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Issue 15index
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Issue Index

  • “I am no longer myself” – UNICRI, Melania Dalla Costa and Dimitri Dimitracacos: a campaign for the elimination of violence against women
  • BUILD RESILIENCE: getting ready to bounce back
  • The Resiliency of the UN staff member’s Oath of Office
  • The legacy of Giovanni Falcone: never lower your head, be brave and always fulfil your commitments until the end
  • Youth – International law on the recruitment of children
  • Why collaborative communities are the future of youth empowerment and education
  • InFocus – The Companion to International Humanitarian Law. A practical approach to the dissemination of International Humanitarian Law
  • 9 Online Privacy Myths Keeping You from Maximum Online Privacy
  • Collective Human Action against Deepfakes
  • InFocus – Obligation to Investigate Minimum Investigative Standards under Article 2 of the ECHR, and Their Applicability to Post-conflict Situations
  • SDG 14: stepping up international efforts to tackle ocean plastic pollution
  • Sapere Aude: a social mentorship project which uses education to promote social justice for children and young people living in the public care system
  • When Sport Breaks Down Walls
  • A more humane approach to addressing the harm of criminal behaviour
  • Lived-experience-and-strengths-based strategies for persons with mental illness who offended and their family members
  • Youth – The phenomenon of returning foreign terrorist fighters and its challenges
  • InFocus – Who is susceptible to the call of political violence?
  • How to train professionals for managing the contradictions of a multiethnic society?
  • Youth engagement and resilience against violent extremism in the Sahel
  • No one is left behind in the fight of the EU against violent extremism
  • Community resilience: insights from UNICRI experience in the Sahel-Maghreb to adapt, bend, and change – but not to break
  • Women and prevention of violent extremism: does it work – and if so, how?

“I am no longer myself” – UNICRI, Melania Dalla Costa and Dimitri Dimitracacos: a campaign for the elimination of violence against women

Turin, 25 November 2019. The actress Melania Dalla Costa and the photographer Dimitri Dimitracacos are the advocates of the 2019 campaign that the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) will launch on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

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BUILD RESILIENCE: getting ready to bounce back

WRITTEN BY Bettina Tucci Bartsiotas - Director a.i. of UNICRI

The development of modern technologies along with the acceleration of globalization and increasing inequalities are generating new paradigms and unpredictable risks. This has huge impact on populations all over the world. Today, millions of people are coping with crises stemming from climate change, violent extremism, organized crime, and a general lack of vision on how to develop sustainable responses. Threats, uncertainties and socioeconomic disparities, and the need for new effective and innovative approaches are symbiotic in every corner of the world.

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The Resiliency of the UN staff member’s Oath of Office

WRITTEN BY Andrea Angeli

This is not the first time that I have been asked how we can succeed in advancing the values of the United Nations in the most critical situations. It is a good question. Even those who have served in peace missions for over thirty years cannot provide a single answer to this question.

In retrospect, the most striking example that implied the spirit of service and self-denial was recorded at the beginning of the 90s, during the grueling negotiations for the liberation of Western hostages in Lebanon.

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The legacy of Giovanni Falcone: never lower your head, be brave and always fulfil your commitments until the end

WRITTEN BY Marina Mazzini - Interview with Maria Falcone

Your brother was a great judge and statesman, among the first to understand the real dimensions of the mafia phenomenon and the importance of judicial cooperation. His work and legacy have helped to change the strategies to combat organized crime. His path has been defined by the spirit of sacrifice and the awareness of risks. He was born and he lived in Sicily and was surrounded by forms of acceptance and resignation caused by the Mafia. What was his relationship with his land? Can you tell us about how he developed his strength and determination in Sicily?

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Youth – International law on the recruitment of children

WRITTEN BY Mira Luoma

The recruitment of children raises many important questions, the most important being whether children should be recruited at all and what is the definition of a child. The most internationally accepted definition for a child soldier is established in the Cape Town Principles 1997 by UNICEF: “any person under 18 years of age who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or armed group in any capacity.”[1] However, this is not a legal definition.

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Why collaborative communities are the future of youth empowerment and education

WRITTEN BY Rudradeb Mitra

You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes
the existing model obsolete.

