Freedom from Fear - Volume 2018, Issue 15, 2020

Innovative approaches in countering violent extremism are not only a question of philosophy, but also of pragmatism. We need a new dialogue to strategize how to establish a consensus/springboard from which to reinforce local, national and global security. We don’t need to analyse what has not worked, but actually focus on analysing what is working.

In physics, “resilience” is a measure of how well a material, such as rubber or metal, responds to pressure by bending, adapting, and changing, without breaking. However, this concept is more than a scientific term. Resiliency can also describe a community’s ability to bounce back from pressures, including natural disasters, economic downturns, and - in the case of UNICRI’s Pilot Project on Countering Radicalisation and Violent Extremism in the Sahel-Maghreb - violence and terrorism. In the Sahel and Maghreb, the pressure on communities is certainly intense, and ever-growing. Conflicts in Libya and Mali threaten to spill over porous borders, while drought and desertification have increased food insecurity and heightened intercommunal tensions. Increasingly active extremist militant groups have brought violence and chased out tourists, which once had been an importance source of income. Now, more than ever, an approach aimed at building the resilience at a community level is needed - one that can empower communities to respond to these pressures by adapting and changing, without “breaking” and entering into conflict.

31st January 2019, at the European Parliament in Brussels, several officials, experts, researchers and journalists concerned with finding solutions to the rise of violent extremism in the Maghreb and Sahel region gathered to share insights on a 5 million euros European Union (EU) funded programme implemented by UNICRI.

On the sidelines of the 74th session of UNGA, on 24 September 2019, UNICRI, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) and the Global Center on Cooperative Security (the Global Centre) - in collaboration with the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Permanent Mission of Senegal to the United Nations - organised a panel on the critical role that youth play across the Sahel in preventing and countering violent extremism.

The society we live in is so diverse and mixed that we are no longer able to understand it only through traditional research perspectives. It is multiethnic and we often see that the stories shared in the public arena do not reflect what happens in everyday life.

The phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) is a matter of great concern for the international community. Newspapers and media are full of stories pertaining to the radicalization of young people who left their country of origin to engage in violent extremism in other countries.

This essay describes lived-experience based strategies for persons with mental illness who offended (PMIO) and their families. These recommendations are derived from the results of a multidisciplinary research project which aimed to develop multidisciplinary strengths-based strategies for PMIO and their families. These recommendations can inspire a broad range of practitioners and policy makers from the criminal justice system as well as the mental health systems working with PMIO and their family.

In this paper, which is based upon research undertaken in 2017 and 2018,1 an alternative and more humane approach to addressing harm of criminal behaviour is presented. Our goal was to explore if this approach could transform the way society responds to crime.

On the 9th of November 2019, we celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, an event which has become a global icon for positive, disruptive change, a symbol of reunification and justice.

With the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its relevant Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the United Nations with Goal 4 renewed its mission for better education of children and young people worldwide. While the earlier Millennium Development Goals focused on access to primary education, the 2030 Agenda goes beyond this. With Goal 4 and its focus on quality education, the international community recognizes that learning goals in themselves are not enough – it is important to aim for both the quality of education as well as the social and emotional well-being of students, in order to achieve substantial learning outcomes.

Eight to twelve million tons of plastics end up in the oceans every year. One of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), Goal 14 on life below water, calls upon states to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris, by 2025. Following China’s ban of all imports of non-industrial plastic wastes in 2018, exports of plastic wastes by high-income countries have shifted to South East Asian countries putting unbearable stress on their waste management systems. Despite worldwide attention devoted to the ocean plastics crisis, these practices are likely to aggravate the problem. It shows that current efforts are not sufficient to achieve the SDG target 14 for marine plastic litter and microplastics.

For Immanuel Kant, our senses are the gate to perceive information from the environment and to generate our knowledge. Yet, in the age of advanced technology, our senses are easily becoming subject of manipulation. In such context, the fundamental question arises whether we, humans with manipulated sense, can continue relying on our own decision making. There has been an unprecedent progress in the quality of techniques for human image synthesis based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which can manipulate our sense of sight. Deepfakes constitutes the most famous example of it. In just few years, many alarming examples of fake content have involved politicians, governments, technology leaders, and media celebrities. What does this mean for our future, the future of our societies and the future of our countries? What will this manipulation entail at the moment we exercise our rights as citizens and voters? Perhaps instead of jumping into the complexity of these questions, it is worth focusing on how our collective efforts can help us preventing technology from manipulating our senses. This consideration served as a guiding principal for the solution developed by the Open|DSE team in response to the UNICRI challenge at the Hackathon for Peace, Justice and Security (The Hague, June 2019). Before proceeding with the description of the solution, let’s have a closer look at the AI technology behind the creation of this fake content.

These are the days of big data and security breaches. This is a long-distance call to action. With the risks of governments rolling back data privacy regulations and explosive data processing controversies involving social media and companies, it is clear we need to talk about online privacy.

Companies around the globe are finding it difficult to recruit the right talent, especially for emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI). A recent survey by EY and MIT Technology Review1 showed that 48% of current challenges comes in emerging technologies from a shortage of skilled talent while on the other hand, the number of data scientists and machine learning engineers has increased tenfold in the last five years, primarily due to access to online education.

The recruitment of children raises many important questions, the most important being whether children should be recruited at all and what is the definition of a child. The most internationally accepted definition for a child soldier is established in the Cape Town Principles 1997 by UNICEF: “any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.”1 However, this is not a legal definition.

Your brother was a great judge and statesman, among the first to understand the real dimensions of the mafia phenomenon and the importance of judicial cooperation. His work and legacy have helped to change the strategies to combat organized crime. His path has been defined by the spirit of sacrifice and the awareness of risks. He was born and he lived in Sicily and was surrounded by forms of acceptance and resignation caused by the Mafia. What was his relationship with his land? Can you tell us about how he developed his strength and determination in Sicily?

This is not the first time that I have been asked how we can succeed in advancing the values of the United Nations in the most critical situations. It is a good question. Even those who have served in peace missions for over thirty years cannot provide a single answer to this question.