Director General/Executive Director
Excellencies,
Distinguished participants,
Thank you for joining us for this discussion on the key challenge of countering terrorism financing.
In order to unravel terrorist networks, the international community must go after the money.
However, terrorism financing often involves a complex network of fundraising channels, all having a strong transnational component that makes them very difficult to trace and disrupt.
Moreover, terrorist groups are constantly seeking to diversify and renew the source of their funds, as well as the channels and instruments they use to transfer them.
It is therefore essential that we increase coordination and cooperation between financial intelligence units, law enforcement entities and intelligence services in order to strengthen effective responses.
The 1999 Convention for the suppression of the financing of terrorism represents one of the most successful counter-terrorism legal instruments in terms of the number of ratifications.
Since then, the Security Council has adopted resolutions creating sanctions regimes against terrorist organizations, and criminalizing financial support to a terrorist organization, regardless of its links with a specific terrorist act.
The Council has also addressed related challenges, including countering the financing of travel of foreign terrorist fighters and dealing with their return; addressing the crime of human trafficking and related financial flows; and preventing and combatting the trafficking of cultural property, oil and other natural resources.
Taken together, these obligations further highlight the need for Member States to identify and assess the risks of terrorism financing within their economies.
UNODC is pursuing a number of initiatives to assist countries with strengthening national legislation and enhancing their capacities to counter money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
This includes ready-to-deliver courses that can be tailored to needs and resources.
Since 2017, UNODC has provided a wide range of technical assistance on countering the financing of terrorism and reduce terrorist financing risks in Africa, Asia and the Gulf region, coordinated with UN partners through the CTITF Working Group.
We are delivering operational training on financial disruption, to enable investigators to understand the terrorist business model and identify vulnerabilities that can be exploited, thereby cutting off funding flows.
Training on understanding and implementing the Security Council sanctions regime against individuals and entities associated with terrorist groups is also on offer.
Moreover, UNODC is working to increase capacities to address terrorist use of virtual currencies and the darknet with training on pursuing cryptocurrency investigations.
As the sixth report of the Secretary General on the threat posed by ISIL points out, alongside the threats posed by cyber-terrorism and possible cyberattacks, terrorists are also increasingly using the internet as a tool for raising funds.
In addition, UNODC has developed a guidance manual on terrorist financing risk assessments, which is being presented here today.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our panellist Mr. de Koster of the Belgian Financial Intelligence Unit for his substantial contributions to the manual, which was developed in cooperation with CTED and aims to support sub-regional and regional organizations as well as Member States.
It brings together experiences and cases from several Member States and regional organizations, offering insights into different approaches and stages of risk assessment, and presenting concrete examples.
I hope this tool will help support best practices in conducting terrorist financing risk assessments and provide a useful reference for technical assistance activities.
That is just a brief overview of what UNODC is doing with our UN and other partners to support efforts to counter financing of terrorism.
This meeting, which follows on the Paris Conference in April initiated by President Macron, can help to shed further light on the challenges and strengthen international cooperation to identify, investigate and disrupt financial flows to terrorists.
Allow me to conclude by thanking our partners in organizing this discussion, namely France, Peru and Nigeria.
Thank you.