Countering Violent Extremism

We refuse to accept violent extremism and terrorism as a way of life. Here in the United States, as well as abroad, acts perpetrated by violent extremists and terrorists can have far-reaching consequences on National Security, Lives and properties of government, as well as citizens.

The GlobalCops’s work on preventing and countering violent extremism (PCVE) reflects the growing international focus on preventive approaches to transnational violence, including terrorism, organized crime, and conflict. Working with our partners both locally and globally, we have developed, and adopted comprehensive and actionable blueprint on how to effectively combat the growing appeal of violent extremism within the United States and abroad with a particular focus on diminishing the appeal of extremist ideologies and narratives.

In doing so, we have devoted resources on four priority work streams namely:

Facilitating the sharing of lessons learned and supporting the development of national action plans to counter violent extremism, with the aim to implement the UN Secretary-General’s Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism;

Support for the cross-cutting Initiative to Address the Life Cycle of Radicalization to Violence;

Identifying priority communities for focused CVE support aimed at containing community tensions; and

Guiding priority research areas, linking to policy implementation and further developing evaluation.

Through our CVE program, we work with local, national, regional, and international stakeholders to promote holistic and integrated responses to violent extremism that underscore the critical importance of human rights, the rule of law, and community engagement. As part of this effort, we have incorporated different CVE actors, including women, tribal leaders, religious leaders, the academia, law enforcement, youth, policy makers and civil societies.

Challenges:

Violent extremist threats come from a range of groups and individuals, including domestic terrorists and homegrown violent extremists both here in the United States, and in many other parts of the world, as well as international terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIL. We also have Lone offenders or small groups who get radicalized to commit violence at home or attempt to travel overseas to become foreign fighters. The use of the Internet and social media to recruit and radicalize individuals to violence means that conventional approaches are unlikely to identify and disrupt all terrorist plots.

CVE FOCUS CATEGORIES AND AREAS

Developing Resilience:

Working with high-risk communities while also upholding their human rights is essential in our work to provide CVE tools and resources. Among our many commitment towards promoting social inclusion and cohesion are measures to prevent violent extremists and their supporters from radicalizing, recruiting, or inspiring individuals or groups in the United States and abroad to commit acts of violence.

Training and Engagement:

Our CVE campaign also provides training that fosters understanding and provides communities with the skills to resolve internal conflicts and disagreements. This is consistent with our efforts to enhance dialogue and broadens understanding, promoting tolerance and coexistence, and fostering an environment that is not conducive to incitement of radicalization which ends up turning individuals to extremist and terrorist.

Managing Interventions:

We work with local tribe leaders, religious leaders, policy makers, the academic, civil societies, and women to discuss a broad range of challenges facing communities working to prevent and counter violent extremism. In doing so, we provide resources to build and sustain local prevention efforts and promote the use of counter-narratives to confront violent extremist messaging online and among peers.

Challenging the Narrative:

Containing radicalization through social media (the internet Jihadist) is one of the cardinal tools necessary to ameliorate the high rate of radicalism happening today among our youth. This issue has continued to occupy discussion at both local, national, regional, sub-regional and at multilateral level on best to stop people from becoming radicalized through the social media.

At GlobalCops, we engage in cyber counter narrative on daily basis with the help of our volunteers, interns and staff members who monitor cyber operation from countries and regions susceptible to violent extremism.

Building Capacity:

Building relationships based on trust with communities is essential to this effort.

Creating Awareness:

Through concerted advocacy engagements, we involve communities with street run activities (Run Against Terror), posters and billboards, television ads and one on one mentorship, and also alternative digital messaging to empowering community-led CVE interventions, continuously intensifying awareness efforts on the dangers of extremism, radicalization and terrorism. So far, we have reached astronomical numbers in terms of our awareness interventions. We also deploy bumper stickers (stickers of all kind), Print T-Shirts and other print materials with a message against radicalization and extremism that we give out free of charge to young people in High Schools, Colleges and Universities around the USA & abroad. We also hold town halls, seminars, conferences targeting vulnerable communities and countries.