PerspectivePreventing Violent Extremism during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic

While the world’s attention appropriately focuses on the health and economic impacts of COVID-19, the threat of violent extremism remains, and has in some circumstances been exacerbated during the crisis. The moment demands new and renewed attention so that the gains made to date do not face setbacks.

Eric Rosand, Khalid Koser, and Lilla Schumicky-Logan write for Brookings’s Order from Chaos program that

Headlines over the past few weeks have suggested that violent extremist and terrorist groups ranging from Colombian hit squads to ISIS affiliates in sub-Saharan Africa to far-right extremists in the United States are watching the disruption caused by COVID-19. Many are at least aware of the potential to benefit from that disruption, and in some cases they are already taking advantage.

As with so much reporting on and analysis of the pandemic, however, there is a shortage of data and evidence to support the headlines. The Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF), where two of the authors work, has surveyed 50 local NGOs it supports to build community resilience against violent extremism in eight developing countries worldwide, to try to understand the nature of the threat.

The authors describe the six themes which their investigation shows as recurring, and then conclude:

Going forward, international development assistance should be viewed less as a zero-sum game about which priorities to fund and more about how to make better use of the increasingly limited resources to address multiple ones. In many cases, it should be about investing in local communities and NGOs to allow them to do so, while gradually becoming self-reliant. At the end of the day, this shift may be necessary to ensure that PVE continues to get the attention it merits in a post-COVID-19 world where the threat of extremist violence remains.