Abstract
Governments around the world have developed a range of policy approaches for countering violent extremism (CVE) in education. In this article we review a United Kingdom (UK) government website offering a library of resources (Educate Against Hate), evaluating the extent to which it is consistent with human rights principles. Whilst the advice, guidance and resources are varied and inconsistent, our analysis shows that children are frequently perceived as potential victims in need of protection, rather than individuals with agency, and they are rarely considered explicitly as rights holders. Whilst an equalities framework is used throughout the website, this is rarely linked to human rights, and does not prevent some stereotypical views of religious minorities being promoted. The article ends with an outline of how a more explicit engagement with children’s rights might help teachers to better align CVE policy with human rights education (HRE) principles.
Highlights
Governments around the world have developed a range of policy approaches for countering violent extremism (CVE) in education
In this article we review a United Kingdom (UK) government website offering a library of resources (Educate Against Hate), evaluating the extent to which it is consistent with human rights principles
We do not claim that resources which aim for CVE outcomes fail to achieve EDC/human rights education (HRE) outcomes; that would be an unfair criticism
Summary
Governments around the world have developed a range of policy approaches for countering violent extremism (CVE) in education. The need to conduct CVE policy within a human rights framework is clearly established in The Council of Europe (CoE) Convention on the prevention of terrorism, which states its purpose is ‘to enhance the efforts of Parties in preventing terrorism and its negative effects on the full enjoyment of human rights’ (CoE, 2005, Article 2) This commitment is echoed in the United Nations (UN) global counterterrorism strategy, which states that the UN’s efforts should be directed to ‘the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism’ (UN, 2006, Annex, parag.2(b)). It noted that a range of other rights might be affected or unduly restricted: freedom of expression; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; and freedom from discrimination (Ragazzi, 2017) These concerns are borne out in empirical research about the impact of CVE policies in education, which indicates that in practice educators are positioned in an ethically ambiguous situation. Focusing on the UK’s approach to CVE in education has wider implications, given the nature of ‘policy epidemics’ (Levin 1998) that characterise the ‘borrowing’ of policy from one jurisdiction to another, and the fact that the UK is often regarded as influential in this area (Kundnani and Hayes 2018)
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