The United Nations Security Council gathers every six months to review the ongoing threat to international peace and security posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh). The mid-year review falls on Aug. 20 this year under Panama’s presidency of the Council. The session and the latest accompanying report from the Secretary-General provides a chance to reflect on progress since the previous report in January, which described how ISIL continues to not only survive, but also adapt. The session is always one to watch, as the U.N.‘s role in countering ISIL illustrates the interplay among the United States, European countries, Russia, and China, with their shared counterterrorism interests but often competing bids for influence at the U.N. It also will indicate whether there can be consensus and attention by the U.N. counterterrorism bureaucracy towards reporting on results, drawing on important findings from recent evaluations.
Member States assess the impact of U.N. counterterrorism efforts on an ongoing basis to better understand how strengths might be reinforced and weaknesses addressed. While this is even more timely during considerations of broader reforms for the U.N. during this year’s 80th anniversary, a focus on impact in counterterrorism does not require a separate negotiated process, as is typical currently. Instead, considerations of how the U.N.’s counterterrorism efforts could be more effective should be integrated across the entire cycle of U.N. meetings and reviews. Rather than requiring new mandates or products, there are existing opportunities to improve the U.N.’s counterterrorism work and truly establish the “results culture” called for in the U.N. Office of Counterterrorism (UNOCT)’s 2022-2025 strategic plan.
Saferworld’s Jordan Street’s recent analysis and recommendations for the counterterrorism portion of “UN80” reform discussions highlighted the risk that potential mergers tied to funding cuts would weaken human rights protections. States’ interventions at the Security Council Aug. 20 meeting will indicate where negotiations over the future of the U.N.’s counterterrorism system are headed during the review of the body’s Global Counterterrorism Strategy at its 20th anniversary next year.
Security Council’s Mid-Year Review
Secretary-General António Guterres’ latest biannual report on the threat of ISIL, as mandated last year by resolution 2734, outlines U.N. efforts in support of member States to counter the threat, and importantly, the “impact of these efforts.” The report concludes that ISIL continues to opportunistically expand to operate in conflict zones, and that in the specific case of the threat of ISIL in northeast Syria, the international response should combine States’ repatriation of their nationals with judicial accountability and due process.
In the Aug. 20 session, each Security Council member will offer their observations and priorities. It will take parsing through the three-hours of speeches to discern trends and hints at the evolution in the Council’s thinking since its last gathering on the topic.
The Council’s unity in countering the threat posed by ISIL is a testament to the fact that there are few threats as immediate in their cross-regional impact. The reach of the terrorist group and its affiliates ranges from the Sahel to Afghanistan, where ISIL-Khorasan recruits individuals remotely from around the world. Still, States’ varying priorities and critiques of each other’s policies make the Council’s end-products a patchwork of compromises.
To keep counterterrorism implementation on track and results-focused, the Council should maintain a shared focus on the linkages between individual activities and overarching, evidence-backed theories of change. The U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact is the coordination mechanism for counterterrorism activities across the U.N.’s three “pillars” — peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights and humanitarian affairs, and bodies within that Compact have distinct and complementing roles to play, ranging from criminal justice to civil aviation. The Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team, for example, details ISIL’s regional developments and implementation of U.N. sanctions measures. Their 36th report was published on July 24. It found, for example, an increase in foreign terrorist fighters’ travel, including to conflict zones in Africa. CTED’s assessment visits to States provide even-handed findings to those States on gaps and successes in implementation of the Council’s counterterrorism provisions – this year for Somalia, Cameroon, and Chad, among others. UNOCT, established in 2017, while experiencing push and pull from interests across the full membership of the General Assembly, is intended to enhance coordination and coherence across the Compact.
Monitoring Impact
The Security Council’s biannual review of ISIL’s threat and the Secretary-General’s related reports should be used to greater effect by focusing on indicators of success, including a forthright accounting of impact in contributions to the Secretary-General’s report. Currently, there is the risk that member States will fuel a disjointed U.N. and internal competition by overly focusing on promoting the individual projects they fund.
