Event

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Terrorist organizations like ISIS, Hamas and the Taliban have exploited children for years for tactical reasons. For terrorist groups, “grooming the next generation” is a priority to safeguard the longevity of the movement. Children in conflict zones are especially vulnerable because recruitment might literally be coming ‘from the inside of the house’ -- members of their own family, and not strangers, who are brainwashing the youth to join a militant organization. This is a form of child exploitation and child abuse. 

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In some accounts, children in terrorist groups have been mischaracterized as a “lost generation” or as “ticking time bombs”. The reality is more complicated.

This seminar will review the different ways in which terrorist groups recruit and deploy children and address the lingering issue about whether these children should be repatriated now that ISIS has lost its territorial Caliphate. 

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This seminar is arranged by the Consortium for Research on Terrorism and International Crime.

Speakers bio:

Mia Bloom is the International Security Fellow at the New America Foundation, a professor at Georgia State University, and member of the Evidence Based Cyber Security at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. Bloom has conducted research in Europe, the Middle East and South Asia and speaks eight languages. Bloom has authored books on violent extremism including Dying to Kill: The Allure of Suicide Terror (Columbia 2005), Living Together After Ethnic Killing (Routledge 2007) Bombshell: Women and Terror (UPenn 2011) and Small Arms: Children and Terror (Cornell 2019). She is publishing two books later this year: Veiled Threats: Women and Jihad (Brookings in October) and Pastels and Pedophile: Inside the Mind of QAnon with Sophia Moskalenko (Stanford in June). Bloom is a former term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has held appointments at Princeton, Cornell, Harvard and McGill Universities. She serves on the boards of the Anti Defamation League, GIFCT: Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, and the UN Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (UNCTED). Bloom has a PhD in political science from Columbia University, a Masters in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a Bachelors degree from McGill in Russian, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. 

Elisabeth Harnes works at Resource Centre on Violence, Traumatic Stress and Suicide Prevention (RVTS Vest) and holds a position as a Special Consultant on Forced Migration and Refugee Health, Radicalization and Violent Extremism and Honor Related Violence. She is coordinating the center`s work on Radicalization and Violent Extremism and is a member of RVTS`s National Expert Group and TOT Radicalization- a interdisciplinary operative consulting team on radicalization in Bergen municipality. She also leads a National Mentor Training on Radicalization to Violent Extremism (RVTS Vest). Harnes has broad work experiences in social and therapeutic work from several countries. She holds a Masters in Religious Studies and a Bachelor in Intercultural Studies from NLA University College. She is also a licensed Family Therapist from Western Norway University of Applied Sciences with a specialization in Narrative Therapy from the Institute of Narrative Therapy Riverbank Psychology, Manchester, UK and advanced training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy from Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute (SPI).

Related publications

Publications

August 27, 2018

Publications

Scientific article

August 27, 2018

Rita Augestad Knudsen

Measuring radicalisation: risk assessment conceptualisations and practice in England and Wales

Individual ‘radicalisation’- extremism- and terrorism-related risk assessment tools have become increasingly central instruments of counter-terrorism. The scholarship on such tools, however, is still its infancy, and remains concentrated on methodological issues and on identifying the ‘best’ indicator list for carrying out assessments. This article takes a different approach, and examines England and Wales’ main counter-terrorism relevant risk and vulnerability assessment tools: the Extremism Risk Guidance (ERG22+) and the Vulnerability Assessment Framework (VAF), concentrating on their shared 22 risk indicators and their uses in counter-terrorism. The article explores the ideas of ‘radicalisation’ emerging from these indicators and from their use at two different ‘ends’ of England and Wales’ counter-terrorism; to assess sentenced terrorism offenders in prison, and to assess non- criminal individuals referred over concerns over their possible ‘radicalisation’. The article hence clarifies the ideas of ‘radicalisation’ underpinning counter- terrorism policies in England and Wales, and considers the operational utility of the tools' present uses. The article finds that the tools' shared indicators suggest a conceptualisation of radicalisation associated with individual psychology and ways of thinking, and do not in and of themselves open for sufficient incorporation of relevant context. While not rejecting the possible value of specialised terrorism-related individual risk assessment tools, the article finds that the ideas underpinning the tools’ uses make their present counter-terrorism roles questionable. It concludes by stressing that any benefit associated with risk and vulnerability assessment tools in the counter-terrorism space would seem conditioned on them being reserved for the uses, target groups and assessors they were originally created for, and on them being used as only one component of a broad, contextual assessment of individuals about whom there is an evidence-based terrorism-related concern.

• Terrorism and extremism

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May 10, 2017

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Report

May 10, 2017

Rita Augestad Knudsen

Radicalization and foreign fighters in the Kosovo context: An analysis of international media coverage of the phenomena

This working paper takes a critical look at the written coverage of issues of jihadi radicalization and foreign fighters from Kosovo, identifying key themes, assumptions, and areas where the press seems to have missed certain points. The paper is based on an extensive survey of written English-language media coverage retrieved online, secondary NGO/grey and academic literature, as well as some 50 original interviews with experts, frontline practitioners, policymakers and donors conducted in Prishtina, Brussels, or via Skype. While not attempting to provide a full picture, the paper identifies points on which the international media coverage seems to have got matters wrong, and areas where the evidence calls for greater nuancing. These include the number of foreign fighters, the reasons for radicalization and why people have travelled to Syria, as well as the government’s response.

• Security policy
• Terrorism and extremism

• Security policy
• Terrorism and extremism