 Good morning. Welcome to the United States Institute of Peace, and welcome to today's symposium launching USIP's RISE Action Guide. RISE RISC stands for Rehabilitation and Reintegration through Individual, Social, and Structural Engagement. The subject of the Action Guide is people who are disengaging from extremist violence and who are reintegrating into and reconciling with local communities. I'm David Yang. I'm a Vice President at USIP. I head up the Gandhi King Global Academy. USIP is a national, nonpartisan institute dedicated to preventing, mitigating, and resolving violent conflict. We were established by Congress in 1984, and we're looking forward to celebrating our 40th anniversary next year. We invite all of you to join us in those celebrations. In Washington, D.C., we are located opposite the Lincoln Memorial, on the walls of which are inscribed President Lincoln's words about a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. And from the steps of which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his great American dream. Our venue is appropriate because USIP aspires to promote an American way of peace building, one that views peace, freedom, and justice as inseparable. The RISE Action Guide was produced by USIP's program on violent extremism. In the two decades since 9-11, the threat from extremist violence has evolved considerably. Worldwide, the number of terrorist attacks has increased. The attacks have spread geographically. They have diversified ideologically. And the attacks continue to be fueled by violent conflict and state fragility. These threats also provide opportunities for the opponents of democratic governance and the opponents of a rules-based international order to expand their influence. At USIP, we seek to address the problem of extremist violence by promoting community resilience. We do so because we believe that healthy communities provide all their members with belonging, purpose, agency, and well-being. In all these cases, the twin agenda, I'm sorry, thus we seek to provide practitioners and policy makers with the knowledge and tools regarding non-securitized approaches to combating violent extremism so that the international community can prevent mobilization into extremist violence, facilitate disengagement from it, and support those most vulnerable to exploitation by such forces. Colleagues, the Islamic State despite its loss of territory in Iraq and Syria still has about 100,000 fighters around the world, including many affiliate groups in Africa. This continuing challenge exists alongside the unprecedented challenge of dealing with the tens of thousands of people who were partnering in ISIS or living amongst it. Before its territorial defeat, people who are now residing in places like the Al-Hul camp in northeast Syria or in prisons in Iraq. These populations are ISIS targets, targets for recruitment and resurgence. They thus present the imperative of rehabilitation and of reintegration. A similar challenge is presented by those who have escaped or disengaged from Al-Shabaab or Boko Haram in Africa, and a third type of challenge is represented by white supremacist movements in western countries. In all these cases, the twin agenda of rehabilitation and reintegration has forced its way to the top of the international agenda on preventing and countering violent extremism. From the diverse experiences of civil conflicts coming to an end, the international community has learned much about DDR, that is disarmament demobilization and reintegration of armed groups. Lessons about DDR, even in conflicts such as the one in Sierra Leone where the violence against civilians was horrific. Yet, rehabilitation and reintegration in the context of violent extremism is exceptionally challenging. Not simply because of the large numbers of people involved, but more importantly because the stigma attached to those who have been involved in extremist violence. The distressed fear and anger that surrounds even those who have left behind such movements. We all remember the tragic abduction of the Chibok school girls by Boko Haram in Nigeria, and the equally tragic aftermath for those who escaped or were rescued. Yet many of those who were free were rejected by their original communities, their home communities, because they had been subjected to rape, forced marriage, forced pregnancy, and sexual slavery. In response to all these challenges, the international peace-building community has invested in developing a body of knowledge and rehabilitation and reintegration in the context of violent extremism. USIP has been part of this global effort to develop evidence-based solutions. Our partnership with the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism has focused on such rehabilitation and reintegration. Our initiatives included the Global Counterterrorism Forum and the working group of that forum on foreign terrorist fighters. And today we're meeting to launch USIP's just-published action guide on rehabilitation and reintegration through individual social and structural engagement. As you'll discuss over the course of this day-long symposium, the RISE framework uses peace-building tools to resolve conflicts, to bridge social and political divides, and to build inclusive institutions to address the individual social and structural dynamics that continue to foster extremist violence. You'll also discuss how the RISE action guide innovatively applies public health principles and how it links individual and community approaches, hitherto not linked, preventing and countering violent extremism. Our schedule begins with a stage-setting fireside chat with Ian Moss, who is the State Department's Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism. This will be followed by a TED Talk-like session with our three RISE co-authors, Chris Bosley, Lisa Scherk, and Mike Miancha. For those of you who are attending in person, you'll be able to explore in breakout session some of the six modules that make up the RISE action guide. We'll also hear from practitioners from around the world who are implementing different parts of the RISE approach and will learn what impact they're having in their communities. Finally, we invite you to explore USIP's current exhibit, which you'll find right outside the doors here. It's entitled Nobody's Listening, and it documents the ISIS genocide against the Yazidi people in Northern Iraq in the summer of 2014. We invite you to tour the exhibit during lunch to experience its virtual reality component and to attend a gallery walk reception at day's end. Before I introduce our fireside chatters, I'd like to thank and congratulate my USIP colleague, Chris Bosley. Chris and his dedicated team here at USIP have led the production of the RISE action guide, and they have pioneered the innovations that the guide represents over the past five years. In the State Department's Bureau of Counterterrorism, Ian Moss is Deputy Coordinator. His portfolio includes countering racially and anti-racial ethnically motivated violent extremism, combating terrorist use of the internet and preventing terrorist recruitment. He also manages diplomatic efforts on foreign transfers of custody, the detention and repatriation of terrorists and terrorism suspects, and initiatives to rehabilitate and reintegrate former extremists. Previously, Ian practiced law in the military commissions at Guantanamo, and he served as a Senior Advisor in the State Department's Office of Global Criminal Justice, as the Chief of Staff to the Special Envoy for Guantanamo Closure, and as a Director for Human Rights at the National Security Council. Ian also is a veteran of the Marine Corps. Ian will be joined by my USIP colleague, Dr. Karine Graff. Karine is USIP's Senior Advisor for Conflict Prevention and Fragility. Again, welcome to everyone here and online. I wish all of you, those here and abroad, a productive day of discussions on these critical issues of peace building. Welcome, Karine and Ian. Thank you, David, for that introduction. It's a pleasure to be here, and thanks to all of you for braving the cold on this Friday morning. I see a lot of familiar faces in the audience, and thank you to those who are joining us online. As David indicated, what we would really like to do with this fireside chat is to set the stage for the rest of today's program and the launch of the Rise Action Guide by talking about the scope of the challenge of return and repatriation from northeast Syria. And the State Department's perspective and response to the challenge. So, Ian, welcome. