Absolutely, and thank you for the opportunity.
The first thing to mention is the intersection between gender equality and violent extremism. What is common to these groups is an agenda that is against women's rights and against gender equality. What we also find is that, as a result, violent extremism seems to take root more easily in communities in the context where there is gender inequality.
It is much easier to radicalize and recruit in a context where what's core to your agenda is a push back on women's rights. It's easier to radicalize and recruit in a context where we don't have models of women as political leaders, educated mothers, sisters, community leaders, etc. The direct nexus between gender inequality and radicalization and recruitment is important to look at.
The second thing to look at is the fact that when these groups spread, their first targets are often women and girls. The push-back on women's clothing, where they go, how they dress, their education, their health, etc., is an early warning indicator in itself we need to be paying attention to.
Then, of course, there is the role in prevention. Having said that, we do also need to be very careful we do not turn women into a securitized institution either, but that we are protecting their spaces and protecting women themselves. In particular, there have been cases where we're connecting early warning mechanisms directly to criminal justice responses, which may not be appropriate when you're asking women to hand over their sons through a criminal justice response because they're seeing radicalization. We need to also be protecting women. We cannot be criminalizing their spaces. We cannot be securitizing their spaces.
I think that's why it's so important that women, peace, and security be applied to our countering and preventing violent extremism efforts. The reason for that is that at the heart of WPS, it is a rights agenda, an equality agenda, and it is a demilitarization and prevention agenda. These are exactly the qualities we need to bring to our efforts to prevent the spread of violent extremism.