Director-General/Executive Director
Ambassador Alwasil,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is an honour to be here to co-chair this session on strengthening capacity building programmes to prevent and counter terrorism, alongside his Excellency Ambassador Alwasil of Saudi Arabia.
Terrorism is a transnational threat that targets gaps in institutions, laws, societies, and responses, wherever it can find them.
For this reason, capacity building is a crucial element in preventing and countering terrorism in a sustainable manner.
Providing people, institutions and practitioners with the right education and tools, boosts our collective resilience against terrorism, locally and globally.
Today, we will reflect on how to improve capacity building programs and partnerships for greater impact on the ground, drawing on best practices and lessons learned.
At the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, our experience of over 25 years training frontline responders to prevent and counter terrorism, supporting over 70 Member States every year, has taught us important lessons in seeking long-term results.
We have seen that sustainable solutions are ones that are more inclusive, involve more women and young people, invest in prevention, promote the rule of law, and mainstream human rights.
We have seen that assistance which supports institutional and cultural reform yields true results, and that responses must be tailored to local contexts and owned by local partners.
We have seen the importance of harnessing the comparative advantages of different UN entities, to deliver as “One-UN” in the framework of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Compact.
And we have seen that a whole-of-society approach that brings together government agencies, the private sector, academia, and civil society is needed.
We need the contributions of all relevant actors and stakeholders to stop terrorist exploitation of new technologies, to address terrorist links with organized crime, to work on the ground with local communities, and more.
As just one example of these efforts, UNODC is partnering with civil society in Iraq through our recently launched “Victims’ Voices, Silencing Terrorism,” campaign, aiming to defeat terrorist narratives using the power of victims’ stories.
And we need to build our interventions on evidence and experience.
UNODC, along with UNOCT and UNICRI, have taken the lead on designing and implementing the first-ever independent synthesis of evaluations under the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, aggregating the results of evaluations and other oversight reports produced by compact partners since 2018.
The results have offered insights which will be extremely valuable in informing our capacity-building activities going forward.
The experiences, challenges, and best practices you will share today can serve as important contributions to enhance progammes and our partnerships across the UN system.
Excellencies,
Today’s session also aims to touch upon one of the most prominent terrorism-related challenges of the last decade: how to deal with returnees and nationals that have alleged or actual links to terrorist groups.
Starting in 2015, over 40,000 foreign terrorist fighters and associated families from over 120 countries travelled to Iraq, Syria and other countries to carry out terrorist attacks.
As a result, there are now thousands of foreign terrorist fighters and their families who have either returned to their home countries or have been detained.
Developing strategies for their prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration is vital.
Institutions of justice must be capable of bringing foreign terrorist fighters to justice in a fair and human rights compliant manner, ensuring accountability for any crimes they have committed, and working towards their rehabilitation so that they are no longer a threat.
However, prosecuting foreign terrorist fighters presents many investigative and legal hurdles.
UNODC is providing capacity-building to Member States on this issue, and our work has helped us identify a number of good practices.
It is important to criminalize all relevant preparatory and support crimes, as identified in UN Security Council Resolution 2178 of 2014 and subsequent resolutions.
It is important for national authorities to be able to collect, preserve, and use different types of evidence, including digital evidence from digital platforms, and battlefield evidence for crimes committed in conflict settings.
And it is important to account for the complex situations of women who travelled as foreign terrorist fighters or to join family members, using a gender-sensitive lens.
This is of course in addition to the importance of robust international cooperation.
This session will give you an opportunity to share priorities, challenges, and ideas on how to improve capacities to best address the issue of foreign terrorist fighters and related challenges.
Ladies and gentlemen,
The focus of our conference this week is multilateralism.
Developing successful capacity-building programmes is one of our most powerful multilateral tools against terrorism and violent extremism.
I look forward to hearing from our participants today on how we can build programmes that promote sustainable approaches and ensure good coordination.
Thank you.