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The Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) discourse in Kenya reflects the larger Global War on Terror (GWOT) policy framework. Donor-driven governmental approaches support the top-down efforts to counter violent extremism. CVE initiatives now emerging in response to the rise of homegrown violent extremism in Kenya, in contrast, seek to encourage more community participation in the campaign to limit the activities of Al-Shabaab. This article examines existing countering violent extremism (CVE) initiatives in order to elucidate the effectiveness and shortcomings of CVE interventions. The findings are based on an ethnographic study in the coastal region of Kenya comprising of 249 in-depth interviews with key informants, observations and eight focus group discussions. The article maps existing CVE projects across Kenya's coast including the prevention framework of primary, secondary and tertiary interventions as modelled on preventative public health approaches. Assessment of existing CVE programs provides information elucidating what works and for whom from a community perspective. Feedback from the community is critical for, facilitating effective measures for mitigating the process of youth radicalization in the coast region. The findings reported here recommend periodic consultation with the intended beneficiaries and other CVE initiatives' stakeholders to enhance the sustainability of the projects.

Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism (BRAVE), the World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE)'s community-based approach to countering violent extremism (CVE), has gained international recognition for its approach to CVE and its emphasis on research-driven strategies. This article provides an overview of the BRAVE model and suggests practical steps for how to structure an effective, research-based CVE program, based on the BRAVE experience.

Governments across the West have invested significant resources in preventing radicalization, and strategies to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE) are increasingly prominent within wider counter-terrorism policies. However, we know little about their effects, especially about projects that utilize former extremists to counter extremist narratives and increase critical thinking. Despite the prominence of interventions utilizing &ldquo ; formers&rdquo ; there are almost no systematic, scientific evaluations of these programs. The lack of evaluation is problematic given the recognized risks and negative effects of using formers to address other social issues, such as crime prevention. This paper presents findings from the largest study to date of the effects of using former extremists to prevent violent extremism. Based on a randomized controlled effect evaluation with 1931 Danish youths, it highlights significant successes, including reducing the perceived legitimacy of political violence, as well as negative effects, including a small decrease in political tolerance. Overall, the findings suggest a need for cost&ndash ; benefit analyses of P/CVE initiatives, weighing the benefits against the risks.

Governments across the West have invested significant resources in preventing radicali-zation, and strategies to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE) are increasingly prominent within wider counter-terrorism policies. However, we know little about their effects, especially about projects that utilize former extremists to counter extremist narratives and increase critical thinking. Despite the prominence of interventions utilizing "formers", there are almost no system-atic, scientific evaluations of these programs. The lack of evaluation is problematic given the recog-nized risks and negative effects of using formers to address other social issues, such as crime pre-vention. This paper presents findings from the largest study to date of the effects of using former extremists to prevent violent extremism. Based on a randomized controlled effect evaluation with 1931 Danish youths, it highlights significant successes, including reducing the perceived legitimacy of political violence, as well as negative effects, including a small decrease in political tolerance. Overall, the findings suggest a need for cost–benefit analyses of P/CVE initiatives, weighing the benefits against the risks.

Countering violent extremism (CVE) policies infiltrate every corner of public life, travelling across the Global North and South. However, scholars have under-analysed the perspective of those charged with CVE's implementation, and have treated CVE in a spatial binary, implying that its operationalisations in the Global North and South are conceptually distinct. This article presents a comparative political ethnography of CVE projects framed as care provision in the field of education in Morocco and the UK. It asks, how is CVE rationalised for and by non-traditional security actors in education, such as university and NGO administrators, and how is it integrated into the ordinary across the North and the South? In both contexts, implementation does not "just" enrol those involved with care duties at their institution into the government of the "dangerous other." It also shapes the self-governance of those transformed into hesitant security actors. This paper argues that implementers leverage the 'normal politics' of institutional care to implement the global counter-extremist agenda. CVE enters spaces of education globally through camouflage – it blends itself into existing understandings and practices of institutional care, whatever they may be. By working across the North and the South through similar mechanisms of sense and subject-making, CVE recruits implementers for the co-production of an expansive global geography of exclusion that locates marginalised young Muslims as global outsiders within.

There is still little discussion on how community-based organizations (CBOs) may help counter violent extremism (CVE) in Nigeria. This research explores the implications of CBOs' use of external networks for CVE and the distribution of humanitarian aid in North-East Nigeria. It finds that because CBOs depend so heavily on outside funding, they are constantly exposed to the demands and whims of donors. We therefore urge the government to prioritize CBOs in CVE programmes and operations to reduce external influence and to limit the spread of violent extremism in the region.

This article assesses whether the scholarly literature on radicalisation is adequately integrated into national policy strategies for countering violent extremism (CVE). It outlines concepts and models of radicalisation, and offers a framework for understanding its various complex causes. The article then compares this scholarly research against case studies of CVE policy from the United Kingdom, Australia, Denmark, Sweden and The Netherlands. These countries' policies adequately capture the core nature of radicalisation, but otherwise exhibit significant variation in how they explain its causes. This can be explained partly by a lack of clarity over how and why radicalisation happens. However, it also suggests that CVE policy is often shaped less by evidence-based research, and more by cultural, political and historical factors. This confirms a need for evidence-based approaches to CVE, and for deeper comparative studies of how radicalisation is understood across national contexts.

