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Yesterday, I retweeted an article by @lizziedearden reporting that a UN Special Rapporteur had found that #Prevent breached human rights, calling for it to be scrapped. The @NILC disputed the accuracy of this.
So what exactly did the UN say?
ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HR…
Yesterday, I retweeted an article by @lizziedearden reporting that a UN Special Rapporteur had found that #Prevent breached human rights, calling for it to be scrapped. The @NILC disputed the accuracy of this.
So what exactly did the UN say?
ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HR…
As noted, the report was not focussed just on the UK but on CVE programmes globally. As the most elaborate and well funded CVE programme in the world and a key reference point for the globalisation of CVE policy making, its reasonable to assume she did have #Prevent in mind.
1. There was the age old problem of trying to counter or prevent a concept which remains undefined. She found that “the term ‘extremism’ has no purchase in binding international legal standards”. 
One of the problems critics of #Prevent have with its policies is the lack of clear definition of ‘extremism’ which we recall Theresa May even famously struggling to explain on @BBCr4today
2. The Special Rapporteur criticised the methodology and science underpinning CVE programmes commenting that there was “little or no robust monitoring and evaluation of such programmes and practices, leaving a real gap in assessment of their impact on the ground.”
She singled out the ERG22+ system used by #Prevent in the UK for specific criticism. The problems with using this pseudoscience as a method of countering extremism was slammed by @UK_CAGE as far back as 2016 cage.ngo/wp-content/upl…
The report by @UK_CAGE led to over 140 academics writing an open letter to the Guardian protesting against the lack of transparency and scrutiny of the science that underpins the strategy.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/s…
theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/s…
The Guardian article also mentioned that the Royal College of Psychiatrists had released a position statement expressing concerns about the secrecy shrouding the evidence base for the risk assessment.
3. Lack of transparency, including in the scientific underpinning of the programmes, was another criticism the Special Rapporteur made of CVE programmes. Again it’s not certain, but it is reasonable to assume she may have been commenting on #Prevent.
4. The Special Rapporteur expressed concern about the focus on creating counter narratives despite the lack of data that such an approach worked “absent a meaningful commitment to and the delivery of transformed material conditions on the ground.”
Creating counter-narratives has been at the core of #Prevent’s work through its Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU) which was also exposed by @UK_CAGE in 2016 in this groundbreaking report cageuk.org/wp-content/upl…
5. The Special Rapporteur had a problem with CVE programmes masquerading as female empowerment projects, something #Prevent is also quite keen on through programmes such as Families Against Stress and Trauma (FAST), and #MakingAStand Campaign which securitise motherhood.
6. The Special Rapporteur agreed with Asma Jahangir’s findings specifically re #Prevent in 2008 that it was not the Govt’s role to seek out the “true voices” of any religion or define the contents of a religion. 12 yrs later, the UN has felt the need to repeat her words.
7. The Special Rapporteur was concerned with the securitisation of teachers, social workers, health care professionals & others. This is likely to be referring to the statutory duty on such people to prevent extremism under s26 of the Counter Terrorism & Security Act 2015.
8. The Special Rapporteur was concerned about how the term “extremism” was utilised as “a device to silence, limit the scope of and target civil society actors” who hold them to account. Could this be why @UK_CAGE is repeatedly targeted as “extremist”?
The unprecedented level of smears thrown by the government at @UK_CAGE and those who associate with it is precisely what is being warned against. Yet, this organisation on a shoe-string budget & without a bank account continue to expose the government’s excesses like no other.
9. The Special Rapporteur calls for organisations like @UK_CAGE to be included in policymaking and warns against excluding those who tell the government the reality even if it is not what they want to hear.
10. Linked to the last point, the Special Rapporteur warns against the following people. Again the comments are in general format but seem to form a precise definition of the #Prevent careerists in the UK today.
So yes, perhaps the Sp Rapporteur did not directly single out #Prevent or call for it to be scrapped but you would have to have your head buried deep in the sand to think she meant anything else in light of her criticisms.
Sorry for mistakenly tagging in @NILC . They of course said nothing, it should have been @NatCoordPrevent
Having now read the report on a laptop as opposed to my phone, it is even clearer that there are explicit references to prevent - see footnotes 26 (re @ExtinctionR being included as ‘extremist’ list), footnote 70 re Prevent Duty and FN 88 re securitisation of women’s space.
Now that the Sp Rapporteur has confirmed that she was referring to #Prevent, I look forward to revised comments from @bricksilk @NatCoordPrevent @WillBaldet & others who assumed otherwise. Or perhaps @NiAolainF is just another unrepresentative Islamist who shouts the loudest...
