Function before form: optimising the UN’s counter-terrorism architecture

This report provides an independent view and recommendations to assist the UN Secretary-General, Member States, UN officials and other experts on the three issues under the seventh iteration of the United Nations’ Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy. These issues are:

1. Oversight and effectiveness – options for enhancing the effectiveness of and for monitoring and evaluating UN counter-terror efforts, and better integrating rule of law, human rights and gender issues.
2. Appropriate funding for the integrated and balanced implementation of the strategy, and delivery of the mandate given to UN Office of Counter-Terrorism in 2017.
3. Grant-making – should UN Office of Counter-Terrorism gain the authority to make direct grants and payments to implementing partners, and if so, how should this work?

This report is written and published on behalf of the Civil Society Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, and is funded by the New York Office of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.

The views represented in this paper are the author’s own and may not represent the positions of Saferworld or of coalition members in the CSO Coalition for Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism.

Download the report here.

Read more about our work on counter-terrorism.