The recent revelations in the Panama and Pandora papers, as well as several smaller leaks, have exposed how anonymous shell companies and the use of secrecy jurisdictions can shield wealth amounting to billions of U.S. dollars and facilitate criminal activity. The scandals exposed a system that allowed for the shifting of taxable wealth to shell companies in low-tax jurisdictions, as well as the concealment of legitimate and illegitimate assets from authorities.
This brief draws on a review of the practice of obtaining beneficial ownership information in the United States, the United Kingdom, and several countries in Africa and South Asia. It examines the existing approaches to collecting beneficial ownership information and the related challenges that practitioners experience. It concludes with recommendations for policymakers and regulators on strengthening the collection and maintenance of beneficial ownership information as a primary tool for the detection and prevention of money laundering, tax evasion, corruption, fraud, and other criminal activity.
This brief presents key recommendations for improving civil society engagement in UN counterterrorism and preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) efforts. It provides concrete steps that the United Nations and its member states can take to better engage civil society and offers a blueprint for civil society to advocate for and assert itself more consistently and effectively within the UN counterterrorism architecture, policies, and programs.
The recommendations are based on wide-ranging consultations with individuals representing diverse civil society organizations, governments, and UN entities as well a comparative analysis of relevant mechanisms for engagement between civil society and other multilateral bodies.
The Global Center is grateful to the many partners who participated in the consultations and the Government of Switzerland for its financial support. We are especially grateful to the members of the project’s advisory council.
In recent years, the growth of digital financial services, and more particularly mobile money, has been at the center of financial inclusion initiatives in various countries, notably in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Financial inclusion is featured as a prominent enabler of the Sustainable Development Goals, yet various constraints and barriers prevent eligible adults from accessing digital financial services. Policy and regulatory factors affect the environment in which these services are provided, practical barriers affect an individual’s ability to access and utilize digital financial services, and social and cultural factors affect the customer’s adoption and usage of and trust in digital financial services or its providers. This brief explores the barriers and constraints that hinder digital financial inclusion efforts in jurisdictions that have unbanked populations. It offers recommendations to policymakers and financial sector supervisors on adopting a risk-based approach that overcomes these challenges and enables expanded provision of mobile money and other digital financial services to realize financial inclusion objectives.
This policy brief examines the 2021 renewal of the mandate of the UN Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and seven key issues Security Council members must grapple with as part of the renewal: (1) assessments, (2) facilitation of technical assistance, (3) research and analysis, (4) partnerships, (5) mandate expansion, (6) human rights, and (7) monitoring and evaluation.
To support Security Council members in their reconsideration of CTED’s mandate, the Global Center and the International Peace Institute undertook an extensive research and consultation process. A broad range of stakeholders were consulted, including current CTC members and other UN member states, UN representatives, and civil society actors. Information was gathered through a widely distributed survey, bilateral interviews, three focus-group discussions, and two workshops held on 28 July and 3 November 2021. Along with providing analysis of the implementation of CTED’s mandate, the intention was to provide an informal Track II setting for member states and other stakeholders to engage on priorities for the mandate renewal and to solicit input into the formal negotiation process from underrepresented parties, including civil society. This brief outlines findings and recommendations for the renewal of CTED’s mandate, building on this research and consultation process.
This brief explores how civil society is included in national frameworks to prevent and counter violent extremism at different stages of the policy cycle, including in design, development, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. In doing so, the analysis contributes to a stocktaking of how international recommendations on civil society inclusion are reflected in such documents. In analyzing how national frameworks have included civil society, this brief identifies positive examples that may be useful to national authorities in considering the range of ways in which future frameworks can draw on the valuable contribution of civil society.
Threats to human rights and security triggered by artificial intelligence (AI) and data capture technologies will require peacebuilding and violence prevention actors to bridge the gap between early warning and response and anticipate new challenges. Conflict prevention is rapidly becoming an element of UN peacekeeper mandates in which technological and data governance will have powerful and unprecedented implications. UN actors need to integrate emerging technologies to digitize, share, and secure the information they collect from open sources, human informants, and data capture technologies. They also need to monitor how armed nonstate actors evolve and blend into civilian environments, collude with transnational criminal networks, and adapt their attack strategies to new domains, including cyberspace. Experts must scrutinize how online hate speech and incitements to violence contaminate the lifeblood of social media and private messaging applications in countries where ethnic and socioeconomic tensions prevail.
