A/HRC/33/29 is particularly important considering that there seems to be insufficient information available with respect to the effectiveness, and the gender and human rights impact, of some newly set up policies.48 Furthermore, the evaluation of policies, programmes and activities contributes to ensuring that lessons are learned, programmes can be duly adjusted and good practices distilled. Making the results of such evaluations public also fosters trust and ensures transparency. 28. Recurring components of best practices and lessons learned on human rights-compliant programming aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism relate to community engagement and empowerment, youth engagement and online measures to prevent and counter violent extremism. A. Community engagement and empowerment 29. Establishing a trust-based relationship between communities and authorities, including security forces, as well as social and educational services, helps build resilience and prevent violence. Initiatives related to preventing and countering violent extremism tend to be more successful when there is a pre-existing relationship with the community. In cases in which the State authorities have not previously engaged with a community, or if engagement happened largely through security forces, such programmes that are carried out by the authorities, or that visibly involve them, may cause further tensions. Routinely investing in community engagement helps to deflect such risks and provides broad benefits that go beyond preventing and countering violent extremism. However, community engagement will not counteract those factors favouring violent extremism that are external to the community. The authorities therefore also need to address such external factors. 30. In order to be effective and take into account contextual and individual triggers of violent extremism, programming aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism should be based on needs assessments that are gender sensitive and that meaningfully involve relevant stakeholders and affected groups, including civil society, as well as community and religious leaders. However, if engagement mainly focuses on male community and religious leaders, there is a risk of leaving out women. Thus the comprehensive engagement of women at all levels is crucial in this context. Such an approach also facilitates local ownership by the groups or communities that the programme is intended to benefit. 31. Due care should be taken when devising and implementing such programmes to ensure that they have no direct or incidental effects that would result in discrimination, stigmatization and racial or religious profiling. This is particularly important, as targeting specific communities may lead to further marginalization and grievances. Fully and inclusively engaging communities in designing the programmes aimed at them is the best way to avoid unintended negative consequences and to guarantee that such programmes address the political, social, security-related and other issues identified by the community as matters of concern. 32. In a number of States, security forces, in particular law enforcement agencies, seem to be at the forefront of programmes to prevent and counter violent extremism. While security actors may play a constructive role in these initiatives, the nature and extent of their involvement needs to be carefully devised, as it may be detrimental to relations with the community if the counter-terrorism agenda is mixed with the community cohesion 48 Peter Romaniuk, “Does CVE work? Lessons learned from the global effort to counter violent extremism” (Global Center on Cooperative Security, 2015). 11