The last decade has witnessed growing concern about violent extremism as many European countries have introduced policies to prevent and counter violent extremism (P/CVE). Norway is no exception, launching three such action plans. Having also suffered from an extensive history of right-wing extremism, Norway was once the scene of the relatively successful pioneering of the European EXIT programme. However, extremist groups today are more socially complex and in rethinking how society can strengthen P/CVE approaches through social networks, 'resilience' has emerged as a key element of what might make people resistant to violence and extremism. This chapter provides an overview of developments in violent extremism in Norway over the last decades, and the social and political responses to it. We examine how resilience manifests in policy and how it relates to P/CVE practice, as well as discuss the implications of Norwegian P/CVE approaches. We distinguish between security-oriented and pro-social approaches to resilience and explore how this differentiation may be used to highlight an antagonism between securitisation and social transformation. In our conclusion, we suggest deemphasising securitised P/CVE approaches in favour of developing pro-social forms of resilience to violent extremism in Norway.

Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have an increased incidence of cardiovascular events (CVE). The contribution of subclinical atheromatosis extent, including femoral arteries, to CVE in CKD patients has not been investigated. In this paper, we examine the prognostic value of subclinical atheromatosis extent, assessed as the number of arterial territories with plaque, in predicting the incidence of major and minor CVE. The NEFRONA is a multicenter, prospective cohorts study that recruited 2445 CKD subjects and 559 controls, free from previous cardiovascular disease, in 81 medical centers across Spain. The presence of atheroma plaque was assessed by arterial ultrasound in ten arterial territories (carotid and femoral). The predictive power of the presence or absence of atheroma plaque in any territory was compared with the quantification of atheroma extent as the number of territories with plaque. During the median follow up of 48 months, 216 CVE were reported. Factors predicting the incidence of CVE in the whole cohort were being male, CKD patient, lower levels of 25(OH) vitamin D, higher levels of cholesterol and the extent of subclinical atheromatosis, yielding a higher concordance (C) index than the presence or absence of plaque. In stratified analysis including specific factors of CKD patients not on dialysis, the variables predicting CVE were the same as in the whole cohort, plus higher levels of potassium. Again, the inclusion of the information about atheromatosis as number of territories with plaque, presented a higher C index than the presence or absence of plaque. In the dialysis population, significant variables were older age, diabetes, dialysis vintage and higher levels of cholesterol and phosphate. In this case the higher C index was obtained with the information about plaque presence. Subclinical atheromatosis extent, including femoral arteries, influences CVE in CKD and its detection could improve the prediction of cardiovascular events. ; The NEFRONA study is funded by a research grant from AbbVie and the Spanish government RETIC (RD16/0009/0011), FIS PI16/01354 and FEDER funds

Circulating microparticles (cMPs) are small phospholipid-rich microvesicles shed by activated cells that play a pivotal role in cell signalling related to the pathogenesis of atherothrombosis. We aimed to investigate the prognostic value of cMPs released from different vascular cells for cardiovascular event (CVE) presentation in asymptomatic patients at high cardiovascular risk factors under nutritional and pharmacologic treatment. This is a nested case-control study of 50 patients from the five-year follow-up prospective PREDIMED trial enrolled in the nuts arm of the Mediterranean diet (MedDiet-nuts). We randomly selected 25 patients who had suffered a CVE during follow-up and pair-matched them for sex, age, and classical CV risk factors to 25 patients who remained asymptomatic (no-CVE). Total Annexin V-(AV)+ cMPs and cMPs from cells of the vascular compartment were quantified by flow cytometry at baseline and after one year follow-up. MedDiet-nuts and pharmacological treatment neither modified levels nor source of MP shedding in CVE patients. However, no-CVE patients showed 40-86 % decreased total AV+, PAC-1+/AV+, CD61+/AV+, CD142+/CD61+/AV+, CD62P+/AV+, CD146+/AV+, CD63+/AV+ and CD11a+/AV+ cMPs at one year follow-up (p≤0.046, all). CD142+/CD61+/AV+, CD146+/AV+ and CD45+/AV+ cMPs were decreased in no-CVE patients compared to CVE patients. A ROC-curve clustered model for CD142+/CD61+/AV+, CD45+/AV+ and CD146+/AV+ cMPs predicted a future CVE [p<0.0001, AUC=0.805 (0.672 to 0.938)]. In patients at high CV risk profile treated with a controlled MedDiet supplemented with nuts and receiving up-to-date CV drug treatment, reduced cMPs derived from activated platelets, leukocytes and endothelial cells are predictive of protection against CVE within the next four years. ; GC-B is a Sara Borrell Postdoctoral Fellow (CD13/00023) from Instituto de Salud Carlos III. This work has been possible thanks to funding received from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Plan Estatal de I+D+I 2013-2016, SAF2013-42962-R, to LB), from the Cardiovascular Research Network of Instituto de Salud Carlos III (RIC, RD12/0042/0027 to LB; SAF2012-40208 to GV) and from CIBER CB06/03 Fisiopatología de la Obesidad y la Nutrición of Instituto de Salud Carlos III, (CIBERobn, RD06/0045 to RE). All grants were co-financed by European Union Funds, Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) "Una manera de hacer Europa."

In the present media age, the phenomenon of violent extremism is one of the major challenges confronting Pakistan's internal and external security. Cyber radicalization and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) has become a daunting task around the globe because of the changing nature of conflicts. This study explores the literature on online radicalization, extremism, its trends and challenges with special reference to Pakistan. The study investigates how social media helps militant groups in spreading hate and radical thoughts to propagate extremist ideologies. The study also probes the measures adopted by Pakistan to counter cyber extremism and radicalization. The study concludes that due to the fact that terrorist organizations are a constant driver of violent extremism and are linked to hostile foreign agencies, Pakistan faces significant social and economic losses as a result. Therefore, there is a need for an effective policy to counter radical ideas disseminated through the Internet.