LAHORE: A comprehensive and data driven presentation of Punjab’s countering violent extremism (CVE) model at a policy dialogue organised by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime highlighted the province’s transition from legislative groundwork to full scale implementation, with participants terming it a replicable framework for other provinces, particularly Sindh.
Dr Ahmad Khawar Shahzad, Deputy Coordination Officer of Punjab Centre of Excellence for Countering Violent Extremism (CoE-CVE), was invited to unveil the groundbreaking governance model of Punjab Centre of Excellence on CVE, a pioneering initiative that garnered widespread acclaim at the UNODC Strategic Planning Workshop for the Sindh CoE-CVE in Karachi, impressing leading academicians, experts and executive heads associated with Sindh’s CVE framework with its potential to drive meaningful change.
Presenting the model, Dr Shahzad outlined a multi layered institutional, legal and operational architecture developed under the Punjab CVE Act 2025, alongside a detailed three-year action plan and a broader strategic roadmap aligned with national and international frameworks.
Providing a granular situational analysis, the presentation identified a complex interplay of internal drivers of extremism, including weak governance reflected in a public sector effectiveness score of minus 0.75 and a corruption ranking of 133 out of 180. Structural socio-economic challenges were detailed, with Pakistan’s literacy rate at approximately 62pc, nearly 64pc of the population under the age of 30, youth unemployment at 11-12pc, and multidimensional poverty affecting 38pc of the population.
The justice sector’s limitations were underscored through data showing over 2.26 million pending cases and prolonged adjudication periods of up to eight years. Additional stressors included the presence of 3.7 million Afghan refugees, 2.4 million of them undocumented and unchecked expansion of madaris, estimated between 38,000 and 40,000 institutions, with over 20,000 operating without registration and enrolling around four million students.
The misuse of religious platforms and digital spaces also emerged as a major concern, with around 60,000 mosques in Punjab and approximately 6,000 annual FIRs related to loudspeaker misuse, alongside nearly 15,000 cyber hate complaints each year. Sectarian fragmentation was described as deeply entrenched, with over 200 organisations and more than 4,000 fatalities since the 1980s, particularly concentrated in South Punjab and parts of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The presentation linked these factors to the broader repercussions of violent extremism, including Pakistan’s high ranking in the 2025 Global Terrorism Index, its placement on the Financial Action Task Force grey list between 2018 and 2022, and a 36pc decline in foreign direct investment. It also cited over 6,000 deaths between 2016 and 2025, as well as fatalities during violent agitations in recent years, as indicators of the socio-economic toll on ordinary citizens.
