A/HRC/43/46 inform policymakers about local drivers and factors are significantly absent from policymaking and programme-designing forums. The communities and individuals who are the subject of programming aimed at the prevention and countering of violent extremism are further excluded in ways that raise a myriad of ethical issues, as well as undermine claims to effectiveness. 17. There is an emerging scholarly and scientific debate concerning whether there is a predictive relationship between radicalization and terrorism. Acknowledging that that debate is ongoing – and recognizing the lack of certainty in the available tools and indication systems being deployed by Governments and private entities – is essential for framing deliberations concerning the widespread use of programming aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism. 31 A number of tools deployed at the regional level, including the Revised Religious Fundamentalism Scale, the Violent Extremist Risk Assessment 2 (VERA-2R), the Extremism Risk Guidelines (ERG22+) and the checklists developed under a project on the recognition of and responses to violent radicalization by professional groups concerned, as well as various tools made available by European agencies, such as the common risk indicators booklet prepared by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, Frontex. 32 The use of such tools poses a number of ethical and functional challenges. For example, the common peculiarity of psychometric systems, such as VERA-2R and ERG22+, is that they mix structured forensic analysis models, traditionally focused on mental illness and deviance, with other models of intelligence analysis containing strong ideological and political connotations. 33 Those psychometric tools consistently use ambiguous factors in their application, detaching radicalization assessment from criminal and legal practices and mainstreaming psychiatric factors into the preventative criminal justice arena. 34 Moreover, many of the risk assessment tools used in practice for preventing and countering violent extremism function as profiling tools, which expose their users, primarily but not exclusively States, to the pitfalls of using risk models that: (a) are tainted by prejudice, politicization or specific ignorance, particularly in multicultural contexts; (b) generate unpredictability in the monitored subjects and communities; (c) open up wide administrative arbitrariness in the practice of prevention; and (d) entirely lack judicial supervision in most applied contexts. 35 All of those risks are of concern to the Special Rapporteur, and she stresses that they appear to be systematically ignored or discounted in their use in policy arenas. 18. As is now widely recognized, presumptions and assumptions about the drivers of violent extremism and the underlying factors must be robustly challenged. 36 Having reviewed numerous national plans and policies on the prevention and countering of violent extremism, the Special Rapporteur concludes that the importance given to religious ideology in both mapping the pathways to radicalization and devising strategies aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism was done at the expense of appropriately addressing other factors, despite the lack of empirical data to support the assumption that religious ideology supports terrorism. 37 She recognizes evidence of good practice in national plans for the prevention and countering of violent extremism, specifically that of Switzerland, which has the strongest incorporation of a human rights framework, and acknowledges the meaningful incorporation of human rights as a key reference point into the plans of Austria, Canada, Finland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 Sergio Bianchi, “Radicalization: no prevention without juridicalization”, Security Papers No. 2/2018, Agenfor International; and Cecile Rousseau, Ghayda Hassan and Youssef Oulhote, “And if there were another way out? Questioning the prevalent radicalization models”, Canadian Journal of Public Health, vol. 108, No. 5–6. There are also a range of local products, such as the “Arrel” system used in regional prison systems. E.D. Pressman, “Risk assessment decisions for violent political extremism” (Public Safety Canada, Ottawa, 2009). In the findings of the joint settlement process between the New York Police Department and mosques in Raza v. City of New York, case No. 1:13-cv-03448-PKC-JO, the New York District Court confirmed that such interventions were intricately connected with legal rights. Bianchi, “Radicalization: no prevention without juridicalization”. UNDP, “Report on Oslo II”, p. 15. A/HRC/31/65, para. 15. 7