Last month, START Director William Braniff served as the opening speaker in an informal dialogue series intended to help the co-facilitators of the Seventh Biannual Review of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy benefit from the insights and research of independent counterterrorism experts and scholars on current and emerging trends in the latter’s fields of expertise.
Invited by the leadership of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, which serves as the Secretariat for the review process, this closed-door event focused on the evolution of terrorism and counterterrorism, including the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on terrorism, counterterrorism and preventing and countering violent extremism (PCVE).
The General Assembly reviews the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy every two years, making it a
living document attuned to Member States’ counterterrorism priorities. As part of its Sixth Review of the Strategy on 26 June 2018, the General Assembly examined the Report of the UN Secretary-General (A/72/840) on the implementation of the Strategy over the preceding two years. The Assembly adopted resolution A/RES/72/284 on the Review of the Strategy by consensus, as it has done with all other previous five Review resolutions. The Seventh Biennial Review was postponed from July 2020 to the end of June 2021.