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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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]
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
