Civil Society Day | May 25, 2017
Following the 2017 OSCE-wide Counter-Terrorism Conference, the Prevention Project convened representatives of civil society organizations (CSOs), as well as from the OSCE executive structures, the United Nations, and interested participating States during a ‘civil society day’ on 25 May 2017 in Vienna. The purpose was to give CSOs and other local actors attending the OSCE-wide Counter-Terrorism Conference the opportunity to further consider the issues on the conference agenda primarily from the perspective of civil society and other community-level actors, and to put forward a series of recommendations for consideration by the OSCE participating States for strengthening the role of civil society and of local communities in preventing and countering violent extremism and radicalization that lead to terrorism (P/CVERLT) in the OSCE area. The participating CSOs came from across the OSCE area, with expertise on and experience in a range of P/CVERLT issues, e.g., youth empowerment, community-law enforcement dialogue, rehabilitation and reintegration (R/R), religious engagement, research, gender, good governance and democratization. The back-to-back approach proved to be cost-effective and could be seen as a formula for the 2018 Italian Chairmanship in its planning for the next OSCE-wide CT Conference.