PAVE Policy Roundtable in Berlin
On 22 February 2023, the Berghof Foundation hosted a PAVE policy roundtable on “Prevention of violent extremism through multi-actor community resilience”. The event was attended by policy makers, diplomats, scholars, experts, and practitioners in the field of violent extremism and its prevention.
Following a short presentation on the general findings from the PAVE research, the event was organised around two panel discussions. In the first panel, PAVE project partners discussed with Francesca Pavarini, DG NEAR, European Commission, their research findings in reference to MENA and Western Balkan countries, highlighting the crucial role of religious leaders and institutions as both resilience and risk factors for violent extremism. The panellists stressed the importance of multi-stakeholder platforms and the prominent role of civil society organisations in local-level prevention and resilience-building. Additionally, the panel discussed to what extent internet-based content should be taken into account when researching (de-)radicalisation.
In the second panel, speakers discussed to what extent the PAVE findings from the MENA and Western Balkans can be relevant for the German context. They underscored the importance of equitable social policies to prevent discrimination against certain groups of immigrant communities and to counter radicalisation narratives that rely on feelings of being rejected. In addition, while the potential for strengthening multi-actor cooperation was discussed, it was also mentioned that such coordination should follow a common strategy and that differing resources and opportunities of the involved organisations, especially of Muslim religious communities in Germany, should be considered. Besides, the panellists stressed the importance of efforts to foster mutual understanding and learnings from and between communities, and that this strive for learning should not merely rely on security concerns but on authentic interest. In the final part of the roundtable, multiple practical outputs of the PAVE project, such as the PAVE toolkit of cross-regional vulnerability/ resilience factors, the policy guidelines for multi-stakeholder collaboration , and the upcoming training curriculum, were presented.
