Comprehensive, multi-disciplinary and tailored approaches are crucial to the development of effective and sustainable prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration strategies in national legal and policy frameworks. In its resolution A/RES/75/291 of 30 June 2021 on “the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy: seventh review,” the General Assembly calls upon all Member States to develop and implement prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration and strategies, taking into account gender and age dimensions, for returning and relocating foreign terrorist fighters and their families. In this regard, it underscores the importance of a whole-of-government approach and recognizes the role that civil society organizations (CSOs) can play.
In this context, UNODC’s Terrorism Prevention Branch delivered a joint regional training that focused on rehabilitation and reintegration while adopting comprehensive, multi-agency and multi-disciplinary approaches. This virtual training, held on 27 October 2021, addressed the multiplicity of counter-terrorism and prevention of violent extremism (PVE) measures to enhance the capacity of South-East Asian practitioners. These discussions were based on UNODC’s recently published handbook “Complex Terrorist Cases for South and South-East Asia: Investigation, prosecution, adjudication, rehabilitation, and reintegration” and its corresponding E-learning course, which is available on UNODC’s Counter-Terrorism Learning Platform.
The training enhanced participants’ understanding of the most relevant international legal instruments related to rehabilitation and reintegration and PVE frameworks. It also provided them with a platform to exchange national practices and challenges related to rehabilitation and reintegration in South-East Asia. Building on the fruitful contributions provided by the experts, the training emphasized the importance of engaging CSOs in rehabilitation and reintegration activities. CSOs are considered critical partners who can provide specialized knowledge and access to networks, involve local communities, and increase the credibility of PVE policies and programmes among beneficiaries (individuals and communities).
Ultimately, the discussions highlighted the need to develop comprehensive and tailored rehabilitation and reintegration strategies through multi-agency and multi-disciplinary collaboration. In this regard, the participants acknowledged the related need to enhance the technical capacities of CSOs and local communities in rehabilitation and reintegration efforts.
The training was funded by Japan.