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Hello, welcome to The War Pod, the official podcast of the Remote Warfare Programme, a London-based research initiative focusing on remote warfare, the trend where states support local and regional forces on the front lines rather than deploying large numbers of their own troops.

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The Remote Warfare Programme is part of the Oxford Research Group, a peace and security think tank. I'm Abigail Watson, Research Manager at the Remote Warfare Programme. And I'm Liam Woodpole, the Policy Manager at the Oxford Research Group. In this episode, we'll be joined by Ali Attock, an independent researcher, and Jordan Street

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from Safer World. We will be discussing their report on the rise of counter-terrorism in the UN. Enjoy the show. So, Ali, Jordan, welcome to The War Pod. I mean, it's surprising that we've not had anyone from Safer World, our great friends at Safer World, on the podcast ever before,

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I don't think. But now we have you here, it's really exciting. And we're here to discuss your report, a fourth pillar for the United Nations, question mark, the rise of counter-terrorism. So, could you briefly outline what you mean by this, to start? What are the pillars of the UN? And why do you consider CT, counter-terrorism, becoming an additional fourth pillar?

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Thank you, Liam. I'm very happy to be here with Jordan. And maybe I can first answer your question by refreshing our memories to answer what are the three pillars of the UN. And I mean, speaking colloquially, the UN has three pillars. The first is the maintenance of peace and security. And the second is upholding human rights and rule of law. I mean, I would

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rather put this in broad terms, is justice. And the third is the development pillar. To say it more accurately, and related to today's world, is the sustainable development. So these three pillars are founded on the UN's charter. And three pillars guides UN work, and they are interconnected. What charter tells us is that you cannot achieve one without

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achieving all of them. So, but in this paper, what we say is that, what we see is that the rise of counter-terrorism is so drastic, so that we had the feeling that we need to ask this question provocatively, is that, is counter-terrorism is the fourth pillar. So UN, what we see is that, you know, UN system embrace counter-terrorism with a flood of

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UN Security Council resolutions, General Assembly strategies, new funding streams, offices, committees, working groups, and staff, large number of staff. And, and recently, with the growing, very big policy framework, prevention of violent extremism, and funds and agencies also joined this effort. So, so what we kind of, what we demonstrate in this paper is

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that the rise of the new pillar, distort the balance between the three pillars, three original pillars of the UN, through prioritizing exceptional forms of securitization. I simply framed the problem, despite the, if I, if I can simply frame the problem, despite the charter of the UN, starts with the, we, the peoples of United Nations, determined to save

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succeeding generations from the scourge of war. What we say in this paper is that UN is increasingly offer, what UN increasingly offer to the next generations is the global war on terror, and deep, deep and wide engagement in global war on terror. Thank you. And I think you, I think you already started to answer this question in that

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answer. But I would like to drill a bit more into why this matters, but why Safer World decided to investigate it, and why UK policymakers should care about what the report says. So do you want to start with the first one, about why Safer World decided to investigate it? Yeah, yeah, thanks, Abi, I can jump in here. And then, thanks to you and to Liam for having us on

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and, and I can't believe I'm the first Safer Worlder on, I can't believe I've tricked you into doing that. There'll be a lot. I hope I've not offended anyone. A lot of Safer Worlders are very jealous now. And so, yeah, I can gloat about that. But, but, but

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look, to answer the question, um, you know, I think over the past few years, we've been looking at the negative impacts of war on terror. I know that lots of organisations have and the way in which we've been doing this is trying to delve into deep case studies on exactly how counterterrorism is impacting peace and security at a national and local level. And, you know, we've been researching a number of

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different case studies in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Kyrgyzstan, Tunisia, and a host of other contexts. But we've also started looking at the impacts of counterterrorism on multilateralism. And that's where our focus on the UN comes into play. We started this bit of work looking at how UN peacekeeping is being affected by an embrace of counterterrorism. And I know that at OIG, you've

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done lots of work around this, and I'm looking at kind of the most recent deployment in Mali. But what we found in that report was that there's serious threats to the impartiality of the UN system with this embrace of UN peacekeeping systems. So what we wanted to do was just look a little bigger, look at what the impact of the creation of the Office of Counterterrorism in 2017 was, what the impact of

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huge funding from quite problematic sources was, and to see, as Ali said, what the impact on the three pillars in the UN Charter was. So that's really why we started to delve into that. From a UK policymaking perspective, why does this matter? I mean, I think this is definitely something to keep an eye on. The UK is still heavily invested in the United Nations. And while we, you know, there's certainly

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things, policy positions of the UK at the UN that we haven't agreed with, we have to acknowledge there's been a number of really productive roles that the UK has played in recent years. So the support for sustaining peace resolution, the investments made in the UN Peacebuilding Fund and the great work that fund does, and of course, the support for a standalone goal on peace, justice and security in the 2030

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agenda. All of these really positive moves could very well be undermined by the UN's shift towards counterterrorism. So I think UK policymakers should be taking notes of this trend. That's a really interesting point to make. I always feel like it's like the conscience of the UK is at the UN. And then sometimes the UK sort of back home grips slightly. But the principles on which we sort of