Richard Buckminster Fuller

Companies around the globe are finding it difficult to recruit the right talent, especially for emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI). A recent survey by EY and MIT Technology Review[1] showed that 48% of current challenges comes in emerging technologies from a shortage of skilled talent while on the other hand, the number of data scientists and machine learning engineers has increased tenfold in the last five years, primarily due to access to online education.

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InFocus – The Companion to International Humanitarian Law. A practical approach to the dissemination of International Humanitarian Law

WRITTEN BY Drazan Djukić and Niccolò Pons

The Companion to International Humanitarian Law, edited by Drazan Djukić and Niccolò Pons, aims to contribute to the debate concerning the practical dissemination and the application of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). With its seven essays and 265 substantive entries written by 98 experts in the humanitarian field, the volume draws attention to the challenges and mechanisms enhancing IHL implementation by practitioners. This concept note explains the importance of the proper dissemination of IHL for the purpose of strengthening its implementation and contextualizes the edited volume in this framework, by briefly describing its contents.

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9 Online Privacy Myths Keeping You from Maximum Online Privacy

WRITTEN BY Harold Kilpatrick

These are the days of big data and security breaches. This is a long-distance call to action. With the risks of governments rolling back data privacy regulations and explosive data processing controversies involving social media and companies, it is clear we need to talk about online privacy.

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Collective Human Action against Deepfakes

WRITTEN BY Pierluigi Casale, Vladimir Osin, Grazina Raguckaja and Giulia Violatto


“All our knowledge begins with senses, proceeds to the understanding and ends with reason.”

Introduction

For Immanuel Kant, our senses are the gate to perceive information from the environment and to generate our knowledge. Yet, in the age of advanced technology, our senses are easily becoming subject of manipulation. In such context, the fundamental question arises whether we, humans with manipulated sense, can continue relying on our own decision making. There has been an unprecedent progress in the quality of techniques for human image synthesis based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which can manipulate our sense of sight. Deepfakes constitutes the most famous example of it. In just few years, many alarming examples of fake content have involved politicians, governments, technology leaders, and media celebrities. What does this mean for our future, the future of our societies and the future of our countries? What will this manipulation entail at the moment we exercise our rights as citizens and voters?

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InFocus – Obligation to Investigate Minimum Investigative Standards under Article 2 of the ECHR, and Their Applicability to Post-conflict Situations

WRITTEN BY Andrey Antonov

The Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (or European Convention on Human Rights; hereinafter – ECHR, the Convention) is a Treaty aimed at the protection of human rights and political freedoms in Europe. The Convention was adopted in 1950 and entered into force on 3 September 1953. All Member States of the Council of Europe are party to the Convention. ECHR also establishes the European Court of Human Rights (hereinafter – ECtHR, European Court), which receives, considers and delivers judgments over complaints of any person who feels his or her rights have been violated by a State party to the Convention. ECtHR’s judgments finding violations are binding on the States in question, who are then obliged to execute them.

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SDG 14: stepping up international efforts to tackle ocean plastic pollution

WRITTEN BY Jivan Dasgupta

Eight to twelve million tons of plastics end up in the oceans every year. One of the targets of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), Goal 14 on life below water, calls upon states to prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris, by 2025. Following China’s ban of all imports of non-industrial plastic wastes in 2018, exports of plastic wastes by high-income countries have shifted to South East Asian countries putting unbearable stress on their waste management systems. Despite worldwide attention devoted to the ocean plastics crisis, these practices are likely to aggravate the problem. It shows that current efforts are not sufficient to achieve the SDG target 14 for marine plastic litter and microplastics.

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Sapere Aude: a social mentorship project which uses education to promote social justice for children and young people living in the public care system

WRITTEN BY Milena Westermann

With the adoption of 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its relevant Goals (SDGs) in 2015, the United Nations with Goal 4 renewed its mission for better education of children and young people worldwide. While the earlier Millennium Development Goals focused on access to primary education, the 2030 Agenda goes beyond this. With Goal 4 and its focus on quality education, the international community recognizes that learning goals in themselves are not enough – it is important to aim for both the quality of education as well as the social and emotional well-being of students, in order to achieve substantial learning outcomes.[1]

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When Sport Breaks Down Walls

WRITTEN BY Massimiliano Montanari

On the 9th of November 2019, we celebrated the 30th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, an event which has become a global icon for positive, disruptive change, a symbol of reunification and justice.

