Topic 3 Approaches to protecting places of worship
The UN (2019) has created the Plan of Action to Safeguard Religious Sites. A number of actions are included in this plan in order to, first, prevent and second, respond to, violent attacks.
- Engaging in interfaith dialogue
- Raising awareness on mutual respect
- Promotion of education on diversity
- Drafting of national action plans against violent extremism
- Engaging youth in decision making
- Building counter-hatred discourses
- Mapping of religious sites around the world
- Producing an interactive tool to capture the universality of religious sites
- Installing video surveillance (e.g., CCTV systems )
- Assigning of patrolling staff (from among the holy place’s staff)
- Keeping the valuables and funding in safe places
- Developing a security plan that will be often reviewed
(Mehl, 2021)
Furthermore, law enforcement agents should engage with religious leaders as well as with congregants and relevant staff members. Education and training especially for law enforcement employees and religious leaders is deemed of importance along with networking amongst such entities
(Haughton, 2019)
