Slovenia’s University of Ljubljana wins Peer-2-Peer OSCE ‘Challenging extremism’ competition in Hamburg

HAMBURG, Germany, 8 December 2016 - A team of students from the University of Ljubljana today won first prize in a regional OSCE competition under the “Peer-2-Peer (P2P): Challenging Extremism” initiative.

Universities from 23 OSCE participating States were invited to join the competition during the Autumn Term of this year, and the three top teams, from Canada, Slovenia and Sweden, were shortlisted to pitch their campaigns live during the 23rd OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg, in front of a jury of OSCE senior officials and ambassadors of participating States.

The winning entry from Slovenia created an online algorithm that helps users assess how fear inducing media reports are. Once a media report is uploaded to their platform, the text is analysed against pre-defined key words through the so-called Fear Index. In order to help promote the tool and encourage young people to think critically when consuming media content, the team launched an awareness raising campaign: thinkagain.si, supported by a series of community events, to challenge recurring media narratives.

"It was not an easy semester, we all worked very hard to develop and launch this project, and presenting it at the OSCE Ministerial Council, let alone, receiving the first prize, is the best award one could imagine,” said Lucija Bahovec, a member of the winning team.

Milena Stošić, Special Representative on Youth and Security for the German OSCE Chairmanship-in-Office, said: “This is crucial that we support young people to be active and use their creativity to initiate change in our societies. This event shows that this is also a key priority for the OSCE and we are proud to support this initiative.”

Sinem Taşkın, Germany Public Policy Manager for Facebook, which sponsors P2P globally, said: “At Facebook we are proud to support P2P. Students participating in this programme inspire us all by their creativity to tackle issues and their aspiration to make a difference in their respective communities. By using social media they spark and initiate positive change to bring people together."

The competition was organized on 7-8 December by the OSCE delegations of the United States of America, Austria and France, Facebook, the consultancy EdVenture Partners, and the OSCE Transnational Threats Department, under the umbrella of the OSCE United in Countering Violent Extremism (#UnitedCVE) campaign. This event was presented as part of “#mxdzone – Hamburg Forum for Dialogue”, an innovative live discussion area to foster exchange between delegations of OSCE participating States and civil society, media and youth.

Every semester the global Peer-2-Peer: Challenging Extremism (P2P) initiative invites university students from around the world to identify, develop and pitch a digital or social initiative, product or tool to educate and empower their peers to challenge violent extremism.