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. We're really pleased to have you. So, given the limited time that we have and a very full program, I'd really like to jump right in if I could. Your responsibilities, as David just mentioned, Ian, include managing diplomatic efforts to rehabilitate and reintegrate former extremists. So, I just want to start off by asking if you could help us understand what is the situation facing the men, women, and children who are in the detention camps and centers like Ahol in northeast Syria. What is needed from your perspective to ensure effective, safe, and humane return? And how do you do this, and why is it important? Sure. First, Karin, thank you for having me, and I want to give a special thanks to the authors and everyone who worked on their eyes guide and to Chris, Chris, and Mike for coming over and spending some time earlier this week to talk to me and colleagues about this important guide and the work that you all have in front of you. So, thank you very, very much. Look, the situation in northeast Syria is exceedingly complicated. It is not indifferent from a number of situations elsewhere in the world that have been in existence for a long time, and unfortunately will continue to be, and of course, there will be new circumstances, which is why I think the rise guide in particular gives us a really tangible tool to help address the consequences and the aftermath of some of these circumstances. But in northeast Syria, and as you mentioned, in the camps that are home to nearly 50,000 individuals, conditions are just very, very concerning. Despite the best efforts of the United States government and our partners, there is a dearth of access to education, to psychosocial support, to healthcare, even down to real concern over consistent provision of sustenance. So, the day-to-day situation actually makes the possibility for these individuals to realize the opportunities outside of the camp pretty strained. The circumstances in the camps also don't necessarily position individuals well to receive the types of services and to benefit from the types of programs that we are working to build in their home countries. It's really important for them to be prepared and to have a mindset. I mean, the work is going to have to happen when they get home, but there are certainly things we can do before they get home that increase the likelihood of their successful participation in rehabilitative and reintegrative programming. Some of the things that we are doing, I would say first and foremost, we are engaging diplomatically to really impress upon the 60-plus nations that have nationals in northeast Syria, the need to repatriate their nationals. It is no place for a child. It's really no place for anyone. These are not camps that were supposed to be permanent. The reality is there will be some people there for a very, very long time. But in addition to diplomatic engagement, to persuade or cajole, we're also providing programmatic assistance and leveraging resources of partners and allies to ensure that governments, one, have the tools and have the know-how to help these individuals when they return. That's why the Rise Guide is so critical. It is a comprehensive framing of what governments at the national level and the local level need to do and can do to help facilitate the return of their citizens. Well, that is a nice segue into my next question, which is obviously this is a very comprehensive and multifaceted problem, which is in part why we have the Rise Action Guide. But how do you prioritize? What comes first? Can you walk us through and talk us through how you're thinking about prioritizing the most urgent needs? And how do you do that at the State Department? So as I mentioned, we are very, very concerned with the day-to-day existence, which we have to do two things at once. We have to, one, try to improve the security situation and the humanitarian situation inside the camps while also working to reduce the populations. And the reduction in the population, of course, comes through repatriations and or resettlements in some cases. Excuse me. We have, so I lead an interagency group, the Alhole Working Group, which pulls together colleagues from around the department and around the interagency, DOD, USAID, and then, of course, individuals and entities inside the department that you all know very well, PRM, DRL, NEA, among others, to address the various components as we've identified, the central component, so the security situation. So one of the things that we've done inside the camps is we have worked to make life inside the camp more safe. There are, you know, thousands and thousands of individuals that aspire to live in peace. There's also a small number of individuals that we'll call mischief makers. So we need to keep those who are aspiring to return to their home communities and become peaceful, contributing members of society. We need to keep them safe. So that involves ensuring that there's appropriate training for guard forces and community policing within the camps that's compliant with human rights law and really engages the individuals in a way that acknowledges and appreciates that they are not detainees. So we have worked to improve the security situation. We've also worked to increase and make more sustainable humanitarian access, which of course is dependent upon in many respects a secure environment. So security first and foremost so that we could then take steps. And then, of course, creating space for the provision of psychosocial support. It's a very, very challenging circumstance to work in. I mean, the security situation more broadly in northeast Syria and then, of course, in the camps makes it difficult to deliver programming. But as I mentioned, we want to make sure that working through partners, we are able to deliver whatever services we can. We have a partner, the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund, GSERF, that is working to deliver some pre-departure, rehabilitation and reintegration. One of the things that I've heard and colleagues have heard repeatedly from governments entertaining repatriation is that the more a jumpstart their nationals can have, the easier it is on their end. They're working with a population that's already been, we'll say, sensitized to the types of engagement from various actors in society that, for example, the rise guide promotes. So your efforts have been underway for some time and there are a number of actors involved, as you've suggested. Rehabilitation and reintegration are both needed, as you've explained, to prevent future violent extremism. But could you walk us through some specific strategies that you've seen, success stories that demonstrate the effectiveness of this comprehensive approach? Or some examples of where you've seen this kind of comprehensive approach that you're describing work? