Over the last two years, I have been working—together with a small group of trusted colleagues and friends—on a project called KIRA Global. It started as a simple question: how can we protect young people before criminal and extremist structures get to them? Since then, we have refined the concept, tested the logic with practitioners and experts, and received interest from a few people who immediately understood its potential, even if the broader institutional world has been slower to react.
Today, I would like to share with you not a finished product, but a strategic blueprint: an ethical, non-profit, human-security model for early prevention. I invite you to read this short overview of KIRA Global and, more importantly, to give me your honest opinion—through your comments and your response to the poll attached to this post. Your feedback will help me decide how, and how far, to move this project in its next phase.
KIRA was designed as something much more specific and much more demanding: an ethical, human-security early-prevention model to protect young people from being recruited, manipulated or exploited by criminal groups, gangs and extremist organizations.
Today, KIRA Global exists as a strategic blueprint. The concept is mature, the architecture is defined – but the world around it has not yet caught up.
This article is not a funding pitch. It is a simple attempt to answer three questions:
- What problem was KIRA built to address?
- What exactly is KIRA – and what is it not?
- And finally: is there real support for this kind of platform in the current global context?
1. The problem we still refuse to see clearly
Across regions – from Latin America to Europe, from North America to the Middle East and Africa – criminal and extremist networks are learning faster than our institutions.
They recruit younger. They recruit earlier. And they recruit exactly where the State is weakest, slowest or simply absent.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, a region with barely 8% of the world’s population accounts for roughly one-third of all global homicides, with young people between 15 and 29 disproportionately represented among both victims and perpetrators. The Americas as a whole have the highest homicide rate for those under 18 anywhere in the world – more than three times the global average. Behind every statistic there is a pattern: boys and girls pulled into street economies, gangs, armed groups and criminal networks long before they reach adulthood.
In many cities, being young and poor has become a risk factor in itself. UNICEF has warned that for every youth homicide in the region, there are 20 to 40 additional young victims of non-fatal armed violence who require hospital care. That means that what we see in the news – the numbers we count as “deaths” – are only the visible tip of a much larger landscape of trauma, intimidation and daily fear.
In Mexico and Central America, cartels and splinter gangs openly compete for the bodies and futures of children. Investigations have documented how drug cartels recruit minors who start as lookouts or message carriers and, in some cases, are pushed into kidnapping, torture and murder before they are even 13 years old. New research shows that it is not some romantic “narco culture” that pulls them in, but the brutal combination of economic vulnerability, lack of decent jobs and the visibility of criminal power as the only “successful” path available. In neighbourhoods where school feels useless and legal work is precarious or humiliating, a gun, a motorcycle and fast cash are not just temptations; they are presented as the only rational choice.
At the same time, youth radicalization is accelerating in the digital space. In Europe, analyses of online extremism have shown how adolescents are deliberately targeted through algorithms, gaming communities and social networks, gradually nudged from mainstream content into more extreme material. Recent data indicate that teenagers have been involved in nearly two-thirds of ISIS-linked arrests in Europe, with the time between first exposure to extremist content and operational activity shrinking dramatically compared to the early 2000s. What used to take years of progressive indoctrination can now happen in months, sometimes weeks.
Beyond gangs and online extremism, there is the silent expansion of child soldiers and children in armed conflict. Despite decades of international commitments, the recruitment and use of children by armed groups is rising again. UN reporting and humanitarian organizations have documented tens of thousands of children affected each year by recruitment, killing, maiming, abduction and sexual violence, with 2024 and 2025 marking some of the worst years on record for grave violations against children in conflict zones.
If we strip away the diplomatic language, the reality is simple and brutal:
- Young people are dying in disproportionate numbers in the Americas because organised crime and urban violence have colonised their daily environment.
- Young people are being weaponised – as soldiers, messengers, killers, propagandists and “content” – in wars they did not start and do not control.
- Young people are being targeted as a market by cartels, gangs and extremist movements that treat vulnerability as an asset and despair as an opportunity.
And yet, most institutional responses remain reactive and punitive.
We invest in prisons, not in prevention. We invest in post-crisis management, not in early warning. We design frameworks, strategies and declarations, but on the street, the sequence is always the same:
after the gang, after the cartel, after the extremist cell, after the trauma.
