The Time Has Come to Streamline the UN Security Council’s Counterterrorism Program

The UN Security Council’s 6 May 2008 release of COMPARATIVE TABLE REGARDING THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL COMMITTEES ESTABLISHED PURSUANT TO RESOLUTIONS 1267(1999), 1373 (2001) and 1540 (2004) attempts to show a coherent and efficient division of labor among each of the three Security Council counterterrorism-related bodies. Unfortunately it does not seriously address the obvious synergies possible and duplication of effort between those committees and does nothing to address the structural issues impeding the Council’s efforts.

The Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee (the 1267 Committee), the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC, established pursuant to resolution 1373), and the Committee established pursuant to resolution 1540 (2004) (the 1540 Committee) and their expert groups form the core of the UN’s counterterrorism program. They were established respectively to address sanctions against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and their associates; to strengthen counterterrorism capacity building and information sharing; and to deny terrorists access to nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

Those three Security Council bodies are in fact made up of the same fifteen members of the Council and in many cases the same individual representatives. The table conceals the reality that there are overlapping mandates, turf battles, duplication of work, multiple and sometimes confusing reporting requirements for states, and inadequate cooperation among the committees and their respective expert groups, all of which continues to undercut the effectiveness of the larger Council and UN counterterrorism effort. This stove-piped approach, which has existed since 2004, has impeded the Council’s ability to develop a coherent counterterrorism program. Rather than continuing with the current fragmentation, the Security Council should consolidate the existing bodies into a single inter-governmental body, which would be supported by a unified group of UN experts, an approach that was recommended by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2006.

A wide range of UN members, including both members and nonmembers of the Security Council, recognize that cooperation and coordination among these groups remains inadequate and that the resulting duplication of effort and overlapping mandates are hampering its counterterrorism performance. Repeated calls by the Council and others for enhanced cooperation and coordination among the different Council groups has largely fallen on deaf ears. Countries in the global South have perhaps been the most critical of the current set up. Many have had difficulty distinguishing among the different mandates of the three committees and their respective expert groups (the 1267 Committee Monitoring Team, the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), and the 1540 Committee Group of Experts); they are inundated with multiple, seemingly duplicative reporting and other requirements. Furthermore, there is awareness within the UN community that the repeated calls from the Security Council for enhanced cooperation, including the drawing up of a single, unified work plan and coordinated site visits, have gone unheeded. With reform at the top of the UN agenda of many countries, including the US, consolidating the UN bureaucracy to make it more efficient and effective should resonate with Washington and other capitals.

A few examples of the overlap are worth noting. First, the CTED and the Monitoring Team’s work overlaps in the areas of terrorist financing, arms embargoes, and travel bans. The Security Council–imposed al Qaeda/Taliban sanctions constitute a subset of the measures states are obliged to take under Resolution 1373. Thus, any analysis related to the difficulties of states in implementing the sanctions regime may be relevant to, and duplicative of, analysis related to the difficulties of states in implementing Resolution 1373. This duplication is most apparent in the terrorist financing context, but also applies to other areas. In their analyses, the Monitoring Team and the CTED have reached many of the same conclusions, not only as to the nature of the gaps in states’ counterterrorism capacity but also what is needed to fill them. This parallel analysis is generally undertaken with insufficient coordination between the two analytical teams.

Second, the CTED and the 1540 Committee’s group of experts overlap in the areas of weapons of mass destruction. Among its many different provisions, Resolution 1373 includes several that are aimed at preventing terrorists from getting their hands on such weapons. Prior to the adoption of Resolution 1540, which is exclusively devoted to this subject, the United States had been pushing the CTC to focus more attention on the WMD-related provisions of Resolution 1373. Despite this overlap in mandates, the CTC and 1540 Committee and their respective staff bodies have yet to agree on a common approach to handling these issues with states.