This paper highlights the importance of providing due process and respecting other fundamental human rights when countering terrorism and offers a set of recommendations for civil society organizations to consider in their efforts to support and sustain human rights as priority rather than postscript for measures to enhance security.
A report to Cordaid, this document considers civil society’s role in monitoring Security System Reform (SSR) and counterterrorism both in policy and in practice. It argues that civil society engagement, particularly with local actors, is central to ensuring proper civilian oversight and the overall effectiveness of both SSR and counterterrorism efforts and examines how efforts to engage civil society may be improved.
Many of the policies carried out in the name of counterterrorism are making the terrorist danger worse. An overemphasis on security measures has eroded civil liberties and human rights in many countries and diverted attention from the policies needed to counter the complex challenge of contemporary global terrorism. This paper examines the contradiction of counterterrorism measures that can hinder the work of countering terror.
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.
This report provides an analysis of issues and challenges relevant to the implementation of the UN Strategy in East Africa and an overview of the Strategy-related counterterrorism efforts of some of the key stakeholders in the subregion. It offers a series of recommendations aimed at states, the United Nations, and regional and subregional bodies on how to further the implementation of the Strategy in East Africa with a view to strengthening counterterrorism cooperation in this volatile subregion.
This report addresses the challenge of ensuring that the human rights–based approach to combating terrorism enshrined in the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy is mainstreamed through the relevant UN and regional bodies and programs and at the national level. It provides specific recommendations on what the United Nations, region and subregional bodies, and civil society can do to carry forward the human rights elements of the Strategy.
“The Sanctions Era: Themes and Trends in UN Security Council Sanctions Since 1990” by David Cortright, George A. Lopez, and Linda Gerber-Stellingwerf in The United Nations Security Council and War, edited by Vaughan Lowe, Adam Roberts, Jennifer Welsh, and Dominik Zaum (Oxford University Press, 2008) pp. 205-225.
The report focuses on the challenges of and priorities for implementing the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in southern Africa. It considers how the Strategy can be used as a guide for governments in and outside the subregion, the United Nations, and other multilateral bodies and civil society to contribute more effectively to addressing the terrorist threat and as a basis for improving the overall coordination and cooperation in the subregion in combating terrorism.
This report was the culmination of the “Security Council Counterterrorism Review Project” and highlights the successes and shortcomings of the post–September 2001 Security Council counterterrorism program and the steps that can be taken to improve it, in particular the work of the Counter-Terrorism Committee and the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate.