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in reading through the guide, what really stood out to me and made me just filled me with a certain degree of happiness, our partners in Albania, for example, have taken an approach that is consistent with the kind of the framework that the rise guide sets out. I think that the rise guide certainly offers the government of Albania, which is continuing to repatriate its nationals additional tools. But as a kind of structural matter in terms of the approach, the Albanians in partnership with G-SERF that I mentioned, really went at the rehabilitative and reintegrative effort through a whole of society approach. So the Albanians engaged at the municipal level, they engaged at the national level, and they brought in actors like social workers, teachers, local police, not just counterterrorism police or national level security personnel, but local level beat cops, so to speak. And really, and sports coaches, they really brought kind of every touch point, particularly for a child, to the process of engaging these individuals immediately upon their return to Albania, which I think, and if you talk to the Albanians, they'll say the message that that kind of comprehensive approach sent was that, hey, this is, we are all here. Like you're not, this isn't an approach that's taken because we feel that you are some sort of threat, but we are really taking every effort to make sure that you feel that you are being raptor or hugged, so to speak, by the entire community. So Albania is a great model. Kosovo similarly has undertaken efforts. And part of our desire is that other governments are able to engage with, say, governments like Kosovo and Albania to learn those best practices, because it's in addition to having solid tools like the Rise Guide, it's really important for facilitating face-to-face connections, and that's also something that we at the State Department are intent on doing and have done. Are there mechanisms in place, if I could just follow up, to facilitate the learning, peer-to-peer learning across the actors that are engaged in these efforts? There are, and there need to be more. And we look forward to working with USIP to hopefully facilitate just that in the context of the Rise Action Guide. But there are a number of partners that have brought governments together in forum so that they can share best practices and hear from one another. The International Institute of Justice and the rule of law in Malta has been one such place. The GCTF, there have been a number. Other partners, the Strong Cities Network, G-SERF also have worked to facilitate those connections. We also encourage bilateral engagement. There are governments that we are engaging right now with respect to repatriation. I won't name those governments, but what I will say is that the Kosovo's and the Albania's, for example, have been more than willing to provide mentorship, so to speak. Very helpful. Thank you. I want to pivot a little bit to talk specifically about the role of the Action Guide and also the most vulnerable population, the needs of children. And ask you if you could talk about the unique challenges that face children and how you think that the Rise Action Guide can serve as a framework to help drive an international response to their needs in particular. Yeah, I mean, so we are, as I mentioned, I focus a lot of energy and time on the situation in Northeast Syria. These tools apply to a variety of geographic locations, a variety of political of strife and a number of different political contexts. And that's, and I mentioned to you kind of earlier this morning, you know, one of the things that I found really, really notable is the kind of, for lack of a better term, egalitarian framing that the guide takes, in particular, as it relates to challenges that we face in Western countries. You know, we have spent a lot of time over the past couple of decades, primarily focused on othering extremism. But there are significant issues within Western societies. And we can learn from our, from our own experiences elsewhere. But with respect to children, you know, there are acute needs. As I mentioned, in Northeast Syria, the kids don't have education. So even when children are repatriated, you know, we've this year facilitated, and I failed to mention this earlier, one of the things we do is we actually move people. We work with our Department of Defense colleagues to physically put folks on a plane and fly them home. So any government that's listening that may not have heard from me or my colleagues, we are ready to help and we will help you bring your, your folks home. But the, the, the fact that these kids in particular don't have access to education means that they are in a sense behind when they get home. Part of what we've heard, however, is, and this is not news to anyone, kids are resilient, and they exceed expectations in many instances when they do get home and are met with the, with, with proper resourcing. But the fact that, that these kids are, are in this situation really underscores the urgency. I mean, I think the reality is the, the longer we wait to address their circumstances in particular, and that's not to say that, that the adults aren't also in need, but the longer we wait with respect to the kids, frankly, I think we are complicit in, in their deprivation. We're complicit in, in, in, in leaving them with few opportunities. And we're complicit in, in, in, in their increasing vulnerability to exploitation by actors that, that intend to use them to advance, you know, twisted ideology like ISIS. So there are a number of really specific concerns related to the children. Obviously the psychosocial, the provision of psychosocial support. And, you know, every day is, is an opportunity. You know, so this goes back to my point about trying to provide services there. The sooner you can start to engage, the better off these kids are. So that leads actually me to, to my last question, we're almost out of time. But you've talked about the various phases and different kinds of activities that are involved in returning and repatriating and reintegrating. But could you talk a little bit more specifically about the importance of social integration? What does this require? What does it entail? I know you have a background in human rights. So you can talk to this probably in some detail. But how can policymakers who are working on these issues outside of government also help you with that aspect of the process? I think first and foremost, appreciating that this doesn't happen in isolation. And it's certainly connected to other really important initiatives. You know, there was a an anecdote or a comment in the guide. I think it was in one of the vignettes, basically, pointing out that an individual left, came back, but the kind of circumstances that were that in a sense induced the individual to engage in extremist behavior went unaddressed, right? So appreciating that that this is part of a broader effort to build resilience in communities, I think is is first and foremost really, really important. Like we cannot be siloed in trying to address this problem. I think that other, I think it's also really, really critical that