A group of 18 participants of the International Pearl Fishers Action Learning Group (IALG) 2015/16 gathered at Hague, the Netherlands, from November 8 and 14 to map out strategies to tackle violent extremism.

The IALG is one of the major overseas development training programmes participated by Police College. This senior international leadership programme aims at grooming leaders for law enforcement agencies.

The IALG 2015/16 is jointly organised by the Netherlands Police and the Royal Netherlands Marechaussee, the Australian Federal Police and the New South Wales Police as well as the Force. The participants will meet three times over the course of the programme to find solutions to common challenges.

This year, Police College Deputy Director Cho Ming-lung joined the Programme Management Team as a representative of the Force. In the first seminar at Hague in November, 18 IALG participants, including Senior Superintendent Chiu Wing-lan from the Force and other participants from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Norway, Denmark, UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Interpol and Europol got together to explore partnership in combating radicalisation. At the same time, renowned academics, counter-terrorism experts and representatives from Eurojust, the International Criminal Court and Europol shared their knowledge, expertise and views.

The participants will meet again in the second seminar in Hong Kong to be hosted by the Force in March 2016. The last seminar will be held in Sydney, Australia, in June 2016, where the participants will present their research findings in the annual Pearls in Policing conference to the top executives of the police and law enforcement agencies around the world.