Radicalisation and Countering Violent Extremism
RUSI has significant international expertise in countering violent extremism (CVE) – researching radicalisation, implementing CVE programmes, and understanding what works and what doesn’t.
Threats from terrorism and violent extremism are a top priority for governments and multilateral bodies such as the UN and the EU. There is a growing recognition that counter-terrorism, with its dependence on military, law enforcement and intelligence responses, cannot manage the problem alone. CVE has emerged as a field of theory and practice that seeks to complement counter-terrorism with non-coercive measures, particularly using preventative approaches which seek to address the drivers of terrorism and violent extremism.The Institute’s expertise in countering violent extremism spans research, policy analysis, programme implementation, and training and education. RUSI’s CVE work reaches across the world, with particular emphasis on the UK and Europe, the Middle East, East Africa, and Central Asia.
Current Activities
STRIVE Horn of AfricaRUSI is partnering with the European Commission to increase societal and individual resilience to violent extremism in Kenya and Somalia. The project was the European Union’s first CVE programme outside Europe. The project involves research into drivers of radicalisation and pilot CVE interventions with law enforcement agencies, civil society organisations, and vulnerable youths in Kenya and Somalia. Read more >
The Prevention Project: Organising Against Violent Extremism
The Prevention Project, led by former senior State Department official Eric Rosand, is a partnership between the Global Center on Cooperative Security, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth, the Brookings Institute, and RUSI. The project aims to identify how a better ‘whole of society’ approach can deal with violent extremism. A series of workshops and papers have been completed, leading to a major paper incorporating practical recommendations for governments, NGOs and multilateral bodies at the end of 2016. Read more > http://www.organizingagainstve.org/
CVE Training
With the French agency CiviPol, RUSI is leading on the delivery of CVE training for the European Union. The training aims to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes required for the successful design, delivery and evaluation of CVE programmes. The training, targeted primarily at EU delegations, is being delivered in the Middle East, East Asia, Central Asia, the Western Balkans, and East Africa, as well as in Brussels for EU officials.
Recent Activities
In 2016, the Institute conducted a five-country study of the capacity for CVE programmes in five countries (Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, Kosovo, Bangladesh) for the Global Community Engagement Resilience Fund. RUSI also completed two studies for the UK Department for International Development: ‘Drivers of Violent Extremism’ and ‘Conflict and Countering Violent Extremism’. The study concluded that Islamist violent extremists were nurtured and sustained by conflict, and so seek to prolong and aggravate the wars in which they are involved. This work has led to the commissioning by Palgrave Macmillan of a forthcoming monograph, Conflict, Violent Extremism and Development: New Challenges, New Responses.
Publications
Countering Violent Extremism and Risk Reduction: A Guide to Programme Design and Evaluation by James Khalil and Martine Zeuthen (2106) aims to assist policy-makers and implementers by examining approaches through which to understand the drivers of violent extremism and the wider context in which this violence occurs.
Learning and Adapting: The Use of Monitoring and Evaluation in Countering Violent Extremism by Laura Dawson, Charlie Edwards and Calum Jeffray (2014) provides professionals with guidance on different aspects of undertaking monitoring and evaluation in CVE programming for the purpose of measuring effectiveness and impact.
RUSI’s published work on counter-terrorism also has significant implications for CVE practitioners. A major RUSI-led study it led on lone-actor terrorism analysed comprehensive data on cases from across Europe. The report’s finding that the terrorist threat from the far-right was particularly picked up by media around the world. In Nigeria, RUSI published a report in 2015 offering policy proposals for the new Nigerian government as they pursued their fight against Boko Haram.
Source: https://rusi.org/CVE
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