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Building Resilience Against Violent Extremism and Polarisation

Project description

Exploring resilience as a response

Europe has grown increasingly polarised in recent years. One of the first steps to building more resilient communities is learning from the policies and programmes implemented so far to counter violent extremism. The EU-funded BRaVE project will systematise existing knowledge and assess the impact of policies and practices in preventing extreme ideologies and polarisation in European societies. Drawing on the findings, the consortium of experts from universities and civil society organisations from across Europe will design a set of polarisation Indicators. Their focus will be on the factors that provide fertile ground for extremism and polarisation to grow: historical and cultural factors, real and perceived socioeconomic inequalities, and media discourses.

Objective

Far Right and Islamist groups seeking to recruit people to their particular political cause promote ‘black and white’ ideologies that lead to polarization, hatred, intolerance and violence. Often cherry-picking from religious doctrines, they rely on superficial understanding and interpretation of such doctrines. The activities of such groups can lead to disruption of social cohesion, diminished civic capacity, social tensions, hate speech, intolerance, discrimination and even violence. This project builds on existing knowledge and policy experience with a view of developing better analytical and policy tools for the design of more efficient resilience policies that counteract polarization and prevent violent extremism. The project starts with a critical reading of existing scholarly literature and with a critical mapping of existing policy approaches to develop a preliminary impact assessment of these approaches. It continues with a further survey of good practices in counteracting polarization and violent extremism and builds an integrated database of such practices. The project develops a Resilience Hub that engages with three types of factors that can promote or mitigate polarization and violent extremism in society: notably historical and cultural factors; socio-economic conditions; the role of the social media and networking. We develop stakeholder workshops in relation to these three sets of factors that affect radicalization in society, and follow up with digital forums with the participation of a large number of stakeholders. Each stakeholder dialogue builds a tool of resilience in their field: notably inter-faith education training for secondary school teachers; a proposal for a basic income policy that mitigates socio-economic inequalities; a guide to responsible social media design. The Resilience Hub further develops a Resilience Fair where arts-based community interventions to stop polarization and build resilience will be presented

Call for proposal

H2020-SC6-GOVERNANCE-2018-2019-2020

See other projects for this call

Sub call

H2020-SC6-GOVERNANCE-2018

Coordinator

EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE
Net EU contribution
€ 423 000,00
Address
VIA DEI ROCCETTINI 9
50014 Fiesole
Italy

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Region
Centro (IT) Toscana Firenze
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost
€ 423 000,00

Participants (6)