Data-driven Tools, Strategies Must Be at Heart of Building Peace, Security, Secretary-General Tells Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact

For women and women in particular, terrorism is often marked by sexual and gender-based violence.   For communities, terrorism makes it more difficult to break the particular chains of poverty, or even create stable political plus economic systems, or create resilience against climate unfortunate occurances.   For people already facing milling poverty, hunger and starvation, terrorism makes life exponentially worse — as we find in the Sahel and somewhere else. I am pleased to join you for this ninth meeting of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact.   Since its start in 2018, this Compact has grown to 45 associate and observer entities and it has also started meaningful engagement with civil society and private sector partners.   Your work is more important than ever. Terrorism remains a global scourge — an affront to mankind on every level.   It affects people of all ages, civilizations, religions and nationalities. In every that we do to prevent plus end terrorism, we must keep your needs of victims front-and-centre.   And we must honour the particular memory of those whose life have been so cruelly seized away by this scourge by working to end it, once and for all. All the way, we need this Small and its working groups to continue building close ties to Member States and other partners to gather, analyse and deploy data for insight, influence and integrity. As we look to the forthcoming review of the United Nations Worldwide Counter-Terrorism Strategy in 06, let us strengthen multilateral cooperation and confront transnational terrorist threats that are more persistent, diverse and complex than ever before.   I look forward to hearing your ideas on how we can gather more entities, groups and countries to this essential cause. Terrorism discovers its home in vacuums.   A vacuum of security.   Vacuum pressure of effective political and civic institutions.   A vacuum of opportunity and hope.   Vacuum pressure of respect for human rights, equality and pride — especially for minorities plus women and girls.   And a vacuum cleaner of guardrails for technologies, where terror can distribute at the touch of a button. Combating terror should never be used as an reason for trampling on people’s human rights.   We need to securely ground all counter-terrorism procedures and initiatives within individual rights.   Because when we guard human rights, we are in fact tackling many of the root factors behind terrorism. While terrorists and criminals often go after different agendas and techniques, they are both fuelled simply by crimes like drug smuggling, human trafficking and illicit financing.   Our counter-terror reactions need to stay one step ahead. Following are EL Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks, as prepared for delivery, to the ninth meeting from the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact, in New York these days: More broadly, terrorism takes a sledgehammer to the shared values, institutions and norms and standards.   Human being rights.   The rule associated with law.   Equal and sustainable development.   And the peace plus security that every country and region of the world deserves. But as this meeting reminds all of us, today’s rapidly evolving terrorism threat requires an equally nimble and adaptive reaction, grounded in data and evidence.   Data drives every factor of economic, business and social life.   Combined with a lawless cyberspace, data also energy sources the increasingly intertwined world of terror and criminal offense. Terrorism represents the denial plus destruction of human legal rights.   And so the fight against terrorism will not succeed if we perpetuate exactly the same denial and destruction. Nevertheless it comes to the collection, analysis and strategic use of data, we are several steps at the rear of.   We need to place data-driven tools and strategies at the heart of our own approach to building peace plus security — including counter-terrorism efforts.   And we need to make use of data and evidence to judge the effectiveness of terrorism prevention activities and policies — and particularly, to ensure that human rights are usually upheld throughout. This must include the important rights and dignity of the victims of terrorism.   Not simply by remembering those people who’ve been killed by terrorist acts.   But by supporting and helping to heal those who have been injured and displaced by terrorism. That’s exactly why the proposed New Agenda for Peace must concentrate on a holistic and comprehensive method of building more peaceful plus stable societies in which terror has no home.   Through prevention, by addressing the economic and social conditions that may lead to terrorism in the first place.   Through inclusion, by ensuring that counter-terrorism strategies reflect a wide array of sounds, communities and constituencies — especially minorities, women and young people.   And through placing human rights and the rule associated with law at the core of all counter-terrorism policies.

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