On December 9, 2021, The Soufan Center was proud to support a Securing the Future Initiative (SFI) roundtable discussion on “An Independent Assessment of UN Security Council Counterterrorism Efforts” at the Permanent Mission of Germany to the United Nations in New York. The discussion gathered key stakeholders, including Member States, UN officials, independent experts, and civil society, to identify areas of impact as well as successes and challenges in United Nations Security Council efforts to counter terrorism and violent extremism over the past two decades. The discussion was led by Naureen Chowdhury Fink, Executive Director of The Soufan Center; Alistair Millar, President of the Fourth Freedom Forum; and Eric Rosand, Visiting Senior Fellow of The Soufan Center.
The interactive discussion explored the shortcomings and successes of the Security Council’s counterterrorism work, highlighting the need to address the underlying conditions that give rise to terrorism and underscoring the need to better assess and measure the effectiveness of implementation of Council resolutions and actions. The insights from this session helped identify key issues to be considered in follow-on multi-stakeholder SFI workshops and research areas during the course of the initiative, with analysis and policy-relevant recommendations and findings to be delivered by SFI in Fall 2022.