Remarks of ASG Brands Kehris’ at the UNOCT Side event “Strengthening Partnerships for Human Rights Compliant and Gender Responsive Counter-Terrorism Efforts”

Excellencies and distinguished guests, dear colleagues and friends,

It is an honour to take part in this side event. I would like to join my thanks to the Kingdom of Spain and the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism for the invitation and for co-organizing the high-level international conference on human rights, civil society, and counter-terrorism. Indeed, it is a very symbolic and important event. It is good that we are all here together—both in the room and online.

I would like to begin by congratulating the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism for the establishment and the launch of its dedicated Human Rights and Gender Section and we are eager to hear more about. It is a great effort and a positive step towards strengthening its internal human rights capacity.

OHCHR-UNOCT collaboration on human rights

OHCHR has collaborated extensively with UNOCT on human rights. We have a mandate to promote and protect the effective enjoyment by all of all human rights and UNOCT’s mandate to enhance coordination and coherence on counter-terrorism throughout the United Nations and to ensure a balanced implementation of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, as was just referred to, means that we join together in a shared human rights agenda, with a common objective and commitment to advance the application of international human rights law in counter-terrorism. A very good basis indeed for a partnership and cooperation.

In this regard and over some years, OHCHR and UNOCT have strengthened our cooperation on the basis of good collaboration on a number of initiatives, such as our Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights project and the Global Framework to support Member States with the return of their nationals from Syria and Iraq, to mention a few. And there also others and more to come.

These joint initiatives have paved the way for a new stage in OHCHR and UNOCT’s relationship. I am confident that a mutually beneficial partnership can facilitate positive change for human rights in counter-terrorism. And we need to do this together. Together, we can deliver on human rights. Ultimately, what matters is making sure we successfully make a positive impact. We can foster innovation and dynamic knowledge, and advocate for stronger human rights protection for both individuals and groups at risk in the area of counter-terrorism.

With the establishment of the Human Rights and Gender Section, we certainly look forward to continuing working closely together in a spirit of genuine partnership and meaningful engagement, including not only in the name of this conference but in realitythe real meaningful cooperation and partnership with civil society. It also means that we need to address the negative impact of counter-terrorism measures on human rights, civil society organizations, and civic space. We honestly need to make our efforts in assessing and addressing these challenges and ensuring that any measures taken to combat terrorism do comply with international human rights law and other international law.

Mutually beneficial partnership with civil society organizations

As we advance our collaboration, it is important to consider how we broaden relationships so that we include cooperation with civil society—a broad range of civil society and not a hand-picked, selected few organizations only but truly inclusive. And also of course national human rights institutions, a very important actor in this regard. As we discussed earlier today, for those present at the OHCHR side event earlier, this is critical to forging sustainable, legitimate, and effective counter terrorism measures that are in line with international human rights standards.

In the seventh review of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy last year, that was mentioned strongly by the Ambassador of Spain to the United Nations, cooperation and partnerships with civil society organizations was emphasized throughout the resolution. For example, it calls on States to work together with civil society to ensure that counter-terrorism measures in the online sphere respects international human rights law. It also calls on United Nations entities to strengthen their engagement with relevant civil society organizations which can play a valuable role in assisting and supporting victims of terrorism.

Given the centrality of civic space and human rights in preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism conducive to terrorism, the United Nations system has an important role to play in both the protection of civil society actors and also in the promotion of civic space. Multistakeholder partnerships and platforms involving actors from government, civil society, and the private sector, as mentioned previously, are critical to building an enabling environment for genuine collaboration.

In conclusion—a very obvious conclusion but one that we do really need to emphasize—it is working together with civil society and national human rights institutions that we can find a more consistent and coherent way to make sure that measures taken to counter terrorism are based on human rights and really reach the communities and protect all individuals’ human rights.

I thank you very much.