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 will include 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 is currently establishing the referral centre, which will be housed at its General Secretariat in Lyon, France. Through the referral centre, INTERPOL will act as an intermediary, facilitating the exchange of resources, experts, technical assistance and best practices in the area of vulnerable target protection, using its worldwide law enforcement network.

As part of its initiative to increase cooperation between the public and private sectors in the field of vulnerable target protection, the Working Group brought together public authority and private sector representatives and experts from around the world for two ‘brainstorming’ meetings at UNICRI headquarters in Turin, Italy. The Working Group is also gathering and analyzing available material on the subject of public-private partnerships for the protection of vulnerable targets and plans to produce a set of recommendations that can be operationalized in the future.

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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