A Guide For Cities: Preventing Hate, Extremism & Polarisation

Chapter 1: Introduction

Why cities?

Local governments of all sizes are uniquely placed to understand and provide for their communities. They witness how wider tensions and conflicts play out locally and often bear the brunt of extremist and hate-motivated violence that disproportionately targets communities and infrastructure in urban areas. Equally, for residents, the main points of engagement with government actors are likely to be when they access services and interact at the local level.

Local resources and administration models vary, but around the world, there are an array of social, public health, youth-related, business-oriented, cultural and educational functions that local governments hold that offer potential for violence prevention and social cohesion. Even for those that do not have dedicated public safety functions, local governments can build trusted relationships to strengthen inclusivity, participation and resilience while breaking down segregation, hate and polarisation in their communities. 

Realising this potential can make an immediate, more sustainable and very practical difference to the peace and security of urban and other local communities the world over. However, despite the numerous benefits that city-led approaches can offer – from early detection and warnings about emerging challenges to trust-building, participatory planning, awareness-raising, and interventions at all levels – cities are still rarely recognised for their role in addressing these challenges.

On issues that often suffer from over-securitisation and top-down policymaking, local leadership and action offer a means to stop risks from escalating further, address root causes, and gain traction and support from the most marginalised and vulnerable groups. These are all difficult tasks for central governments otherwise acting alone and they are all areas that can benefit from alignment and cooperation between local and national approaches. 

Those who seek to divide communities, stir hate, incite extremism or espouse violence often do so by trying to exploit hyper-local challenges before tapping into wider grievances and building polarising narratives. If we recognise that the challenge is in our neighbourhoods, streets and small towns, then involving local government in the effort to make these places strong, resilient and peaceful is clearly a vital step.

What is Prevention?

Strong Cities considers prevention to incorporate all measures and initiatives that address potential causal factors (or ‘drivers’) contributing to the rise of hate, extremism and polarisation. This includes developing and adopting strategies and policies, designing and implementing various frameworks and mechanisms that provide key services and delivering activities that aim to address one or some of the potential risks and drivers.

Such measures should be considered complementary to security and criminal justice efforts and are typically led by civilian governmental departments and agencies, such as education, social services and public health. They may also involve civil society, youth, the private sector and, in some cases, local police. The specific stakeholders and city departments involved will depend on what services and departments fall under the jurisdiction of any given city, bearing in mind multiple potential contextual differences from one city to the next. It will also depend on what risks are identified, the level of intervention required and the methodological approach decided upon.

Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Prevention

The concepts of primary, secondary and tertiary intervention originally come from the field of public health, referring to efforts to prevent disease and prolong life. This is being increasingly applied to violence prevention, P/CVE, peacebuilding and related fields in recognition that these also require at the three levels: broad population-wide measures, efforts to detect and mitigate risk, and efforts to reduce risk where it already exists. 

There are many resources available on all three levels of prevention and how they are being applied in different fields. For the purposes of this Guide, we will adopt the understandings outlined in the diagram below. This three-tiered approach can help guide community-based or offline prevention initiatives, as well as assessing and mitigating online risks in a way that reflects an integrated, multi-faceted threat landscape. 

At each level, this Guide will refer to interventions, which should be understood as actions that a city is taking with the intention of making a difference at any given level, rather than in a technical sense as applying specifically to individual interventions through, for example, one-to-one mentoring programmes.

For many cities, primary prevention is where they can make the greatest difference. This is because primary prevention involves addressing the broader structural and societal issues that create an enabling environment for hate and extremism to take root. Cities can do this through leveraging existing service provision mandates, programmes and resources, e.g., ones related to education, housing, psychosocial care, recreation, culture and youth engagement. 

Depending on the risks identified in a city, secondary prevention targeting particular groups or individuals showing behavioural signs of radicalisation to violence may also be possible. In some cases, tertiary prevention, which involves individualised interventions in the most serious cases may be part of a city’s prevention apparatus, or a city may otherwise be required to play a role in tertiary prevention coordinated by other agencies or levels of government. 

Addressing issues such as systemic discrimination, marginalisation, corruption and intercommunal tensions while also strengthening social cohesion, good governance, accountability, trust, representation and transparency are considered key components of prevention. Promoting and protecting human rights, gender sensitivity and ensuring that measures ‘do no harm’ are fundamental principles for prevention efforts at any level. Considering the complex and multifaceted nature of how hate, extremism and polarisation affect a community, prevention measures should also aim to be multidisciplinary and whole-of-society in its approach. 

A city is unlikely to need to create new infrastructure, develop new policies or hire outside professionals to deliver prevention. Despite the sensitivities and, in some cases, the specificity of the risks related to hate, extremism and polarisation, cities should not feel obliged to ‘exceptionalise’ prevention and set it apart from the rest of what they do. In fact, in many cases prevention is more impactful, sustainable and participatory when it is considered a routine part of existing services in a way that encourages contribution and cooperation with local communities rather than fear and distrust. Finally, prevention also has to be realistic and work for cities where resources are limited and there are daily competing priorities around basic service provision.

Informed Prevention: A Pathway for Cities

Effective prevention is informed and delivered through an inclusive and participatory approach that begins with a rigorous mapping and runs through a methodical evaluation, the learnings of which inform strategic updates and new measures in a process that is not necessarily linear and almost always circular. Prevention should begin and remain informed,  incorporating opportunities for adjustments and other updates (for instance in light of institutional changes, new threats or learnings/results). To help understand the various elements that are needed to achieve informed prevention, this Guide presents a basic pathway below, the elements of which are expanded upon throughout the subsequent chapters.