Category: IN2PREV-en

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IN2PREV-en News Projects

Granada Hosts Final IN2PREV Training Seminar

From June 24th to 26th, the Euro-Arab Foundation, a member of the consortium for the European IN2PREV project aimed at preventing radicalization through the successful inclusion of refugees, organized the project’s final training seminar. Titled Training of Trainers: Mentorship Program and Vulnerability Assessment, the activity brought together over 40 participants, including consortium partners and frontline professionals from Law Enforcement Agencies and non-governmental organizations across several European countries. The objective was to enhance their competencies in law enforcement and community cooperation to prevent radicalization by ensuring the inclusion of refugees.

To achieve this, the training developed the professionals’ capacity to transmit the knowledge acquired in previous IN2PREV trainings held in Poland and Slovakia. It also strengthened their understanding and use of the project’s products and fostered collaboration and the exchange of best practices between law enforcement agencies and non-governmental organizations.

IN2PREV Final Conference

The IN2PREV project is a European initiative that began in September 2022. The Euro-Arab Foundation participates as a member, alongside partners from Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Republic of Moldova, Slovakia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The project’s goal is to facilitate the integration of refugees and asylum seekers and prevent their radicalization through the early identification of vulnerability risk factors. The successful inclusion of refugees as a means to prevent radicalization is a topic that, despite its recognized importance and growing concern, has not received adequate attention or action and is often addressed through highly securitized approaches.

After three years of research and training, the final IN2PREV project conference will take place on October 1st, 2025, in the Portuguese city of Porto. The event will serve as a platform to present the project’s final results to key organizations and representatives of the European Commission.

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Safeguarding individual rights and freedoms in the face of the security challenge

On 28 April, the third Network Panel Thematic Debate, organised by the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies (FUNDEA) and Innovative Prison Systems (IPS), examined the intersections between migration and security, and the risks of unlawful profiling of refugees and asylum seekers in Europe. This online debate brought together key actors and organisations, including law enforcement, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), as well as experts, to discuss how to prevent radicalisation in a way that does not unduly undermine fundamental rights, including the right to non-discrimination and the right to asylum, in line with the objectives of the IN2PREV project.

To this end, the event benefited from contributions from the International Centre for Counterterrorism, as well as from the Euro-Arab Foundation whose researcher, Lucía Alonso Pérez, provided guidance to help prevent profiling based on discriminatory criteria when conducting risk assessments of violent extremism. The conference concluded with a presentation by the Guardia Civil, which presented the protocols and practices currently applied in Spain to prevent unlawful profiling, followed by an exchange of experiences and reflections with participants from NGOs and law enforcement agencies from across Europe.

About IN2PREV

The European IN2PREV project is a European initiative that started in September 2022 and in which the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies participates as a member, together with partners from Poland, Portugal, Romania, Republic of Moldova, Slovakia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The aim of the project is to facilitate the integration of refugees and asylum seekers and prevent their radicalisation through early identification of vulnerability risk factors. The successful inclusion of refugees as a way to prevent radicalisation is an issue that, despite its acknowledged importance and growing concern, has not received adequate attention and action, and is often addressed through highly securitarian approaches.

Last March, the project brought a seminar to Bratislava to improve the skills of law enforcement and non-governmental organisations working on the frontline with refugees and asylum seekers in preventing radicalisation. Euro-Arab researcher Lucía Alonso Pérez gave a presentation that explored in depth the practices of preventing violent extremism in order to ensure their compliance with fundamental rights and ethical principles. In her intervention, she addressed issues such as respect for human dignity, the right to non-discrimination and privacy, and the importance of guaranteeing access to international protection. In addition, he stressed the need to implement action protocols that prioritise the protection of the rights of refugees, especially those in vulnerable situations.

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Human Rights and Refuge: Essential Training for Frontline Professionals

From March 25 to 27, a training seminar took place in Bratislava, Slovakia, framed within the European project IN2PREV, of which the Euro-Arab Foundation is a part. This initiative supports the improvement of the skills of security forces and non-governmental organizations working on the frontlines with refugees and asylum seekers, in the prevention of radicalization. The Euro-Arab Foundation researcher, Lucía Alonso Pérez, participated with a presentation that delved into the practices of preventing violent extremism to ensure their compliance with fundamental rights and ethical principles. In her speech, she addressed issues such as respect for human dignity, the right to non-discrimination and privacy, and the importance of ensuring access to international protection. Furthermore, she highlighted the need to implement action protocols that prioritize the protection of the rights of refugees, especially those in vulnerable situations.

Lucía Alonso Pérez, Euro-Arab Foundation’s researcher, during her intervention in the training

The event served to exchange experiences and improve the capacity to prevent and identify the factors of vulnerability to radicalization in refugees and asylum seekers, to transform these vulnerabilities into protection factors.

About IN2PREV

The European project IN2PREV, with the participation of the Euro-Arab Foundation and partners from various countries, seeks to prevent the radicalization of refugees and asylum seekers by facilitating their integration and early detection of risk factors. Faced with the growing refugee crisis in Europe, aggravated by conflicts and the pandemic, the project focuses on improving cooperation between security forces and NGOs, developing tools to assess vulnerability, implementing mentoring programs, and training frontline professionals.

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FUNDEA emphasizes ethical and human rights considerations to improve refugee integration

Between the 15th and the 17th January, it took place in Poznan – Poland- the first Capacity Building Training Seminars “Facilitating Refugees and Asylum Seekers’ Integration through Mentoring”, organized as a strategic initiative under the IN2PREV “Law enforcement and community cooperation and training approach to prevent radicalisation by ensuring refugees’ successful inclusion” project.

