Violent Extremism

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2018 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Purvis of Tweed]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the British Council Building Young People’s Resilience to Violent Extremism in the Middle East and North Africa, published on 12 December 2017, what are their priorities for preventing and countering violent extremism.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an office holder of the All-Party Group on the British Council. I was a member of a sub-committee of the all-party group which worked under the able chair, David Warburton MP, on putting together a report with my colleagues, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hodgson and Lady Suttie, and, for a period, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, all of whom are in their places. Together we forged a degree of consensus after receiving a great deal of evidence from witnesses, to whom we are grateful. Our report, which was published last year and formally earlier this year, I hope is a contribution to a debate which will continue to be of considerable importance not only for the United Kingdom but for our allies and partners across the MENA region. That work was ably supported by Siobhan Foster Perkins and Zafran Iqbal, who was at the British Council at the time. Without their support we would not have been able to put together our recommendations and conclusions.

Two weeks ago, 8 million children across the Middle East and North Africa sat their end-of-year school exams. Many will have done so after overcoming significant challenges—displacement, poverty, child labour, poor school transportation, overcrowding, lack of teachers and facilities and low-quality education. One in five of all children across the region live in conflict-affected countries. Those children do not only deserve our admiration but consideration of the role we can play to help them grow up in a safe, stable and prosperous region where they can realise their ambitions.

It might be only a tiny proportion of these young people who become violent as a result of being radicalised, but their violent behaviour has an impact on the wider age group across the whole of the region. The all-party group sub-committee therefore considered the best ways of improving resilience among young people to overcome this and whether our government policy needs to be reviewed. I am pleased that the Minister will be responding to this debate. He commands a great deal of respect not only from myself but across all parts of the House.

Nearly a third of the region’s population is aged between 15 and 29, with a further third aged below that. This demographic momentum, therefore, will last for at least two decades. The phenomenon of some young people using violence as an extension of their extreme views may also now be a long-term issue that requires long-term solutions, given the scale of violent conflict affecting the area. The sub-committee found that there was a need for new thinking. However, often the debate has not been helped by casual terminology. While we found a lack of consensus around definitions and language, we settled on the broad descriptions used by the United Nations on countering violent extremism by focusing on the so-called pull factors of the individual and preventing violent extremism by focusing on the so-called push factors of the wider community. However, even that division is too simplistic. We considered carefully whether we have the correct balance between CVE and PVE. We found that without undermining the security considerations of CVE, once extremism has exhibited itself, the balance should rest upon the priority being on PVE to reduce the risk factors in an individual’s capacity and the society’s ability to reduce vulnerability to violent extremism.

Those risk factors within the society fall within three broad areas—economic, civic and social. The economic factors in the region are stark. Research by UNICEF shows that in 11 League of Arab States countries, the under-18 population stands at approximately 118 million, or 6% of the world’s child population. Of those 118 million, 82 million—70%—live in acute or moderate poverty. There is no evidence to make a direct link between poverty and violent extremism. Nevertheless, countries afflicted by conflict and with such acute economic difficulties often present fertile ground where extreme ideology, and those who use it as a tool, can develop. A further complexity is that we know through research that the majority of the most extreme violent young people have educational qualifications. Simply looking at access to education will therefore not be so revealing. Rather, witnesses told the committee that the type and quality of education available to young people in the region was of the greatest importance.

The risk factors associated with the civic sphere are plain to see for anyone visiting the region. Too many young people see their respective Governments as unresponsive, unrepresentative, corrupt and distant. A body of research presented to the sub-committee suggests that this is likely to be a major continuing factor of risk in the region. The state capture of non-state actors is also very present. Social risk factors often receive the most publicity. The simplistic, often verging on the Islamophobic, characterisation of religious radicalism belies complex and multifaceted issues concerning young peoples’ beliefs, identities and loyalties. Work in Tunisia by the peacebuilding charity Search for Common Ground, which we met over there, shows clearly that young people in the region are not a homogeneous group and that drivers for radicalisation are often localised and differ from one community to another.

Given this highly complex set of circumstances in a deeply troubled region, we found that focusing on upstream activity—in other words, on the building of greater strength and capacity in communities and societies, and on the individual herself or himself—is a more effective route to follow than countering it once it has materialised. It is not, however, the straightforward route. The UN Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism states that,

“there is no authoritative statistical data on the pathways towards individual radicalization”.

However, we learned of clear evidence of programmes delivered by the British Council itself or by UK-based or international NGOs where interventions to reduce the risk factors for individuals and the community have worked and are continuing to work. I want to put on record my admiration for DfID’s staff and others within the charity sector who are doing sterling work.

The sub-committee made a number of recommendations which we believe would help build on this work, informed by our witnesses and the evidence we received. Our principal conclusion was that there needed to be scaled-up activity in preventing violent extremism along with better co-ordination of effort by both donor and recipient Governments as well as the international NGO community. This reflects our view that while there are many complexities and cross-overs between the push and pull factors in addressing violent extremism, we believe that the principal focus on investing in building the resilience of communities and the individuals living in them is the most effective way to build the capabilities of young people and the stability of their community, so that they reject the proponents of violent extremism and the ideology which they promote. They can also recover more quickly from violent extremism when it manifests itself in the community or their country.

I cannot do justice to the 28 conclusions and recommendations in the report, nor will I try to rattle them all off for the benefit of the Committee, but I know that neither will the Minister be able to respond in detail to them all today. I wish to highlight some which I feel are important, and I am sure that colleagues will highlight those that they consider to be the most important to them. First, relating to the risk factors within the economic and education systems in the region, we found a need for much greater co-ordination among its education ministries on data, statistics, skills gaps and curriculum reform. We believe that an annual MENA education forum, supported by the British Council and the Government, would have merit.

We also saw many examples of excellent programmes to support young people, but there has been insufficient consideration of how they can be scaled up. That is not easy but it is necessary. In the civic space, we saw that the benefits would be much greater collaboration between NGOs and Governments on the rollout and use of participation programmes, and we suggested consideration of a MENA-wide national citizen service. In the social sphere, we recommended that more work should be done to identify individual risk communities within countries and to share this data.

A recommendation to our Government is that they should set out a clear UK strategy for and approach to preventing violent extremism and offer more clarity on what programmes they fund and why. To address what we found to be the continuing lack of an evidence base on effectiveness, we called for donors to invest more effort into ensuring that programmes are evidence-based and carefully evaluated, with their impact being properly judged, and to publish the lessons learned for future programming.

We argued for much more work on the violent extremism theory of change and seeking consensus based on a much greater level of sharing good practice. To help bring this about, we called for a violent extremism community of practice, and I am delighted that the British Council has accepted this recommendation and will be convening it soon. I hope that the Government will offer their full support. This could be extremely valuable and, I believe, is the first of its kind. We also recommended that the Government should encourage other Governments in the region to commit to a whole-government response rather than the agenda being led by the security or interior ministries. Finally, we believe that all of this could be enhanced by the UK promoting a PVE charter which would show consistency of language and a consensus on the effectiveness of interventions, and would work in parallel with the UN.

I returned from the region at lunchtime today. Every time I visit the area I see small pockets of hope in a deeply troubled region. Those 8 million children who sat their exams will be just as anxious as our children will be later in the summer when they get their results. What our kids take for granted in this country, we should make every effort to ensure that children in the MENA region can also take for granted: a safe, open and tolerant society in which their ambitions can be fulfilled.