The United Nations General Assembly failed to reach consensus on the U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS) for the first time in the strategy’s 20-year history. The ninth review of the GCTS, which concluded in early July, also marked the second review cycle in a row in which the General Assembly failed to make much-needed updates to the strategy (the last substantial review to the text occurred in 2021). These successive lapses will amplify questions about the role of the U.N.’s counterterrorism entities and programs at a time when the U.N. is facing dramatic resource constraints. With a major leadership change coming to the U.N. in 2027, as the General Assembly selects a new Secretary-General later this year, it will be high time to look at other ways to right-size the U.N.’s counterterrorism system and ensure it is fit for purpose.
A Late Start, Quickly Unraveled
With 2026 marking the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy’s 20th anniversary, many states entered the review seeking a more substantial update and showed early willingness to negotiate on issues such as new technology and oversight of U.N. counterterrorism programing. But the process struggled from the start. The two co-facilitators of the negotiations – Ambassador Elina Kalkku of Finland and Ambassador Omar Hilale of Morocco – were appointed months later than in past reviews, compressing an already difficult timeline. Once talks began in April, they quickly sprawled. States proposed edits to nearly all of the strategy’s 180 paragraphs and suggested 30 new ones on a broad range of issues from border security and transnational organized crime to hate speech and gaming, with few areas of agreement. States further staked out conflicting nonnegotiable positions (“red lines”), and discussions became heated at many points. The United States circulated alternative texts of its own that challenged the process and ultimately torpedoed any progressive outcome. The co-facilitators attempted to rein the process back in by reducing the number of issues on the table, but by this point it was too late for broad agreement on even a select few.
In the end, the co-facilitators, frustrated by the lack of compromise, put forward a resolution identical to the previous review (save the removal of two paragraphs on COVID-19). After proposing and subsequently withdrawing a last-minute amendment calling for a significant set of procedural changes to future reviews, the United States broke consensus practice by calling for a vote and was joined by Israel and Argentina in opposing the resolution. The months of back-and-forth negotiations signaled a general appetite to update the strategy, but in the end, that collided with a multilateral environment too polarized and a process too rushed to deliver it.
Factors in Failure
Several factors contributed to the outcome of the review, beginning with the process itself and the late appointment of the co-facilitators. In past reviews, the president of the General Assembly named them in October of the year preceding the March start of negotiations; whereas this time the appointment came only at the end of January. This reduced the time the co-facilitators had to meet with all delegations to get a sense of priorities and identify a handful of issues where there were opportunities to reach broad consensus. Granted, the delayed appointment might also have been a reflection of the unwillingness of many states to take on the role in a challenging negotiating environment rather than any lack of effort on the part of the General Assembly president.
Even with the limited time they had, the co-facilitators’ tactics did not appear to meet the moment, and their approach to the negotiations precipitated the outcome in many ways. In an increasingly fraught multilateral environment, making progress on the GCTS required significant, early, and sustained diplomacy with key states and negotiating blocs, combined with a deliberate strategy to build incremental agreement throughout the negotiations on select issues and paragraphs. In the absence of such an approach, the negotiations became too unwieldy to manage in the shortened timeframe.
Another contributing factor was the U.S. approach in the negotiations, which was notably different from its disengagement from and blatant opposition to other U.N. negotiations. In this case, the United States appears to see the U.N. as useful for counterterrorism and actively participated in GCTS negotiations. But the United States engaged in a way that won itself little support with other delegations. It declared several red lines early in the process, including proposing substantial cuts to the text (including on human rights and gender) and indicated that it was willing to call a vote in the General Assembly (thereby breaking the traditional consensus by which previous reviews have been adopted) if its proposals were not taken on board. (The U.S. calling a vote after not getting what it wants is familiar. Just weeks before the GCTS negotiations began, the United States had tried and failed to strip long-agreed language on gender at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), forcing the first recorded vote in the commission’s seven-decade history – a vote it lost 37 to 1.)
When the U.S. proposals were not included in GCTS drafts, the United States circulated its own draft resolution that significantly cut down the existing resolution, but this text received almost no support from its usual allies in the “Western European and Other Group” (the negotiating bloc at the U.N. that includes the United States), due in part to the removal of many critical clauses related to encouraging civic participation, respecting human rights, and considering gender-related impacts of counterterrorism. Had the U.S. delegation worked to build coalitions and compromises, it is possible that some progress could have been made to streamline and update certain parts of the strategy. In the end, the United States was isolated, but its efforts undermined the co-facilitators’ attempts to make substantive progress on the resolution text.
Where This Leaves the U.N. Strategy
The U.N.’s counterterrorism strategy was designed with a clear purpose: To provide a balanced, comprehensive framework for states and the U.N. system to prevent and counter terrorism while ensuring it does not itself become a tool for human rights abuses. Its four pillars were conceived as interdependent – weaken one pillar, and the structure tilts. Civil society organizations such as the CSO Coalition on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism have long argued that implementation has been imbalanced, yet the text as designed should allow for an approach to U.N. counterterrorism activity that is based on the rule of law and complies with human rights. (One of us, Brian Kimari, is a member of the Coalition and two, Beth Alexion and Kaleigh Homstad, work in the Secretariat).
