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Sixth Global Summit: Cities and Tertiary Prevention

Publication Date:

22/01/2026

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Event Reports

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Civil SocietyOnline RadicalisationRehabilitation and ReintegrationSixth Global Summittertiary preventionToronto

— 10 minutes reading time

This report provides a summary of discussions during the session and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Strong Cities Network Management Unit, Strong Cities members, event sponsors or participants.

Introduction

On 9 – 11 December 2025, the Strong Cities Network held its Sixth Global Summit in Toronto (Canada), bringing together more than 300 representatives of local governments, national governments, civil society organisations, academia, the private sector and international organisations. This included nearly 60 mayors and governors, as well as 110 other local government officials from 100 cities and 42 countries. Under the theme Stronger Together: Forging Safer, Connected, Thriving Cities in a Changing World, the Summit provided a platform for city leaders to share practical and innovative solutions to prevent and respond to hate, extremism and polarisation, and build safer, more resilient and more inclusive communities.

The Summit agenda included a session on Cities and Tertiary Prevention, which showcased the role of cities in the rehabilitation and reintegration of returnees from conflict zones, former terrorist offenders and individuals exiting hate or violent extremist groups. The session brought together municipal officials and civil society practitioners to reflect on existing models, coordination structures, lessons learned and recommendations for strengthening tertiary prevention at the local level.

Scene-Setters:

• Zouhair Racheha, Head, MENA Regional Hub, Strong Cities Network – Moderator
• Fleur de Braaf, Policy Officer, City of The Hague (The Netherlands)
• Georgios Sotiriadis, Policy Advisor, Senate Department for the Interior and Sports, Berlin (Germany)
• John McCoy, Executive Director, Organization for the Prevention of Violence, Edmonton (Alberta, Canada)

Key Takeaways

1. Local governments play a critical coordination role in effective rehabilitation and reintegration programmes, helping to align security, welfare and civil society actors through clear roles, shared procedures and structured collaboration.
2. Trust between municipalities and criminal justice institutions is essential and can be strengthened through transparent confidentiality standards, demonstrated programme impact and robust monitoring and evaluation approaches.
3. Tertiary prevention programmes must be adaptable to address a broad range of ideological threats, including far-right extremism, hate crime and online radicalisation.
4. Municipalities need to respond to the online dimensions of youth radicalisation, shifting from short-term digital detox approaches toward longer-term digital redirection and mentorship strategies that can be delivered in community and local service settings.
5. Political support for repatriation and reintegration is often secured through pragmatic security and prosecutorial arguments rather than humanitarian framing alone, highlighting the importance of evidence-based, risk-informed messaging for municipal leaders.

Key Themes 

1. Coordinated Local Responses to Rehabilitation and Reintegration

Across jurisdictions, the return of individuals involved in terrorism-related activity has exposed a consistent tension between national responsibility and local implementation. While prosecution, citizenship decisions and repatriation are handled nationally, the social, psychological, educational and housing consequences are borne locally.

Despite this reality, there remain relatively few structured examples where local governments play a formal, resourced role in rehabilitation and reintegration processes. In many contexts, municipalities are expected to manage the downstream impacts of returnees without clear mandates, coordination frameworks or sustained national support.

The experiences of Berlin and The Hague demonstrate how cities can nonetheless take on meaningful coordination roles within nationally led systems. These models offer practical lessons for other municipalities seeking to strengthen local involvement in tertiary prevention, clarify institutional responsibilities and balance security, care and reintegration objectives.

Berlin’s Single-Point Coordination Model

Georgios Sotiriadis, Policy Advisor, Senate Department for the Interior and Sports, Berlin (Germany), explained that when Berlin (which is both a city and a state under Germany’s federal system) residents began returning from Syria and Iraq around 2018, the City established a Returnee Coordination Office to manage reintegration. The office operates through a single coordinator, who serves as the main point of contact across law enforcement, intelligence services, prosecutors, youth welfare, housing, schools and civil society organisations. Since 2019, approximately 50 returnees have been managed through this city-funded structure.

