Mapping the role of international organisations in Preventing Violent Extremism through Education: a comparative analysis of discourses and practices

• In Event: Educational approaches to preventing violent extremism

Proposal

Over the past two decades, there has been a marked increase of terrorism and violent extremism across the globe, ranging from radical religious movements to white supremacists. However, it is only in the past five years that international organisations have started acknowledging and appreciating the ‘soft power’ of education to either foster or prevent radicalisation and violent extremism. Dozens of organisations such as Hedayah, OSCE and RAN (Radicalisation Awareness Network) have recently - and increasingly- highlighted the importance of education in fostering an identity of ‘resilience’ and have been given an explicit mandate to facilitate such policies through new initiatives and practices. In addition, when in 2016, ‘Preventing Violent Extremism through Education’ (PVE-E) was given a central role on the global stage by the UN, UNESCO’s actions in this area have been rapidly expanding within the framework of Global Citizenship Education and Education for Sustainable Development, in particular as part of Target 4.7 of Agenda 2030. However, up to date there has been no systematic analysis of the role of these international organisations. This paper fills in this gap by providing a mapping of the role of these organisations, taking a comparative perspective in order to delineate the various practices and discursive constructs of PVE-E that are mobilised in the international arena. Using a theoretical framework of international organisations as ‘normative powers’ that has hitherto only been used to analyse the power of the European Union in the discipline of International Relations (Rosecrance 1998; Manners, 2002), this study asks not only how PVE-E is represented within and between these different organisational discourses, but also reveals the normative values and ideological assumptions underpinning these representations. What exactly are these norms in terms of PVE-E and how are they constructed & legitimised? Do the norms have an ‘intersubjective transcultural validity’ or do they exhibit a ‘form of cultural imperialism’ (Sjursen, 2006:249)? Is there evidence of a critically reflective framework in their representations or are there problematic assumptions that might be counterproductive to preventing violent extremism? Finally this study offers an indication of the impact of these organisations on a global scale through a comparative review of their outputs and practices, allowing us to draw conclusions about their strengths and weaknesses. In the new transnational order such questions are of particular urgency as they expose relations of power in terms of who is setting the agenda, how this differs from earlier practices, and what types of hegemonic articulations of educational identities are emerging from them.

Author

• Eleni Christodoulou, Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research