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should be upholding are very much sort of at the heart of some of the things that the UK ambassadors, for example, at the UN kind of talk about. They don't always talk about it as strongly back home, unfortunately. So I wonder what you thought sort of led to the change, because you would imagine that the seeds of this were sown back in the beginning of the 21st century. But what do you think sort of led to the

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change in the UN, but also around the world? Yeah, if I jump on this point, I'm not sure if I can speak about this about the entire world, but I can say about the UN, as this report in our research speaks about. So I mean, apart from peacekeeping, what we see is that the ever-growing counterterror architecture of the UN is impacting the entire system of the UN almost. So to say it,

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so we see that counterterror architecture reoriented peace, development and human rights. And we have seen, we observed in the last 20 years, peace, political and peacebuilding affairs. We're asked to engage in counterterrorism. And of course, UNODC has grown significantly. And UNDP has been very reluctant to engage in any counterterrorism activities. It's now deeply engaged. And actors that we don't expect them to be

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engaged, like UNESCO, now implementing counterterrorism programs. What they do is youth employment and empowerment programs they offer. UNESCO offers youth employment and empowerment programs as counterterrorism tools. These are, to me, very counterintuitive developments. But I need to give a little bit more texture to this, because there's also resistance still exists in the system. We know that Office of Coordination of

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Humanitarian Affairs, UNICEF, UN Population Fund, these entities are still kind of pushing or keeping them away from counterterrorism. And I want to say also, you know, Women's Peace and Security Agenda, or Youth Peace and Security Agenda, these human-centered peace and security agendas, they're very cautious how they want to engage with counterterrorism. And they kind of see the risks and fault lines in this type of engagement, especially at the UN.

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Can I just jump in just really quickly on a little bit on the why, just to add to what Ali said on how and where this is happening? Just because I think it is important to note that, you know, this hasn't just popped up overnight. This has been a process over the last 20 years. But it really has sped up in the past few years. There's two major donors to the UN Counterterrorism Architecture, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, they themselves donate about 80% of the non-assessed contributions. And, you

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know, now the UN is spending per year, £520 million, million dollars on PVE and CT work. So it's not insignificant. And money does talk. That has pushed the UN system to work on this a little bit more. I think the other thing that's worth acknowledging is the fear of losing influence. And that has pushed some UN leaders to embrace this agenda. Even if, on principle, they might reject the UN being engaged in this, they have worried that other member states would take their

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business elsewhere, so to speak. So I think it's important just to flag that. I think that when you unpack those, that rationale, there's stuff underneath that didn't mean that they had to embrace it that much. And I think we go into that within the report. But it's worth flagging that. Yeah, thank you. That's really useful. And I think already you've painted quite a pessimistic picture of what all of this

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means. And what I really like about your report, which shows I did read it, or at least the executive summary, that you don't just talk about it as if there's already concerns about what Saudi Arabia's investment in certain things might mean for shifts in the global landscape and how the international community responds to problems abroad. What I really like in the report is that you break it down into quite tangible problems that this shift has created or could create. Can you briefly

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outline what some of them might be? And then we can maybe go into a bit more detail on some of them. Of course. So in this report, we identified seven major problems. If I go one by one, the first one is, as we say, PVE-ization of peace, human rights, development and humanitarianism. So the UN transformed its regular, ordinary working methods into PVE programs. This is now common knowledge, but we just frame it in a way that is accessible for everybody, I

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think. And the second problem we identified is the blue-washing member states' abusive approaches. So counterterrorism has been misused by member states, and UN is increasingly becoming a vehicle for that. And the third is the UN counterterrorism embracing contested radicalization concepts. Radicalization concept has a lot of problems with it, which we can maybe speak about this later. And the fourth is UN is also exaggerating the risk and threat of terrorism over other security concepts. So

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what we call this is fueling threat inflation. And the fifth is the co-opting critical voices. So as I said about UNDP, for example, you wouldn't necessarily think that they would engage in counterterrorism, not being taken into this counterterrorism framework, or like they've been asked to implement counterterrorism programs. And the sixth is the UN is failing to manage risks. Counterterrorism, engaging in counterterrorism comes with risks. It's, it creates problems. And it's, it is, you know, the

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risk of engaging with the, sorry, the issue of engaging with the risk of terrorism may produce greater risks than the risk of terrorism. And what UN, UN doesn't report on this, but it just transferred, transfer it to each other or other entities, or civil society organizations. And the last seven problem we identify is that UN fails to learn. I mean, UN just shows that counterterrorism, what works in counterterrorism, but we know that counterterrorism fails in many, in many areas. So these are the seven problems.

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That's really, really, really interesting. I think that point about learning lessons is something that we can all relate to, at ORG and at Safer World. And saying that, I think there are a number of parallels with our own research, and some of the findings that you present. In particular, I think we've seen the way in which counterterrorism based approach sort of enables states, elites to take targets, certain ethnic groups, or dissenting voices under this sort of guise of, of fighting terrorism. And Ali, you touched on it

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there. But Jordan, I wonder if you could sort of outline briefly, and I'm going to attempt to say this, TV-ization, if we can go into that, and then bluewashing, I think it'd be important if we can understand what you guys mean by bluewashing, if people are not familiar with that term. And then also this idea of threat inflation, and sort of how these happen in practice. Yeah, absolutely. So I think actually, Ali and I coined the term TV-ization. So we should know how to say it. I did a quick Google search.