This 1st 3-day in-person training CBTS was coordinated by the Polish Platform for Homeland Security (PPHS) and the Innovative Prison Systems (IPS) – members of the Consortium – and focused on developing the capacity of participants to promote and foster the successful integration of persons in refugee and asylum seeker-like situations into their host communities, particularly considering their vulnerabilities to being targeted and exploited by radicalising and extremist agents. It counted with the participation of around 45 participants, from 9 European countries: Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

One form of integration is through mentoring. The 1st CBTS provided skills to practically utilise the IN2PREV Mentoring Programme to support persons in refugee and asylum seeker-like situations to foster social inclusion. The implementation of this mentoring programme will last 6 months, from February to July 2025, and that will be organized mainly in the 7 countries of the Consortium partners, which are: Spain, Portugal, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.

FUNDEA’S participation

In addition to the contribution in the preparation for the training, FUNDEA’s participation was in facilitating three sessions:

  • Ethical and Human Rights compliant Principles for Practitioners, that was facilitated by Rascha Albaba Acosta, Researcher and Project Officer at the foundation, whom provided guidelines for practitioners to implement a human rights-based approach when implementing mentoring programs and in other interventions as well.
  • Refugee and asylum seeker communities’ vulnerabilities to successful integration: The IN2PREV findings, that was facilitated online by Lucia Alonso Pérez, Researcher and Project Officer at the foundation, who presented the key findings of a study that interviewed 32 practitioners and stakeholders to identify common factors, elements and dimensions that may contribute to identifying potential indicators of the procedures and tools developed in Europe to screen radicalisation vulnerabilities among asylum seekers and refugees.
  • Moderation of a panel discussion with practitioners, whom presented their country experiences in the integration of refugees and asylum seekers, and best practices, challenges and lessons learnt to consider when implementing mentoring programmes. The panel discussion was moderated by Rascha Albaba Acosta, Researcher and Project Officer at the foundation.

In addition to FUNDEA participation as a Consortium partner of the IN2PREV project, three Spanish partners participated in the training, as experts in implementing integration approaches with asylum seekers and refugees in Spain, including through mentoring programmes, whom will pilot the IN2PREV mentoring programme with mentees in addition to others.

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The Euro-Arab Foundation, in charge of adapting a new tool to assess vulnerability and risk factors of refugees in the framework of IN2PREV project

The Euro-Arab Foundation is in the process of adapting the Frontline Extremism Vulnerability Risk – Structured Evaluation Screening (FEVR-SES), a new tool created within the framework of the European IN2PREV project, which will allow assessing different vulnerability and risk factors of refugees and asylum seekers. This calibration work is being made possible thanks to the dialogue and multi-agency collaboration of experts, police forces and social entities with which the Euro-Arab Foundation has been able to discuss, in a national online calibration workshop, the points to be improved, adjusted or reinforced.

The FEVR-SES tool, which was already assessed in another workshop last month at international level, seeks the early detection of vulnerabilities and protection factors with assessment indicators, such as mental health, psychosocial well-being or the migration experience itself, which are essential for social inclusion and the development of public policies that promote a diverse society.

IN2PREV is a European project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme in which the Euro-Arab Foundation is leading research on methodologies for assessing the vulnerabilities of refugees and asylum seekers, the development of a manual on ethics and respect for human rights in interventions with refugees, the national implementation of the IN2PREV mentoring programme and the development of training programmes.

In this context, Euro-Arab also held a national mentoring event last May for frontline professionals from social organisations, NGOs and mediation services working with asylum seekers and refugees. This IN2PREV mentoring service will continue with training in September for Spanish NGOs, as well as those from the project’s partner countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovakia, Moldova, Portugal, Poland and Romania) in order to subsequently launch pilot mentoring programmes in their respective territories.

Soon, the Euro-Arab Foundation will publish a manual on guaranteeing human rights and ethics in Spanish for police forces and social entities, which will accompany a manual on good police practices in the treatment of asylum seekers.

More information on the IN2PREV website: https://www.in2prev.eu/

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IN2PREV-en News Projects

National Mentoring Event for Social Entities working with Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Daniel Pérez García, researcher at the Euro-Arab Foundation and coordinator of IN2PREV

This morning, the Euro-Arab Foundation for Higher Studies held a national mentoring event aimed at leading professionals from social organisations, NGOs and mediation services working with asylum seekers and refugees. The director of the Department of Research and Projects, Javier Ruipérez Canales, together with the coordinator of this activity and researcher of this department, Daniel Pérez García, and Celia Sánchez Villarejo, both researchers of this department, have explained what the mentoring programme Approaching mentoring for a successful inclusion of Refugees and Asylum Seekers of the European project IN2PREV of which the Euro-Arab consortium is part of, and whose objectives include fostering cooperation and collaboration between police forces and NGOs representing refugees and asylum seekers. It also aims to establish accompaniment and inclusion strategies, adapting them to each context and improving the skills of professionals, thus mitigating any risk of vulnerability initially detected.

This mentoring programme, which will take place in 2025 simultaneously in Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovakia, Moldova, Portugal, Poland and Romania, is a group mentoring process, where each mentor can have up to 3 mentees. It includes a preparation phase for mentorees, as well as session plans that will help to create a safe space for the mentorees and foster better communication and the development of a climate of trust between the mentorees and the host community.

Thematic organisation of each mentoring session

A total of twelve mentoring sessions with an approximate duration of one and a half hours each have been established. They will deal with: 1. needs assessment; 2. bureaucratic issues involved in the migration process of the mentored persons; 3. integration into the host community with, for example, an open discussion on the differences and similarities between the country of origin and the host country; 4. language barriers; 5. religion and culture; 6. job search and the working environment; 7. educational environment; 8. social integration; 9. mental health; 10. health care system; 11. the connection with the country of origin and 12. reflection and closing session.