Suchergebnisse

The Peer to Peer (P2P): Challenging Extremism initiative, which counters violent extremism through youth engagement, is a partnership between an interagency government team and EdVenture Partners, a private organization that manages experiential learning initiatives using a peer-to-peer approach. The initiative tasks university students across the globe to counter extremism among their peers and in their communities, by creating and implementing, over the course of a school term, a social or digital initiative, product, or tool designed to empower their peers and counter hate. At the time of writing, more than two thousand students from more than ninety-five universities in more than thirty countries have been involved in the initiative, which is specifically designed to capitalize on public-private partnerships.

Countering violent extremism (CVE) is a widely used and defined term. From a practitioner's perspective, it works on three levels: prevention of radicalization, intervention with individuals in danger of radicalization, and de-radicalization. The European Union pursues a holistic approach, which includes transnational collaboration and eliminating possible root causes of radicalization. The focus is not exclusively on national security concerns but also on prevention, de-radicalization, and rehabilitation. European states have developed a variety of CVE strategies, some of which are perceived as centrally controlled, while others are characterized by participative and cooperative structures. At both the European and national levels, collaborative approaches that encompass incorporation of civil society organizations and governmental programs are seen as the most effective in CVE.

This policy paper provides a guiding framework for centralising the role of local women in preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) and peacebuilding programmes. It draws on the author's research into the gendered appeals of violent extremist propaganda and field experiences implementing programmes across Southeast Asia. The approach outlined here builds on the "linkage" approach to propaganda analysis and P/CVE programme design arguing that women need to be capacitated with the knowledge and strategic tools and empowered through women's networks to develop locally nuanced solutions. The Capacitate to Outcompete, Persuade, and Empower (C.O.P.E) framework consists of four broad pillars. First, workshops to educate women about violent extremist strategies and P/CVE and peacebuilding approaches. Second, narrative-driven actions led by women addressing key psychosocial, political, economic, and health issues. Third, strategic communications efforts to promote empowerment goals. Fourth, establish grassroots women's networks as forums for bonding, support, and organisation for collective action. This paper highlights experiences implementing C.O.P.E offering a practical guide for design and implementation.

Despite the military efforts of the Kenyan, Ethiopian, and Somali Federal governments, the collaboration of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces with US and coalition forces, and despite the enormous tactical and strategic set-backs that al-Shabaab has faced over the last five years, its insurgency in the Horn of Africa (HoA) remains resilient. The Kenyan government's approach to stemming domestic recruitment to al-Shabaab remains fixated on law enforcement control and surveillance. As a result, many Somali communities are subject to daily crackdowns, interrogations, and discriminatory profiling practices whose negative effects are only heightened by current tribal and clan-based tensions in the country. Current scholarly evaluations of Kenya's 'Countering Violent Extremism' (CVE) & 'Preventing Violent Extremism' (PVE) policies tend to adhere to three major approaches: top-down evaluations by elites repeatedly locating the protection of national security in inter-agency cooperation; bottom-up CVE/PVE evaluations placing primacy on the voices of Muslim community elders, such as imams, social workers, parents, and community leaders for interventions with at-risk youth; and social scientific evaluations of CVE/PVE policy through empirical exploration of the push and pull factors of youth recruitment into militancy. To date, there is a dearth of studies asking what Kenyan youth leaders think about CVE/PVE policies especially in light of the fact that they are often the main targets of al-Shabaab attacks. This study has one key objective: to use input from Kenyan youth to evaluate the effectiveness, suitability, and appropriateness of Kenya's current CVE/PVE policies in order to dissect their utility, inefficiencies, and possible harms, and contribute to the academic and policy discussions on the best CVE/PVE policy mix.

Der fehlende Impuls zur regionalen Selbstidentifikation und Integration hat die ostmitteleuropäischen Länder bislang daran gehindert, eine eigenständige Rolle in der europäischen Politik zu spielen. Der Aufbau der zukünftigen Sicherheitsstruktur in Europa, der weitere Verlauf der europäischen Integration und die diesbezügliche Rolle Rußlands werden in entscheidenden Maße von der Politik der Großmächte abhängen. Wie bereits während des Kalten Krieges wird auch in Zukunft die ostmitteleuropäische Frage darüber entscheiden, ob Zusammenarbeit oder Konfrontation in Europa die dominierende Politik sein werden. Leider scheinen sowohl Rußland als auch der Westen nicht die entsprechenden Lehren aus der Geschichte gezogen zu haben. (BIOst-Mrk)

Modern mechanisms of state surveillance reinforce gendered, raced, classed and sexed power hierarchies. Forms of control and regulation of "problem bodies" are framed as neutral or benign forms of bureaucratic bookkeeping (Dubrofsky and Magnet, 2015). This thesis explores the possible Islamophobic and Anti-Black dimensions of Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) program, a counterterrorism community outreach program initiated by the federal government in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, which targets the Somali community. I will be evaluating whether CVE programs, initiated by state agencies, transform into a site of surveillance. This thesis will examine declassified state documents from sources such as Homeland Security and the FBI relating to CVE programs, which detail program rationale, function, and implantation. My research will examine the presence of Anti-Black racism and Islamophobia in the purpose and deployment CVE programs. Additionally, I will be analyzing how mechanisms of surveillance operate at the intersections of Anti-Black racism and Islamophobia and how do CVE programs impact and shape the lived realities of Somali Muslims. This study of CVE programs is, by necessity, an analysis of power relations, and relies on an intersectional feminist approach to surveillance studies. Through this, I will produce a coherent understanding of how surveillance mechanisms build on the criminalization and over-policing of Black communities to surveil, mark and easily monitor Somali Muslims in Minnesota. The recent election of Donald Trump and the looming threat to activate a Muslim registry makes this research more relevant and necessary.

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of precision oncology programmes are being launched world-wide. To support this development, we present the Cancer Variant Explorer (CVE), an R package with an interactive Shiny web browser interface. RESULTS: Leveraging Oncotator and the Drug Gene Interaction Database, CVE offers exploration of variants within single or multiple tumour exomes to identify drivers, resistance mechanisms and to assess druggability. We present example applications including the analysis of an individual patient and a cohort-wide study, and provide a first extension of CVE by adding a tumour-specific co-expression network. CONCLUSIONS: The CVE package allows interactive variant prioritisation to expedite the analysis of cancer sequencing studies. Our framework also includes the prioritisation of druggable targets, allows exploratory analysis of tissue specific networks and is extendable for specific applications by virtue of its modular design. We encourage the use of CVE within translational research studies and molecular tumour boards. The CVE package is available via Bioconductor ( http://bioconductor.org/packages/CVE/). ; AM was supported by the National Institute for Health Research, Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Cambridge BRC) and the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes). We would like also to acknowledge the support of The University of Cambridge, Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre and Hutchison Whampoa Limited. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007-2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n. 337905. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

This article explores how societal actors in Somalia take part in a transnational politics of countering/preventing violent extremism (CVE/PVE) through a political sociological approach to militarisation. We argue that the transnational politics of CVE represents an extension of global militarism by some states, institutions, donors and brokers. CVE works to adapt global militarism and to reconfigure the global-local relationships that sustain it. We explore the roles and influence of local 'CVE brokers' in deradicalisation efforts in South-central Somalia. They inadvertently merge the counter-terrorism approach to Somali people, values and territory with non-military means. We show that their key practices – co-ordination, translation and alignment – advance, but also disrupt, alter and transform CVE policy objectives. ; publishedVersion