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You've coined it. It's yours. Don't try and claim you wrote it on a notebook somewhere and take credit for it, Liam. It's ours. Sorry, if someone else has actually used that before. I'm not sure they have. But, but I mean, I think that the other two we definitely didn't coin. But there are three really important trends that I think are not always self explanatory. But once we kind of explain them and go through them, I think we realise

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that actually, we see it in everything we're doing. So, I mean, the TV-ization one, it's when you're looking for a PVE problem, when there isn't necessarily one, and suddenly peace, justice... And can you just explain PVE for those that don't know what that means? Sorry, you shouldn't do that, should you just start with the acronym. So PVE is, it means preventing violent extremism. It was the UN's

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take on the countering violent extremism agenda, with the idea being, you know, that countering was going to be too close to counter-terrorism and actually involved you kind of going after the one group. Whereas PVE was more about, you know, upstream prevention, thinking about what are the conducive factors that lead to individuals joining armed groups, and was definitely closer to the right answer, but we don't necessarily think the right answer. You know, I think it was a classic UN middle of the road approach. And I

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think there is some really good stuff in PVE, in the sense that, you know, it has helped promote certain discourses around human rights and bringing in gender issues, where the CVE and CT didn't, but there is still some problems with PVE. So one of the things that we've observed is that since the PVE agenda has risen at the UN, there's this propensity for agencies, funds and programs to look at their peacebuilding work, their work on justice, their education work, their job creation work, their work on women's health on, you know, on

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everything, to be about preventing violent extremism to make donors happy. And that is really problematic, because it starts, it labels certain groups as, you know, the recipient groups as the violent extremists, or the potential violent extremists. And that is something that I think, you know, we can all observe, with authoritarian governments is really quite problematic. I mean, we heard anecdotally some awful ideas around PVE at the UN. In recent years, I think the biggest red flag we heard was one agency was trying to do a PVE program in a refugee

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camp, that there was lots of really divisive narratives about refugees being terrorists. And, you know, they didn't see the potential harm that a PVE program in that camp could do. Thankfully, I mean, I'm not going to name names and tell you where it is, but you could probably guess. Thankfully, internally, in the UN, there was huge pushback. But the fact that this was even being voiced and suggested, really shows the nature of how certain agencies that do PVE are looking at it. The issue around bluewashing, I think, is quite useful to know as well. I mean,

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bluewashing has been used before, but it's usually around companies that use the UN's logo or a partnership with the UN to basically hide their negative labour or environmental practices. You know, very similar to whitewashing or pinkwashing concepts, I'm sure listeners are familiar. But bluewashing hasn't really been used to refer to negative and harmful kind of security practices and counterterrorism practices. So I think what we were trying to do is show that actually, there are many instances where governments and others use the UN's embrace of

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counterterrorism to legitimize some negative nefarious practices that they have. So I think useful just to highlight those. And I think, you know, the UN is a really good example of that right now. The UN helped the government do a national action plan on PVE. That national action plan on PVE was used at times to justify targeting Muslim students, right, but done under the guise that this is, you know, the UN's agenda. So it's something that we have to be really careful about. The final thing, then, you mentioned threat inflation, which I think is really, really

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interesting and really pertinent for this moment right now, especially with everything that's happening with COVID, is this idea that, you know, just talking about an issue can actually raise the threat and change the response and change the way in which you analyse it. And, you know, I'll try and be brief on this. But I want to talk a little bit about this in the context of Kyrgyzstan, because I'm quite familiar with it. We've done quite a bit of research there, and our country team is fantastic. And we've got some really good connections there. But this

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process of threat inflation is something that I think should be familiar to many. What normally happens, well, it always starts with a threat, you know, it's not a fabrication. But what happens is a number of different institutions, agencies, donors, journalists, pile in on this threat, and end up completely changing the nature of the threat through their actions inadvertently, usually. So academics will go into research. In Kyrgyzstan, what happened was individuals were leaving to go fight in Syria and Iraq for ISIS. That definitely happened. There were

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definitely a number of individuals that left. The only data we ever got, though, was from the government, from intelligence services. So you can never verify it. So what happened is, academics researchers came in, they came to speak to NGOs and UN staff, they said that, you know, this was these were local perspectives. UN staff and NGOs weren't actually connected to the communities that actually left because they were, you know, they're not engaging with NGOs, to be honest. So they were just repeating the government's stats. That was then being used as

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evidence that this was threat was massive. The research then went to donors, donors then started funding this other institutions changed what they were going to do, because they saw that the donors were funding this. So suddenly, all national NGOs started doing CPVE. Then the donors thought the ones that weren't funding CPVE thought this is a massive problem, we have to fund it. And suddenly there's this whole web of CPVE that started from, you know, a few hundred people leaving, a few hundred people leaving a country of 5 million, you know, it and what and what