Sotiriadis emphasised that the office’s institutional neutrality has been critical in bridging the cultural divide between security agencies and civil society organisations working on disengagement and reintegration. By maintaining clear roles, transparent procedures and predictable communication channels, the model has helped reduce friction and build trust.

He also highlighted unresolved questions about the duration of rehabilitation and reintegration: when it begins, when it ends and how long someone should be considered a returnee. Berlin’s response has been pragmatic, maintaining the structure to remain prepared for future repatriations. However, strict EU and German data protection regulations limit information-sharing between security agencies and welfare services, constraining full integration despite strong political commitment.

The Hague’s Care and Safety House Approach

Fleur de Braaf, Policy Officer, City of The Hague (The Netherlands), described how The Hague, with cooperation and support from the national government, developed a locally tailored Care and Safety House model in 2014, following a high number of residents travelling to Syria and Iraq. Under the Dutch system, while national authorities manage repatriation and prosecution, municipalities lead reintegration and case coordination.

The City’s Returnee Plan functions as a practical handbook outlining partners, coordination procedures and divisions of labour. The municipality acts as the case coordinator, working alongside police and prosecutors while balancing safety and care considerations. De Braaf noted that many returnees in The Hague have been women, often with children. Upon return, adults are detained and children are placed under child protection services, with municipalities becoming involved immediately, even at the airport stage, to plan reintegration pathways.

Over time, the same structure has been expanded to address multiple ideologies, including far-right extremism. The Hague found that a unified coordination model could support both secondary and tertiary prevention across ideological contexts.

2. Trust, Monitoring and the Role of Civil Society in Canada

The Canadian experience highlighted the importance of trust-building between civil society and criminal justice institutions. John McCoy, Executive Director, Organization for the Prevention of Violence, Edmonton (Alberta, Canada), explained that terrorism-related recidivism in Canada is relatively low compared to hate crime. However, success is measured not only by reoffending rates but also by avoiding future contact with the justice system and improving psychosocial wellbeing, housing stability, education access and pro-social connections.

The organisation he leads, the Organization for Prevention of Violence, works with individuals at multiple stages of the justice process, including those under investigation, subject to peace bonds or awaiting charges. This coordination allows for early risk reduction while demonstrating to courts that individuals are engaging in rehabilitation.

McCoy outlined the financial benefits of tertiary prevention, noting that avoiding lengthy trials and incarceration can save significant public funds. Trust with law enforcement was initially strained. He recalled early interactions with the police that were adversarial and threatening. Over time, trust was built through clear confidentiality standards, a legislated duty-to-report framework and consistent demonstration that addressing mental health, family issues and basic needs reduces risk.

He stressed the importance of a division of labour, where police focus on enforcement while civil society delivers rehabilitation. This clarity, combined with transparent monitoring, enabled sustainable cooperation.

3. Adapting Tertiary Prevention to the Digital Threat Landscape

A major cross-cutting challenge identified was the rise of online radicalisation among youth, often involving minors aged 14–16 or younger. John McCoy described patterns of social isolation, heavy use of platforms such as Telegram, Discord and TikTok, and links between online grooming, extremist content and other forms of exploitation. Some cases involve coercion through blackmail and escalating harmful behaviour, including violence.

In the Canadian Prairie region, for example, approximately 75% of certain high-risk youth clusters were described as neurodivergent, highlighting the complexity of vulnerability factors.

Georgios Sotiriadis noted similar trends in Berlin, with young men and girls becoming radicalised online, often in family contexts where parents struggle to regulate device use. Berlin has shifted away from digital detox toward digital redirection, using youth coaches, mentorship and gaming-based engagement to build alternative offline identities and positive belonging.

Fleur de Braaf highlighted the difficulties reaching individuals radicalised online due to ethical, legal and funding constraints. Thus, translating existing coordination structures into the digital space remains a major challenge for cities.

Panellists expressed scepticism about blanket social media bans, instead emphasising education on healthy digital behaviour, parental engagement and school-based prevention.

