In April 2019, the IIJ convened a workshop in N’Djamena on Understanding and Effectively Addressing the Terrorist Fighter Phenomenon in Chad. The workshop brought together judges, prosecutors, investigators, correction officers, social workers, psychologists and religious leaders from various organisations in Chad, along with national and international subject-matter experts. The practitioners shared expertise and experiences on enhancing interagency cooperation on rehabilitation and reintegration, and the important roles of probation and parole, and the community, in successful rehabilitation efforts.
During in-depth discussions and interactive group exercises, participants started developing elements for an addendum – specifically addressing the rehabilitation and reintegration of terrorist offenders – to Chad’s National Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Strategy.
The Chad workshop was convened under the IIJ Returning Foreign Terrorist Fighters (RFTFs) Initiative, and is part of a project – funded by the Government of the Netherlands – on rehabilitating and reintegrating terrorist offenders with a specific focus on Chad and Mali. The project is implementing the recommendations articulated in the GCTF's Addendum to The Hague-Marrakech Memorandum on Good Practices for a More Effective Response to the FTF Phenomenon, with a focus on Returning FTFs. The workshop in N’Djamena was the second of four capacity-building workshops with Chad. Separately and concurrently, four capacity-building workshops are being held in Mali, the first of which took place in December 2018.
For more information on this workshop or the IIJ RFTFs Initiative, please contact Director, Programmatic Unit, Gail Malone.