In this policy brief, Eleonore Pauwels examines how AI and data capture technologies can be positively harnessed and potentially misused, as the new paradigm of predictive behavioral analysis and population data capture is increasingly being presented as a solution to challenges in humanitarian action, conflict prevention, and counterterrorism. The brief advances recommendations for ensuring a do-no-harm approach to deploying these technologies in the field.
UN Security Council Resolution 2396 recognizes the contributions of civil society to the rehabilitation and reintegration of returning and relocating foreign terrorist fighters and their families, encouraging member states to engage civil society when developing their rehabilitation and reintegration strategies. This policy brief explores how government and civil society can advance their cooperation in the rehabilitation and reintegration of individuals convicted and imprisoned for violent extremism or terrorism-related offenses. It presents the current state of cooperation between government and civil society in the rehabilitation and reintegration process, then outlines the potential objectives of further cooperation. For each objective, the brief explores the opportunities and challenges of cooperation for both governments and civil society.
Following the first UN High-Level Conference of Heads of Counter-Terrorism Agencies of Member States in June 2018, the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) organized seven regional high-level conferences to “keep up the momentum on key counter-terrorism issues … strengthen international cooperation … [and] pro¬mote implementation of the [United Nations] Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and relevant General Assembly and Security Council resolutions.” To help bolster civil society engagement as part of that process, UNOCT partnered with the Global Center to organize two one-day, civil society–led workshops preceding the last two regional conferences, in Abu Dhabi on 17 December 2019 and Vienna on 10 February 2020.
This paper summarizes the key outcomes of those discussions. It highlights some of the contributions of civil society to advance implementation of the Strategy in the areas of prevention, intervention, and rehabilitation and reintegration. It identifies challenges and proposes a series of recommendations for states, intergovernmental bodies, and civil society to enhance engagement on counterterrorism and preventing violent extremism by 1) creating an enabling environment for civil society, 2) supporting its financial and organizational capacity, and 3) engaging it in relevant policy formulation and implementation processes at all levels.
History offers plenty of examples of female involvement in political violence, but a certain fascination and disbelief continue to surround female violent extremists because women are often still viewed as homemakers and mothers, surprising society by the number of young girls and women joining the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. This policy brief explores the drivers of radicalization to and engagement in violent extremism and the factors of disengagement and desistance among women and girls by examining cases of individuals that went through the United Kingdom’s Channel program. Channel cases were chosen for this analysis because it is one of the longest running (since 2007) and most documented early intervention programs developed specifically to prevent engagement with terrorism and violent extremism. It aims to enhance understanding of gender-sensitive interventions that address the specific needs of women and girls. Recommendations include the focus on mechanisms for women and men to claim their rights and have their grievances heard while ensuring accountability mechanisms are in place and the need to more effectively combine online and offline preventing and countering violent extremism actions.
Over the past decade, security actors in Kenya and the international community have increasingly viewed young people in Kenya’s Muslim communities as vectors for radicalization to violent extremism. A number of large scale economic development assistance programs in the country, even as they promote the intense free market entrepreneurialism that continues to leave the vast majority of Kenyans behind, are also increasingly taking on preventing violent extremism objectives. Against the backdrop of heightened international and domestic concerns over the vulnerability of Kenyan youth to violent extremism, this policy brief focuses on the hardships and priorities of youth in Kenya through the voices of young people themselves. Drawing on a series of focus group discussions conducted by the Kenya Community Support Centre in September 2018, the paper explores the daily challenges confronting young people in Mombasa County as they struggle to make ends meet in the face of joblessness, wage theft, nepotism, and political corruption. While the serious threat posed by al-Shabaab cannot be ignored, the paper argues that the overriding drive to prevent violent extremism among Kenyan youth, especially in Muslim and Somali communities, is not only disproportionate but also counterproductive, threatening to overshadow the overwhelming need for economic justice, governance accountability, and reform.
