This policy brief presents recommendations for a whole-of-society approach to the reintegration of former Boko Haram associates in Cameroon. The brief builds the Global Center’s engagement with local, national, and regional partners in Cameroon to strengthen the country’s response to terrorism in the Far North Region, a joint roundtable with the Centre for Peace, Security and Integration Studies of the University of Maroua, and other consultations. The Cameroonian case offers a window into the roles of different stakeholders in shaping and implementing efforts to reintegrate ex-associates and the challenges they face. This brief emphasizes the need to adapt to local specificities and to place communities at the heart of the process, which is particularly important in nontraditional disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration contexts such as the Lake Chad Basin, where peace agreements are absent and conflict is ongoing.
Realizing a Whole-of-Society Approach to Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration in the Far North Region of Cameroon
The Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF)’s Gender and Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) Policy Toolkit was developed under the leadership of the GCTF CVE Working Group Co-Chairs, the governments of Australia and Indonesia, and implemented by the Global Center with support from Professor Jacqui True and a twelve-person Expert Project Advisory Committee. The Gender and P/CVE Policy Toolkit was developed to support the implementation of the Good Practices on Women and Countering Violent Extremism (2015) and the Addendum to the Good Practices on Women and Countering Violent Extremism, with a Focus on Mainstreaming Gender (2019) by providing practitioners and policymakers with relevant frameworks, good practices, and resources for designing, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating gender-responsive P/CVE policies and programs.
The Toolkit is based on the premise that mainstreaming gender is about ensuring inclusive, equitable participation and leadership of people of diverse gender and intersecting identities, while also recognizing the diversity within a group of individuals that identifies similarly. It is about accounting for the experiences, needs, and challenges of individuals and recognizing gender differences and inequalities, as well as intersecting factors, including socioeconomic, age, disability, ethnic, and cultural identities.
The threat of violent extremism, porous borders and vast coastlines, and interconnectivity by land, sea, and air has caused Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand to adopt strong governmental approaches to tackling violent extremism and terrorism within their jurisdictions. This report explores practical examples of how governments and civil society have cooperated across Southeast Asia to support the rehabilitation and reintegration of individuals associated with violent extremism, including prisoners, detainees, and returnees. The case studies featured are examples of how governments and civil society have approached rehabilitation and reintegration across the five countries of focus, but are not intended as an assessment of the success or propriety of the actions taken nor as an embrace of the approach. Rather, they are meant to highlight discrete elements that may be informative as stakeholders consider ways to advance cooperation between governments and civil society.
Despite a growing volume of research on foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), there remains limited publicly available research on the financial footprints of FTFs and the facilitation networks that support them. This typology report, produced in partnership between the Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering and the Global Center, examines what is known and unknown regarding the financial profiles of FTFs connected to Southeast Asia and explores the collection and utilization of FTF-related financial intelligence in the region. Persistent challenges in detecting FTF financial patterns underscore the critical importance of partnership between law enforcement, intelligence agencies, border control, and financial intelligence units.
A growing number of countries want to improve their assessment of violent extremism in prisons. This involves understanding whether prisoners are likely to commit future violent extremist offenses and how this can be prevented. It also involves identifying and managing prisoners vulnerable to radicalization and recruitment to violent extremism. Establishing frameworks to assess violent extremism poses challenges that may not be apparent to prison services. This brief provides a critical review of the choices available to prison services in their use of assessment, examining the processes of conceptualizing, developing, implementing, and evaluating these frameworks. It aims to ensure that these are appropriate, rights compliant, and sustainable in prisons.
This report, the fifth in the “Blue Sky” series, explores how the UN’s comparative advantage can be leveraged to improve the policy development, interagency coordination, delivery, and impact of counterterrorism and preventing violent extremism efforts in support of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. It first observes the growth of the Strategy and UN counterterrorism efforts in response to the evolving security landscape, resulting in a sprawling institutional architecture and array of programming that require considerable focus to coordinate and lead. Second, the report places counterterrorism and preventing violent extremism efforts within broader UN reforms to advance a prevention-forward approach that creates opportunities for greater integration across the UN’s pillars of human rights, peace and security, and development. Third, it assesses efforts to implement the Strategy at the global, institutional, and programmatic levels in a manner that systematically accounts for human rights and promotes transparency and accountability.
The recommendations focus on (1) calibrating the UN counterterrorism architecture; (2) situating UN counterterrorism efforts within the prevention framework; (3) engaging and supporting civil society; (4) mainstreaming human rights; and (5) assessing the Strategy’s implementation.
Summary findings and key recommendations were presented during a launch event held in July 2020, in the lead up to the Virtual UN Counter-Terrorism Week. Support for this project, including the consultations, high-level events, and report, was generously provided by the governments of the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland.
