Report explainer: How Security Council discourse drove counter-terrorism expansion at the UN 

Over the past 25 years, counter-terrorism has transformed from a peripheral concern into a major focus of the United Nations (UN). Saferworld has followed this growth for the past decade, leading groundbreaking research and engaging with the UN policy community to feed in our expertise as an international NGO focusing on preventing violent conflict.

In Saferworld’s latest publication, we set out to answer whether the UN’s counter-terrorism architecture has grown in proportion to security threats, or whether a process of threat inflation has led to the exaggeration of the issue of 'terrorism' to aid institutional growth. Here, the two authors, Jordan Street, Head of Saferworld’s US/UN Program, and Ali Altiok, Peace Studies & Political Science Doctoral Candidate, University of Notre Dame, explain what they found in their research.

Q: In The voice of the fourth pillar: How Security Council discourse drove counter-terrorism expansion at the UN, you track how narratives, discourse and rhetoric have led to vast institutional expansion of counter-terrorism at the UN. Can you tell us why you decided to undertake this research and what you found?

Ali Altiok (AA): Effectively what we did was analyse every speech that has been recorded at the UN Security Council to understand which words were used, how they were used and who used them, undertaking a ‘corpus-assisted discourse analysis’. Thankfully we did not have to read every speech – and used a wonderful database, ‘The UNSC Meetings and Speeches’, produced by Professor Takuto Sakamoto and Tomoyuki Matsuoka. We used this database to search for specific words related to terrorism and counter-terrorism. This allowed us to move beyond anecdotal observations that many in the policy community, including us, often base their perspectives on, and instead test the relationship between language and institutional growth using quantitative data.

By systematically looking at how UN Member States and UN officials use words related to terror, extremism and radicalisation against global ‘terror’ attacks, we show that, at a broad level, the frequency of terror-related language in UN Security Council discourse does coincide with trends in global ‘terror’ incidents. This was surprising to us. We were expecting the UN Security Council to respond only to politicised and sensationalised terror attacks. Yet, the data showed us that the discourse at the UN Security Council does follow recorded terror-related deaths and incidences.

Q: So does this tell us that the UN Security Council is inflating the risks associated with terrorism?

Jordan Street (JS): No, not necessarily. The story of course is much more complex. The term ‘terror’ has been kept strategically elastic by states for the last three decades. States have often widened the term’s scope by folding in other types of violence, such as criminal violence, insurgency or dissent-adjacent phenomena to this ‘terrorism’ frame. We cannot be fully confident whether the tracking you see happens because the UN Security Council just responds to ‘terror’ objectively or because more incidents are being labelled as ‘terrorism’ collectively by states, which in turn draws the UN Security Council in. The truth is probably somewhere in between these two options.

But, what we certainly know is that there is a mutually reinforcing dynamic between discourse and institutional development: whereby new threats lead to new resolutions, which create new structures, which in turn generate more UN Security Council meetings, reports and, ultimately, further rhetoric. We can then see that this creates an institutional momentum to ‘do something’, which then often outlasts the crises that triggered it – embedding counter-terrorism more deeply into the UN’s architecture.

Q: In the research you map institutional developments related to the counter-terrorism architecture against five time periods. Tell us more about these.

AA: We didn’t assume the counter-terrorism architecture would grow linearly. Based on our previous readings and knowledge of the development of the architecture, we identified five phases of change or growth. We wanted to explore, in-depth, our assumptions regarding these specific time periods.

The first phase was ‘Not “our” issue: pre-9/11’, where the UN basically treated counter-terrorism as a technical, legal issue, one that was not a core concern for the institution. This of course all changed after 9/11. This ushered in the second phase: ‘Panic Period! 9/11 and its aftermath’. During this phase, in just two short years, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1373, and established the Counter-Terrorism Committee. After that, the next big development comes three years later, at the beginning of what we label the third phase, ‘Growing in the shadows: counter-terrorism at the UN’, which took place until 2014. Here, UNSCR 1535 created the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate, and the UN General Assembly adopted the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.