Policy gatherings such as the U.N.’s Counterterrorism Week (the last one took place in 2023) correspond with adoptions of the Global Counterterrorism Strategy (GCTS) reviews, and are useful for generating buy-in to shared outcomes or directions. But other high-level counterterrorism events that donor and recipient States host with the U.N. too often are rooted less in concrete outcomes than in demonstrating activity. It is even more important to maintain vigilance that U.N. activities do no harm, including as laid out in the 2024 Scoping Study on Independent Civil Society-U.N. Counterterrorism Engagement. The study laid out key preconditions needed for civil society participation in U.N. efforts, including protection from reprisals and engagement at grassroots and local levels.
Statements from member States at the Aug. 20 review of the ISIL threat will not only discuss the role of the U.N.’s counterterrorism architecture, but will rightly offer broader assessments of efforts beyond the U.N. to counter ISIL. While the U.N. system offers particular comparative advantages, including to assess, convene, or build awareness of gaps, it should not be stretched to answer every request for support, if nothing else because of its limited resources. To this end, an evaluation of UNOCT this year by the U.N.’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) recommended identifying specialized areas of support.
Improving Implementation of Existing Measures
The U.N. counterterrorism architecture has expanded dramatically over the past 20 years, so it is already robust, and member States should focus more on improving implementation and effectiveness rather than adding new elements. In linkages between terrorism and organized crime, for example, CTED already has related mandates, including Security Council resolution 2482’s direction to integrate that linkage in its assessments.
States should take seriously the task of addressing the gaps CTED identifies in its assessments, such as for border security or criminal justice frameworks. States should brief the Security Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee on their followup, and demonstrate leadership and transparency by briefing civil society and broader audiences. There are positive trends of more Sstates briefing the Council after assessments, including Qatar and the Maldives last year. A focus on follow-up ensures that the detailed CTED assessment reports are not left on a shelf, but are utilized to advance global, consistent implementation of the Council’s counterterrorism efforts, including in the landmark resolution 1373, which obligated States to criminalize terrorist acts in 2001. (See here for the 2019 technical guide to implementation of resolution 1373.)
Similarly in the biannual Security Council review of the threat of ISIL, it would be useful, moving forward, for the Secretary-General’s report to candidly discuss challenges in achieving impact and potential adjustments that would be needed to improve the record. The Secretary-General’s reports have succeeded at demonstrating the cross-regional range of counter-ISIL efforts. At the same time, it would be useful for the descriptions of the various programs to specify the indicators used to measure their success.
UNOCT’s combined 2024 report could offer some lessons. It addresses the recommendation by OIOS for aggregated reporting, beyond those for individual donors or projects. The report provides indicators of higher-level success, including that 10 former beneficiary States became funding partners. But there is room for improvement. Since trainings and workshops are a key activity for UNOCT and other Compact entities, what were the baseline measurements and outcomes to show success, beyond the numbers of participants? The OIOS evaluation in May provided positive case studies of UNOCT support to Iraq, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Uzbekistan, including ways to address foreign terrorist fighters and support victims of terrorism. On the other hand, the report concerningly noted the need for the UNOCT to consistently monitor results from its trainings and workshops.
Forward Look to Progress
In addition to the Secretary-General’s biannual reports and the 2024 UNOCT report at least demonstrating cross-regional reach and buy-in, there are also positive vignettes on whole-of-U.N. coordination, including use of CTED analysis to inform programs. The Secretary-General’s biannual report should further highlight trends across assessments, drawing on what is in CTED’s thematic reports. For example, for CTED’s findings of an expansion in regional hubs for foreign terrorist fighter recruitment and financing, the Secretary-General’s report should then outline the relevant implications for the U.N. Counterterrorism Compact’s regional approaches in support of Central Asia and the Sahel, among others.
Finally, the Secretary-General’s biannual report should show how UN bodies are taking action after program evaluations. There are good evaluations to showcase. The mid-term evaluation of the UNOCT Program on Countering Terrorist Use of Weapons found that beneficiaries appreciate advanced trainings, but also that the program lacks a standardized baseline assessment of States’ capacities.
The Security Council’s mid-year review of the threat posed by ISIL on Aug. 20 is a chance for member States to not only express the rhetoric of shared concern at the threat, but also to focus more rigorous attention on impact and results and reflect on what is needed in their own implementation of the Council’s counterterrorism work. The danger is acute, as is demonstrated in ISIL-affected areas around the world every day, so it must be not only a shared interest of all States, but also a point of serious urgency and honesty in such reviews.
