ABSTRACT
Although the UN has sought to assume the leading role in the post-September 1 1 , 2001, multilateral effort, other intergovernmental bodies have joined what has become a growth industry, with more and more counterterrorism programmes being initiated at different levels and in different substantive areas. Regional organisations such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), the African Union (AU) and the Organisation of American States (OAS) have adopted strong political counterterrorism declarations and action plans and/or established dedicated counterterrorism units within their secre tariats to work with their members in building capacity. Functional interna tional organisations such as the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the International Monetary Fund and the World Customs Organisation (WCO), to name just a few, have also added a counterterrorism component to their work. Some have adopted counterterrorism-related best practices, codes or standards and/or provided training and other forms of counterterrorism technical assistance. Some regional bodies have succeeded in getting their members to implement the technical standards developed by the functional institutions. This has gen erally occurred, however, only where there is a strong donor presence among the membership, for example APEC (Australia, Canada, Japan and USA), OAS (Canada and USA) and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) (EU, Canada and US). In these bodies, donors have funded technical assistance programmes to help the less-developed members implement the rel evant standards or best practices.