This report contains a comparative evaluation of national strategies to prevent and counter violent extremism, to explore how they reflect recommendations and good practices outlined by the United Nations. Drawing upon a sample of 19 national strategies, the report analyzes the procedures and standards of policy planning that underpin the development of countries’ strategies. Using the guidelines of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism’s “Reference Guide: Developing National and Regional Action Plans to Prevent Violent Extremism” as a common analytical framework, the report is organized around the six procedural components outlined therein as essential in developing inclusive, context-specific, and robust national strategies.
Based on this comparative analysis, the report provides a number of recommendations related to each of the six procedural components analyzed. It is hoped that these recommendations will help guide countries as they develop new or optimize existing strategies in line with international norms and common standards of promising practice and in turn design more effective national strategies to prevent and counter violent extremism.
The Compendium of Good Practices in the Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Violent Extremist Offenders presents good and promising practices in the rehabilitation and reintegration of violent extremist offenders (VEOs) in correctional settings, while also discussing how practices related to prison regime, security, intelligence, and risk assessment can impact these two processes. The compilation endeavors to (1) inform understanding and improve decision-making regarding the implementation of approaches for the rehabilitation and reintegration of VEOs, specifically in the correctional services of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, although it has value in other jurisdictions; (2) integrate established with emerging promising practices in this field; (3) translate key existing documents into an applied and accessible resource for use by various stakeholders; and (4) include good and promising practices associated with women, juveniles, and foreign fighters convicted of terrorism offenses, and prison and probation services where issues associated with violent extremism may be less frequent.
The compendium is housed on a separate website that contains an overview of the key promising practices for the different sections of the compendium. The compendium is accompanied by a Good Practices Guide, which lists a range of key questions for prison services to explore as they develop, evaluate, and update their approaches to managing VEOs and identifying and addressing radicalization and recruitment to violent extremism. To access these documents, visit https://www.veocompendium.org/.
In the Sahel, weak law enforcement capacities, vast ungoverned territories, and underdeveloped criminal justice systems have contributed to the proliferation of nonstate armed groups, with the military placed at the forefront of suppression efforts. A number of issues arise in the adjudication of terrorism cases. Ambiguities in the law persist where the protective framework of minors conflict with repressive antiterrorism framework; understaffed courts are burdened by a large caseload, while individuals detained en masse face criminal sanctions that may not always be proportional to the gravity of the offense. Judicial investigations are further hampered by a lack of cooperation with military actors and coordinated efforts to preserve evidence on the battlefield.
To affirm the primacy of the criminal justice framework, the chief justices of the Sahel supreme courts unanimously adopted a set of recommendations on 2 March 2018 in Dakar, Senegal. This report presents the legal responses to terrorism in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal and discusses international standards articulated in the field, providing comparative analysis and commentary. It features contributions from supreme court justices from France, Niger, Mali and Senegal. The report forms part of a program on Counter-Terrorism Criminal Justice Support to Senior Judicial Officials shaped by a steering committee comprised of supreme court justices and implemented in partnership with UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the Association of Francophone Supreme Courts, and funded by the International Organisation of la Francophonie and the governments of Canada and Japan.
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Quand la poussière retombe: La justice face au terrorisme dans le Sahel
Dans le Sahel, les faibles capacités de la police et la présence limitée des autorités dans les territoires reculés contribuent à l’inefficacité de la justice, et les militaires ont joué le rôle de premiers intervenants. Un certain nombre d’enjeux se posent dans la gestion des affaires de terrorisme. Les ambiguïtés de la loi persistent là où la protection spéciale accordée aux mineurs entre en conflit avec le cadre antiterroriste ; les cours, déjà surchargées, sont confrontés à un nombre croissant de dossiers de terrorisme et les accusés font l’objet de sanctions pénales qui ne sont pas toujours proportionnelles à la gravité du délit ou crime. Au niveau de l’enquête, les magistrats ont déploré la piètre qualité de la gestion des éléments de preuve par les premiers intervenants sur le champ de bataille.
Affirmant la primauté du cadre de justice pénale, les premiers présidents des cours suprêmes des pays du Sahel ont adopté à l’unanimité des recommandations dans la matière le 2 mars 2018 à Dakar, au Sénégal. Ce rapport présente les réponses judiciaires au terrorisme au Burkina Faso, au Mali, en Mauritanie, au Niger, au Sénégal, et au Tchad, et évoque des normes internationales développées dans la matière tout en fournissant une analyse et des commentaires comparatifs. Le rapport présente des contributions de magistrats des cours suprême de la France, du Niger, du Mali et du Sénégal, comprenant des membres d’un comité de pilotage dans le programme sur « Les cours suprêmes dans la prévention et la lutte contre le terrorisme ». Ce projet a été réalisé avec l’appui et l’expertise de la Direction exécutive du Comité contre le terrorisme, de l’Office des Nations Unies contre la drogue et le crime (ONUDC), de l’Association des Hautes Juridictions de Cassation des pays ayant en partage l’usage du français (AHJUCAF), et a bénéficié du soutien financier de l’Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF) et des gouvernements canadien et japonais.
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.