On 24 September 2019, the Prevention Project, International Civil Society Action Network, and Global Center on Cooperative Security hosted a side-event on the margins of the opening of the UN General Assembly entitled “Two Sides of the Same Coin?  Operationalizing Linkages between the SDG 16 and PVE Agendas.”  The roundtable, convened with support from the Swiss Development and Cooperation Agency, included representatives from member states, international organizations, and civil society to highlight the different ways in which efforts aimed to support SDG 16 and those that target violent extremism are mutually reinforcing in their shared aims to promote peace, justice, resilience, and inclusion.

The event featured a series of short presentations on the contributions of women-led and other local civil society organizations and municipalities and on how multilateral development actors such as the OECD and UNDP are working to integrate the PVE and SDG16 frameworks into local programming. The discussion also explored ways of breaking down silos that exist at the global and national levels, including among policymakers, practitioners, budgets, and coordination mechanisms. These silos often hinder deeper integration between the SDG 16 and PVE agendas and slow progress in tackling many of the underlying drivers of violent extremism, such as corruption, injustice, security sector abuses, and poor governance.  The event also featured the release of ” The SDG 16 and PVE Agendas: Different Currencies or Two Sides of the Same Coin?”, a new Prevention Project/ICAN policy brief, which includes a series of policy-relevant recommendations on how conversations around justice, peace, and inclusion at the global and national levels can strengthen and further empower, rather than, as is sometimes the case, impede progress on locally-led action to achieve the inter-related objectives of the SDG 16 and PVE agendas.