Thread by @LarryAttree

This deserves a proper response – especially because yes I have read your recommendations and there is so much we agree on – so let me do my best #PVE #ReformUNCT

https://twitter.com/sanambna/status/1271156131323416580

First, no one is or should be saying that local CSOs shouldn’t be
✅stopping violence
✅challenging and changing the behaviour of all those responsible
✅describing their work in whatever way makes it most safe and effective

So yes, but as I wrote a couple of years back, there are some important questions to ask about how we should engage
saferworld.org.uk/long-reads/sho…

After all, when you have an agenda like C/PVE that violent, extreme, anti-women leaders like these are so comfortable with, CSOs need to think twice before embracing greater partnership

What worried me was the headline in your tweet, which seems to invite governments to extend what they are doing to pull civil society into PVE efforts – as if PVE would no longer be problematic if only civil society was more involved

This concerns me first because so many CSOs we talk to do see PVE as distorting and defunding work for rights, equality and peaceful change

For example, here’s what the women say at @NoWomenNoPeace
gaps-uk.org/prioritise-pea…

In the process of setting up a new CSO network on Security Policy Alternatives, here’s what those we surveyed said about PVE and shrinking space [as you can see, really widespread concern]

Women's rights orgs we work with in Libya & Yemen have told us that they are not getting international support for the broad range of what they do - only the CVE bits - putting them at risk + undermining a long-term human/women's rights agenda by gutting their capacity/energy

Taking a global perspective Special Rapporteur @NiAolainF has documented how PVE is part and parcel with the stranglehold on global civil society

Or, as Romanniuk puts it in 'Does CVE work?'
globalcenter.org/wp-content/upl…

This is particularly troubling given that possibly the biggest global challenge we face right now is that ‘for the first time since 2001, autocracies are in the majority’ v-dem.net/en/ @vdeminstitute

For so many of our colleagues, PVE is making this worse.

Also, when conflicts relabelled as problems of ‘extremism’, this often:
❌Implicitly lets states off the hook
❌Distracts from addressing underlying grievances
❌Takes dialogue + conflict resolution off the table
❌Stigmatises/endangers ‘suspect’ populations + 'radical' thinkers

I know you all already know all this, and are doing brilliant work to make counter-terrorism less bad – but many CSOs feel a less securitised, more transformative agenda than PVE is both necessary and possible + want governments + the UN to know we need their help for to build it

If you made it this far, please check the arguments @Saferworld @jordan_street07 @atomicsentences make about the UN's role in counter-terror and C/PVE their new paper here:
saferworld.org.uk/resources/publ…