The UN & International Terrorism
The initial United Nations response to the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001 operated on two parallel tracks: a) adoption of Security Council Resolution 1373 and its enabling arm the Counter Terrorism Committee and b) establishment of the Secretary General’s Policy Working Group on Terrorism (PWG) within the UN Secretariat. The Security Council’s objective was to engage member states in a comprehensive effort to move against both terrorists and their supporters on a worldwide basis. The PWG was creted to define precise steps that the Secretary General can take to sustain high-level attention on the manifold challenges of international terrorism as well as finding ways to galvanize and effectively coordinate the many components of the UN system in this effort. The Secretary General presented the Policy Working Group’s report to the Security Council and the General Assembly on September 10, 2002. (See here the Report of the Policy Working Group on the United Nations and International Terrorism)
With strong support from the MacArthur Foundation and the Netherlands Government, IPA was actively involved in supporting the UN’s efforts to chart a viable response to both the immediate and long-term challenges of confronting international terrorism. As an active participant in the PWG, a high level action-oriented task force, IPA interacted closely with senior levels of the Secretariat since its inception. In particular, IPA provided its own in-depth analysis on recent trends, facilitated meetings between a number of prominent outside experts and senior levels of the UN Secretariat in reviewing the PWG draft report, and helped to organize and conduct two key sub-groups on a) the role of ideology and b) strengthening the UN’s relationship with Regional Organizations.
Following upon the work of the PWG, IPA hosted a major international conference on “Responding to Terrorism: What Role for the United Nations?” in New York, on October 25-26, 2002. The conference brought together diverse non-governmental and academic voices from the developing world to engage with officials from the United Nations, Permanent Representatives, and leading academics and INGOs. It involved over seventy participants and was co-chaired by Under-Secretary-General Kieran Prendergast and David Malone. IPA prepared an in-depth Concept Paper laying out the current challenges facing the UN in developing its role in anti-terrorist initiatives, and outlined key issues for consideration at the conference. The discussion concentrated on a number of these issues, particularly: a) the often overlooked phenomenon of terrorism in “the South”; b) the manipulation and misuse of religion; c) an exploration of the connection between underdevelopment, poverty and terrorism; d) the need to uphold human rights standards in the fight against terrorism; and e) the importance of strengthening the regulatory framework to prevent illegal manipulation of the international financial system to fund and support terrorist networks.
The discussions and recommendations over the two days of the conference were summarized in a Conference Report prepared by IPA Consultant William O’Neill. The concept paper and conference report, together with abridged versions of six of the papers IPA commissioned for the conference, presented a range of views from the global South and North, made up the basis for the final report of the project.
The particular value of IPA’s approach for the United Nations was its capacity to mobilize a body of knowledgeable independent analysis otherwise unavailable to the United Nations and to cast it in policy relevant terms. As attendance at the Conference demonstrated, there was a continuing need within the United Nations for external policy analysis, closely targeted to the UN’s operational requirements. IPA intends to build on this niche in the continuing phase of the United Nations and International Terrorism Project.
Following on the success of the first conference, 2004 was a landmark year for the Program on the UN and International Terrorism. Two years after the terrorist attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, the Government of Norway and the International Peace Academy convened a day-long conference in New York of seventeen heads of state and government, three foreign ministers, academic experts, religious leaders, victims of terrorism, journalists and representatives of non-governmental organizations to shed new light on the roots of terror and thereby to broaden and enhance our common campaign against this evil.
The initiative for the conference came from the Prime Minister of Norway, Kjell Magne Bondevik, and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Professor Elie Wiesel, whose goal was to provide an opportunity for world leaders to renew their commitment to stand together against terrorism. Under the rubric “Fighting Terrorism for Humanity: A Conference on the Roots of Evil,” the organizers sought to elicit the views, analysis and recommendations of the conference participants on how best to combat terrorism, to understand the conditions that generate support for it and to listen to the voices of some who have suffered directly from terrorism. Barely a month after the terrorist attack on United Nations headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003, the role of the UN in the fight against terrorism was never been more obvious or important.
It was precisely this tragic event in Baghdad that cut short the life of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Sergio Vieira de Mello, who had proposed to IPA the possibility of exploring the ambiguous yet inter-dependent relationship between terrorism and the struggle for human rights. As a result, the International Peace Academy and Columbia University’s Center on International Organization organized a day-long seminar in New York City in November 2003 on “Human Rights, the United Nations and the Struggle Against Terrorism” featuring a keynote address by the acting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Bertrand Ramcharan. The event sought to examine through four substantive panels a) examine the extent to which abuse of human rights has contributed to the rise of international terrorism, b) national Counter-Terrorism Strategies and Human Rights, c) regional approaches to the war on terrorism and d) the challenges ahead for the United Nations. The audience included senior diplomats, leading officials of international, regional and subregional organizations, and prominent experts from non-governmental organizations and academic organizations.