About the phenomenon of terrorism among women

The first round table on the theme “Terrorism among women: development tendency and preventive measures” was held at the Academy of Law Enforcement Agencies within the framework of the Regional Hub.

Representatives of state of law enforcement agencies, scientific community, non-state organizations, international and national experts took part in the round table.

The event is devoted to the discussion of the problem of women participation in the terrorist activities, reasons and development tendency of this phenomenon in order to develop effective counteraction strategy. Leading foreign and national experts were as the experts.

The Acting Rector of the Academy Shakir Shayakhmetov noted the urgency of studying women’s terrorism in the light of contemporary social-political processes. He stressed that the study of the gender aspect of terrorist is necessary for understanding the identity of terrorist, analyse their motives and causes of crimes. It is important part of terrorism preventing strategy and developing countermeasures.

According to the statistics, women took considerable part of terrorist organizations in West European countries. In Germany – 47%, in Italy – 44%, in France – 46%, in Spain – 46%. A lot of women are counted in terrorist organizations in the Latin America and Palestine. Interpol’s data shows that almost the half of terrorists wanted in the world are women.

Forum participants shared their opinions about the topical aspects of this problem, discussed the factors of emergence of suicide bombers, the need to study their personality and motives of behaviour for the development of preventive measures.

International expert, professor from Bulgaria Tatyana Dronzina told about the features of terrorism among women and shared results of scientific investigations in this field.

Tatyana Dronzina is co-author of the book “Women in the Islamic State” which tells about women who fight with terrorist organizations. The authors tried to find the answer to the question how the Islamic State is able to attract many women from different countries” by analysing their confessions, the reasons of joining terrorist organizations.

An important topic of the meeting was the issues of forensic investigation of cases where women are involved in terrorism and extremism. Representatives of non-governmental sector shared their experience in countering this phenomenon.

Participants of the meeting expressed their confidence that topical issues discussed in the forum will contribute to consolidation of efforts civil society, scientific institutions and law enforcement agencies to effectively implement a nation-wide strategy to counter the potential threats of terrorism.