4. Political Dynamics and the Case for Repatriation

Political resistance to repatriation, let alone reintegration, remains strong across contexts. Intelligence-based arguments alone often fail to persuade decision-makers and, too often, potential receiving communities are reluctant to open their doors to returnees. Panellists also highlighted long-term security risks associated with leaving children in camps, where prolonged exposure increases the likelihood of radicalisation.

In the Netherlands, Fleur de Braaf explained that prosecutorial necessity became the most effective political argument for repatriation, particularly in cases involving women who had travelled to Syria and Iraq. Trials in absentia risked collapse without suspects physically present. Framing repatriation as a tool for legal accountability and due process proved more persuasive than humanitarian appeals alone.

At the local level, both The Hague and Berlin sought to address community concerns by embedding reintegration within structured, multi-agency coordination models that prioritised safety, clear procedures and risk management. In Berlin, the Returnee Coordination Office established predictable communication channels between security services, welfare actors and civil society organisations, helping to reassure stakeholders that returnees were being monitored and supported in a controlled manner.

Similarly, The Hague’s Care and Safety House model balanced care and security considerations through formal case coordination led by the municipality in partnership with police, prosecutors and child protection services. This structured approach helped demonstrate that reintegration was not ad hoc or permissive, but governed by clear safeguards, responsibilities and oversight mechanisms.

Together, these examples suggest that community and political resistance can be mitigated when repatriation and reintegration are framed not only as humanitarian obligations, but as legally necessary, security-conscious and institutionally managed processes.

Next Steps

Building on the discussion, the Strong Cities Network will focus on:

• Supporting cities to develop structured coordination models that clarify roles between security, welfare and civil society actors.
• Facilitating peer learning on trust-building with criminal justice institutions, including confidentiality standards and monitoring frameworks.
• Expanding guidance on multi-ideological tertiary prevention, ensuring programmes address far-right, hate-based and online radicalisation.
• Strengthening city capacity to respond to online youth radicalisation through mentorship, education and redirection strategies.
• Supporting cities in developing evidence-based advocacy tools to engage national policymakers on repatriation and reintegration.
• Advancing national–local cooperation (NLC) through the newly launched NLC Working Group. This provides a dedicated platform for municipalities to engage with national authorities on repatriation, prosecution, data-sharing and reintegration responsibilities, and to share practical solutions to jurisdictional and policy gaps.

The session underscored that tertiary prevention is not a peripheral issue for cities, but a core governance responsibility requiring structured coordination, trust-based partnerships and adaptive responses to evolving threat landscapes. As radicalisation increasingly shifts online and crosses ideological boundaries, municipalities must be equipped with flexible, evidence-driven systems that protect communities while supporting rehabilitation and reintegration. For the Strong Cities Network, the discussion reaffirmed the value of its convening role in amplifying local expertise, strengthening multi-level cooperation and supporting cities to navigate the complex realities of tertiary prevention in today’s security environment.

Additional Resources

Recent Strong Cities policy briefs and resources:

• City Leadership in Partnering with Local Communities for Social Cohesion: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• National-Local Cooperation: Opportunities and Lessons Learned for Secondary and Tertiary Prevention, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• City Leadership in the Face of Rising Incivility and Polarisation: Ten Considerations for Mayors and Local Governments, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• Innovations in Prevention: Piloting Multi-Actor Frameworks in Small and Mid-Sized Cities in the United States, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Cities: Building a Multi-Actor Local Prevention Framework, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Toolkit for Manitoba Municipalities: Addressing Anti-Government Hate and Harassment, Strong Cities Network, 2025
• A Guide for Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for Mayors: Preventing and Responding to Hate, Extremism & Polarisation, Strong Cities Network, updated 2025
• A Guide for City-Led Response, Strong Cities Network, May 2024
• City Spotlights Library, Strong Cities Network

Donors & Partners

The Sixth Global Summit was co-hosted with the City of Toronto and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, and delivered with generous support from the Government of Canada, The Fourth Freedom Forum, The Toronto Foundation and Charities Aid Foundation.

Contact Information 

For more information about the Sixth Global Summit or the Strong Cities Network, please contact [email protected].

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