Strong Cities Network to conduct study tour to the Netherlands on P/CVE

AMMAN — The Strong Cities Network (SCN) is delivering a regional preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) programme to further institutionalise Jordan and Lebanon’s six multi-stakeholder P/CVE Local Prevention Networks (LPNs) and build their capacity to support the National P/CVE Strategies and action plans as a model for local implementation. 

The SCN is organising a study tour to the Netherlands for 25 Jordanian and Lebanese policymakers, judiciaries, practitioners and national stakeholders, in partnership with the Embassy of the Netherlands, said a SCN statement.

The tour will allow for an exchange of insights and experiences with Dutch national and local professionals as part of the SCN’s P/CVE programme as well as provide guidance on the best practices and means to generate a well-established coordination mechanism between stakeholders. 

It will also pave the way for strategies that amplify preventing violent extremism (PVE) approaches, in light of the multifaceted crises affecting the region at large and Lebanon in particular. 

The group will visit institutions, which implement multiple-stakeholder PVE programmes and roundtable discussions with experts to highlight the structure of the “Dutch Safety Houses” (DSH) model and the tools, successes and lessons learned, in addition to the latest research from think tanks on P/CVE. 

It will provide participants with insights that could feed into future national-national and national-local coordination mechanisms and linking mechanisms to social services that are initiated at the local and the national levels. 

At the same time, the visit will strengthen links among the Dutch, Jordanian and Lebanese cities and their respective institutions in keeping with the SCN’s goal of building and reinforcing global connections at the local level.  

Multi-agency structures such as the DSH in the Netherlands are examples of coordination mechanisms which engage with different municipal agencies through a panel of relevant actors, from teachers, youth groups, religious organisations and community leaders. 

The need to organise the study tour was identified following two virtual roundtables organised by the SCN and where policymakers and national stakeholders, together with their Dutch counterparts, discussed the contextualisation of the DSH model and its operationalisation in Lebanon and Jordan.

The SCN was launched at the UN General Assembly in September 2015 and is the first ever global network of mayors, governors and local practitioners united in building social cohesion and community resilience to prevent violent extremism in all its forms. Since then, the SCN has grown to more than 150 cities around the world.