43. 然而，在世界许多地方，公民社会空间正在缩小，并面临持续的压力。防止和打击暴力极端主义日益成为压制民间社会行为体声音、限制其活动范围和针对它们的手段，与此同时，自相矛盾的是，国家将人权倡导解释为一种“极端主义”，再加上缺乏暴力极端主义的全球商定定义，让各国放开了手脚，将民间社会行为体和人权维护者视为“极端分子”。越来越明显的是，人权维护者是一些国家政府推行的旨在防止和打击暴力极端主义的战略的对象，这些政府认识到，借这一新术语之名针对持不同意见者十分具有价值。
43. However, civic space is shrinking and under sustained pressure in many parts of the world. The prevention and countering of violent extremism increasingly functions as a device to silence, limit the scope of and target civil society actors, when, paradoxically, advocacy for human rights is construed by the State as a form of “extremism”, giving States the leeway – enabled by the lack of a globally agreed definition on what constitutes violent extremism – to target civil society actors and human rights defenders as “extremists”. It is increasingly clear that human rights defenders are targeted in the strategies aimed at preventing and countering violent extremism pursued by Governments that recognize the value of the new nomenclature to be directed against those who disagree with them.