Double Seminar of the CRG Conflict continuities:Preventing violent extremism in Kenya: the presence and absence of African women

This presentation explores how faith-based actors engage with Violent Extremism across community, national, and transnational levels, with particular attention to lived experience, narrative, and locally embedded knowledge. The presentation draws on findings from the Joint Initiative for Strategic Religious Action (JISRA), a multi-country programme examining the role of religious actors in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (P/CVE) in Kenya and Nigeria. 

 

Drawing on two qualitative research studies and two policy briefs produced under the JISRA Knowledge Agenda, the presentation demonstrates that violent extremism is not experienced or addressed as a discrete event, but rather as a phenomenon embedded within ongoing social, political, and relational processes. The first study, The Role of Religious Leaders in Response to VE in Kenya and Nigeria, examines how religious leaders understand, explain, and respond to violent extremism in their local contexts. Based on extensive interviews and narrative analysis, the findings show that religious leaders link violent extremism to enduring grievances, including socio-economic marginalization, governance failures, political manipulation, religious misinterpretation, and regional and global dynamics. Their responses extend beyond counter-narratives to encompass mediation, interfaith dialogue, youth engagement, and sustained community education. The second study, What Role Do Women Religious Actors Play in Relation to violent extremism in Kenya? focuses on women religious actors, a group frequently marginalized within formal P/CVE frameworks. The research demonstrates that women religious actors address violent extremism through everyday interventions that span households, faith spaces, and community networks. By engaging with Gender-Based Violence, family conflict, youth vulnerability, religious literacy, and economic precarity, WRAs contribute to preventive efforts that unfold over time and across generations.

 

The findings call for more inclusive P/CVE approaches that recognize how religious actors, particularly women, operate across overlapping spaces of conflict and peace, and argue that acknowledging longer-term, community-embedded processes is essential for developing P/CVE strategies that are both effective and sustainable.