Many of the critiques of the strategy that were raised during the negotiations have merit. The expansion of the U.N.’s counterterrorism system over two decades has produced a document so sprawling that it is increasingly difficult to use and does not provide strategic direction. More dangerously, it has created a framework that, in practice, serves as a ready cover for states seeking to apply hard-security approaches to issues that should be governed very differently. For example, a counterterrorism approach that equates hate speech with terrorism – as was proposed by multiple states during the GCTS negotiations – does not strengthen the fight against terrorism nor address the underlying causes that give rise to hate speech; rather, it weakens both efforts and increases the risk of human rights violations. Expanding the application of the term “terrorism,” which has no internationally agreed definition despite multiple efforts over the years to produce such agreement, provides too much room for states to abuse counterterrorism laws and policies to repress activists, journalists, and minorities who pose no terrorism threat whatsoever.
During both this review and the previous round, critical proposals related to accountability, results-based reporting, and transparency of the U.N. counterterrorism offices and programs were proposed but left out of the final resolutions. These proposals initially arose during the 7th review in 2021 out of concerns that the system is not equipped to ensure counterterrorism measures uphold international legal obligations, including international human rights law and international humanitarian law (the laws of war, where those might apply). Research and work by many of our peers and colleagues has argued that the U.N. counterterrorism system – led by the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism (UNOCT) – lacks oversight, is inconsistent in reporting its funding and programs, and is largely inaccessible to civil society. UNOCT’s regular budget has grown nearly seven-fold since it was established in 2017, despite the office not having demonstrated the outcomes or impacts of its programs. Human rights due diligence and impact assessments are not standard practice for the U.N.’s counterterrorism efforts, and human rights experts have long raised concerns over the human rights impacts of UNOCT’s projects.
At least one example of the U.N.’s lack of due diligence on human rights risks was clear during the fourth high-level counterterrorism week that took place during this year’s review process. An official side event highlighted a UNOCT project on “Preventing and countering extremism: national and regional practices,” funded by Russia and Egypt. This project apparently has continued despite clear human rights concerns arising from the ill-defined and misused “extremism” label, language that many states have consistently opposed in GCTS reviews.
Overall, the lack of updates to a strategy that is meant to address an evolving threat raises the question of the utility of the strategy and the expansive U.N. counterterrorism system that has grown up around it over the last two decades.
Options for Reform?
States can take another crack at reform of the system during the 10th review in 2029. But that’s far too long to wait, given the repeated evidence of human rights abuses in the name of counterterrorism and the risk that the U.N. may be contributing to these abuses. With new U.N. leadership coming in 2027, as Secretary-General Antonio Guterres makes way for a successor, there will be an important opportunity for states to make structural changes that ensure U.N. counterterrorism work is more in line with the principles outlined in the U.N. Charter and is effectively serving the purposes of the United Nations. Some steps towards achieving this should include the following:
- States should demand more rigorous reporting on the outcomes and impacts of the UNOCT’s programs. Demonstrating value and results is particularly urgent in the context of ongoing U.N. reform and the budget crisis. This reporting should include assessments of outcomes and impact, rather than solely quantitative project indicators, and should be undertaken as part of the office’s core functions.
- States can continue to put pressure on U.N. entities undertaking counterterrorism efforts to ensure their efforts do not jeopardize human rights or contribute to unintended harms. This is already called for in the GCTS and is enshrined as one of its four pillars, but those efforts lack funding and aren’t prioritized. Standardized human rights impact assessments and due diligence for all U.N. counterterrorism programming should be treated as non-negotiable to protect the U.N. from reputational risks of being associated with human rights abuses in the name of counterterrorism.
- U.N. counterterrorism entities should take concrete steps to improve civil society’s access to the U.N. processes that develop counterterrorism policy and programs, as this is a division that remains far behind other parts of the U.N. system in its openness to civic input. While language proposed by the European Union during this year’s review on safe and meaningful participation of civil society was not included in the final resolution, UNOCT and other entities undertaking counterterrorism programs can still make progress, taking lessons from other parts of the U.N., such as its human rights mechanisms. This includes concrete steps to protect civil society from reprisals and improve transparency for the U.N.’s counterterrorism programs and activities at the country and regional level.
The U.N. counterterrorism offices and programs will continue to find new areas of work even in the absence of substantive updates to the strategy. (UNOCT’s ‘extremism’ project is a clear example of this.) Progress on oversight and accountability of U.N. counterterrorism entities need not wait until the next review in 2029. Experience has shown that UNOCT improves its practice when states and civil society apply sustained pressure, and that pressure must continue over the next three years.
As for consensus, its loss is worth lamenting but not romanticizing. For two review cycles, unanimity only produced stasis. The lesson — from the CSW vote in March to the GCTS adoption in June — is that a determined majority can still defend substance when one state walks away; what it cannot afford is to limit its ambitions to “preservation of status quo.” The task before 2029 is not to restore consensus on the strategy as it stands, but to rebuild it around a strategy worth having — leaner, accountable, and anchored in the human rights commitments that give U.N counterterrorism work its legitimacy.
