On 24-25 May, UNRCCA in partnership with the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) and its International Hub on Behavioural Insights to Counter-Terrorism organised the training course “Application of Behavioural Insights in Preventing Violent Extremism and Countering Terrorism Programming in Implementing National Strategies and Action Plans of the Central Asian States”.  The course was organised with the support of the Government of Qatar and took place in a hybrid format in Doha. 

Officials from all five Central Asian states took part in the training sessions and had an opportunity to share their experience with representatives and experts from UNRCCA, UNOCT, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the Organisation of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and a significant number of civil society organisations, think-tanks and academia.

The themes of the training course ranged from political and security developments in the region and their implications on counter-terrorism efforts to more specific areas, such as contemporary and contextualised analysis of the forces undergirding radicalisation as well as the leveraging behavioural science and the behavioural insights approach for preventing violent extremism and countering terrorism. Participants also shared theoretical and practical knowledge on the return of foreign terrorist fighters and their family members to the countries of origin and their rehabilitation and reintegration.     

The training course concluded with recommendations for different state and non-state actors as well as UN entities on how the behavioural insights approach, which combines elements from psychology, cognitive and social science and empirically-tested results, could have practical applications in policy making in the region of Central Asia.