Youth Outreach at Universities for Countering Violent Extremism (YOU-CVE) is an ongoing initiative of CODE PAKISTAN. YOU-CVE was launched in June 2018 with an aim to assist the Government of Pakistan in countering the growing violent extremism on university campuses manifested through incidents such as the lynching of Mashal Khan in Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan and the surfacing of an Al-Qaeda inspired group called Ansarul Sharia Pakistan (ASP) in Karachi University.

We adopted a bottom-up approach to proposing a solution to the problem. In collaboration with the National Counter Terrorism Authority (NACTA) and the Higher Education Commission (HEC), CODE PAKISTAN organized the first-ever National Youth Conference on Countering Violent Extremism (NYC-CVE) in July 2018. The NYC-CVE gathered students and faculty members from 40 universities and 5 madrassahs to seek their input in agreeing on policy recommendations around 10 selected themes in connection with countering violent extremism on campuses. The NYC-CVE resulted in an agreement on a number of excellent recommendations around the 10 selected themes. The most valuable aspect of NYC-CVE recommendations was that they were finalized after a thorough two-day deliberation with the students and faculties of the participating universities.

Our responsibility under YOU-CVE was not over after we had derived the policy recommendations through NYC-CVE. YOU-CVE incorporates an element of working toward actionizing the recommendations of NYC-CVE. Therefore, NYC-CVE was followed up with extensive consultations with 17 universities from across Pakistan, in collaboration with the HEC, to seek their input in devising and developing localized and culturally sensitive action plans for the implementation of the recommendations of NYC-CVE. The following 15 universities were thus consulted between October and December 2018:

Khyber Medical University, Peshawar;
International Islamic University, Islamabad;
University of Malakand, Chakdara;
Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore;
Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Lahore;
Bahria University, Islamabad;
Islamia College, Peshawar;
Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences (BUITEMS), Quetta;
Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi;
NED University, Karachi;
AJK University, Muzaffarabad;
Agriculture University, Faisalabad;
Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi;
Bahauddin Zakaria University, Multan; and
Islamia University, Bahawalpur;

We have prepared a detailed consolidated report on the recommendations of the National Youth Conference and development of Action Plans for the implementation of those recommendations in consultation with the visited universities. We submitted the YOU-CVE report to the HEC in March 2019.

Since we have been among the pioneers of bridging the gap between universities and madrasahs through our University Madrasah Interaction Program, we initiated a similar exercise of consulting the leading madrasahs of Pakistan on devising and developing the action plans for the recommendations of the NYC-CVE under YOU-CVE from March 2019. Thus, true to our slogan of promoting peace, tolerance, and inclusivity in Pakistan, YOU-CVE would be an inclusive process, also involving leading representative institutions of the estimated over 3 million students of madrassahs studying in an estimated over 30,000 madrassahs across Pakistan.

In November 2019, as part of YOU-CVE, we published a one of its kind comprehensive research report on countering violent extremism on university campuses. The report was based on our consultations with relevant stakeholders, including university students and faculties over the project duration, as well as an extensive open-source literature review