The growing involvement of individuals as foreign terrorist fighters (FTF) in various conflicts and terrorist activities has resulted in an increasingly dangerous threat to international peace and security. In response, the UNODC Terrorism Prevention Branch (UNODC/TPB) has launched a new initiative aimed at bolstering countries' criminal justice responses to this phenomenon. The initiative, which runs to 2019, will assist Member States in criminalizing the FTF phenomenon in such areas, as terrorist recruitment, incitement to terrorism, terrorism financing, and terrorist training, among others.
While not a new phenomenon, the extent of the involvement of FTFs in conflicts and acts of terrorism today is unparalleled. With terrorist groups such as Al-Qaida, the Al-Nusra Front, and Islamic State all recruiting foreign nationals, the threat posed by terrorism now encapsulates not just end-target countries, but also countries of origin and transit. In this, the threat of individuals travelling to conflict zones, becoming further radicalized, receiving combat training, and then returning to their home countries with the aim of carrying out terrorist acts is more serious than ever.
In light of this issue, UNODC/TPB organized a three-day conference in collaboration with the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM) and the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law in Malta (IIJ) in Valletta from 23 to 25 March 2015. Representatives from the Mediterranean basin - including Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen - and the Balkan countries - among them Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia and The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - were present to discuss and evaluate the threat that FTFs pose to their countries and regions. Additionally, Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, the Russian Federation, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States were represented, together with five United Nations agencies and six international and regional organizations.
Building capacity within criminal justice systems is an important step towards filling a gap in dealing with the terrorist threat. In this respect, UNODC aims to assist to Member States in strengthening the criminal justice response to FTF in a bid to counter this threat in a specific manner, as well as complement the approach to this scourge taken by other counterparts.
The UNODC global initiative, mainly funded by the European Union, Canada, Japan and the United States, covers both foreign cooperation and domestic assistance: the former is critical given the transnational dimension of FTFs which makes a purely national approach insufficient; the latter meanwhile is central to efforts needed to strengthen national legislation against this pressing terrorist threat and to enhance domestic capacities of criminal justice and law enforcement officials in key areas such as mechanisms to strengthen the national legal frameworks, the protection and use of intelligence information in criminal cases, the use of efficient special investigation techniques to counter terrorist activities on the Internet, as well as the prevention and disruption of the financing of terrorism in the context of FTF.
The next seminars under this initiative will be organized in September and October 2015.