A/HRC/43/46 humanity equally demands the protection of their human rights and inherent dignity. When civil society organizations give voice to the marginalized and vulnerable, including victims of terrorism, they provide a constructive route to accountability and transparency in counterterrorism work, including through activism, education, research, oversight and partnership with Governments. 43. However, civic space is shrinking and under sustained pressure in many parts of the world. The prevention and countering of violent extremism increasingly functions as a device to silence, limit the scope of and target civil society actors, when, paradoxically, advocacy for human rights is construed by the State as a form of “extremism”, giving States the leeway – enabled by the lack of a globally agreed definition on what constitutes violent extremism – to target civil society actors and human rights defenders as “extremists”. It is increasingly clear that human rights defenders are targeted in the strategies aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism pursued by Governments that recognize the value of the new nomenclature to be directed against those who disagree with them. 44. Less worrisome, but equally true, is that Governments see civil society actors as a vehicle for advancing policy aimed at countering violent extremism and have co-opted the efforts of civil society into a top-down agenda for preventing and countering violent extremism for political or security objectives. 90 Government targeting particularly applies to women and girls and is entirely oblivious to the vulnerabilities of such co-option or commodification for those who are generally on the margins legally, politically and economically. 91 Notably, failure to cooperate can be read as having a vulnerability to or sympathy for extremism, rarely as a form of independent survival and a commitment to singular, neutral and non-co-opted space.92 45. However, we should not abandon the value and roles of local communities and those most vulnerable to and affected by extremism. Not only are local engagements the most effective, but they also involve and engage at the local level, in all its complexity, in the making and implementation of policy, sustaining local communities and civil society in the most fraught and fragile settings. Paradoxically, those are often the communities most at risk of defunding and lack of support through the downstream effect of the risk-based approach to the financing of terrorism and the lack of a comprehensive humanitarian exemption. End users must be placed at the centre of the process, with outsiders playing a supporting role. 93 VI. United Nations programming 46. The United Nations has played a significant role in taking forward the agenda for preventing and countering violent extremism. At the national level, a number of United Nations entities, including UNDP, UNESCO, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women), provide direct support and expertise to the creation, implementation and operation of programming aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism. In addition to embracing the concept through resolutions and the Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism, the United Nations has assisted Member States in developing national plans of action and has set up a Working Group on Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism Conducive to Terrorism. There are currently over 400 projects aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism implemented by 18 United Nations entities, benefiting more than 90 Member States in all regions of the world and addressing all seven priority areas recommended in the Plan of Action. As a signatory to the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact, the Special Rapporteur is engaged on a 90 91 92 93 16 Anne Charbord and Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, “The role of measures to address terrorism and violent extremism on closing civic space”, University of Minnesota Human Rights Center, 2019. See https://icsr.info/2018/07/23/from-daesh-to-diaspora-tracing-the-women-and-minors-of-islamicstate/. Annemarie van de Weert and Quirine A.M. Eijkman, “Subjectivity in detection of radicalization and violent extremism: a youth worker’s perspective” Behavioural Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, vol. 11, No. 3. UNDP, “Report on Oslo II”, recommendations.