JS: Dramatic expansion did not really begin until the fourth phase, ‘Panic redux’. This was a short three-year period between 2014 and 2016. It really starts in earnest following the rise of the Islamic State and the growing focus on ‘foreign terrorist fighters’. UNSCR 2178 introduced the language of ‘violent extremism’ into the UN’s official discourse, expanded reporting obligations, and – together with the Secretary-General’s Plan of Action on Preventing Violent Extremism in 2015 – laid the groundwork for the fifth phase, ‘A golden chip: the creation of UNOCT’.

Phase 5 is where the majority of institutional consolidation really happens, with the birth of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT). Since then, as much of our previous analysis has shown, the UN counter-terrorism architecture has grown rapidly and – through the Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact – has become the largest coordination body in the UN system.

Across these phases we see different terms enter the UN Security Council’s lexicon, different UN Member States taking a leadership role, and the role of UN officials steadily and continually growing. And this is why we think these phases offer useful points of analysis for the broader discourse analysis.

Q: So what does the analysis of speeches tell us in relation to the current state of counter-terrorism at the UN?

AA: What we see is that counter-terrorism at the UN became a self-sustaining agenda. Discourse related to counter-terrorism at the UN is very routinised and institutionalised, even during periods when the overall trend of ‘terror’ attacks declined. But it is important to note that not all concepts endure. Our analysis looked at the use of the terms ‘terror’, ‘extremism’ and ‘radicalisation’. We see that ‘radicalisation’ remains contested and does not gain the same institutional traction as ‘terror’ or ‘extremism’. This is probably a good sign given there is still significant uncertainty as to whether there is a predictive relationship between radicalisation and violent terror acts.

Q: Are there any specific results that surprised you as researchers who have followed the UN counter-terrorism space over the past decade? 

JS: The analysis draws out five key insights. Some were more surprising than others. The first and perhaps most surprising result was that rhetorical leadership on counter-terrorism discourse at the UN has shifted between major powers: while the US led initial efforts, Russia and China now dominate the discourse. Readers of this analysis might be shocked to see that the US is not the ‘leader’ of cumulative mentions of ‘terror’-related keywords, given that the US launched the ‘Global War on Terror’ in 2001 and introduced the concept of countering violent extremism to the UN in 2014.

The US has undoubtedly been a central proponent and enabler of the discourse related to ‘terrorism’ and counter-terrorism at the UN Security Council, and Ali and I would argue that it has had by far the most consequential impact on the birth, rise and consolidation of the agenda at the UN. However, it has not maintained rhetorical dominance. Russia is the cumulative leader of mentions related to ‘terror’ and has been the annual leader every year since 2015. China has also surpassed the US since 2015 and has matched Russia in its rhetoric and discourse in a consistent manner. The language – and focus – that was once staunchly the US’ responsibility is now being used most frequently by others. Most passive observers would probably have assumed that the US would have led and would continue to lead the discourse, but that’s really not the case.

Q: What about the role of the UN and its leadership? What has its role been in the expansion of counter-terrorism architecture?

AA: The Secretariat and UN entities have made strategic choices that deepened engagement with counter-terrorism, reflecting institutional incentives – and they are now among the rhetorical leaders pushing the counter-terrorism agenda. This was not always the case, but has been a clear development, especially during the tenure of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Q: Finally, given you are publishing this at a time when the wider UN system is undergoing a period of contraction with the UN80 process,  – do you see this having an impact on the UN counter-terrorism architecture?

JS: The UN Secretary-General’s revised budget proposal for 2026 for the UN system does include cuts to the UN counter-terrorism architecture. But it also includes cuts to the vast majority of UN functions, and so there is no unique contraction occurring. But the UN80 process does offer an opportunity to shift sprawling counter-terrorism structures that have been overwhelmingly weighted towards hard security into an offering that fits more comfortably with the UN’s core purpose: focusing clearly on its core pillars of peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights and humanitarian affairs.

We hope that at the end of the UN80 process, a transparent and accountable UN counter-terrorism architecture can clearly show that it is prioritising balanced implementation across the four pillars of the UN’s Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. This offering should clearly ensure that the counter-terrorism work of the UN system does not inadvertently support harmful approaches at a national or local level, thereby negatively impacting the UN’s reputation. If this occurs, then perhaps a sixth – and welcomed – phase could be ushered in.