Prevention of Violent Extremism as Conducive to Terrorism
16 United Nations entities are implementing more than 270 prevention of violent extremism projects in 84 countries based on their request.
The Secretary-General designated the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism to act as the main focal point of the United Nations system for the prevention of violent extremism. UNOCT acts as the Secretariat to the Secretary-General’s High Level PVE Action Group, which under his chairmanship provides leadership, coherence, and strategic guidance on the United Nations PVE agenda. UNOCT maps UN activities in a regularly updated matrix of PVE projects at the global, regional and national levels across all priority areas of the PVE Plan, identifies and collects good practices, lessons learned and experiences, and established a virtual Global PVE Resource Group consisting of international experts from around the world. UNOCT/UNCCT launched a new project to facilitate coordinated “One-UN” support to requesting Member States on PVE policy-making and developing national and regional PVE plans. Through a strategic partnership with UNDP, the PVE programme seeks to provide coordinated support to requesting Member States and regional organizations in accordance with General Assembly resolution A/70/291 and the UN PVE Action Plan.
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) developed a comprehensive strategic framework in March 2016 entitled Preventing Violent Extremism through Inclusive Development and the Promotion of Tolerance and Respect for Diversity which was revised in February 2017. In September 2017, UNDP published a study on “The Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives and the Tipping Point for Recruitment, which was based on interviews with 718 individuals from Cameroon, Kenya, Niger, Nigeria, Somalia and Sudan. UNDP also released a Toolkit for design, monitoring and evaluation of PVE programming (2018). UNDP further led a facebook #ExtremeLives campaign (2017) – a series of Facebook Live interviews seeking to uncover the human face behind extremism in Asia. The campaign explored themes of radicalization, extremist recruitment methods, gender and extremism, and how ordinary people can counter extremist narratives. It has reached a total of 12 million Facebook users. All #ExtremeLives videos can be found on the UNDP Asia-Pacific Facebook Page.
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural organization (UNESCO) is empowering young women and men to live up to their potential as positive change actors through unique cross-sectoral work on. UNESCO seeks to assist countries to deliver education programmes that build young people’s resilience to violent extremist messaging and foster a positive sense of identity and belonging. This work is being undertaken within the framework of Global Citizenship Education. The UNESCO Youth team focuses on creating an enabling environment for the empowerment and democratic participation of youth, in order to ensure that young women and men have the opportunities to become active global citizens. Under media and online coalitions for PVE, UNESCO is also mobilizing stakeholders - particularly youth, policy-makers, researchers and media actors- to take effective actions, both online and offline, to prevent and respond to violent extremism and radicalization on the Internet.
The UN Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) has continued its efforts to promote interreligious and intercultural dialogue and mutual understanding. Within the framework of the #SpreadNoHate campaign, it partnered with the European Union and the United Nations Regional Information Centre in Brussels to organize a symposium on “Hate Speech Against Migrants and Refugees in the Media”.
