The Need for a United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordinator

The case for a high level United Nations (UN) Counter-Terrorism Coordinator position within the UN system has become increasingly urgent in 2013. This need has diluted some Member State reticence to creating a new Assistant Secretary-General position that would supervise and manage the existing counter-terrorism structures in the UN system. A Coordinator would have a basic responsibility to keep track of all of the activities of many formal inter-governmental organisations operating at the international, regional and sub-regional level and would also work closely with national counter-terrorism focal points. In this Policy Brief, Dr. Howard Stoffer reviews the debate among Security Council and Fifth Committee members about the efficacy of establishing a senior UN Global Counter-Terrorism Coordinator. He argues that the creation of such a position could lead to a restructuring of the UN counter-terrorism architecture as well as its funding within the UN budget and among donors. The position would eventually make the UN overall counter-terrorism effort, under the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, a stronger, more effective and more efficient process with measurable impact on the ground among Member States.

Read the Policy Brief here.

How to cite: Stoffer, H. "The Need for a United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordinator", The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism - The Hague 4, no. 3 (2013). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.19165/2013.2.03