The development of UNESCO’s programmes for preventing violent extremism: educational norms, institutional politics and declining legitimacy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since 2015, UNESCO has developed a variety of programmes for preventing violent extremism through education (PVE-E), under the framework of Global Citizenship Education and Target 4.7 of Agenda 2030. There have been formal board decisions to promote PVE-E, regional and international conferences and three key publications: a Teacher’s Guide (2016), a Guide for Policy-makers (2017), and a Youth-Led Guide (2017 and 2018). Through a discourse analysis of these key documents and a critical engagement with the institutional politics of UNESCO, the paper delineates the discursive constructs of PVE-E that are mobilised and sheds light on the under-researched politics of production that affect the nature of these texts. Taking a comparative perspective, the paper shows how PVE-E is represented within and between these different texts, exposes the normative values and ideological assumptions underpinning these representations and argues that we are ultimately witnessing a declining legitimacy of UNESCO’s normative power.