ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to give a brief introduction to the international legal and institutional framework (at the UN level) on terrorism prevention efforts. The main focal point will be preventive aspects, which address the root causes of terrorism. Within the UN there are several bodies whose role it is to deal with terrorism. Their primary goal is to enforce measures directed against terrorist groups, or to support states in doing so. The Security Council has therefore established three bodies mainly dealing with terrorism: two ad hoc committees (the committee established pursuant to resolution 1373 (2001) concerning counter-terrorism1 and the committee established pursuant to resolution 1540 (2004) for the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to non-state actors) and one sanctions committee established pursuant to resolution 1267 (1999) concerning al Qaeda and the Taliban and associated individuals and entities. A fourth committee,2 established after the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri, has only a very limited mandate and ‘[a]s of 26 January 2007, no individuals have been registered by the Committee.’3 Apart from the thirteen existent international anti-terrorism conventions, which put the emphasis not on the prevention of terrorism but instead on the prevention of terrorist acts and the suppression of terrorism (that is, the preemption of terrorism), there has been no specific legal framework developed on how to fight terrorism. In order to fill the gaps between the existing treaties and deal comprehensively with this issue the, General Assembly established an ad hoc committee with resolution 51/210 on 17 December 1996. The task of this ad hoc committee was to develop a comprehensive legal framework of conventions dealing with international terrorism. The final expected output of this committee is a comprehensive convention against international terrorism. Though the work involved would clarify the definition of terrorism and the duties of states, a preventive approach has not been chosen in this context.4 To say that the UN’s framework for fighting against terrorism does not consider any real preventive options would be wrong. Indeed, this task has been left to the respective institutions of the UN. In order to improve the coordination of different efforts and measures against terrorism, the former UN Secretary
General, Kofi Annan, established the Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF ) in July 2005. Its scope goes beyond mere information sharing within the UN institutions. The idea was to plan and coordinate strategies by also including other entities like the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol). For better coordination of institutions and member states in implementing the ‘The United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy’,5 the next step under Ban Ki-moon was the launching of the ‘UN Counter-Terrorism Online Handbook’.6 The conclusions Kofi Annan drew in his report ‘Uniting Against Terrorism’ on how to prevent terrorism were very clear:
There has been ongoing discussion among Member States about whether terrorism can be traced to certain so-called ‘root causes’ and he further pointed out that in order to come to an operational strategy to counter terrorism it must be clear ‘that terrorist acts do not occur in a social or political vacuum.7
