UN Action to Counter Terrorism

Section III, paragraph 13: “To encourage the United Nations to work with Member States and relevant international, regional and subregional organizations to identify and share best practices to prevent terrorist attacks on particularly vulnerable targets. We invite the International Criminal Police Organization to work with the Secretary-General so that he can submit proposals to this effect. We also recognize the importance of developing public-private partnerships in this area.”

Status: The Working Group aims to establish appropriate mechanisms to facilitate both the sharing of existing best practices and the development of further best practices to protect vulnerable targets. This includes the establishment of a Referral Centre to facilitate the sharing of vulnerable target protection resources, an initiative to enhance public-private partnerships, and an examination of the specific vulnerability of UN implementing partners in areas prone to terrorist attack.

Through the Working Group, INTERPOL has established a Referral Centre, which is housed at its General Secretariat in Lyon, France, to facilitate the sharing of vulnerable target protection resources using the organization’s existing world-wide law enforcement network. Through the Referral Centre, INTERPOL has used its National Central Bureaus and Regional Bureaus to identify, obtain and compile best practices as well as contact information for the responsible ministry units, relevant experts and resources in member countries where vulnerable target protection strategies are being or have been implemented. Upon request, INTERPOL will assist member countries seeking either to develop protection strategies or enhance established strategies by securing suitable assistance from among the network of experts/resources identified through the Referral Centre. Recognizing the importance of enhancing the attentiveness of member countries to this initiative, INTERPOL has undertaken an awareness campaign to highlight the work being done through the Referral Centre and to date more than 100 countries have provided INTERPOL with information and contact details for the responsible national units within their respective country for the protection of vulnerable targets. As more countries become familiar with the resources available through the Referral Centre, new initiatives will be undertaken to make best use of the information collected and compiled by INTERPOL.

As part of its initiative to increase cooperation between the public and private sectors in the field of vulnerable target protection, UNICRI has produced a report, reviewing some of its activities and findings and identifying some basic Public-Private Partnership (PPP) principles and practices which should be taken into account when designing, developing and implementing PPP policies. The report further offers suggestions as to how such an innovative and challenging form of cooperation as PPPs can be expanded and how UNICRI through the Working Group on Strengthening the Protection of Vulnerable Targets can play a role in this development. UNICRI has conducted field research to test the identified principles and practices and to further encourage the development of new PPP approaches. Two testing events have been held in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2008 and a third is planned for March 2009 in Mexico. The conducted research and testing events have partly been designed on the feedback received from three ‘brainstorming’ meetings held in 2008, bringing together public authority and private sector representatives and experts from around the world.

As part of the effort to address the specific vulnerability of UN implementing partners in areas of humanitarian and peacekeeping operations prone to terrorist attacks, DSS is collaborating with UN system entities and the NGO community and collecting and analyzing data on security incidents relating to terrorism in order to identify emerging threats and deploy required mitigating measures.

Working Group on Strengthening the Protection of Vulnerable Targets

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