Violent and Hateful Extremism in Mindanao: A Contextual Analysis of the Situation and Development NGO Responses

This is a preliminary report in relation to the Philippines, the first report on a collaborative project between Deakin University (Deakin) and Plan International Australia (PIA) entitled Appropriate International Development Responses to Address Violent and Hateful Extremism. This report presents preliminary analysis of data collected during an initial visit by the project team to the Philippines, in late September 2022, a scoping mission to commence case study work in that country on this 4-year, 4-country joint project. It offers a synthesis and contextual analysis of the violent and hateful extremism (VHE) situation in Mindanao, and NGO responses to this, from the perspectives shared with us in key informant interviews conducted during this visit. The report also discusses some of suggestions made in these interviews of proposed programs that would support current efforts in the preventing/countering violent extremism (P/CVE) space in Mindanao. It is hoped ideas in this report might be relevant to the work of Plan International Philippines (PIP). Primarily, however, this data and analysis aims to highlight the learnings of the foreign project team, inform the next steps of research engagement by the team with PIP, and point towards further data which might also be collected, plus the opportunities for engagement in co-design and trial of new VHE context analysis and monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (MERL) tools.