Author: Slava

The project HOPE holds Transnational Policy Forum and Dissemination Workshop in Albania

On 19 and 20 April, a Transnational Policy Forum and a Dissemination workshop were held in Albania within the framework of the HOPE project “Holistic Prevention of Radicalization Initiative”, a project of which the Euro-Arab Foundation is a member of the consortium along with its partners from Portugal, Norway, Italy, Bulgaria, Serbia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania.

On 19 April , the Transnational Policy Forum (TPF) kicked off the day with a presentation on the approach of the HOPE project, and a talk on best practices in training and cooperation in preventing and countering violent extremism, as well as the results presentation of needs assessment conducted by the project. The first roundtable of the Forum focused on the topic of “How to coordinate CVE activities in the Western Balkans from a policy perspective”, which was followed by a panel on the tangible results of HOPE. The day concluded with a second panel discussion on “Challenges of implementation for endusers: A regional approach”.

On 20 April the Dissemination Workshop was held, divided into a panel on the main results of the HOPE project, and a round table on the “The Future of CVE Training: The Albanian
Context”. The first panel featured Josep Garcia Coll, Euro-Arab Foundation researcher, with the topic “State of the art analysis & European Survey: A regional Approach”.

After three years of implementation, HOPE is coming to an end with a focus on continuous training and knowledge sharing in the countries of the Balkans, Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as on improving the transition process between the prison and/or probation systems and the community, for those prisoners at risk of radicalization or who have been radicalized.

The HOPE project, in which the Euro-Arab Foundation participates, is led by IPS-Innovative Prison Systems, and is funded by Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA-Norway Grant Fund for Regional Cooperation.

EN Standup News

The European Parliament will host the STAND UP seminar ‘Against Hate Crimes’

This week, 28-29 September, the seminar organised by the European project STAND UP – Fighting Hate in the EU takes place in the European Parliament (Brussels). The aim of this event is to find a common European definition of “hate crime” and to analyse measures that can counter this hate speech.

The seminar will also provide an overview of the results of the focus groups developed by the STAND UP project on hate crime and hate speech in Greece, Italy and Spain, as well as a proposal for standardised reporting procedures, including the use of technology to report, investigate, prosecute and prevent (RIPP) hate speech and hate crime in the framework of multi-agency cooperation and the highest level victim assistance model.

To this end, the seminar at the European Parliament will bring together experts from the legal, law enforcement, CSO (civil society organisations), NGO and policy-making fields from different European countries.

Wednesday 28th: “Defining Hate Crimes: Towards a common European definition”
Thursday 29th: “Reporting Hate Crime: Cooperation between Law Enforcement Authorities (LEAS) and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs)”.

STAND UP

Discrimination, intolerance and hatred are still present in European societies, often leading to serious and violent crimes.

These practices and sentiments are to a large extent causes of wider social tensions and have lasting repercussions on victims, their families and our societies. However, there are shortcomings at European level in the handling of hate crimes and discrimination towards individuals or communities on grounds of gender, race, sexuality or other aspects, as well as in the response given by public authorities in European countries.

The STAND-UP project aims to improve inter-agency cooperation in the fight against hate crime through the design, development and implementation of a new inter-agency model led by public authorities.

The model developed by STAND-UP comprises technological tools to improve the monitoring of hate speech and hate crime, as well as the exchange of data between different agencies; an established definition of hate crime; hate crime reporting templates (for law enforcement and CSOs); inter-agency manuals for victim support.

STAND-UP, financed by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers, is coordinated by the Procura della Repubblica presso il Tribunale Ordinario di Trento -Italy,and counts in its consortium with the National Commission for Human Rights- Ethniki Epitropi gia ta Dikaiomata tou Anthropou – Greece; Fundación Euroárabe de Altos Estudios -Spain ; European Public Law Organization – Greece; Fondazione Agenfor International – Italy ; Association des Agences de la Democratie Local – France

EN Hope EN Interrad EN Mirad EN Pave

Granada hosts the 7th International Countering Violent Extremism Research Conference

The International Countering Violent Extremism Research Conference 2022 takes place from May 23 to 25 in Granada, at the Faculty of Law.

Hedayah, the Euro-Arab Foundation, the European Institute for Counter Terrorism and Conflict Prevention, Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, Moonshot, United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism and University of Granada hold the Seventh International Countering Violent Extremism Research Conference 2022. The Conference is sponsored by the Government of Spain and with the strategic partnership of the Royal United Services Institute, the Cyber Threats Research Centre (CYTREC) and Tech against Terrorism.

With the aim of responding to current and evolving terrorist and violent extremism threats and challenges, this seventh edition is being held with a forecast attendance of a hundred guests, including experts and researchers in the field, policymakers and practitioners from around the world

For three days, the conference addresses, through different round tables, the areas that affect the analysis of the current situation and future scenarios, such as: the implications of COVID-19 on this type of extremist actors; the role of the Internet and new technologies; the effects of environmental change on violent extremism; the fight against extremist groups of ideological inspiration; how to deal with the rise of the radical right; gender and youth in the prevention and fight against violent extremism, among other issues.

Inauguration and opening conference

The Conference will be inaugurated by the Rector of the University of Granada on Monday, May 23, at 9 a.m., in the Paraninfo of the Faculty of Law and will be attended by the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the United Arab Emirates to the United Nations, Lana Zaki Nusseibeh; Chief of Strategic Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of Bahrain, Nancy Abdulla Jamal; the Minister Plenipotentiary, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Spain at the European Union, Guillermo Anguera Gual; the Major General, Guardia Civil and Director, Center for Intelligence against Terrorism and Organized Crime (CITCO), Manuel Navarrete Paniagua; the sub-delegate of the Government in Granada, Inmaculada López Calahorro; the President of the European Institute for Counter Terrorism and Conflict Prevention (EICTP), Herbert Scheibner and the Head of Global Programme on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office (UNOCT), Sean Hutchinson, among other prominent national and international professionals.

The co-organization of this international Conference by the Euro-Arab Foundation is established based on the work that we have been developing over the years in terms of radicalization and violent extremism. At the moment, we are carrying out 10 projects funded by the European Union and the Government of Spain, four of them address this framework, the PAVE, HOPE, MIRAD, INTERRAD projects.

EN Bigosint EN Standup News

Virtual reality sessions and coordination of the BIGOSINT and STAND-UP European projects at the Euro-Arab

An important work agenda begins this morning at the headquarters of the Euro-Arab Foundation today and tomorrow, May 10 and 11, developed by the consortium of two European projects in which the Euro-Arab participates, the BIGOSINT project and STAND -UP.

The objective of this conference is to work on the training and coordination of the pilot tests that will be carried out, sharing the tools and platforms of these two projects financed by the European Commission, the BIGOSINT project, whose objective is to counteract Trafficking in Human Beings through the analysis of Big Data and Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and the STAND-UP project that focuses its work on the fight against hate in the European Union.

In this sense, training in Virtual Reality will be held tomorrow in Granada. With it, it will be possible to support the understanding of the training methodology that both projects will apply in a later phase. This, in turn, will allow them to contribute to the development of the training content and its implementation in a more meaningful way.

This joint activity is expected to open the way to new collaborations with other projects financed by the European Union, those that share a similar research approach and training methodologies, as well as beneficiaries and the use of open source intelligence.