Summer Greetings from Nordic Safe Cities

Dear Members, Partners, and Friends

We are approaching summer after a spring that has been very different and more turbulent than any of us could have predicted. Some cities are currently hit harder than others, and all cities have adjusted their priorities accordingly to respond to the health crisis at hand.

Although the coronavirus swiftly changed most operations and ways of working, for the time being, all our member cities have been devoted to ensure that their cities remain safe during the pandemic. Over these past months, the Nordic Safe Cities team has continued to operate and support the work in our member cities. We opened an immediate series of online conversations with our member cities, enabling them to share the changes, challenges, and new practices on safety and security due to the pandemic. Producing recommendations on how to handle the crisis, ensure a good and safe summer for the local youth, and build prevention efforts in a longer perspective, when the pandemic has paused.

On June 2^nd we launched the Safe City Blueprint presenting an overview of the current safe city strategies, emerging challenges in the Nordics and every city’s designated safe city action that they will be working on within Nordic Safe Cities. The launch was followed by an intensive 10-day Safe City Sprint in June 2020. Here we took the first steps towards new local solutions to each city’s safe city action and to help prevent extremist violence and hate in each city.

Simultaneously, all our ten Norwegian Member cities have handed in new concept ideas to prevent extremism to our partner Gjensidige Foundation in Norway. The Safe Spaces Task Force met for the first time to rethink and develop new solutions for how cities can create safer, more secure and liveable urban spaces. In Addition, steps towards creating the first Norwegian Beacon Mosque in Kristiansand have been taken. Read more about all these initiatives below.

Yesterday, the evaluation and report of the handling of the attack on the Al-Noor Islamic Centre in our Norwegian member city, Bærum, was publicised. We look forward to work with Bærum and other Norwegian cities to take the recommendations in the report forward to further improve the local collaboration around extremism.

Lastly, we are happy to announce that Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, director of the Institute for Strategy at the Royal Danish Defence College and international scholar of terrorism, has been appointed new chairwoman of Nordic Safe Cities and will lead the conversations and support to the cities going forward.

It has been humbling and impressive to follow the work in the Nordic cities to keep the citizens safe during these special times, and we look immensely forward to continue our collaboration with our partners and to support the cities.

Have a safe and good summer.

Best regards,

Jeppe Albers
Executive Director
Nordic Safe Cities

 

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