we make sure that we facilitate kind of transparency and not just for individuals as they return, but importantly for the for their communities. This is, I think, been a pretty stark lesson, but one that I think that we are now internalizing and we see this really, you know, acutely in Iraq, right? So you have individuals returning from from northeast Syria, two communities that were the the specific communities and individuals that suffered under ISIS. And so we really have to make sure we take a deliberate effort, make a deliberate effort and take a deliberate approach to engaging and preparing communities to receive individuals. This is how we are trying to think about this problem. It isn't just put them on a plane, drop them off and it's over. We know that that will ultimately mean we're doing that in perpetuity, probably, but figuring out ways to make sure that there's transparency in what we're doing. Also, to make sure that we don't neglect individuals in communities. You know, we don't want to have individuals at return be seen as greater beneficiaries than the folks who are we're expecting to receive them and welcome them back. So making sure to engage broadly, I think is really critical as well. Thank you so much. We are at time. So I'm going to invite my colleague Chris Bosley to come up and facilitate the TED Talk discussion with the co-authors. But first, please join me in thanking Ian Moss for his very candid and helpful remarks. Thank you everyone for coming up and supporting us and showing up. And thank you to Deputy Coordinator Moss. Thank you to Corinne for that fantastic conversation. I want to start in May 2011, I was several months removed from two years serving aboard what we affectionately call America's favorite aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson. And two months after I left the Carl Vinson in 2011, Osama bin Laden's body was buried at sea from that ship. For quite a bit of time, one of my biggest disappointments was that I didn't extend my time on board. And so I was not a part of that story, no matter how tiny a part that would have been. But what I've come to realize is that there are perhaps hundreds of thousands of others engaged in extremist violence worldwide, and millions more who are sympathetic to violent extremist movements who need viable ways out. And bin Laden's well deserved fate just simply cannot be shared by all of them. My name is Chris Bosley. I lead the program on violence and extremism here at USIP. Since making the transition from the Navy to USIP in 2017, we've been working to articulate what can peace building bring and contribute to the challenge of people exiting violent extremist conflicts and disengaging from extremist violence. While the field has, and it seems that my slides aren't actually moving, although the confidence monitor is. Thank you. While the field has evolved in that time considerably, most conventional CVE efforts continue to remain based in what are frankly flawed assumptions between the basic relationship between radicalization and violence. And the assumption seems logical, right? If we can just convince people that their beliefs or ideological interpretations are wrong, then somehow they would just leave violent extremism behind. And unfortunately, that's just not how it works. It runs counter to the research and the evidence in a number of key ways. First, radicalization as a conflict as a concept can actually be somewhat problematic when it's applied to violent extremism. That's because radicalization is inherently subjective in nature. It selects an arbitrary point on a continuum of thought where all of a sudden belief becomes unacceptable. And that can empower repressive governments that seek to control dissent. And it can empower abusive security elements to use disproportionate force against marginalized people. And assuming that radical beliefs lead to engagement in violent extremism actually lacks a good evidence base. In fact, behavioral science has known for decades that radicalized beliefs and violent behavior are not causally linked. Putting it simply, there are radicals who are not terrorists and there are terrorists who are not radicals. And while, slide, some people who hold extremist beliefs may engage in violent extremism, most never do. De-radicalization and counter-narrative programs often occur in a vacuum. They focus on individuals while failing oftentimes to work with the affected communities, to prepare them to support reintegration. They're often removed from the structures, the networks, and the social environments that make up a person's lived experience. But what's even worse, trying to convince somebody that their beliefs are wrong can more often backfire, causing people to fortify their beliefs and to retreat further into their ideological shelters. Think about your own life. How many times have you actually been able to convince somebody who disagrees with you that you're right? We're just not very good at doing that. So if ideology isn't the key defining feature of violent extremism, then what is? Well, fundamentally, extremist violence is an expression of violent conflict. It's inherently social in nature. And engaging in it is a form of violent behavior. And that's good news because while we're not very good at getting people to change their beliefs or change their minds, we do know how to get people to change their behaviors. And we do have tools to help resolve conflicts. So rather than focus on individuals and ideology alone, the rise framework instead shifts the locus of change to the social ecologies in which people find themselves and the behaviors that perpetuate violence. Now, I'm not trying to say that it's okay to hold hateful or violent beliefs and attitudes. It's not. But the way to change those beliefs and attitudes is not by trying to argue against them directly, but rather by encouraging healthy behaviors that can inherently demonstrate how those beliefs are invalid. So while we began trying to define a peace building approach where we ended with something more of a peace building public health partnership, using peace building tools to resolve conflicts, to bridge social and political divides, and to build inclusive institutions to address social and structural undercurrents, and applying public health principles that emphasize low threshold, access to services, and bottom up interventions to help prevent violence and change behaviors. Now, foundational to the rise framework is that sustained, positive, and inclusive, or what we call pro-social interactions between people who are reintegrating in local communities, can build relationships, produce a sense of belonging, and ultimately can offer an alternative identity that rejects violence. And these are the very things that provide resilience to violent extremism. So the six modules in this action guide examine social, structural, and individual level dynamics that are involved in why people mobilize to engage in violence and trap them into remaining engaged in it. So on the individual level, I cannot stress enough that there is no psychological profile of a terrorist. You cannot pinpoint who may be at risk of engaging in violent extremism just by identifying mental health deficits, nor can you just throw somebody into therapy and expect that they'll disengage from it. Rather, the challenge is that people reintegrating are often unwilling to interact pro-socially with others. So while the vast majority of people who experience mental or behavioral health challenges will never engage in