Albania: ICITAP Partners with the State Department to Counter Violent Extremism

On June 24, ICITAP provided an update on the State Department-supported Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) project. Three Albanian State Police (ASP) community policing (CP) chiefs met with ICITAP and State Department officials to discuss the effects of ICITAP’s training courses on effort to counter violent extremism through community policing efforts. The chiefs said the benefit of the project really started taking root with ICITAP’s instructor development course, which placed the chiefs in a position to organize their lessons for the CP officers they supervise, as well as better deliver CP activities to the community. The chiefs said the variety of instructors (15 from six different nations) for the second course (“CVE Through CP”) was valuable since it allowed them to glean CP activities and overall CVE knowledge from different international perspectives. They also cited the 32-member class structure with representatives from the ASP, Ministry of Justice, and civil society as advantageous to developing networking contacts to support their projects. In Albania, ICITAP provides assistance and training in this area with the support of and in coordination with the State Department’s Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism (CT).