A/HRC/43/46 report are rooted in the absence of a clear definition of almost every word in the phrase “preventing and countering violent extremism”. Making policy measures and regulatory frameworks entirely reliant on a non-defined concept that is by nature context-dependent can never be compatible with the principles of proportionality and necessity in which human rights are grounded. Doing so ultimately allows for a discriminatory or overbroad application of those measures to individuals and groups that legitimately exercise their fundamental freedoms. As with terrorism, overbroad preventing and countering violent extremism definitions and practices are infecting the “ordinary” law, creating new forms of legal exceptionalism, including the retraction of due process rights, the resort to exceptional courts and the imposition of severe penalties for security offences. As with terrorism, the widespread crackdown on human rights defenders and civil society activists under the guise of countering extremism is a predictable feature. In a notable irony, States report their statistics on “terrorism and extremism” charging and processing to the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1373 (2001) concerning counter-terrorism or other global entities, such as the Financial Action Task Force, promoting such numbers as evidence of their commitment to countering terrorism, and are rewarded for their “good practice” of adhering to global obligations to prosecute, regulate and defeat terrorism, despite the contradictory realities of the human rights and rule of law compromises that are part and parcel of that landscape. The lack of definitional clarity is only one of the reasons that preventing and countering violent extremism challenges human rights in complex and multiple ways. III. “Science” of preventing and countering violent extremism 16. The Special Rapporteur has met with many government officials who claim that their programmes aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism work. When they are pressed for evidence, methodology and assessment methods, it quickly becomes clear that there is little or no robust monitoring and evaluation of such programmes and practices, 27 leaving a real gap in assessment of their impact on the ground. The same lacuna is true for projects supported by the United Nations aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism, which implies, at a minimum, a systematic lack of adherence to the United Nations due diligence policy. As one humanitarian non-governmental organization noted: “whether development interventions actually reduce violent extremism is at best unproven. Evidence that conscious [countering violent extremism] approaches have successfully reduced extremism is scarce. This does not prevent exaggerated claims being made as to the likely efficacy of particular interventions, especially in the education sector.”28 In fact, the Special Rapporteur finds that, despite some increase in the knowledge base on the drivers and tipping point of violent extremism, the debate thereon is often largely dominated by private actors and consultants who are self-proclaimed experts or influenced by government policies that continue to pursue issues that have been scientifically disproven, 29 which highlights the challenge of linking research and evidence to policies and programmes to ensure that they are not ineffective and counterproductive, exacerbating the grievances on which terrorism feeds.30 Academic experts, professionals and civil society actors who could 27 28 29 30 6 Some attempts are being made but are marginal to the sector scale of projects and spending. See UNDP, “Report on Oslo II”. Norwegian Refugee Council, “Countering violent extremism and humanitarian action”, position paper, August 2017. D. Elaine Pressman and John Flockton, “Violent extremist risk assessment: issues and applications of the VERA-2R in a high-security correctional setting” in Andrew Silke (ed.), Prisons, Terrorism and Extremism: Critical Issues in Management, Radicalization and Reform (Routledge, 2014); Akimi Scarcella and others, “Terrorism, radicalization, extremism, authoritarianism and fundamentalism: a systematic review of the quality of psychometric properties of assessments”, PLOS ONE, vol. 11, No. 12; and Allard R. Feddes and Marcello Gallucci, “A literature review on methodology used in evaluating effects of preventive and de-radicalization interventions”, Journal for Deradicalization, vol. 5, No. 1. European Union-funded research; see Kundnani and Hayes, “The globalization of countering violent extremism policies”.