Terrorism, Radicalisation, and CVE: Practical Considerations and Concerns

Abstract

The volume contains nine contributions drawn (with one exception) from presentations given at workshops held by the Centre of Excellence for National Security at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS; Singapore) in 2016 and 2017. These annual workshops bring together some of the foremost practitioners and academics in the field, sharing (mainly to an audience of government officials and practitioners) the essentials of the national CVE (countering violent extremism) systems they work in (or on), as well as what approaches to deradicalisation and disengagement. Contributors were asked to revisit their original remarks, and to take into account feedback and audience response from the syndicate discussions at the workshops. The point was not simply to issue simple conference proceedings, but to provide to government officials, practitioners, and the interested general reader thought-through examinations of current approaches—national, as well as conceptual—to CVE and deradicalisation. As Jayakumar notes, despite the wide variation in approaches (as well as differences between how academics and government officials view these issues) there are certain key connecting strands across many of the contributions. These include the focus on more upstream interventions, either at the level of mentoring, community or social support, or multi-agency information sharing. These appear to hold promise at several levels, not least in the critical pre-radicalised stage. Regular discourse involving all concerned parties—practitioners, officials, and academics—is the sine qua non of making further tangible progress on these issues.