Description
In the last few years, the Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) agenda has come to dominate global security agendas and is presented as a shift away from the ‘hard’ security approaches of the ‘war on terror’ towards a ‘softer’ focus on addressing the underlying drivers of violence, such as poverty, unemployment and marginalisation. PVE frameworks are increasingly used by development actors. Whilst a number of scholars have questioned the effectiveness of PVE in reducing violent extremism, less attention has been given to how the agenda has been taken up by development actors in the Middle East and North Africa and the gendered and racialised consequences of such activities. Based on a postcolonial feminist reading of relevant policy documents (e.g. PVE National Action Plans, reports by international and local non-governmental, governmental and intergovernmental agencies) and semi-structured interviews with international and local development practitioners, this paper will explore the impact of PVE frameworks on development work in the Middle East and North Africa, with a specific focus on women’s groups and faith-based organisations in Jordan and Lebanon. The paper examines the racialized dimensions of the PVE agenda alongside the tensions and ambivalences that are present when women activists and faith-based organisations engage with it. Overall, we argue that the PVE agenda may simultaneously empower some civil society actors at the local level whilst reproducing dominant structures of gendered and racialised power at other geopolitical scales.
