Terrorism has always been a battle of ideas, reflecting a desire for violent and immediate political transformation. The technologies available in a globalized world today, however, have expanded the theater of conflict into a broader swath of spaces—governed, less governed, virtual—than ever. Groups such as al-Qaida have articulated a clear mission statement and excelled at strategic communication, crafting messages based on audience perceptions and including actions as well as words.
This report presents a qualitative analysis of how strategic communication principles can strengthen international efforts to address terrorism and violent extremism. The report examines the evolution of the challenge and draws on discussions with officials, diplomats, and experts to offer a series of recommendations for enhancing strategic communications on counterterrorism. While this study focuses on the United Nations, the key principles and recommendations may also be applicable to governments and international organizations confronting this complex transnational threat.
This report provides concrete suggestions for strengthening international counterterrorism efforts over the next decade, including three specific, costed options for a single UN counterterrorism coordinator. The report details 22 recommendations aimed at helping the United Nations to better exploit its comparative advantages in countering terrorism and to enhance the productivity of its partnerships with other counterterrorism actors, including states, regional intergovernmental bodies, nongovernment experts, and civil society.
Based on research, interviews, and consultations with counterterrorism officials and experts from around the world, the report presents recommendations for reshaping UN counterterrorism efforts by:
1. Creating a broader movement against terrorism, involving not only states but also a range of other actors;
2. Strengthening engagement in the field and at UN headquarters with human rights experts and civil society;
3. Placing greater emphasis on measuring its own performance; and
4. Enacting one of three options for architectural adjustments to streamline UN counterterrorism efforts and improve monitoring, political analysis, and capacity building (a UN Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, a Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Counter-Terrorism, or an Under Secretary-General for Transnational Threats).
To help inform the UN General Assembly’s review of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and the Security Council’s comprehensive consideration of the mandate of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), this report details an independent strategic assessment of UN counterterrorism efforts over the two years since the Strategy and CTED were last reviewed. The report is based on consultations with dozens of member state officials, UN officials, civil society representatives, and academic experts, as well as a two-day retreat for key stakeholders. It argues that the UN system should use the next year to visibly push the United Nations’ counterterrorism program out beyond UN headquarters in New York and Vienna and into the field, emphasize the preventive and holistic aspects of the United Nations’ vision of counterterrorism, provide a fresh start on human rights, and deepen UN partnerships with other stakeholders. It includes 25 recommendations for revitalizing the UN counterterrorism program leading up to the 10-year anniversaries of 9/11 and the adoption of Resolution 1373 and the five-year anniversary of the adoption of the Strategy.
This report makes the case for West African states and partners to develop counterterrorism capacities and cooperation in the subregion, using the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy as their point of departure and working closely with and through the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The report is based on recommendations that emerged from a large stakeholder meeting cohosted with the ECOWAS Commission in Abuja and a series of smaller consultations in Brussels and New York. The goal of these meetings was to identify and prioritize the unmet counterterrorism and related capacity needs of countries in West Africa across the four pillars of the Strategy. The report concludes with a set of action-oriented recommendations that outline steps the ECOWAS Commission, ECOWAS member states, and their partners could take to develop a subregional counterterrorism framework and mechanism. It includes other recommendations for strengthening counterterrorism cooperation in West Africa and between the subregion and external partners.
Available in French.
This report provides an overview of the evolving terrorism threat in North Africa and analyzes how states in the subregion working with external partners, including the United Nations, European Union, and United States, can improve subregional counterterrorism-related cooperation. In particular, the report argues that because of its universal membership and distance from the politics of the region, the United Nations can play a unique role in catalyzing this cooperation.
The report is based on a series of consultations with representatives from states in the subregion, the United Nations, and relevant regional and subregional organizations as well as nongovernmental experts. Those consultations included a meeting cohosted by the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) at its headquarters in Rabat, which included counterterrorism focal points and other representatives from states in the subregion. The project builds on recommendations made at a November 2007 conference held by ISESCO, the United Nations, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and the Tunisian government in Tunis.
Available in French.
This policy brief examines the role of the UN system in carrying forward implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. It highlights some UN achievements in supporting Strategy implementation efforts, enumerates some of the challenges facing the organization as it seeks to enhance these efforts, and offers suggestions on how to overcome them.
This report discusses the contributions that regional and subregional bodies can make in implementing the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Strategy. It provides a region-by-region survey of some of the contributions of those bodies and an overview of counterterrorism-related engagement between regional and subregional bodies and the UN system. It concludes with a series of forward-looking recommendations on maximizing the contributions of regional and subregional bodies to Strategy implementation and to counterterrorism efforts in general, as well as improving cooperation between those bodies and the United Nations.
This report is a compendium of documents from the International Process on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation, a process sponsored by the governments of Costa Rica, Japan, Slovakia, and Turkey with the support of CGCC. The focus of the process was assessing overall UN contributions to the fight against terrorism and how to make UN institutions more relevant to national counterterrorism strategies and better able to support implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
This report explores the important and often overlooked role that civil society can play in combating terrorism without compromising their ongoing important work and examines the challenges and the opportunities for expanding engagement between civil society and the UN system on counterterrorism and related issues. The report also looks at the impact that counterterrorism measures have had on civil society and the need for the United Nations to promote the role of civil society, including in the context of implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
This report provides an overview of issues relevant to the implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in the Latin America and Caribbean region. It focuses on the role of the United Nations and regional and subregional bodies, in particular the Organization of American States, and looks at how counterterrorism cooperation within and between these bodies could be strengthened and how the Strategy could be used to further not only this cooperation but also broader regional efforts to combat terrorism.