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happened was the parts of the puzzle that were inflating the threat didn't realise it, they were genuinely thinking they were doing the right thing. And that's, you know, we're not saying that they were doing the fairest things. And I think that we've seen that this is not just happening in Turkey. Some of this is happening in lots of places. Just last week, UNDP tweeted, violent groups worldwide are capitalising on the COVID crisis to divide people. Are they? I mean, you know, they might be, but I'm not sure there's any evidence to suggest that violent groups worldwide are doing

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this. I'm sure there's, I'm not sure there's any evidence to suggest that governments aren't doing this as well. You know, so why are we drawing attention to this? This is actually inflating the threat. And I think that it's irresponsible. I think the UN needs to be really careful about how its agencies, funds and programmes let this happen. You know, the Special Rapporteur Fionnuala has referenced how many authoritarian governments are using counter-terrorism measures and legislation in the COVID era to crack down on civic space and target human

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rights defenders. So why is the UN not being very, very careful, very cautious in their response to this? So I think there are kind of three things, I think, we think the UN is aware of, but it's not actively taking steps to mitigate or to navigate. Interesting. I think, maybe not entirely comparable, but I think stuff that, for example, Abby's written about our perceptions of the threat of China and Russia, in the way that they're kind of very much talked about in the public space at the moment, without actually

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really understanding what exactly that threat is. And I think that then quickly snowballs into something else and you're then incorrectly, I mean, Abby Chippin, but incorrectly kind of then analysing the threat that actually exists. Yeah, I think that, I mean, the thing that's tough is being a dissenting voice in that. Especially in Kyrgyzstan, what we were always trying to say was, we're not saying that this isn't a threat or an issue that we have to deal with. We're not saying that the issue of

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individuals joining violent groups is something not to address. What we're trying to say is, are there other security priorities that people have in Kyrgyzstan, that Kyrgyz nationals have, that we're failing to address because of this undue focus on this threat, because it's been inflated. And I think, you know, it's often very, very hard to say that, especially when all the INGOs, all the national organisations around you, start saying the same thing. And on China and Russia, too, you know, I think it's probably comparably hard to

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be a dissenting voice to say, yes, I think there is an issue here, but we're not sure. Especially after today, we're recording today, of course, and it's just about what ways have been made. It's very, very interesting. I feel like we've sort of covered really, this idea of embracing the concept of radicalisation as a problem, also perhaps what the implications of that are. So I was going to suggest maybe that we go to the next Abi, if that's okay with Ali.

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It also gives me an opportunity to say how much what they were saying really reflected in our own work, this idea that actors come in with their own biases, and their own characterisation of who's a violent actor, of what the main threat is, which goes against what the local partners, local people, civil society, all the leagues, but then the engagement with civil society starts to be, well, this is what we've decided. So if you could just, if you could just make recommendations within the confines of what we've already decided to do. Yeah, so

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at the UK level, we already see that. And one of the big recommendations that we make to try and address it, is that the way that meaningful engagement with civil society could be a key vehicle for addressing some of these mistakes and highlighting problems of international approaches, which is why I was so disheartened to read your report. Not that I'm saying no one should read it, but that you have such a pessimistic picture of how civil society groups are instrumentalised. It would be great if you could talk more about the ways in which civil

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society is being used and misused in the counter-terrorism architecture of the UN. Yes, of course, I would be very happy to speak about engagement and inclusion. So, I mean, so when we speak about inclusion and participation or engagement, we have to treat these things as, in my opinion, as vehicles. These are not and themselves, you know. So unless it is, if only if it's meaningful, civil society inclusion would make things better. But so I need to say as well that as a researcher who has been focusing on

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especially on young people and youth, I know that inclusion or participation, engagement is often being instrumentalised, tokenised, co-opted. So my suggestion is that, or our report's suggestion is for inclusion of civil society to be meaningful. The counter-terrorism processes has to create the space for CSO inclusion from beginning to the end. So this means consultations, of course, but also in the delivery and assessment of counter-terrorism, monitoring and evaluation, and kind of allowing civil society to kind of find and speak about the problems or the negative

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consequences of counter-terrorism approaches. So what Jordan said about dissents, kind of speaking about raising a different voice in the counter-terrorism space, we need that. But only when we kind of give that space for civil society to speak up and speak out, inclusion will not be truly meaningful, in my opinion. So, I mean, for us, meaningful inclusion has to really create this space for plurality and a place for kind of a conversation that is not a monolithic about why we need more counter-terrorism. We need to start speaking about when counter-terrorism fails. That's very

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important. Thanks a lot, Ali, and thank you for adapting to the slightly different answer to the question. I think that leads on quite nicely to something that we take from your report. And you argue about kind of the way in which the UN sometimes manipulates different communities. And one of these areas is around gender. And you argue in the report that gender language is used for political expediency. And while there have been examples where women's peacebuilding has sort of been drawn on, I think it

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definitely chimes with the research that we've been doing at the moment. I have to plug an upcoming report from IYG later this month around the protection of civilians debate here in the UK. And I think while you clearly see a lot of activities that have been translated on the ground, there's often a tendency, I feel, on the point that we found in our research, for the UK and policymakers to sort of see it as a tick-boxing exercise, without really considering how this can be applied to a broader approach to tackling civilian harm in conflict. I wonder if you could touch on that in a bit more detail.

