I have the pleasure to speak on behalf of the Nordic countries: Finland,
Iceland, Norway, Sweden and my own country, Denmark. We are grateful to the
Indonesian presidency for placing this very pertinent topic on the Council’s
agenda. Your excellent timing allows us to build on the discussions of last
month’s UN Counter-Terrorism Week and the Secretary General’s recent report on
this issue.
Mr. President,
While it is still too early to fully understand and assess the impact of
the COVID-19 pandemic on the global terrorism landscape, the pandemic leaves
the world more vulnerable to terrorism with the possibility that already
existing negative dynamics are coming into play earlier than expected and with
more severe consequences. Furthermore, terrorist groups have set up local and
regional systems to generate and move funds through illicit and organized
criminal activity. This makes it all the more important to ensure our national,
regional and global counter-terrorist financing architecture is fit for purpose.
Terrorist networks depend on external financing to run their
organizations. This financing must be cut off. We must disrupt the links
between organised crime and terrorism in order to identify and stop illicit
financial flows to terrorist organisations and criminal networks. We encourage
expansion of existing as well as developing new initiatives to deal more
effectively with the nexus between terrorism and organised crime.
Mr. President,
The Nordic countries fully support the important message
delivered by the Secretary General in his opening remarks during last month’s
UN CT Week: Counter-terrorism laws and security measures cannot be an excuse to
shrink civic and humanitarian space, curtail freedom of association and deny
other human rights.
We are currently faced with multiple international crises requiring
humanitarian, development or security-led responses, and the Covid-19 global pandemic
and its derived effects has only increased competition for Member States’ scarce
resources. We fully agree with the Secretary General’s point during last
month’s UN CT Week that we must
harness the power of multilateralism to find practical solutions. Terrorism
does not respect national borders. It affects us all and can only be defeated
collectively. Hence, the demand for a
coordinated approach ensuring effective and demand-driven responses that create
tangible, gender-sensitive and sustainable outcomes on the ground in Member
States has never been more outspoken.
The United Nations Headquarters in New York and the United Nations
offices in Vienna must work effectively together, including by making the best
possible use of their field presence– and by finding the right balance between
headquarter and field presence. We call on the UNODC and UNOCT to develop
strategies to this end drawing on the specific strengths and mandates of each
Office.
Similarly, as Member States we must also work together, both within our
countries and between authorities and sectors as well as with other Member
States. Indeed, coordination and cooperation between authorities has been
identified as one key factor in countering organized crime and terrorism. Furthermore,
it is important to build and improve partnerships with civil society, including
humanitarian and private sector actors.
The Global Counterterrorism Forum has developed a number of practical
guidelines and best practices relevant to today’s debate that can assist us in
translating our shared visions and priorities into concrete partnerships. We
welcome the increased UN-GCTF collaboration and we call for even further realization
of potential synergies between the UN and the GCTF, in particular through GCTF-inspired
institutions like the International Institute for Justice & the Rule of Law.
The training institute in Malta presents an obvious platform for addressing
many of the gaps identified in the Secretary General’s report through capacity
building and experience sharing.
Mr. President,
A key prerequisite for promoting a rule of law-based approach is the need
to move from convictions based on confessions alone to sentencing based on objectively
verifiable evidence. Not only as a way of ensuring a rule of law based and
human rights compliant criminal justice response to terrorism but also to
ensure a more efficient and more comprehensive investigation and prosecution
process, increasing the possibilities of exposing linkages between terrorists
and individuals or networks involved in other forms of crimes. Such an approach
shows that effective counter-terrorism measures and
the protection of human rights are indeed complementary and mutually reinforcing objectives.
Thank you