violence, these challenges are overrepresented among people who do engage in extremist violence. And there are a couple lessons that behavioral health can teach us. First, being so committed to the cause that someone refuses to participate in a support program or engage pro-socially is only one reason they may not do so. And ignoring the mass of people who don't participate or engage for reasons that are accessible and addressable in favor of costly and unproven interventions to try to reach the very few people at the very thin tail of the bell curve who are most committed to the cause and most unwilling to engage pro-socially miss the mark. The second thing behavioral health can teach us is that we need to take trauma seriously. Trauma looms large for people who have engaged in violent extremism. This includes traumas that may have contributed to their engagement to begin with, traumas that were incurred while they were engaged in violence, and trauma associated with disengagement, rehabilitation, and reintegration itself. This also could include collective traumas faced by the communities who have been affected by violence and violent extremism. And trauma is important because it erects very significant neurophysiological barriers to building social bonds and finding a sense of belonging, cutting off avenues for rehabilitation and reintegration. Now increasing access to trauma informed in behavioral health care is not a panacea. Don't think that it is, it's not. But what can do is at least crack open a willingness in some people to engage in a possibility for change in some people who would otherwise have remained entirely out of reach. But removing individual level barriers to pro-social behavior is going to be like building a bridge to nowhere if communities themselves are unwilling to engage with people as they return. People reintegrating may face multiple levels of stigma including anger over their participation in violence, disrespect for their ideological beliefs, fear of their perceived or sometimes real connections with dangerous networks, discrimination against the broader social groups with which they identify, and self-stigma and shame over their own actions that they participated in while they were engaged in violent extremism. So without reducing stigma and opening community spaces in which pro-social engagement is welcome and safe, reintegration is not going to be possible. We know that high levels of social network diversity, that is the range of social ties that cross social groups, we know that's associated with a whole host of positive behavioral health and social outcomes including a lower risk of engaging in violence and violent extremism. And this makes sense. Engagement and violent extremism is influenced deeply by our social bonds. And a limited social network diversity will reduce your exposure to others perspectives and reinforce those violent extremist narratives. So by carefully facilitating social interactions between those who are reintegrating and other community members, programs can prevent that isolation and perhaps facilitate relationships across those social divides to build a more diverse social network and increase exposure to the diverse range of perspectives. But lowering cognitive barriers to and opening social spaces for pro-social engagement will still be insufficient because structural and political barriers like marginalization and broken governance if they're left unaddressed will leave disengagement unsustainable. This is especially the case for communities who themselves have been affected by violent extremism and feel betrayed by angry at or fearful of people returning from violent extremist conflicts. We cannot forget violent extremist groups are guilty of committing heinous crimes, cleansing entire ethnicities, perpetrating mass violence against civilians and inflicting untold amount of damage and a harm on communities. Nonetheless, prosecution and incarceration of those who have engaged in it will not always be possible and sometimes it's simply not appropriate either. Still affected communities and survivors of extremist violence need and deserve a sense of justice. But justice has a second face and that's restorative justice and tradition or community-based mechanisms can enable communities to chart a pathway to move forward together that can offer redemption and perhaps begin to heal some of the broader conflicts within that community. That's because people are often going to be disengaging in the very same environments and facing the very same lived experience as those that contributed to their engagement in violent extremism to begin with. So rehabilitation and reintegration efforts that fail to address this ecosystem, that fail to build political and social institutions that can bridge divides and bring people together and that fail to at least provide nonviolent channels to express legitimate grievances will be unsustainable at any scale. Prevention and disengagement in this way are not opposite ends on a PCV spectrum that can operate independently. They're integral to each other and they close a circle of violence together. So there are several keys that rehabilitation and reintegration efforts need to turn. Encouraging a sense of belonging, a sense of agency, a sense of meaning, and I would add to that a sense of well-being. And that's because extremist violence is only one of a whole host of social challenges that can result from a strikingly similar set of risk factors and environments. So helping somebody to disengage from extremist violence, if they instead engage in organized crime or harmful substance use or intimate partner violence and for many of the very same reasons just cannot be our yardstick for success. I'm going to talk honestly here for a second to close right as conflict specialists as I think most of us in this room including myself are. To be frank we can sometimes be a little bit overconfident that we have all of the tools and all of the networks that we need to solve a challenge. In this case we don't. Ultimately what makes rise rise is that it's menu of intervention options which reach across a wide array of disciplines in areas of practice to build networks and relationships among all the different stakeholders that need to be involved if we're ever to move beyond just admiring this as an intractable complex challenge. Thank you. Thank you so much and it's almost as if Chris and I coordinated our talks to talk about similar things. My name is Mike Nickenschuk. I'm a practitioner at the intersection of peace building and mental health. I've had the I don't want to call it a privilege but I've had the opportunity of working on this very issue of repatriation and rehabilitation of women and children from those camps in northeast Syria in Albania, Bosnia, Maldives not why most people go to the Maldives but we chose this path didn't we? Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan and I want to zoom in a little bit deeper on this issue of behavioral health and trauma which is a word that we're hearing more and more about in cultural discourse writ large and more and more in this space of violence prevention and truth be told this action guide was written by Chris and Lisa with limited inputs from myself and from a wonderful array of academic partners and reviewers the guide was written really with the belief that we can better serve individuals who have been affected by brutal forms of violence and for full disclosure you'll find academic references on my last slide with a nice QR code and I think that's important to honor the work of so many others many of whom are sitting in this room whose scholarship and whose incredible research have made the world of us practitioners a hell of a lot easier so I want to thank them and honor their work as we talk as we talk about this so violent extremism like many other social identities relies heavily on narrative and story the story of us and them the story of grievance and of hope the story of what could be what we could make the world into even if through the use of unconscionable brutality to get there and the rise action guide presents the process of rehabilitation and reintegration of persons affected by violent extremism as a deeply human challenge elevating the humanity at those of the center of violent extremism and the humanity of those who have been unwillingly dragged into the center of violent extremism and above everything the guide is rooted in the potential that each person's story carries the potential to change the potential to alchemize pain into good to alchemize ill will into pro-social engagement and into nonviolent ways of confronting adversity appropriately each module of the action guide begins with a story so I want to take us into one of those stories the story of Shadi from module two Shadi slowly gathered the pieces of what was once a lamp now scattered across the room a sense of regret overwhelmed him he was angry with himself for breaking something else his wife cowered in the corner shuddering for years Shadi had had difficulty controlling his emotions but the intensity frequency and violence of his outburst had been growing since he came back from Eirak his wife had asked nothing about his departure nor his return while he was in Eirak she had accepted his infrequent calls but beyond the fact that he went to defend friends as he said she knew nothing about his time as a fighter she had simply told people that he was traveling for work that he had a new venture with a friend in Libya since returning Shadi and his wife had spoken little sex was frequent but mechanical sometimes bordering on violent Shadi spent much of his time at home gregarious in his interactions with strangers but practically a ghost in his own home present but mostly unseen sitting in the same room from morning until night he could barely recall what made him explode in anger this particular night apologizing was no use because he knew it would happen again as he picked up the pieces of the lamp images of his father flashed across his mind he had not wanted to be like his father he had not wanted to hurt others the way his father hurt him Shadi found himself mired in regret and resignation at what he had done maybe even at what he had become thinking about it let alone trying to find another way forward seemed futile the self-loathing had only grown worse since he had returned in his time as a fighter he found little pleasure he knew he was going to kill he wanted to kill but not with such brutality not with such casualness like that which he witnessed he had signed up to kill yes but not to torture overall his time in Ed Alk had been a disappointment worse there was blood on his hands and he knew they were indeed innocent and at any moment one of the men he fought with could expose the full details of what he had done to the broader community and to the authorities who for now had other more important suspects to worry about so as we take a few deep breaths with Shadi we feel for him we feel for this man and we burn in anger at Shadi we want Shadi brought to justice just as much as we also want Shadi brought to health and this is just one story perhaps like some that you yourself have worked with perhaps easier perhaps harder whatever those words mean in any case we here see Shadi coping coping by breaking things both inanimate and animate coping with the life of loss with abuse in his past that he reenacts at home today we can see in his we can see his journey into crime as a human story of misdirection of decisions of highest evil consequence but also a story of coping Logan Windish and Simi recently published a paper on the correlations between adverse childhood experiences and participation in right wing and left wing extremism their findings from this most recent and their past studies indicate and suggest that persons who had engaged in any flavor of extremism that they studied had four or more of these adverse childhood experiences under their belt or in their past experiences so similarly Reshna Muhammad in a 2022 paper noted incredibly high rates of post traumatic stress disorder post traumatic not dramatic post traumatic stress disorder among incarcerated extremists in Iraq suggesting that more than 50% of those sampled had PTSD and this active post traumatic distress mediates the relationship between all of the trauma they had experienced during their time in combat and continued aggression interpersonal aggression so we know that mental health matters for rehabilitation work we see and feel this from Shadi just as much as we see it from the data and we know that his experience of violent extremism is not separate from the rest of his inner life from the cascading world inside of him that he has carried since his childhood many scholars have explored this question of how past adversity repeated victimization and life-altering trauma may contribute to radicalization into violence others have also begun to question how post-exit traumas including detention in camps or in brutal detention facilities may shape recidivism and reoffending after release and why does it matter and what are the risks of elevating this topic both in policy and practice observing higher than usual rates of childhood trauma polyvictimization war trauma exposure or post-traumatic stress disorder among persons rehabilitating should elevate the importance of behavioral health and the disengagement rehabilitation and reintegration period when we work with folks it could in theory also offer a really useful and new lens for prevention work but to do so is hasty and dangerous correlation does not equal causation statisticians in the room raise your hands give me an amen correlation does not equal causation more than 99% of persons who are exposed to childhood trauma or adulthood trauma do not radicalize into violence and I can promise you that much of the world is still blazingly obsessed with finding a monocausal explanation for violence offering mental health or trauma as important pieces of a cascade of causality can and will backfire with tremendous consequences especially for those of us doing this work in authoritarian environments where you have folks wanting to scan all young men for trauma exposure if that's a risk factor so this data has to be understood interpreted and utilized with highest sensitivity remember and as Chris mentioned childhood trauma including abuse like that which Shadi endured has also been implicated for its correlations with things like intimate partner violence substance abuse being a victim of violence you are statistically much more likely to be a victim of violence if you have experienced childhood trauma criminal involvement difficulties with interpersonal empathy and cardiovascular health outcomes about amongst other things almost done so neither trauma nor mental illness causes violent extremism they are tributaries in a much larger cascaded process where mediators like negative coping habits negative emotionality as it's called neurobiological dysregulation lack of social support substance abuse perceived lack of