive security sector reforms to aid in peacebuilding and the prevention and countering of violent extremism context.
Civil society organizations represent a bulwark against violent extremism. Civil society organizations across South and Central Asia, many of which focus on development, conflict prevention, peace-building, and human rights, have leveraged their experience in these areas to develop innovative preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) programs targeting a broad spectrum of issues confronting their communities. These initiatives include producing educational entertainment that challenges extremist narratives, improving relationships between communities and local government, and promoting research and understanding to better recognize local factors contributing to the spread of violent radicalization.
To help advance these efforts, the Global Center with support from the U.S. Department of State, undertook a two-year program to support civil society organizations in South and Central Asia in the development of contextually tailored and locally relevant responses to violent extremism. It concludes with key recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and donors to consider as they look to initiate or increase support for P/CVE initiatives in South and Central Asia.
The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) was established in 2004 with the core mission of supporting the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) in monitoring the implementation of counterterrorism obligations required by Security Council Resolution 1373 and facilitating technical assistance to member states to aid their implementation activities. Since 2004, however, CTED’s mandate has expanded considerably in response to the evolution of the threat and the increased number of stakeholders benefiting from CTED assessments and analyses, a group that includes not only the council itself, but also UN member states in general, regional and functional organizations, and other counterterrorism-relevant entities inside and outside the UN system.
This policy brief looks at CTED’s role in light of the need to maintain and strengthen its comparative advantage in assessing member states’ counterterrorism efforts while addressing existing and emerging threats of terrorism and aligning its working methodologies with these developments. It also assesses what CTED and the CTC can do to enhance coordination with partners within and outside the UN system. It then examines the benefits and limitations of CTED’s outputs in relation to its mandate, comparative advantage, capacity, and impact, and concludes by offering some ideas and recommendations for the Security Council, the CTC, and CTED to consider for the next four years and beyond.
Children have always been among the most vulnerable victims of violence and, at times, some of its brutal purveyors. They have played various roles in furthering violent extremism and participating in acts of violence, ranging from inciting propaganda online to carrying out deadly attacks. Rather than exceptionalizing these children, their treatment under the criminal justice system should be grounded in juvenile justice standards.
To advance the work of the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), the government of Australia commissioned the Global Center and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism – The Hague (ICCT) to prepare a report and accompanying policy brief putting forward guiding principles, recommendations, and considerations for the detention, rehabilitation, and reintegration of juveniles convicted of terrorism and violent extremism offenses. Together, they advance a juvenile justice approach for authorities responsible for the care of juvenile violent extremist offenders and support the notion that national security interests and juvenile justice imperatives are compatible and mutually reinforcing in preventing and countering violent extremism.
Responding to a call from the GCTF Neuchâtel Memorandum on Good Practices for Juvenile Justice in a Counterterrorism Context to collect and collate information on children engaged in terrorism-related activity, the report takes stock of theory, policies, and practice globally. The recommendations draw from international juvenile justice standards, the emerging body of principles and practices in the detention of adult violent extremist offenders, and the national experiences in demobilizing and reintegrating child combatants and members of organized criminal groups.
The report elaborates on the policy brief that was formally adopted by the GCTF in December 2016. The policy brief was adapted for publication in EuroVista’s Probation and Community Justice Journal, available at http://euro-vista.org/.
Supreme court justices play an important role in strengthening state capacities to bring terrorists to justice within the framework of human rights and the rule of law. As final arbiters, justices seated at the highest courts of law are the nation’s safeguards of the rule of law and human rights, especially when the executive and legislative branches favor national security over these individual rights.
The report synthesizes the discussions held with supreme court justices over the course of an 18-month program in the Euro-Med region (Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa), implemented in partnership with UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and funded by the European Commission. The program aimed to create a sustainable, nonpolitical forum for supreme court-level and senior judicial officials to discuss, among equals, questions of law arising from terrorism-related cases and to share strategies, frameworks, and good practices for handling these cases over the course of five consultations. The final component of the program brought the First Presidents of the Cassation Courts of Lebanon and Tunisia, as well as other supreme court justices, to discuss their views on how the international community should respond to the threat of terrorism in an open briefing before CTED at the UN headquarters, held in March 2016.
The report is organized around priority issue areas raised by the justices over the course of the program and includes case studies, best practices, and legal commentary on possible resolutions to the common challenges they face in the adjudication of terrorism cases. It further describes a series of international and regional initiatives to support the judiciary, reflecting on the value of interjudicial exchanges in this domain.
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Les juges des Cours suprêmes jouent un rôle important dans le renforcement des capacités des états à traduire en justice les terroristes, le tout dans le respect des droits de l’homme et de l’État de droit. En tant qu’arbitres finaux, les magistrats qui siègent dans les Cours suprêmes sont souvent la dernière ligne de défense de l’État de droit et des droits de l’homme, surtout lorsque les branches exécutives et législatives du gouvernement favorisent la sécurité nationale au détriment des droits individuels.
Ce rapport offre une synthèse des discussions tenues par les hauts responsables judiciaires ayant participé dans un programme de 18 mois dans la région Euro-Med (soit l’Europe, le Moyen-Orient, et l’Afrique du Nord), en partenariat avec les experts de la Direction exécutive du Comité contre le terrorisme des Nations Unies (DECT). Ce programme, qui profite du financement de la Commission européenne, a pour objectif de créer un forum durable et apolitique pour les responsables judiciaires des Cours suprêmes et des instances supérieures, afin de débattre des questions juridiques se rapportant aux affaires liées au terrorisme et de partager les stratégies, les méthodes de travail et les bonnes pratiques relatives à la gestion de ces affaires. La dernière composante du programme a réuni les Premiers présidents des Cours de cassation du Liban et de la Tunisie, ainsi que d’autres juges des cours suprêmes, à discuter sur la manière dont la communauté internationale devrait répondre à la menace du terrorisme lors d’une réunion publique d’information pour la DECT au le siège de l’ONU, tenu en mars 2016.
Le présent rapport est structuré autour des questions prioritaires soulevées par les juges au cours du programme, dont celles se rapportant aux meilleures pratiques, aux défis, aux stratégies et aux études de cas que les juges ont trouvé intéressantes ou dignes d’être discutées et partagées à large échelle. Il contextualise les réponses législatives au terrorisme dans les juridictions représentées et commente sur les solutions potentielles aux défis communs, lesquelles se basent sur les normes juridiques et la jurisprudence existantes au niveau régional et international.