We speak endlessly about “protecting youth”, but structurally we arrive late – when the young person is already inside the structure, already carrying the weapon, already marked by the criminal record or by the stigma of “radicalized”.
This is the gap that KIRA Global was conceived to address.
KIRA was not designed as another repressive tool or surveillance platform, but as a way to move the centre of gravity:
- from reaction to early prevention,
- from speeches to an operational, human-security model,
- from treating young people as a “risk” to treating them as the first line of protection.
In the next section, I will explain what KIRA Global is – and what it is not. But any honest discussion about solutions has to start here: with the recognition that our current systems are structurally late, structurally blind to the recruitment phase, and structurally unprepared to deal with the speed and sophistication with which criminal and extremist actors are capturing the next generation.
2. What KIRA Global is – and what it is not
KIRA Global was never meant to be “just an app”. It was conceived as an ethical, non-profit human-security model: a framework that can be implemented through technology, partnerships and community networks to protect young people before criminal and extremist structures capture them.
In other words, KIRA is both conceptual and operational
- Conceptual, because it defines a way of thinking about youth protection based on dignity, rights and prevention.
- Operational, because it can be translated into a concrete digital platform, local programmes and referral mechanisms that work in real communities.
It is also fundamental to state clearly: KIRA is free for users. Young people, families, teachers and community actors are not “clients” or “data points”; they are the very reason the model exists.
In simple terms, KIRA combines four core elements:
1. Anonymous help and alert channels. So that a young person, a friend, a parent or a teacher can raise a concern early – without fear, stigma or criminalization. The goal is not to “monitor” youth but to offer a safe doorway for those who feel pressure, manipulation or risk around them.
2. Educational and preventive content. Not moral sermons, not political messaging. KIRA provides clear, realistic information about how recruitment actually works, what risk situations look like in different contexts (street, school, online, migration routes), and what alternatives and exit options exist. The tone is practical, respectful and grounded in real experience.
3. Early-warning and referral pathways. KIRA is designed as a bridge, not an endpoint. When a risk is identified, the model offers structured ways to connect at-risk youth with support: mentors, social services, community programmes, mental health resources, faith-based initiatives or specialized NGOs – depending on what is appropriate and available in each territory.
4. Community-based engagement. KIRA is not a distant “central platform”. It is meant to work with and through communities: schools, local organizations, youth groups, faith communities, sports clubs, and trusted local actors who can make the model feel close, not imposed from above. The aim is to build a network of local guardianship, not a centralized control system.
Equally important is what KIRA is not:
- It is not a surveillance tool.
- It is not a police or intelligence platform.
- It is not an instrument of political propaganda.
- It is not a commercial “product” designed to monetize fear, attention or personal data.
From day one, KIRA Global was built on a different logic: ethical, non-profit, human-centred and security-aware at the same time.
Its purpose is not to control young people, but to protect their horizon of choice – so that they are not forced to choose between silence, fear and the false “opportunities” offered by cartels, gangs or extremist movements.
3. Ethical, human-security and early-prevention by design
The KIRA model rests on three deliberate design pillars. They are not slogans; they are the criteria against which every function, partnership and decision must be measured.
1. Ethical by design
In KIRA, protection comes before data. The dignity, safety and autonomy of the young person come before any institutional, political or organizational interest.
This has concrete implications:
- Confidentiality, non-criminalization and informed consent are not “features” – they are the core architecture.
- Any use of information must be strictly oriented toward support and protection, not control, profiling or repression.
- Young people are recognized as rights-holders, not as “risks to be managed”.
If a tool, partnership or decision compromises these principles, it does not belong in KIRA.
2. Human-security focus
KIRA frames recruitment and manipulation not only as “crime” or “terrorism”, but fundamentally as a human-security issue – a space where:
- security,
- social cohesion, and
- human rights
intersect.
This approach changes the map of actors.
It allows KIRA to work with a wider coalition:
- schools and universities,
- municipalities and local authorities,
- NGOs and community organizations,
- faith-based groups and youth initiatives,
- international organizations and responsible private sector actors.