safety physical environment economic status job status peer groups all interact to shape and form and how past adversities influence later social behaviors that can include anything from criminal involvement to interpersonal and violence to violent extremism and to borrow from our colleague Ken Reedy here we can see the multi-finality of adversity and trauma similar life histories leading to many different possible outcomes and the equi-finality of extremism meaning one outcome despite incredibly different developmental trajectories into that it's a complex web of interactions and the case of persons like Shadi specific factors co-occurred in a constellation that may have contributed to his choosing violence tragically the choice of violence is then compounded by experiences that one undergoes in a combat zone things like subsequent trauma feelings of guilt and shame moral injury I wanted to kill but not like that or oh I didn't want to kill and then dealing with the aftermath of that inside yourself and so in this context irrespective of the role of mental and behavioral health in the journey into extremism the journey after violent extremism is deeply and necessarily benefited by comprehensively caring for the inner and the outer health of the person in fact I'm actually really wary to elevate the role of mental health and psychosocial support and prevention efforts as we still live in a world that has not embraced a public health and peace building approach to how we care for our citizens but I'm much more hopeful about the behavioral health approach to working and rehabilitative work so the purpose of behavioral health and trauma recovery in the rehabilitation of persons affiliated with extremist violence is to strengthen those protective factors that we know can increase resilience against negative outcomes and then do this in a way that deprioritizes this obsessive need for causality for causal inference and instead equip persons and communities with the skills and resources that we know fortify against various potential negative outcomes these protective factors that can be strengthened include provision of stronger social supports assisting folks to develop better emotion regulation tactics access to culturally suitable mental health services economic mobility and livelihoods opportunities the availability and exercise of full rights as citizens sense of agency not just creating safe communities but ensuring that people feel safe in their communities the subjective felt perception of safety is often vastly different for a traumatized body than for someone who has not experienced trauma and of course access to justice and here is where the interventions that we do sit psychosocial interventions should be promoted to strengthen these protective factors not only because we don't want folks like Shadi to fall back into extremism because we want to move Shadi away from harm and into care and to wrap up recall that we see in Shadi a man who is haunted by risk a man who should absolutely be brought to justice but also a man whose inner child remains deeply wounded addressing the wounds that Shadi has caused in the world must go hand in hand with addressing the wounds that the world has caused in Shadi to do anything less is insufficient and unethical thank you can someone start the powerpoint at the beginning back there peace building is ultimately about architecture on the one hand we have the architecture of walls divisions and there are societies around the world that are actually physically resembling walled off communities but peace building is also about the social infrastructure the bridge building between individuals and their families and their communities and ultimately any question that we deal with in this beautiful building here at the U.S. Institute of Peace is about the architecture of society are we building walls and divisions to solve problems or are we looking at how we construct the ties between people the bridges the society that is marked by the social infrastructure of relationship between people so as we talk today about how do we support people disengaging from violent extremism I want to invite us to think about this metaphor of bridge building in a society defined by walls there are a lot of different problems there's not only the mental health problems of self-harm or interpersonal violence violent extremism is actually just one manifestation of the divisions evident in so many societies what we often see is a cycle of harm where as my colleagues have just talked about there's this sort of self-harm and the harm that was done to children is intermingling with societal grievances against governments against corrupt local leaders and so it's this toxic cocktail that produces violent extremist beliefs and actions the architecture of reintegration needs to conceptualize the walls that are dividing people from the reintegration process and those walls exist for many thousands of people 43,000 people from approximately 110 countries are trying to go through this reintegration process and they are facing many obstacles many bricks in the wall there's anger there is trauma isolation stigma political grievances marginalization social marginalization and a sense of hopelessness and so what peace building is in this architectural sense is deconstructing these blocks in the wall these bricks in the wall and we have to remember it's not just individuals who have actually engaged in violent extremism it's often their families and their children and so there are more than 11,000 people who have not actually even taken up any sort of arms any sort of official engagement in violent extremism they were brought along and now we need the architecture of reintegrating them into society we have to remember again that the people who are reintegrating are often both victims and perpetrators this is the messy reality of life is that there is a sense of harm that has been done to them and they have also engaged in harm when I teach my students about peace building at the University of Notre Dame I always use this first definition on the first day of class peace building is about designing societies that work for everyone it requires an interdisciplinary approach that looks at economics politics, security as well as psychology and trauma and really the social work and behavioral health public health approach that we need to treat the whole person and the whole society in peace building we're always trying to disentangle the walls that we have built the physical and the social infrastructural walls and we're trying to build bridges where they were in a society defined by bridge building we have access to care we have recovery from trauma social belonging we have stigma reduction community resilience and justice and reconciliation and we have to put then the communities at the center of that process so this is where peace building is really about the democratization of security in a peace building approach to reintegrating people from violent extremism the community is at the center and it's locally owned and locally shaped by their own cultures and traditions by their own capacities and is then sustainable in the long term because it's rooted in that local context when communities are in the lead in reintegrating people after violent extremism there is this focus on transforming behaviors so building the supportive peer networks for example it's about transforming community identities through rehumanizing rights of passage back into the community and it's about transforming