For Save the Dream, an organisation working to promote safe access to sport and its educational and social values, the temptation to associate the power of sport with the demolition of the Berlin Wall and any other barrier between or within nations was so strong that it resulted in the launch of the global campaign “When Sport Breaks Down Walls”, in cooperation with the International Olympic Truce Center (IOTC) and the support of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC).

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A more humane approach to addressing the harm of criminal behaviour

WRITTEN BY Tim Chapman and Annemieke Wolthuis

Introduction

In this paper, which is based upon research undertaken in 2017 and 2018,[1] an alternative and more humane approach to addressing harm of criminal behaviour is presented. Our goal was to explore if this approach could transform the way society responds to crime.

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Lived-experience-and-strengths-based strategies for persons with mental illness who offended and their family members

WRITTEN BY Ciska Wittouck, Freya Vander Laenen, Stijn Vandevelde, Sara Rowaert, Natalie Aga, Sofie Van Roeyen, Kurt Audenaert, Wouter Vanderplasschen, Tom Vander Beken

This essay describes lived-experience based strategies for persons with mental illness who offended (PMIO) and their families. These recommendations are derived from the results of a multidisciplinary research project which aimed to develop multidisciplinary strengths-based strategies for PMIO and their families.1,2 These recommendations can inspire a broad range of practitioners and policy makers from the criminal justice system as well as the mental health systems working with PMIO and their family.

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Youth – The phenomenon of returning foreign terrorist fighters and its challenges

WRITTEN BY Barbara Stadlbauer

The phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) is a matter of great concern for the international community. Newspapers and media are full of stories pertaining to the radicalization of young people who left their country of origin to engage in violent extremism in other countries.

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InFocus – Who is susceptible to the call of political violence?

WRITTEN BY Lieven J.R. Pauwels and Wim Hardyns (Ghent University)

A study of differential susceptibility and situational resistance to exposure to online violent extremism.

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How to train professionals for managing the contradictions of a multiethnic society?

WRITTEN BY by Loretta Fabbri and Claudio Melacarne

The society we live in is so diverse and mixed that we are no longer able to understand it only through traditional research perspectives. It is multiethnic and we often see that the stories shared in the public arena do not reflect what happens in everyday life.

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Youth engagement and resilience against violent extremism in the Sahel

Side event - 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA)

Organised by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT),
the Global Center on Cooperative Security (Global Center), and the
United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI)

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No one is left behind in the fight of the EU against violent extremism

31st January 2019, at the European Parliament in Brussels, several officials, experts, researchers and journalists concerned with finding solutions to the rise of violent extremism in the Maghreb and Sahel region gathered to share insights on a 5 million euros European Union (EU) funded programme implemented by UNICRI.

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Community resilience: insights from UNICRI experience in the Sahel-Maghreb to adapt, bend, and change – but not to break

WRITTEN BY Danielle Hull, Tamara Nešković, Manuela Brunero

In physics, “resilience” is a measure of how well a material, such as rubber or metal, responds to pressure by bending, adapting, and changing, without breaking. However, this concept is more than a scientific term. Resiliency can also describe a community’s ability to bounce back from pressures, including natural disasters, economic downturns, and - in the case of UNICRI’s Pilot Project on Countering Radicalisation and Violent Extremism in the Sahel-Maghreb - violence and terrorism. In the Sahel and Maghreb, the pressure on communities is certainly intense, and ever-growing. Conflicts in Libya and Mali threaten to spill over porous borders, while drought and desertification have increased food insecurity and heightened intercommunal tensions. Increasingly active extremist militant groups have brought violence and chased out tourists, which once had been an importance source of income. Now, more than ever, an approach aimed at building the resilience at a community level is needed - one that can empower communities to respond to these pressures by adapting and changing, without “breaking” and entering into conflict.

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Women and prevention of violent extremism: does it work – and if so, how?

WRITTEN BY Edit Schlaffer

Innovative approaches in countering violent extremism are not only a question of philosophy, but also of pragmatism. We need a new dialogue to strategize how to establish a consensus/springboard from which to reinforce local, national and global security.
We don’t need to analyse what has not worked, but actually focus on analysing what is working.

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