Proposed Reform of UN Counter-terrorism Activities Falls Short

By Victor Comras

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has just issued his recommendations on steps to streamline UN activities. The report, entitled � Mandating and Delivering: An analysis and recommendations to facilitate the review of mandates,� takes a hard look at the numerous UN activities that have been mandated over the years by the Security Council and General Assembly. These cover a wide range of activities and the report devotes separate sections to (a) International Peace and Security; (b) Promotion of Sustained Growth and Sustainable Development; (c) Development of Africa; (d) Promotion of Human Rights; (e) Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance; (f) Promotion of Justice and International law, (g) Disarmament; (h) Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women, and (f) Research and Training. It also has a section on Drug control, Crime Prevention and Combating International Terrorism. I am going to deal here only with these counter-terrorism recommendations.

With regard to terrorism, the Secretary General notes there are now three different Security Council Committees dealing with Terrorism: the Counter-Terrorism Committee, the Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee, and the Committee charged with preventing terrorists from acquiring WMD. He also notes that there is considerable overlap between these committees. The most obvious is that the membership of all three committees is the same as the membership of the Security Council. Each committee is supported by a separate Secretariat staff. Each has different procedures. Each reports separately to the Security Council. The Secretary General believes that special consideration should now be given to consolidating their work and their reporting requirements. Immediate steps should be taken, he recommends, to combine their travel to reduce the burdens on the UN as well as the countries being visited. �In the long run,� he says, �it would be a good idea to look at the possibility of creating a single subsidiary body that covers all the expertise of the current three. This body could include experts in different areas and would in effect take care of the other problems mentioned.�

The corridor talk is that the Secretary General wants to combine the three counter-terrorism committees under the general structure of the Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate. That would be a big mistake. CTED was established by the Security Council over two years ago with the intent of re-invigorating the near dormant Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC). Its principal function is to assist countries in developing and implementing national counter-terrorism laws and strategies, and matching technical assistance to countries lacking the means to combat terrorism. The results of this work have either been very sparse, or tightly held. For, there is little public evidence of any of these accomplishments. Nor has the CTC lived up to expectations that it would provide a meaningful platform for stimulating international cooperation and judicial assistance in going after the terrorists.

The performance of the Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee has been more substantial. It is the only terrorism related committee that maintains a list of al Qaeda terrorists and their financial supporters. It obliges all countries to take specific measures against those on the list. This includes freezing their assets, halting their travel and depriving them of access to arms and explosives. The Committee has its own Monitoring Team which, while constrained from �naming and shaming,� has been able to hammer away at the systemic problems associated with these objectives. Unfortunately, the list this committee maintains is woefully short, out-of-date and inaccurate.

As for the Committee dealing with WMD and Terrorism, it has served as little more than a repository for country reports�each prepared by the countries themselves. None provides any real glimpse into problems or shortcomings.

Perhaps the UN should scrape all three committees and start afresh. What�s really needed is an independent auditing or watchdog group that could oversee what countries are actually doing, or not doing, to implement internationally agreed counter-terrorism measures. Such a group would bring increased transparency and credibility to the international counter-terrorism effort. It would place increased pressure on countries to comply with these measures. It would also provide an independent assessment of any remedial action that might be needed. The fact is that no Security Council Committee will ever be in a position to truly question what specific countries are actually doing. There is just too much diplomatic and political baggage involved in their initiating such inquiries or findings.

The watchdog group that I envisage would include 8 to 10 senior experts or statesmen appointed for three to five year non-renewable terms. Their work would be supported by an independent staff that answered only to them. Their authority would derive from the Security Council pursuant to Chapter VII of the UN Charter. They would report directly to the Security Council on a periodic basis, but no less than quarterly. These reports would be public. The reports would include their own independent assessment concerning the implementation of the counter-terrorism measures along with recommendations to improve their effectiveness. These experts would be beholden to no country. Their views would not be ascribed to any country avoiding the political and diplomatic pitfalls when one country appears to investigate or question another. The Security Council would be free to discuss, debate, and even question their findings. In this way all countries would be on notice that their actions or inactions may well come under close public international scrutiny.

I suspect that the actual reforms that the UN will adopt will fall far short of this strident approach. .

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