IntelBrief: UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy to be Adopted During UN “CT Week”

Bottom Line Up Front

• This week the United Nations General Assembly will adopt a resolution on the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy (GCTS), a comprehensive framework document intended to shape the policies and activities of individual states as well as a myriad of UN bodies.
• For many diplomats, it is the review process and negotiations, more than the outcome, that serves to offer opportunities to shape the international discourse on counterterrorism. Over the past decade, the reviews have increasingly focused on protection of human rights and civil society, integrating gender as a cross-cutting issue, and the impacts of inequalities.
• This eighth review of the GCTS, co-led by Canada and Tunisia (each review has been led by one or two states as ‘facilitators’), has been overshadowed in large part by the war in Ukraine, leaving many diplomats keen on a “technical rollover.”
• As the UN Secretary-General and his teams deliberate on the future of UN peace operations and a New Agenda for Peace, for example, it will be important to ensure that efforts like the GCTS review can make a meaningful and impactful contribution to strengthening the UN’s added value.