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2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the adoption of Security Council resolution 1373 (2001) and the establishment of the Counter-Terrorism Committee. As part of the year of commemoration, CTED experts reflect on their work.

Elizabeth Joyce, Section Chief for the Americas and Asia Pacific, has been with the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) since 2005, when it was first established. This interview has been edited for brevity.

What motivated you to come to the United Nations and to CTED? 

Ms. Joyce: I did my Ph.D. at Oxford University on “Legal and political cooperation on drug trafficking in Latin America”. And part of that research was on the new policy area of anti-money-laundering, which led me to the Global Programme against Money Laundering at UNODC in Vienna. I was there for six years and ended up running the Programme, including after “9/11”, when we started to focus on terrorist financing. When CTED was set up in 2005, I was transferred from Vienna to join CTED. 

You recently led the drafting of the Global Implementation Survey (GIS). What exactly is the GIS? And what purpose does it serve?

Ms. Joyce: The GIS is a summary of the state of implementation by all Member States of Security Council resolution 1373, which was adopted on 28 September 2001 in response to the 9/11 attacks. The GIS is one of the most important pieces of work that CTED undertakes because it's a rare opportunity for everybody, for the general public at large, to see exactly what we do and how we assess Member States in their implementation of resolution 1373. When we put the GIS together, we take a regional approach and we have to be consistent. We ask the same questions of all Member States. We ask them over time, so it has the ability to see how progress is occurring. We never “name and shame” but we do quite often “name and praise” because there's been a lot of progress over the last 20 years. And it's also an excellent tool. It's a great tool for planning technical assistance, for example. It's also a chance to step back and look at some of the thematic areas and see some of the progress there and even the emerging challenges. So we don't do it every year. We do it whenever the Security Council asks us to, which is every three or four years. It’s a “flagship” publication. The CTC held a special meeting commemorating the 20th anniversary of the adoption of resolution 1373 (2001) so we wanted to make this GIS extra special. We preserved the overarching structure, which allowed us to consistently analyse each Member State under the same criteria. But this time we added some regional spotlights, where we identified issues in particular regions that we felt were important enough and concerning enough to take a deeper look at. And the Committee agreed with us that this was an approach that they wanted because we already had that very robust framework of consistency. 

The GIS is one of the most important pieces of work that CTED undertakes because it's a rare opportunity for everybody, for the general public at large, to see exactly what we do and how we assess Member States in their implementation of resolution 1373. When we put the GIS together, we take a regional approach and we have to be consistent. We ask the same questions of all Member States. We ask them over time, so it has the ability to see how progress is occurring.

What would you say are the main takeaways of this GIS?

Ms. Joyce: From a thematic point of view, we are always looking at issues related to legal frameworks. CTED is always monitoring the definitions of terrorism in national legislation to ensure that they are narrow enough to be fair and consistent and not misused for purposes other than counter-terrorism, to target free speech, and so on. On counter-terrorist financing: for all the new payment methodologies that are coming into place, we still see that “cash is king”. The movement of cash in terrorist spaces is a huge concern to us. I think perhaps the most broadly based issue (and this is one that's going to be key to us all going forward) is internet and communications technologies, partly because that heading covers so many policy areas that touch on every single other part of the work that we do. That includes the quiet revolution in border control that's been occurring over the past few years and the use of electronic evidence in criminal justice cases, right through to the more obvious concerns about retail use of the Internet for recruitment and incitement. CTED has a mandate across all those issues and more. So I think that ICT in particular is incredibly influential, in terms both of the threats that it poses and of the solutions that it offers.

Regionally, in Africa, we increasingly see an intersection between the traditional peace and security mandate of the UN and counter-terrorism. The GIS, for example, talks about the use of battlefield evidence in criminal justice because in many countries of Africa, the military is the entity that is on the front line against terrorism and is having to gather information that can be turned into evidence for criminal prosecution. So that's incredibly important. In South and South-East Asia, we're seeing a lot of activity that is, if not ISIL directed then ISIL inspired. Since the last GIS, we've had the Marawi siege in the Philippines, to name just one incident, which was devastating for an entire city. We are, of course, very concerned about recent events in Afghanistan and are monitoring them closely. Many Member States of those regions are facing challenges related to foreign terrorist fighters returning from Iraq and Syria. In some Member States, in Asia and Europe, convicted terrorists are coming to the end of their prison terms and are now being prepared for release, so that is something that we want to watch. And again, in Europe, we continue to see terrorists acting alone in terrorist attacks, and that's something that we're very concerned about.

A lot of the information found in the GIS comes from CTED’s dialogue with Member states. What does this dialogue involve? And what value does it add to counter-terrorism efforts?

Ms. Joyce: CTED’s dialogue with Member States is unique. In terms of counter-terrorism, we are in a very privileged position, whereby the Counter-Terrorism Committee has asked us to go out and not simply assess Member States, but also to conduct a dialogue with them to keep abreast of their evolving challenges and their ideas. It's an incredibly rich and longstanding dialogue. We are an entity that is located within the Security Council framework, which of course is composed of 15 Member States. But CTED’s success is linked to all 193 Member States because all of them have been working with us over the last 16 years to broaden and deepen our understanding of counter-terrorism. Every Member State has been gracious enough to respond to our many, many requests for information. All those that have been visited (and that's more than half of the membership) have undertaken a massive amount of work just to organize and host the assessment visits, and we very much appreciate that. The GIS, and the work that CTED does more generally, is really the work of the Member States as a whole, because without them, we wouldn't have anything. I also think that that dialogue has served us well regionally. There are regions where we've had a regular discussion with practitioners (including judges, prosecutors and police officers), again supported and facilitated by those Member States. So CTED owes an enormous debt of gratitude to all Member States for their longstanding cooperation with us and for supporting us in achieving our current level of success.

Is there a standout or favourite moment from your time working here? 

Ms. Joyce: So one of the things that sticks out in my mind over the years at CTED was a meeting we arranged in 2016. Here in New York, we were able to convene Supreme Court justices from all over the world. And we didn't realize it until the meeting was just about to happen. But it was literally the first time that Supreme Court justices had been convened globally, to talk about the adjudication of terrorism cases, in all its complexity. We brought them from every region in the world. We gave them the opportunity to meet and talk and discuss the issues they had in adjudicating terrorism cases. And for me, being able to contribute that little piece of the puzzle to the UN's work on counter-terrorism was really one of the standout moments of the last few years.