At a side event held at the United Nations on 1 July 2016 on the theme of foreign terrorist fighters, Member States, UN entities, and civil society representatives discussed prosecution, rehabilitation, and reintegration challenges of this threat. On the eve of the first-year anniversary of a special meeting of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee in Madrid, the side event – which was co-organized by New Zealand and Spain – offered participants a chance to discuss lessons learned and the Madrid guiding principles on stemming the flow of foreign terrorist fighters.
In his opening remarks, Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) Jean-Paul Laborde stressed that as Dae’sh is losing territory on the battlefield in Syria and Iraq, there will be an increase in foreign terrorist fighters returning to their countries of origin. “The involvement of FTF returnees in terrorist plots increases the rate of execution of those plots by 61 per cent and the rate of fatalities by 129 per cent,” he said. “These new and emerging threats demonstrate that the Counter-Terrorism Committee must continue to counter the threats posed, and the United Nations Counter-Terrorism bodies be coordinated in their responses and approaches.”
Several speakers addressed the benefits of rehabilitation and reintegration, including reducing prison-based recruitment, and enabling intervention before serious criminal conduct occurs. Moreover, they called for rehabilitation and reintegration to be integrated within judicial and prosecutorial strategies. As Mr. Luigi Marini, Legal Advisor, Permanent Mission of Italy to the United Nations, highlighted “there needs to be a balance between opportunity, rule of law, rehabilitation, and the criminal justice system, in order to identify and analyse threats to national security.”
Speakers further underlined the importance of having individualised and adaptive measures in order to avoid a one-size-fits-all approach. Mr. Chris O’Donnell, DDR Policy and Planning Officer in the Office of Rule of Law and Security Institutions (OROLSI) in the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) of the United Nations, provided an example of an alternative to incarceration. He described a rehabilitation programme in Somalia that provides vocational training, community engagement, and religious outreach for returning al-Shabab fighters. Moreover, Dr. Bibi Van Ginkel, Senior Resarch Fellow, Clingendael Institute and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), called for “Member States to take into consideration the role that the military can potentially play as first responders in evidence collection.”
Other experts, such as Mr. David Scharia, Senior Legal Officer with CTED, spoke about the ways in which “Member States can develop a broad set of legal tools and work with prosecutors and investigators to avoid binary options. Prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration should be all part of one holistic FTF strategy” Mr. Scharia also called for risk-based evidence and stressed the importance of different “exit points during the criminal proceedings” in which Government officials and local communities can assist people to move away from the radicalisation process.
Speakers stressed the importance of the 35 Guiding Principles, adopted in Madrid last year and later endorsed by the Security Council, as an important and effective tool to countering terrorism.