structures and institutions that have perpetuated the grievances and the social exclusion if we're looking at building bridges we can disentangle the wall take those bricks out of the wall and build bridges with a different set of tools and the modules in this new book rise are listed here as examples of what we need behavioral health trauma recovery stigma reduction social mixing and belonging justice and reconciliation and community resilience this is again that interdisciplinary peace building approach that brings together a lot of different theories of change theories of change of how we move from violent extremism back into society part of this is really promoting behavioral health and well-being that can be peer network training to reintegrate people back into social circles it's community-based counseling which is available at the local level rather than sort of in a professional license and it's looking at what kind of care is available locally it's also supporting that trauma recovery with community-based healing and trauma first aid it's about using people first language not calling people violent extremists or terrorists but always using the word people who are reintegrating after violent extremism and making sure that everyone in the community is using people first language so that the media is being trained community leaders are all reinforcing the humanity of the people who are reintegrating it's about facilitating social belonging which means incentivizing social mixing finding ways for people to eat at restaurants of different ethnic groups of going to the same community meetings and having opportunities for that social mixing through even community service or meaningful interaction to contribute to their communities it also means using peace-building skills like negotiation and mediation to help address local conflicts in terms of fostering justice and reconciliation it means employing restorative justice processes exploring the grievances and how society needs to be redesigned to address those root causes of their grievances and promoting social movements political action to address the grievances and the harms that have been coming down maybe from the government finally it's about building community resilience so in-group bonding and helping people to prevent the scapegoating the othering the dehumanizing that often happens with people in conflict it also means strategies to manage or to address a predatory state action in terms of security systems that abuse people and it means building a sense of agency among people so we're going to foster this pro-social behavior through a variety of interdisciplinary peace-building approaches and we will focus then on community well-being so really the reintegration process is part of a broader peace-building process of dismantling walls and building bridges and that's going to benefit not just people reintegrating but it benefits the whole community and because all these forms of violence are so entangled it also reduces other forms of violence and this is where peace-building is a more synergistic holistic approach because you realize you're not just trying to treat one problem one symptom of a dysfunctional society you're treating them all together so as I close really we have a choice for dealing with the many complex challenges of society we can build walls and we can reinforce divisions dehumanization and deprivation or we can focus on bridge-building which requires a long-term interdisciplinary strategy of community support and emphasis on community leadership and focusing on social cohesion the glue that holds all of us together thank you once more for everybody here my name is whoa my name is Chris Bosley I want to thank you all one more time for taking the time on a Friday to be here with us I want to thank as well those of you who are joining us online we're incredibly excited today about today it's really been a long time coming I think the first meetings we had to shape the scope and content of this guide began in early 2020 that was pre-COVID that is a different world at least to me and so many of you here today have contributed to that directly indirectly in ways big and nuanced but without each and every one of you we would not be here today so I owe you all an enormous debt of gratitude thank you all for your support I want to start I have a few quick housekeeping notes for you about today's program first the ubiquitous that you have not done so already please do silence your phones second as you can see by the clock we are running a little bit behind that's okay we'll catch up no worries there what we're going to ask you to do is instead of having a full break after this I'm going to ask you to grab your coffees they will be set up grab a coffee and take it with you into the breakout session immediately following when I wrap up here so the way this is going to work you see that we'll be moving back and forth a few times between plenary and breakout sessions all the plenaries and they're noted there on your agenda will be held here in the Carlucci Auditorium the breakout sessions will be held in three different rooms all of which are located in the Leland Atrium right outside these doors so what you'll want to do is exit these doors if you exit on the top go straight back to the far wall and there'll be three breakout rooms they'll all be marked for you if you exit down here you can exit down this door just walk up the stairs so once you get up the stairs turn left and all the breakout rooms will be there against the far wall marked for you those of you here in person can self-select whichever breakout session you want however the rooms do have a capacity so it's going to be first come first served and if the room reaches capacity we may ask anybody who comes after that to choose a different session I promise you they are all fantastic I'm afraid for those of you online that we're not able to broadcast or livestream the breakout sessions so thank you for joining us this morning for those of you online please if you are available hop back on and join us again this afternoon for our next plenary at 1 p.m. and then again at 4 p.m. those are the next two sessions that will be live streamed for those of you online 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. the sessions are going to begin promptly from here on out promise so can we ask everybody to please try to adhere to those timelines as much as possible finally we will be serving a buffet style lunch for those of us here in person again that will be right outside these doors in the great hall down here as well as in the Leland atrium upstairs here we encourage you during lunch and also during the reception that follows today's program to experience the nobody's listening exhibit in the great hall during those times it is a really immersive really powerful experience that I would encourage anybody and everybody to experience if they get an opportunity finally you'll see a QR code that's on your agenda it's also up here it's also printed out on several papers and flyers outside this code will take you directly to our new newly released guide it was put up this morning we're super excited about it you all get a first look at it let us know what you think we have a fantastic program for you and I really hope you all found it just as interesting as we did putting it together thank you once again and please enjoy the rest of the day we are now moving into your breakout sessions so once again just please grab a coffee and head directly to those rooms thank you