Lifecycle Initiative Toolkit

Guidelines and Good Practices for Developing National CVE Strategies

This document¹ offers guidance for national governments interested in developing or refining a national countering violent extremism (CVE) strategy, or CVE components as part of a wider counter-terrorism (CT) strategy or framework. It includes good practices that have emerged from experiences in this field over the past few years and draws on them to inform future efforts. Where a national strategy is not currently attainable, this document outlines initial steps that could be taken to lay the groundwork for future national CVE strategy development, e.g. initial dialogue between governments and communities targeted for radicalization and recruitment. In this context, CVE refers to the wide spectrum of largely preventive actions and interventions that involves identifying the local factors of radicalization and recruitment to violent extremism, and designing programming to prevent and counter these processes. This includes efforts that may be undertaken by governments, international organizations and civil society.
 

1. The document was drafted by Hedayah (www.hedayah.ae) in consultation with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (www.globalcenter.org), and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (www.osce.org/atu), as well as a number of other stakeholders involved in the White House CVE Summit process. It is not intended to be comprehensive of all the possibilities for national strategy development, nor does the language reflect the opinions of any one organization or government. This is a non-binding and living document, and will be updated regularly.