Countering Violent Extremism
African Communications recognises the importance of working with communities to build resilience to the influence of violent extremism and promote a safe and inclusive society. Thus AC's Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) strategy makes use of carefully targeted media campaigns together with outreach activities.
AC's CVE initiative has been working since 2007 to combat extremism and radicalisation in Pakistan. The initiative works to raise awareness about the root causes of extremism and to develop strategies to address them. During the past five years the project has carried out several activities aimed at de-radicalisation of Pakistani youth, and to empower the general population to be able to identify and mitigate the possible effects of radicalisation. The message of the whole project has been very simple; the power to stop terrorism lies with the people. The project has also served in the public’s perception to criminalise the act of terrorism thus divorcing it from any religious ideology.
Combining high profiled mainstream media programmes with social network marketing and an intelligent outreach campaign involving rock stars, film/TV celebrities and door-to-door campaigning, the activities have aimed to raise the awareness of terrorism as a national problem and to make it the civic and moral responsibility of all Pakistanis to fight violent extremism.
Using knowledge gained from this experience in Pakistan, AC applies the lessons learnt to develop CVE strategies and tools to address similar problems in other areas. AC's CVE strategies seeks to challenge violent extremist narratives and provide alternative narratives thus increase the resilience of communities to violent extremism and try to address the grievances that ideologues are exploiting.