Our Mission
Promoting comprehensive rehabilitation and reintegration strategies for children associated with terrorist and violent extremist groups has been a key priority for UNODC.
In 2018, UNODC began providing tailored support through regional capacity-building activities in South and South East-Asia. During the past year, with the financial support of Japan, UNODC could provide more tailored technical assistance services at national level in Indonesia and in the Maldives. In March 2019, UNODC gathered relevant professionals from both child protection and the security sector, and elaborated with their support the UNODC Roadmap on the Treatment of children associate with terrorist and violent extremist groups. Experts from Bangladesh, Maldives, Nepal, Philippines, and Sri Lanka contributed to this effort. Working as a manifesto, the UNODC Roadmap presents the fundamental principles for the treatment of these children and details essential guidance for action in three priority areas of work.
The UNODC Global Programme to End Violence against Children supports Member States, upon request, in their efforts to provide effective responses to the complex challenges raised by the situation of children associated with terrorist and violent extremist groups, including those linked to the FTF phenomenon. In the past five years, UNODC has provided technical assistance to over 35 countries faced with this complex issue. To do so, the Office has developed a comprehensive training toolkit, comprising four publications, designed to support policy-makers and practitioners in three key areas of work: prevention of child recruitment; rehabilitation and reintegration; justice for children in a counter-terrorism context. In September 2018, UNODC organized a capacity-building workshop to pilot test the UNODC Training Manual on Prevention of Child Recruitment and Exploitation by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups. The event brought together 30 participants from 8 South-Asian and South-East Asian countries.