The OSCE has a holistic approach to security, with its 57 participating states addressing a wide-range of security-related concerns. Human Security Collective has partnered with the OSCE on developing a youth leadership training programme, promoting ‘context-specific efforts against preventing violent extremism and radicalization that lead to terrorism, developed and led by civil society actors at the local level across the OSCE area’. This is in line with UN Security Council Resolution 2178 (2014), which stresses the need for preventing violent extremism and underscores the need for working in partnership with civil society and local communities in order to do so.

The first week-long module of the LIVE training course for youth leaders was piloted in Vienna between 27 February and 3 March 2017. HSC partnered with the OSCE’s Transnational Threats Department and others to deliver the training. LIVE is an innovative capacity-building initiative that seeks to activate civil society leadership to foster diverse local responses to Violent Extremism and Radicalization that Lead to Terrorism(VERLT), which will bolster resilience from the bottom up. A group of 15 youth from Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia and Kosovo took part in the pilot LIVE training course for youth leaders. The first module allowed participants to identify an action idea that they feel would be relevant and realistic for them to undertake in their local community/among their peers. Mentors and resource persons in their home countries helped them plan their action ideas. The 15 youth reconvened after a period of three months in May 2017 in The Hague for the pilot of the second week-long module.

Since then, the training has been rolled out in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina for youth participants. A train-the-trainer session has also been conducted in Skopje, North Macedonia for the OSCE offices in the region.

HSC is also collaborating with the OSCE on the development of a training curriculum on the risk-based approach to countering terrorism financing in the NPO sector (for both NPOs and government).