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Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, look, the first thing to say is, I'm not a gender specialist. Everyone at Safe World works on gender issues. But, you know, we have a really fantastic gender team and have really benefited from their guidance for this report, but for our wider work, and had a whole bunch of great comments on this very issue that you highlight from externals and partners and CSOs we work with. So I really appreciate all that help. I mean, I think the important thing to flag is that some of the discussions around gender at the UN are actually really progressive. They're really good. But often, actually, because of the way the UN works, and because a lot of it is around

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consensus, and there's 192 member states, gender is one of those issues that's reduced to the lowest common denominator, right? It's, you know, it's, it's about trying to get it in wherever you can, rather than trying to get it as the language as good as you can. And, I mean, on the, so one of the things that governs the UN's counterterrorism is this global counterterrorism strategy, started in 2006, it's reviewed every two years. So there's now, you know, however many eight iterations, it was postponed this year, so there will be an eighth iteration, sorry. But it wasn't until 2016, that we actually got the first gender language in, so 10 years it took. And that gender language, I'm going to read it to you, because it's, it just, it just shows basically, that maybe that

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wasn't that big a cause of celebration. It calls on member states to highlight the important role of women in countering terrorism, and violent extremism. It urges member states to integrate a gender analysis on the drivers of radicalization of women to terrorism. And then it asks to consider, you know, the impacts of counterterrorism strategies on women's human rights organizations, and consult with women and women's organizations. So, you know, I think the latter two clauses really good, they can be strengthened, but the first two are so problematic. You know, it's just calling for gender analysis only on the drivers of radicalization of women, that that's the only thing that gender needs to be involved in a gender analysis. So it just shows how, you know, we do have a long way to go. And I think that, to be

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honest, I think that those member states negotiating this resolution, that are gender champions, need to, you know, stick their issue in the ground and not budge on it, they need to be pushing a little bit. We've heard a lot of nice stuff on human rights and gender for a long time. But then when the negotiations get, happen, we seem to lose. So I think, you know, it's about time, maybe they kind of said enough is enough there. Internally within the UN, I suppose the thing to flag is, we are quite surprised that UN women and other parts of the institution have haven't pushed back strong on this. The embrace isn't as, you know, dramatic as maybe other agencies, but it's still there. You know, back in 2015, the UN commissioned a implementation study on women, peace and security on Security Council Resolution 1325. It's even longer than our report. It's a lot longer than our report. And but it's fantastic and really delves into the way in which it has a whole chapter on counterterrorism, women, peace and security. And I'm going to quote from it, because it is more eloquent than I can say it, but it just says it in exactly the way I think the UN should be looking at it, but maybe isn't. It says, while empowering women as a bulwark against extremism is an important idea, such empowerment should never be part of the use of force. It should not come within the ambit of counterterrorism, but as part of civilian assistance to development in human rights programmes in the country. To enmesh such

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programmes in counterterrorism strategies sanctioned by the Security Council is to deeply compromise the role of women's organisations and women's leaders. I mean, you know, it says it in those three sentences, all we need to know about how UN women should be pushing this. And I think, unfortunately, that hasn't happened. And so I think, you know, the parallel that you mentioned is spot on, you know, we've seen this in other areas. But I, you know, I think, sometimes it's, um, what's the word, you know, sometimes it's, the tempting thing to do is to actually try and change it within. But sometimes I think you also need to take a principled stand. The Special Rapporteur calls this, calls the way in which UN counterterrorism deals with women as commodification, you know, which is really strong. And it's from someone that has a deep history looking at these things. So I think if she's saying it, then I think the UN should be taking note, and should be thinking a little bit more strategically about how gender comes into conversations, and isn't just a tick box. I think that's, that's a really great point. And it also maybe speaks to a broader problem around rhetoric and reality when it comes to having beautiful policy documents, and then actually implementing them. I mean, I think it's also kind of indicative of the

00:37:24.340 - 00:38:48.760

fact that you know, in the report that things like marginalisation, exclusion, and poverty are all pinpointed as underlying causes of terrorism. So even within a terrorism framework, if we, if we, if we believe that those things are drivers of terrorism, that there's almost hope. But then at the same time, you say that this counterterrorism legislation is increasingly preventing development and humanitarian work from addressing these issues, it would be great to hear more about why that's happening at the UN level. Yeah, I will, I can, I can speak about this question. So it's not just our report says that marginalisation, exclusion, poverty are the underlying causes of terrorism. This is what UN says. I mean, UN prevention of violence, extremism framework, exactly says this point. However, when counterterrorism is being operationalised, implemented, what, what our reports and others, other reports from humanitarians, human rights, and, and, and also other peace building organisations, what we see is that counterterrorism politicise, politicise and associate development work with the securitised objectives.

