Welkom Hier! Refugees – Local Initiatives – Debate

Human Security Collective (HSC) along with Justice and Peace, Fonds 1818and the Nutshuis held an event on February 8 in The Hague to show the broad support there is for refugees in our region. Volunteers committed to the cause were provided with a platform to showcase their local initiatives. Additionally, the event served as a forum where people could meet, share experiences and come up with new initiatives. Those who came to The Netherlands as refugees in earlier years shared their experiences. Filmhuis Den Haag ran a special series of films relating to the topic. And there was music, a theatre workshop and good food. Initiatives were crystallized and people motivated to help and carry on working on issues of integration and inclusion. HSC is now looking at working with partners on a long-term follow-up project centred around social cohesion in communities.

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Building Youth Resilience in Tunisia and The Netherlands

HSC has just kicked off a project (January 2016) working with Dutch and Tunisian youth on issuesconcerning local security, social cohesion and resilience. This is being carried out in close cooperation with local civil society organizations. The project aims at engaging youth in Delft, The Netherlands and in six areas of Tunisia (Tunis, Ben Arous, Kef, Siliana, Kasserine and Medenine) in order to work on enhancing resilience, social cohesion and security in their communities. Youth have an unique and important outlook on the issues at stake in their communities, thereby having the potential to be positive agents of change. The project will involve a selected group of teenagers who will analyze the problems they see in their communities, and together develop ‘youth-owned’ initiatives that aim to counter these problems. Currently the youth mentors are being selected and the first workshops being held. See more here.  

Also, for an opinion piece on the situation in Tunisia by EL Hammoumi Naoufal, youth worker/ambassador, and one of our associates, see here.

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From Hybrid Peace to Human Security: Rethinking EU Strategy towards Conflict

February 2016 saw the launch of The Berlin Report of the Human Security Study Group which proposed that the EU adopt ‘a second generation human security approach to conflicts, as an alternative to Geo-Politics or the War on Terror’. Human Security 2.0 is an adaptation of human security principles for this century. The report argues that given that the EU is a new type of political institution (as opposed to the twentieth-century nation states), twentieth-century peacemaking processes are no longer as effective. For the full report and the underlying academic studies, see here.

 

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European Commission Private Sector Consultation

As part of the European NonProfit Organization Coalition on the Financial Action Task Force(FATF), HSC were invited by the European Commission (EC) to provide input to an assessment of the risks of money laundering and terrorist financing affecting the internal market and relating to cross-border activities that the EC is currently conducting. This follows the entry into force of Directive (EU) 2015/849 on the prevention of the use of the financing system for the purposes of money laundering and terrorist financing (4^th anti-money laundering Directive). Based on this, the EC will make recommendations to Member States on the measures suitable for addressing the identified risks. For more details, including the draft preliminary NPO input from the European Coalition on the FATF, see here.  

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Upcoming events:

♠ March 14, New York: HSC will be contributing to a high-level side event on the occasion of the 60th Session of the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW) – the panel will be on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, including addressing violence in conflict and post-conflict settings. See more here.

♣ April 18, UNODC, Vienna: Daylong NPO consultation with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) on the margins of the Private Sector Consultative Forum, discussing potential changes to FATF’s Recommendation 8 (and its Interpretative Note) on NPOs.

♥ April 26-30, Venice, Italy: HSC presenting paper on our work in communities across ther globe at an international workshop on ‘Female Migration to Isis’, funded by NATO.