Webinar «Global trends and patterns of violent extremism: Finding new responses»

The joint Master in Conflictology UOC-UNITAR organizes a webinar con violent extremism, that will take place online on June 15th, 2016, at 16:00h CET. The event will be videostreamed and participation will be enabled on Twitter at #UOCUNITARcve. The event is produced in collaboration with UOC Alumni.

About the event

Last years have seen an unprecedented level of violent extremist (VE) activity in the world. Violent attacks increased by 80 per cent in 2014 to its highest recorded level and the number of people who have died from extremist attacks has increased nine-fold since the year 2.000. Even if the activity of VE groups is highly concentrated, five countries (Iraq, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria) accounted the 78% of deaths, however a vast majority of countries did experience during last years violent incidents of some kind where private citizens were increasingly the target of attacks. These global trends, are causing an arc of upheaval and distress. Violent extremism is having a devastating impact on the lives and livelihoods of populations across the globe, particularly the most vulnerable, including youth, women and children.

The growth of VE – and the devastating impact of groups espousing violent ideologies? is not only setting in motion a dramatic reversal of development gains already made, but also threatening to stunt prospects of development for decades to come. In front of this challenge, our governments have started a “War on Terror” trying to combat violent extremism. The cost of the global national security expenditure in charge of preventing “Terrorist activity” has been approximately US$117 billion.

However the cost of these policies is not only affecting national budgets, main costs are related to the immense costs in terms of Human Rights limitations and human life lost in battles and wars.

In front of this challenge, it is mandatory for the academicians, practitioners, international agencies, NGOs and authorities to further understand and analyze the correlates and drivers of this global challenge and find proper responses to counter it. Are we following the right path? It is the “war on terror” the sole response? There are others?

With this questions in mind, the UOC’s and UNITAR are organizing a 60? webinar to open a space of discussion devoted to further understand the violent extremist phenomena and present new responses to counter it. The webinar wants to offer a privileged space of participation devoted to present a new approach based in a peace building strategies, coherent with Universal Human Rights, that focus on the CSOs responsibility for building resilient societies and communities.

Speakers:

Luca Gervasoni is the founding co-director of Novact, the International Institute for Nonviolent Action. For the last decade, his work has focused on how grassroots nonviolent movements can successfully fight for rights, freedom and justice. He currently lives in Barcelona, after spending several years in Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Iraq, Tunis and Morocco working with activists from around the world waging social change. After obtaining a degree in Political Science, Mr. Gervasoni has followed several specialization courses and Postgraduates on Nonviolent Conflict, International Law and Social Transformation at TUFTS University, Harvard or Al Quds University between others.

Maria-Antònia Guardiola is Associate Professor in the School of Law and Politics in UOC, the Open University of Catalonia. Currently she is responsible for international joined learning graduate programs in Conflict Transformation for UNITAR (the United Nations Institute for Training and Research) and UOC. Now a PhD candidate on Educational Leadership, Innovative Learning, Information and Knowledge Society with UOC, she has presented papers internationally on behalf of UOC and UNITAR and collaborates with Universal Learning Systems (ULS), an international consultancy based in Dublin. She has worked with various projects in Africa, Europe and the United States on eLearning, Conflict Resolution and innovative learning architectures.