00:38:48.760 - 00:40:23.780

And when it comes to humanitarian work, we know that we see that criminalises humanitarian aid, and which deprives like large social groups out of humanitarian aid. This is very counterproductive, in my view, and very clearly counterproductive. And, and also, I mean, I need to say that the policy in this area is developing, and I think member states are learning about how counterterrorism is ineffective in, you know, how it becomes a blocking, a block to deliver humanitarian assistance. But I cannot say the same things for, for peace, from peace and security, peace and security nets. Especially from peace building lands, we know that counterterrorism creates a lot of mistrust. However, there's not really enough awareness in the policy fields, the policy developments where you know, no, no one speaks about how conflict insensitive counterterrorism is. So we need to, we need to bring these issues forward. Thanks a lot, Ali. Now, we're going to get on to what your recommendations are about how we tackle the many issues that you've talked about. But I wonder whether perhaps it will be interesting to sort of ask for your views on what you think the long term implications are, if sort of these trends carry on in terms of the future of the UN and multilateralism as a whole?

00:40:25.100 - 00:42:10.560

Well, I can't give it all away, because otherwise, no one's going to read the report. No, but, you know, I think we roughly, we kind of thought about four key trend areas that I think the UN really needs to reflect on, on making sure that it's doing something to prevent this, these trends happening. And the first one is around impairing peace building and the UN's conflict mediation role. I mean, the UN, its purpose, its reason to exist is around maintaining international peace and security. So if the UN can't build peace and can't mediate peace, you know, it does call into question multilateralism a little bit. The second is around jeopardising peacekeeping principles. UN peacekeeping is effective. There's been so many studies to prove that it is effective, that it does protect civilians, that it does reduce conflict. I don't know why the UN would want to jeopardise that tool. The third is around, you know, cracking down on civic space and instrumentalising civil society around, you know, negatively impacting human rights. And, you know, there's just so much fascinating and fantastic work and evidence on this issue. You know, the Special Rapporteur's reports are just, you know, pure fire in terms of the way she analyses the links between what counterterrorism legislation and policies are doing, and how it's leading to damaging impact on civil society. And then the third, the final one, the fourth one, sorry, is, as Ali mentioned, is putting, you know, development and humanitarian functions in the firing line.

00:42:10.560 - 00:43:42.020

You know, the 2030 agenda for sustainable development isn't going to happen unless we're actually able to build peace, because we know that development in fragile and conflict-affected contexts is, you know, is the hardest. We know that the countries, the seven countries that didn't have a single Millennium Development Goal that they achieved, they were all in conflict. So, you know, we just know that these things are going to be interlinked. You know, I think, you know, there's many other things within this. But ultimately, you know, I think unless the UN really reflects on its role in counterterrorism, it will threaten the UN's ability to assist the world's most marginalised people. And that is something that I think is too great a risk to sacrifice. And so, you know, I think there's many people thinking about how to do this. And we'll talk a little bit about the recommendations. But it does need more than just talk now, I think it needs a little bit of action. And I think it's also just going back to Liam, one of Liam's initial points that the UN has often been a pillar for UK foreign policy and how it hopes to be a force for good in the world. And I think given the problems that you highlight in the report, it seems that if these problems continue, then rather than addressing the problems in a unilateral UK foreign policy, they could exacerbate and continue many of the problems in the world.

00:43:42.040 - 00:45:34.060

And so, with that in mind, what role should the UK play in addressing some of these worrying trends? Do you feel that the UK government, with its objective to be more of an active player on the world stage, do you think it can fill a vacuum of leadership or positively contribute to addressing some of these issues? Yeah, I mean, you know, the one thing I didn't really maybe go into as much depth as I should, is the impact on the UN's mediation role. You know, I think that that has been been eroded over the past 20 years. And, you know, there's some really damning reports from SOTO and others in negotiating with Hamas and all the impact that counterterrorism legislation has had on that. But it's in the UK's national interest for countries not to be in conflict, right? You know, that is a national interest, that is one of our strategies. And so if UN and civil society organisations and, you know, local organisations can't mediate conflicts, because there are sanctions on who you can talk to and who you can't, you can't understand the motivation of violent groups, and you can't lay the groundwork for a peace process. So it's just, you know, there's so many elements and layers to counterterrorism, not just, you know, PD programming, but also Security Council sanctions and other sanctions lists that really prevent UK's national interest and many other national interests. I mean, in the report, we talk about 11 recommendations for the Secretary General and UN Member States to consider. These are all achievable. There's nothing, you know, we didn't, we didn't put like, let's put three crazy ones. So you can pick up the eight other ones.

00:45:34.060 - 00:47:17.700

These are 11 achievable recommendations. Always do things in 11. That's why there's 11 spices on KFC chicken. There were just 11 natural recommendations. I won't get off here. But, you know, I think they're loosely in three areas. One is around refocusing UN strategy on peace, rights and development on three pillars. The second one is around adopting a system wide approach to counterterrorism that actually protects the UN's credibility and impact and doesn't harm it. And then this third one, which Liam picked up on earlier is turning this evidence and experience into improvement and really learning from what's happening. You know, I think there's lots of, within this, there's lots of things. But I think one of the things to really pick up on is the fact that no system mechanism exists in the UN right now. With such a diverse footprint, the UN is active in so many different countries with so many different funds and agencies. There's no internal mechanism to flag when harm is being done in the UN's name on counterterrorism. So there's no firewall where you can actually stop things happening, protect the UN's name, and try and ameliorate the problem. If negative practices happen, they either just happen, or they're kind of hushed up. Or, you know, we go again, kind of thing. And this cannot be for an organisation that depends so much on its credibility, and its image, the way things go moving forward. And I think that there's definitely moves within the UN system to pick up on that. I don't know how that will happen necessarily, but I think that that really hit home.

