News & Events Event Reports

Enhancing National-Local Coordination on Prevention, Preparedness and Response to Radicalisation and Terrorist Attack

Publication Date:

06/10/2022

Content Type:

Event Reports

Share:

Tags:

Multi-Stakeholder CooperationNational-Local CooperationPost-Incident ResponseSoutheast AsiaSurabaya

— 2 minutes reading time

Strong Cities collaborated with IIJ in in Surabaya, Indonesia, to co-host a workshop on Enhancing National-Local Coordination on Prevention, Preparedness and Response to Radicalisation and Terrorist Attacks.

In July, Strong Cities Network Central Management Unit joined the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ) in Surabaya, Indonesia, to co-host a workshop on Enhancing National-Local Coordination on Prevention, Preparedness and Response to Radicalisation and Terrorist Attacks. The workshop convened national and local government officials as well as civil society representatives from Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia and a range of international speakers for a three-day programme on multi-stakeholder collaboration and information-sharing to prevent and respond to terrorist attacks.

The first day invited participants to share their perspectives on the current extremist and terrorist threat landscape in each of the three represented contexts, as well as existing mechanisms for addressing this landscape. The second day focused on the role of the internet in both preventing escalations to violence and in responding to a terrorist attack, as well as effective crisis communications.

Topics included the use of hashtags to monitor online responses to an attack and to promote messaging around unity and togetherness in a post-crisis environment, what responsible media communications might look like in a post-incident context, and how social media can be used to determine the types of support communities might require to recover from an attack.

The final day addressed the role of community and religious leaders in prevention and response, with participants from each country and beyond invited to share examples of community-based interventions to prevent extremism and respond in the event of an attack.

Participants received briefings from Strong Cities’ Senior Manager Charlotte Moeyens on the Strong Cities Toolkit: Responding to a Terror Attack, which was developed with support from the US Department of State (available in English, French and Arabic) and takeaways from Strong Cities’ work building multi-actor local prevention networks in contexts ranging from Lebanon and Jordan to North Macedonia and Kenya.

Responding to a Terror Attack

LPNs and Preventing Extremism

The training was further informed by a mapping of national-local coordination gaps and challenges in Indonesia. Preliminary findings and a select number of recommendations from that deep-dive was consolidated with parallel exercises in Uganda, East and West Africa to produce a  Strong Cities Network Policy Brief into the Implementation of the GCTF Good Practices for NLC.

This workshop marked an important next step in the Network’s broader plans for engagement in Southeast Asia, which it hopes to scale through the eventual establishment of a dedicated Southeast Asia Hub. In the interim, SCN’s regional members will be serviced by its soon-to-be-launched South Asia Hub.

Click here for more information on the Regional Hubs.

Read more about the Regional Hubs

Downloads

Download the Report