Background
IHRC Chair on What is Prevent
Take Action
Background
Our updated Prevent page is now up. Prevent is a controversial government funded project, which claims it is setup to stop terrorism, however this has been shown to ignorant at best, and perhaps even dishonest in its intention. It encourages businesses, schools and organisations to spy on their Muslim workers. It uses funding in order to persuade groups into taking part in their scheme. Our website provides many resources to learn, educate and take action against Prevent.
Prevent was founded in 2006, and has since been criticized by Muslim and Human Rights groups both in Britain and abroad. They have accused children, some as young as 4 and 5, for comments they make at school, these comments are usually similar to that which many children make. These children are often kept on a police list, even after the authorities choose not to pursue them. Children have been targeted for becoming more religious, for mispronouncing words, such as “cucumber” being mistaken for “cooker bomb”, and for supporting Palestinian human rights.
Despite the huge amount of criticism from human rights organisations and the British Muslim community, Prevent, has been running now for 11 years. These concerns have not only fallen on deaf ears, but were used by the British government to accuse the groups speaking out against them of being “enablers of terrorism”.
In June 2022, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Whilst Countering Terrorism, has said that it engages in the “de-facto criminalisation of children”, it has a “negative and discriminatory effect on Muslim communities” and it is “inconsistent” with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Unfortunately, even some Muslim organisations have accepted money from Prevent in order to spy on their own community.
IHRC Chair on What is Prevent?
Action
- Goto out Prevent webpage and look at our resources (https://www.ihrc.org.uk/prevent/).
- Watch and share the video above.
- Share this alert and encourage others to take part.
- Please share verified stories and information.