00:47:17.700 - 00:48:42.080

I think the UK can play a really important role here. Because, I mean, look, you know, I think a strong norm-setting UN that's respected, that can promote a rules-based international order is in our national interest, whichever, you know, party is in power in this country. I don't think, you know, the UN is not a divisive institution in the UK, thankfully. It's not like the US. And so across the aisles here, support for the UN is maintained. So I think, you know, the UK then wants to make sure that the UN's credibility and image is protected. So I think they could play a really positive role here. I think this means, you know, actually investing diplomatically and trying to change the system slightly. And I think, you know, there could be a moment in the next couple of years where that's easier without a certain person in the White House, right? So, you know, but considering the UK invests so much in UN Peacebuilding Fund, we invest so much in UN peacekeeping, it's in the British taxpayers' interest that that money is actually going to help and actually solve conflict and reduce conflict. It's not in the British taxpayers' interest to do that, but also fund and allow counter-terrorism to impact negatively on peace dynamics. So I think the rationale is there. And, you know, I think for UK policymakers, this is something to pick up on.

00:48:42.080 - 00:50:38.680

Thanks, thanks, Jordan. I feel like you've sort of answered partly the next question about what is the alternative to counter-terrorism that you guys suggest in the report. I mean, just sort of thinking about the conversation we've had, it would seem that, well, stick to those three founding principles rather than sort of merging into this fourth pillar. But what sort of specifically do you think, Ali, that you would highlight? I would like to put this in a more understandable, simple terms. Say that what counter-terrorism does is creating mistrust and fear. It disrupts social cohesion. It widens the trust gap between young people and their governments. So what UN should do is that, I mean, maybe I should say what UN shouldn't do is, is that, to invest and engage in approaches that are creating mistrust and fear. And, and UN shouldn't engage in things that divide people further. I mean, Jordan nicely said about this regarding mediation work of the UN. That's very clear in that area. But this now expands into a whole different set of engagement areas that goes into youth empowerment, youth education programs. We need to stop and, we need to stop and think. But, but I just want to be clear that I'm not saying that UN shouldn't deal with the risk of terrorism. It's about how UN deals with the risk of terrorism really matters. And we need to really question this. And, and, and we need, we need to, we need to have UN accountable on this, on this issue. I mean, if counter-terrorism generates more conflict,

00:50:40.440 - 00:52:14.420

maybe it's time for UN to rethink what it does in counter-terrorism, or grow, about the growing counter-terrorism architecture. It's, each time when counter-terrorism fails, we, what we see is that the architecture grows further. And that happens very reactionary. And after each terrorist attack, we see that a new policy, a new office, we need to really critically follow these areas. But what UN should do is to, to invest in these three pillars, as Jordan already said. It should revitalize its three pillars and, and update its, update today's reality, today's world. And we know that, I mean, there's really good evidence on this. UN survived through Cold War, and it can survive through global war on terror too, as long as it relies on, on its three pillars. So, and, and just to say a couple more things about the trust and legitimacy, just a little more about this. Counter-terrorism also, as, as it is, harms UN's integrity, it also fosters the problem of, I mean, UN isn't seen as the legitimate actor anymore, in the eyes of people. This is a very important problem. UN is not a, is not just a member state's organization, UN is for the people. And we need to really emphasize this problem, because counter-terrorism fails in building the trust between UN and people.

00:52:14.420 - 00:53:36.840

I mean, I, it's been a very compelling argument. I'm completely sold on your argument. I wonder how optimistic you are that anything is going to change, though. Have you, what, what has been the, how has the report been greeted? And what do you see the changes in the last year are going to mean for these problems, particularly the COVID pandemic? Maybe we'll just finish both from, from hearing from you both on what you think will be the impact of the report, and whether you think anything will change. Yeah, you've, Abi, you've kept saying how pessimistic we are. We didn't intend to. I'm actually optimistic things can change. Look, I mean, I think the COVID element, there's big risks there, right? Like, I think, you know, lots of groups now have started to highlight the risk and securitization on a COVID response. And lots of, you know, including the tweet I mentioned earlier, but lots of starting to speculate, to say that, you know, terrorists are doing this, violent extremist groups are doing that, because of COVID, with very little evidence. And, you know, that will and could create some policy panic, that's quite counterproductive.

