Furthering critical awareness in deradicalisation initiatives
In the course of the INDEED project VICESSE carried out a small study (online-questionnaire & in-person focus group) to explore the awareness of PCD practitioners (PVE, CVE, de-radicalisation) on GELSA (gender, ethical, legal and social aspects) of PCD programmes and initiatives.
The results show a high level of awareness and problem sensitivity among PCD practitioners regarding privacy and data protection issues and the risk of discrimination in the context of PCD interventions in the partner countries surveyed.
However, there are also - among the responses collected - organisational deficits in providing guidance and resources on the gender specificity of radicalisation processes (and the resulting PCD responses to them), as well as in engaging communities in PCD work and considering potential adverse impacts of PCD work on them.
Issues of gender or diversity are only dealt with superficially, and rarely taken up in a reflective way. This is an issue that has also become apparent in the project’s other focus groups and online surveys of practitioners working within the field of PVE/CVE/De-radicalisation. Links between sexism and radicalisation/extremism, gender specific pathways into radicalisation processes, and different motivations, roles, and vulnerabilities of men, women, and non-binary people are not adequately addressed. Against this background, GELS aspects in general, and gender aspects in particular should not be reduced to measuring the gender ratio of participants to the initiative, but reflect gender specificity in more depth as it is relevant to the whole phenomenon of radicalisation.
Even though our projects’ findings indicate a high level of sensitivity of first-line practitioners in the field of PVE/CVE/De-radicalisation towards ethical issues in P/CVE/DeRAD work with regard to the risk of stigmatisation or discrimination, on programmatic level most of the initiatives relegate this dimension to the ethical implementation of the initiative, and only few initiatives/evaluations have taken these ethical aspects issues into critical account, at times providing thoughtful considerations of potential unwanted outcomes of their work or even deliberating about their use of terminology and/or deradicalization policies and practices. Against this background, it is important to consider ethical aspects beyond research and initiative implementation ethics (informed consent) but reflect the on the ground sensitivity to potential stereotyping and (reinforcing) discrimination also on programmatic level and as an explicit perspective in evaluations.
Legal issues were mostly brought up in general mentions of legality or the legal context of a certain initiative or evaluation, as well as general descriptions of terms such as hate crime, however were not discussed in terms of human rights of the clients affected by the initiative. Against this background, legal aspects are not limited to ensuring legality of the type of initiative (legal basis), but should be reframed to a “human rights-based approach” which expands a narrow legal view to a conceptual approach to planning and evaluating initiatives.
Interestingly, social aspects seem to be an area referred to most frequently in initiatives/evaluations and indicate an awareness of risks and potential positive as well as negative outcomes. Social communities are recognised as important but perhaps not yet sufficiently often involved in all stages of initiatives/evaluations. This is in contrast to the questionnaire and focus group conducted within the INDEED project where P/CVE/DeRAD practitioners indicated to lesser degree that considerations to the wider communal and societal impacts of their work had been made part of the daily work routine and organisational make up. Against this background, there is a high risk of a dissociation between programmatic ideals and practices on the ground with respect to inclusion of communities and considering the potential unintended consequences for communities. Program designers as well as evaluators need to include these two aspects into their analysis and go beyond its formal inclusion but investigate how communities and stakeholders have been made part of the initiatives’ implementation.