“The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the different initiatives focused on Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) that have been conducted by the international donor community in Kyrgyzstan since 2016 and to offer some recommendations on how to make the international engagement in this field more effective. According to a mapping exercise carried out in the Spring 2019, in the past 4 years over 30 PVErelated projects have been implemented in the country with the support of international organizations and agencies with a budget exceeding 42 million USD. The abundancy of international funding available has attracted substantial criticism with the international donor community being accused of both inflating the threat of violent extremism (VE) and of distracting civil society organizations from tackling more systemic issues such as structural injustice and exclusion. This paper offers an empirical investigation of the PVE engagement of the international community, looking at concrete activites carried
out on the ground. The study is based on the opinions expressed by international agencies as well as by representatives of international and national non-governmental organizations (NGOs) during semi-structured interviews carried out in Bishkek in 2019 and complemented by an analysis of official documents and project evaluations …”