Brief

Preventing and countering violent extremism

Local solutions to global challenges

The contemporary rise of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE), reflects a growing international focus on joining forces in addressing transnational violence, extremism and terrorism. Such security threats are increasingly understood to travel across national boundaries, and therefore requiring responses based on global cooperation.

P/CVE is also gaining momentum as an approach that complements more traditional counterterrorism (CT) activities. Where CT mainly focuses on combatting terrorists, P/CVE aims at preventing individuals from becoming terrorists by using softer people-centred measures. Such measures include: out-reach programs focused on individuals and societies seen to be ‘at risk’, initiatives aimed at detecting and monitoring signs of radicalization as well as efforts to build the resources and resilience of communities to themselves take action against radicalisation, and exit programs designs to de-radicalise already radicalised individuals.

The brief discusses how this global outlook and people-centred focus of CVE offer possibilities for new forms of cooperation. It also shows how these engagements come with new risks and challenges of developing efficient frameworks for people-centred efforts, and of finding local solutions to global problems. In this regard, it is key that the emphasis on international CVE cooperation and export of CVE expertise is matched by careful assessment of the politics and institutions of the targeted country, while the focus on individuals ‘at risk’ must be matched by analysis of the specific relational and political contexts these individuals are embedded in.

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The politics of Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism.
Finding local solutions to global challenges