00:53:37.480 - 00:55:31.140

You know, I think the counter architecture within the UN system has not engaged with COVID in the way we'd want to. Just last week, they, the UN counterterrorism office hosted a whole, it's high level counterterrorism conference all on COVID, framed around COVID. And I mean, you know, I've quoted from Fanula too many times today, but I think she said something like, you know, I deeply, I'm deeply concerned with this flirtation between counterterrorism architecture, and the pandemic. And I think that, you know, I think that is what many human rights and peace building groups should be kind of echoing the, you know, counterterrorism is already so grossly deficient on human rights. To bring that to the pandemic, and we've seen emergency legislations and emergency laws being really counterproductive. I think that that's a real big risk. And so I think the UN should be very, very careful on how that moves forward. But, you know, outside of COVID, I am, I am optimistic, I generally am, we've got some really good feedback from UN staff. I mean, there are, you know, we don't want to make, we don't want to paint this picture that, you know, everyone in the UN institution is a, you know, a PV supporter. I mean, I think there's some really smart people working at UN that totally understand everything that we wrote about, and have understood this for a while and been trying to push back. We tried to put it all in one place, to give some support for our allies within the system. And I think that, you know, the Secretary General and his team, I think their instincts on this aren't bad at all. I think that they often just felt that they haven't really had the space to win this battle to push on this, you know, that could change in January, they might have support from the number one dupe in country,

00:55:31.140 - 00:57:28.100

rather than, you know, active opposition. And I think, you know, the pandemic has actually changed some opinions on kind of centrist policymaking in the US around counterterrorism, war on terror, you know, Samantha Power, Ben Rhodes, both central figures in the Obama administration, and I would assume would have some sort of role or, you know, influence in the Biden administration, have basically said that this narrow security focus on terrorism has been counterproductive. So I think that's really, really encouraging. And so I think you could see there being much more scope to protect the UN, and for the US to be a really constructive participant in that. I think for UK policymakers, I haven't seen them making that case nearly as much. So I think that we should start thinking about that. And then UK policymakers should start thinking about this post war on terror lens, because they might be, you know, faced with being left behind on that, that the US are making, making the moves and other European states, and we're not. So I think that's something to reflect on. I mean, the final thing I'll say, and then I'll hand over to Ali for his final word is, is the UN's 75th anniversary this year. So they're doing this survey on, you know, what do people think are priorities for the future? And this is kind of a main reason why I'm optimistic. 300,000 people have done this survey so far. And it's based on trends, future trends. And the UN team doing this marked 11 different trends. And you have to pick three of them. Of these 11 options, the risk of terrorism is the 10th ranked of the 11th. So it just shows that citizens around the world are really actually thinking that this isn't the biggest risk, that there are much bigger existential priorities for the UN to be working on. You know, climate change, 65% of participants

00:57:29.960 - 00:58:48.680

said that was the number one or one of the top three issues on health risk, 35% said, and on, you know, risk of terrorism, it was just 10%. So it just really shows that, you know, if we're actually investing in what people see as the big risks, that that's the UN institution they want. So I think the UN should listen to these voices. And I have hope that it will. And that's why I'm relatively optimistic. Ali, what are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I will kind of reiterate a couple points Jordan said already. It's what people see as the most important problem in the UN's own survey. People talk about climate change. This is, I mean, if COVID is the pandemic phase for us to return, but for a major change, I mean, it's very clear. And it's Secretary General also, UN Secretary General made this emphasis that we need to bounce back better. And the direction is very clear. We need to really speak about climate change, not just as a security risk, it's an important issue in itself. And there's really good science on this. Just to say, there's not really good on science, there's not a, there's not really a good science on counterterrorism. And maybe we need to really invest in science.

00:58:49.240 - 01:00:24.920

Just want to add one more thing is that we hear these issues from young people. And we need to really listen to what young people say about counterterrorism. Selectively including a couple of young people to justify legitimize counterterrorism is counterproductive. We need to hear the majority of young people who are speaking about climate change. It's a clear guidance for UN. It needs to listen to young people. Absolutely. I think, you know, if they haven't learned that in the last two years, then where have they been? You know, you've had this very young influential character heading up that across the world. So clearly young people are, that's the one issue that young people do seem particularly passionate about. And there seems an opportunity to maximize that at the international level. Well, Ali, Jordan, thank you very, very much for coming on the show. We are going to put in our show notes, a link to this report. But you guys also have a website, but Safer World. So if anyone else wants to follow up on the research that Safer World have been doing, please do go and check out their stuff. As I say, thank you both for joining us. And thanks to all our listeners for tuning in once again to the WarPod. We hope you enjoyed the discussion as much as I did. And as I say, for those who do want to read in more depth about the topics we've covered, we've put links to any research or publications that we've mentioned in the episode notes. And if you want to stay up to date with RWP, the Red Warfare Programme, and ORG Work, please subscribe to our newsletter by clicking on the button at the top of the screen.

01:00:24.940 - 01:01:02.480

And you can follow us on Twitter. Our handles are at ORGinfo and at remote underscore warfare. And if you are feeling explorative, you've got something to do in lockdown, post lockdown easing, then you can listen to all our previous episodes. There are so many of them, please do go and check them out. They're free of charge, down at the page, follow the link at the top of the page. And we look forward to you joining us soon. Transcribed by https://otter.ai