RAN Practitioners Study Visit Cooperation between NGOs, non-security and security stakeholders in Germany, Nuremberg 30 June-01 July 2022

In the context of P/CVE, NGOs and other non-security stakeholders, can be – and are often already – active and trustworthy partners in terms of national and regional security. In some instances, this manifests as an implicit and indirect partnership, whereby NGOs in the context of rehabilitation contribute to safer societies through their work.

In other cases, however, formats for active cooperation between NGOs (and other non-security practitioner organisations/institutions) and security actors, such as police or intelligence agencies, exist as well. At the same time, such cooperation remains contested among practitioners, often due to a fear of securitisation of non-security oriented social and pedagogical work.

As a result, the positive potential of cooperation between security and nonsecurity stakeholders is sometimes completely ignored and, where it does exist, is not always realised in an optimal way. To gain more knowledge and practical tools on how such cooperation can be organised, practitioners will visit the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees’ (ger.: BAMF) “Advice Centre on Radicalisation”.

The Advice Centre coordinates a network of state-led and NGO-led family support and tertiary prevention projects across Germany and therefore acts at the heart of cooperation in the context of secondary and tertiary prevention of Islamist extremism in Germany.

The overarching objective of the study visit is to provide insights into different cooperation and coordination mechanisms of security and non-security stakeholders in different German contexts, to support other European practitioners in the continuing development of their own of cooperation models.