2016

Women and Preventing Violent Extremism: The US and UK Experiences.

This paper analyses the American strategy “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States”, which adopts a community-based approach to building resilience against violent extremism. The US strategy makes no reference to gender and women. The analysis compares the US strategy to similar UK strategies to offer recommendations for gender and human rights responsiveness. The working paper recommends: acknowledging women’s (in)security is linked to state (in)action in counter-terrorism (specifically referencing Islamophobia in society); introducing good-governance, local oversight, and gender sensitive safeguards to funding projects aimed at promoting community resilience; not using PCVE for surveillance and intelligence gathering; not supporting organisations that are not inimical to human rights, particularly women’s rights; value women’s rights and women’s empowerment as meaningful irrespective of their contribution to national security; avoid gender and racial stereotypes; and include gender sensitive mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation.