I thank you for your participation at this Seminar on ‘Prevention of Violent Extremism in Bangladesh: Graduation and Sustainability’. We are gathered here to mark the end of a chapter of our effective engagement with the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) over nearly ten years. I thank Dr. Khalid Koser and his colleague for flying down to Dhaka to join us for this graduation event.
The origin of GCERF can be traced back to the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism convened by President Barack Obama in February 2015 that Bangladesh also attended at the Foreign Minister level. It was a time when Bangladesh was experiencing a surge in criminal activities by those we may now identify as ‘violent extremists’ targeting writers, publishers, bloggers and others. As a follow-up to the White House Summit, GCERF was conceived of and brought into existence through a consultative process that Bangladesh was again invited to actively participate. In course of GCERF’s formative stage, Bangladesh decided, with the approval of our Hon’ble Prime Minister, to serve as a pilot country along with Kenya and Nigeria to test on the ground a ‘whole-of-society approach’ in real terms.
The GCERF model was unique in many ways as it focused on building community-based resilience as a safeguard against violent extremism and radicalization by financing localized interventions. It was not quite an easy exercise to identify the local level organisations that could pass the eligibility criteria and fiduciary standards to operate among target groups in certain vulnerable locations. Likewise, it was also somewhat of a novel experience to set up a Country Support Mechanism (CSM) comprising representatives from the government, civil society, think tanks and development partners to advise and monitor the conduct of GCERF-funded projects. Earlier this morning, I chaired perhaps the last meeting of CSM, at least for now, as GCERF has decided to move on to the graduation phase in terms of its engagements with Bangladesh.
It is certainly a critical juncture as GCERF marks its first eventual exit from a pilot country based on its overall assessment of the gains made in preventing violent extremism at the community level. We have learnt through GCERF engagements that quick fixes are not sufficient; instead, what we need are long-term, sustainable innovations and solutions to address the root causes of violent extremism so that the communities themselves can act as vanguards and first responders to complement the work of the State apparatus. It would be crucial for us to preserve this lesson learnt in our local contexts in order to sustain the progress made through yet another model of partnership between the government and the civil society. We remain assured that GCERF would continue to assess the sustainability of progress over a period, and would remain available to redeploy in case Bangladesh required it do so. We must stay sensitized to the potential sources of risks and challenges, including from the prolonged Rohingya humanitarian situation pending a durable solution to be found in neighbouring Myanmar – where the crisis had its origin.
We must not, therefore, feel complacent that violent extremism has been eliminated altogether; but we can draw comfort from the fact that GCERF has equipped some of our communities with the tools and modalities to resist and withstand the spread of violent extremism. In line with our Hon’ble Prime Minister’s directives, we have been able to devise proven and effective means to engage our youth, women, religious and opinion leaders to create guardrails against violent extremism sinking its roots within our communities. We need to continue supporting such community initiatives through investing in constructive narratives to counter the harmful messages propagated by violent extremists, increasingly through online platforms. We cannot compromise with the ‘zero tolerance’ approach to terrorism in all its forms and manifestations with a view to building a peaceful, just and inclusive society.
On our part, we would like to assure GCERF of our continued engagement with its work, including through its Governing Board. We hope that the exit plan implemented in Bangladesh would help advance GCERF’s work in other comparable settings. It is certainly a testimony to GCERF’s success that starting with three pilot countries, it has now been able to expand its work into 23 countries around the world. With the growing rise of intolerance, xenophobia and polarization leading to divisive politics in some parts of the world, in may be required of GCERF to use its experiences even in settings that have traditionally been considered to be the key sources of funding only. What we can share from Bangladesh’s experience is that an openness to acknowledge and tackle the challenge is always the best bet for societal ownership and engagement towards necessary course correction.
To conclude, I wish to thank GCERF for its diligent work in Bangladesh that we believe it can further build on and showcase. As the ex-officio CSM Chair, I must thank all members of the mechanism who have contributed to its work over the years. We are particularly grateful to the principal recipients of funding along with their partners for customizing their interventions in response to the needs within their designated communities, and for being able to mobilize their target groups towards a ‘theory of change’ despite occasional challenges coming from different quarters. Going forwards, this is the kind of resolve and resilience from within our communities that we wish to retain from our overall GCCERF experience.
In that spirit, I invite you to actively engage in the ensuing sessions of this Seminar to help chart a way ahead for sustaining Bangladesh’s graduation from GCERF engagements for now.