The Charter of the United Nations eloquently commits States “to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security”.¹ The challenge of preventing conflict, peacebuilding, and negotiating and sustaining peace, peace has been at the heart of the United Nations’ work for over seventy years.  It has also been at the heart of United Nations reforms since 2000, beginning with the Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations (“Brahimi Report”), which observed the immediate need for the United Nations to achieve more effective methods for conflict prevention and resolution. This report emphasized that effective strategies in conflict prevention and resolution required “doctrinal shifts” in peace operations that “emphasizes a team approach to upholding the rule of law and respect for human rights.”² All recommendations were based on mutually reinforcing premises, including “the essential importance of the United Nations system adhering to and promoting international human rights instruments and standards and international humanitarian law in all aspects of its peace and security activities.”³

Over the last two decades, two parallel tracks of work in the United Nations have emerged. The first track was a robust peacebuilding architecture created in 2005 and has continued to grow,⁴ expanding its understanding of “sustaining peace”⁵ and integrating inclusivity, robust engagement of civil society, women and youth in the prevention and resolution of conflict. The second, was, as the Special Rapporteur has observed in other reports, expansive growth in the frameworks and United Nations architecture on counter-terrorism and preventing and countering violent extremism conducive to terrorism. These counter-terrorism frameworks and UN architecture have grown in parallel to, and arguably entirely separate from a clear understanding of their impact on the broader agendas on peacebuilding and sustaining peace, and even less connected to the evidence bases on conflict prevention. And, while the 7th review of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy Review includes acknowledgement of  “negative impacts when counter-terrorism legislation and other measures are applied contrary to international law, which may harm collective counter-terrorism efforts and infringe upon human rights, including by impeding the work and endangering development, peacebuilding and impartial humanitarian action and civil society,” reports of the United Nations Secretary-General to the General Assembly have not yet comprehensively addressed the negative interplay or remedial measures from a normative or institutional perspective. In 2018, the Secretary-General, acknowledged that “the fragmentation of efforts across the United Nations system undermines its ability to support Member States in their efforts to build and sustain peaceful societies and to respond in an early and effective manner to conflicts and crises,” underscoring the “mutually reinforcing reforms to ensure that the United Nations is fit for purpose.”⁶

Despite these efforts, armed conflicts continue to emerge, intensify and reignite, while the maintenance of peace in societies that have experienced cyclical violence remains elusive. The conditions that produce sustained violence in many societies remain under-addressed, including continued human rights violations and lacking rule of law, justice and accountability institutions and processes. Ongoing challenges triggering and sustaining armed conflict also include climate change, grinding inequality, unresolved questions of self-determination, meaningful political participation, and adequate representation in fragile, complex and disputed sovereignties.

The Special Rapporteur has reflected in previous reports (e.g. A/73/361 & A/73/337) that counter-terrorism measures are frequently taken in the context of armed conflict in which international humanitarian law applied. That reality is further illustrated by the number of non-international armed conflicts involving non-State armed groups subject to terrorist designation by the United Nations and its targeted sanctions regime or included on regional and national terrorist sanctions lists.  The widening net of counter-terrorism regulation and practice is being applied to multiple national contexts in which the threshold requirements for armed conflict may be formally met under international law.  Such contexts are increasingly being defined as contexts of terrorism as a political matter rather than as situation of complex conflict in which acts of terrorism occur, but which overall remain regulated as a situation of conflict to which human rights and humanitarian law apply.  Conflict situations, for a multitude of historical and contemporary reasons, remain open to national and international stakeholders engaged in the totality of conflict management, conflict ending, conflict accountability and conflict negotiation sequences and capabilities. 

The UN Agenda on peacebuilding, sustaining peace and conflict prevention/resolution has an intrinsic relationship with the protection and promotion of human rights and fundamental freedoms.⁷ The absence of peace has high co-relation to the violation of the most fundamental of human rights, including but not limited to the protection of the right to life. Where that agenda is limited or constrained the impact on the protection of human rights is considerable.

The Special Rapporteur observes significant and potential impact on the peacebuilding, sustaining peace and conflict prevention/resolution agendas of the United Nations with the rise of counter-terrorism regulation corelated to the entrenchment and expansion of counter-terrorism architectures and normative frameworks within the United Nations, regionally, and nationally.  She will devote her 2023 General Assembly report to addressing these interfaces and impacts both positive and negative.  Her report will also address the use of counter-terrorism measures in complex conflict contexts at national level. 

She would welcome inputs that address the following matters:

1. Observations or examples of any “negative impacts when counter-terrorism legislation and other measures are applied contrary to international law, which may harm collective counter-terrorism efforts and infringe upon human rights, including by impeding the work and endangering development, peacebuilding and impartial humanitarian action and civil society.”
2. Observations of the relationship, positive or negative, between the UN counter-terrorism architecture and normative regulatory frameworks with the anticipated goals and objectives of “Our Common Agenda” and in particular regarding the “promoting peace and preventing conflict” elements of the Agenda.
3. Inputs related to the impact of normative legal standards related to counter-terrorism on the protection of human rights and humanitarian law in situations of conflict, conflict prevention or resolution, negotiated settlement of conflicts, or   peacebuilding.
4. Assessment of the manner in which counter-terrorism technical assistance and capacity building may impact on the advancement of peacebuilding, sustaining peace, conflict prevention or resolution in complex conflict contexts, this may include observations on peacekeeping where relevant.
5. Assessment of counter-terrorism frameworks on the Youth, Peace and Security Agenda, in particular the protection of youth under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the role of youth in fragile and conflicted societies.
6. Assessment of counter-terrorism frameworks on the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, in particular the work of women peacebuilders, peacemakers and the rights of women and girls under the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against women and the UN Security Council WPS Agenda.
7. Inputs related to the impact on peacebuilders, peacemakers and other peace stakeholders on the emergence and consolidation of counter-terrorism frameworks and actors in fragile conflict and post-conflict contexts, including any distinct or disparate gender dynamics/impacts on women who play these roles or distinct or disparate impacts on peacebuilders, peacemakers and their organizations who belong to marginalized communities.
8. Assessment of how counter-terrorism frameworks impact on peace operations and peacekeeping forces and mandates in complex conflict and post-conflict settings.
9. Assessment the impact of counter-terrorism frameworks on various constituencies, communities or civil society actors.
10. Assessment of the impact of counter-terrorism frameworks on the framing and negotiation of peace agreements, including humanitarian access arrangements, the complex question of prosecution for serious international crimes or amnesty provisions as provided for under Protocol II, Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 1949.
11. Assessment of how the balance and structure of peace agreements are influenced by counter-terrorism frameworks and normative standards, with particular attention to the human rights dimensions of peace agreements.

What and how to submit inputs

The Special Rapporteur invites all interested stakeholders to share concise comments and/or existing or already published material on the subject. Please note that all submissions will be made public on the website of the Special Rapporteur unless it is indicated that the submission and/or the supporting documentation should be kept confidential.