On 10 December 2018, the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) and the Global Center of Cooperative Security organized an event on “Perspectives on promoting cooperation amongst criminal justice practitioners of South Asia in countering terrorism.” Building on close to a decade of CTED and Global Center engagement in the region, the gathering served to further enhance regional cooperation and to launch a South Asia toolkit for judges.
Against the backdrop of significant terrorist violence in parts of South Asia, many States of the region have developed a wealth of creative and effective approaches to addressing these challenges. For almost a decade, at the behest of the Governments, and pursuant to visits conducted between 2007 and 2017, CTED has been organizing workshops for judges, prosecutors, and police officers from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, to promote information sharing and lessons learned.
Designed to provide a practical resource for judges in Member States of the South Asian Association for Cooperation (SAARC), the toolkit was developed by the judges themselves to assist in the effective adjudication of terrorism and related cases.
“We are grateful to the Member States of the region, to our partners, and all other involved in this process. We see this practitioner dialogue as an important means of deepening CTED’s engagement with South Asia, and look forward to supporting Member States’ continuing efforts at promoting international judicial and law enforcement cooperation in the region in accordance with Security Council resolution 2322, adopted in 2016,” said Elizabeth Joyce, Chief of Section with CTED.
Participants included practitioners and official representatives of Member States. Donors supporting CTED’s work in the region include Australia, Canada, Denmark, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United States of America.
Additional photos from the event are available at Flickr.
A leaflet on CTED’s long-standing engagement with South Asia can be found here.
The South Asia toolkit for judges is available here.