Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy

Today I went to an interesting luncheon discussion where someone was talking about a report called "Implementing the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in East Africa". The report doesn't appear to be on line yet.

Kudos to Alistair Millar and his colleagues at the Center on Global Counter-Terrorism Cooperation for doing this important work!

Now, to implement the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, the UN created a Task Force of 24 UN agencies that is supposed to come together and share information on what they are doing to contribute to the strategy. The UN Development Program is one of a few on the list that focus on poverty reduction. It is on this task force because of the UN's recognition that reducing poverty and increasing democratic forms of governance around the world will help remove the root causes of terrorism.

However, I am a bit miffed at the fact that despite the fact that the UN Development Program (UNDP) participates in the UN's Counter Terrorism Task Force meetings, one of the recommendations in the the Center on Global Counter-Terrorism Cooperation's report (when the report is online look for priority #14) seems to say that UNDP has proven reluctant to engage on the counter-terrorism strategy. This seems to imply that because UNDP is not interested in branding its poverty reduction, governance, and human rights programs as Counter Terrorism efforts that UNDP is not committed to the idea of making the world safe from terrorism.

This is ridiculous. The work of UNDP and its partners is of course helping to reduce the risk of terrorism by offering people hope for a brighter future. While most helpful for raising the U.S. voluntary contributions to UNDP, labeling UNDP's work "Counter Terrorism" work would be unproductive in nations that simply do not see terrorism as their main concern. For example, South Africa might think that it doesn't really have a terrorism problem--but it does have a crime problem. Dealing with the crime problem arrives at the same place a counter terrorism effort would: increased rule of law and hope for the people of the nation.

Since UNDP works closely with governments around the world to help them address their most pressing problems relating to human poverty, it seems to me that the UN counter terrorism task force would do well to let UNDP continue to do it's thing without insisting on the label of counter-terrorism.