The Western Balkans faces a double challenge from online extremism. Online platforms are facilitating the specific targeting of the region by diverse international extremist narratives. Meanwhile regional histories and geopolitics are being appropriated to justify extremist actions and narratives around the world. This is part of a wider trend that…
Côte d’Ivoire is home to around 200,000 traditional hunters known as the dozo. These traditional hunters are common throughout West Africa and have often filled gaps in state security provision in remote areas by settling local disputes and protecting residents from banditry and theft. Since the end of the conflict…
Far-right groups are leveraging the Covid-19 crisis to further their objectives. Alongside other actors, they are one of the main forces actively seeking to undermine the effectiveness of public-health responses, in this case to further their ideological objectives. This is manifesting in the following ways: public harms through communications (disinformation,…
Extremist ideologues are not constrained to country-level influence. Rather, online extremist propaganda in the Western Balkans exploits and draws on regional narratives and demographics…
This report presents a framework with which peacebuilders can foster disengagement from violent extremism and reconciliation between those disengaging and affected communities by examining the individual, social, and structural dynamics involved. One of a series, the report was supported by the Center for Applied Conflict Transformation at the United States…
As research on violent extremism (VE) and terrorism continues to grow, the safety and protection of those individuals involved in this research needs to grow simultaneously. At the same time, the various stakeholders commissioning the research also face significant methodological, ethical, legal, and financial challenges in ensuring CVE research is…
The purpose of this research is to experimentally test whether counter-narratives are effective to reduce people’s support and willingness to join Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Integrating psychological reactance theory (Brehm, 1966) and need for closure (NFC; Kruglanski, 2004), we predicted that exposing people to counter-narratives when they…
This report seeks to document women’s forms of participation in both community-based armed groups (CBAGs) and peacebuilding in areas affected by CBAG violence in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on East Africa. This report finds that women participate in violence and clandestine operations, provide logistical support to CBAGs, and legitimize…
The RUSI Journal special issue on Strategic Communications tackles how the communications activities of state and non-state actors are among the most complex and challenging security concerns facing Western liberal democracies today.
On the evening of February 19th 2020, a shooter opened fire at a shisha bar and a kiosk in Hanau, Germany killing nine people and injuring more. After the attack, the suspect apparently returned to his home, killed his mother, and committed suicide. He shared a manifesto detailing the racist…
This report aims to analyse the extent to which the terrorist threat in the West has continued to democratise. The authors expanded upon the Dutch Algemene Inlichtingenen Veiligheidsdienst (General Intelligence and Security Service, AIVD) timeline of terrorist attacks and further developed a dataset in order to structurally enhance and map…
This link is to a video, in English, from the Conflict Analysis and Prevention Center (CAPC).