Instead of reducing youth protection to a matter of “policing”, KIRA places it at the intersection of education, social policy, public health, community resilience and security.
3. Early prevention
The entire KIRA model is designed for the future.
Before the first “small favour” for a gang, before the first money transfer for a criminal network, before the first oath to a violent group, before the first irreversible act that will follow a young person for the rest of their life.
We already have many mechanisms to punish, manage and document the aftermath: after the crime, after the arrest, after the sentence, after the trauma.
KIRA asks a more uncomfortable and more strategic question:
Why are we not investing with the same seriousness, resources and creativity in the before?
Early prevention is not naïve optimism. It is the recognition that the lowest-cost, highest-impact intervention is the one that reaches a young person before cartels, gangs or extremist structures close over them.
4. Why KIRA is, today, a latent project
At this moment, KIRA Global is not a live platform.
It exists as a latent project – a strategic asset in waiting:
- a fully designed concept,
- a structured framework,
- a model that could be adapted and deployed as a pilot in a specific country, city or region.
The bottleneck is not technical. The architecture can be built with existing technology and realistic budgets.
The real gap lies in political will, institutional courage and strategic prioritisation: in deciding that protecting young people before they are captured by criminal and extremist structures is not a side issue, but a core priority for security and human development.
For now, KIRA operates as a conceptual reference model that can be:
- licensed or adapted by serious partners,
- used as a foundation for pilot programmes in specific territories,
- integrated into broader strategies on crime prevention, youth protection and counter-radicalization.
In practical terms, KIRA is a ready-to-activate architecture.
What is missing is not the “how”, but the collective decision that societies, institutions and responsible private actors are willing to invest in the before, not only in documenting and managing the after.
5. A direct question to you
In this article, I am not asking you to donate, sign or commit to anything.
I am asking a simpler, prior question.
I propose KIRA Global first as a father, and second as a security professional who has spent decades watching how, in these dangerous times, the recruitment of children and young people has accelerated across the world – in Canada and the United States, in Europe and Asia, in Latin America and the Middle East. Cartels, criminal gangs, radical groups and terrorist organizations are all competing for the same target: our youth.
Whether you are a parent or not, if you are concerned about what is happening to the next generation – in your own city, in your own country, in the digital spaces where young people now live – then KIRA is meant to speak to that concern.
It is also important for me to be transparent about what KIRA is institutionally.
KIRA Global was created by me, together with a small team within IOSI Global, but it is not an internal IOSI project and it is not owned by any security organization. The intention is for KIRA to become an independent, non-profit civil-society initiative, registered in Canada, that can be supported by different kinds of actors: not only security professionals, but also schools, NGOs, community groups, foundations, companies and individuals who care about youth protection.
With that in mind, I would like to ask you one simple, honest question:
Do you believe that an ethical, non-profit early-prevention platform for youth – like the KIRA Global model – is something that societies should support and amplify?
To make this tangible, I have opened a LinkedIn poll in the post where I share this text.
If you have a moment:
- Read this article.
- Reflect on your own country, your own city, your own community.
- Answer the poll with full honesty.
Your response will help me decide whether KIRA Global should remain only as a blueprint – or whether there is enough perceived value and support to push it toward a real pilot.
Thank you for reading. And thank you, above all, for taking youth protection seriously at a time when it is much easier to look the other way.
Poll question:
If an ethical, non-profit early-prevention platform like KIRA Global were launched to protect young people from criminal and extremist recruitment, how would you see it?
Options:
- A project I would actively support and share
- Positive, but my support would be limited
- Not sure – I need to understand more
- I don’t see it as a priority right now
Final words for those who might want to be part of KIRA
If something in KIRA Global speaks to you – as a parent, as a professional, as a leader or simply as someone who refuses to normalize what is happening to our youth – you are invited to be part of this journey.
KIRA is not “my” project in a proprietary sense. It is a shared space waiting to be built by organizations, companies, city leaders, teachers, social workers, security professionals and ordinary citizens who understand that early prevention is not a luxury, but a responsibility.
If you feel called to contribute – with ideas, partnerships, resources or your presence – just contact me. Together, we can shape KIRA as an independent, civil-society platform that belongs not to one institution, but to the communities and countries it is meant to serve.
Johan Obdola