On 11 December 2023 — coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a milestone document in the history of human rights —the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) released a new publication titled “Trends Tracker on Human Rights: Recommendations by the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Following Assessment Visits to Member States (2017-2023)”. This Trends Tracker highlights the human rights recommendations made by the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) following assessment visits of Member States, relevant to some of the UDHR articles. The report, which covers the period January 2017-November 2023, illustrates the Security Council’s and the CTC’s evolving focus on human rights and identifies certain trends regarding the respect for human rights when countering terrorism and violent extremism conducive to terrorism.
The Counter-Terrorism Committee and its Executive Directorate have mainstreamed human rights across all their mandated activities and assessment tools, including in making human rights-related recommendations to Member States in the context of States’ counter-terrorism efforts, following assessment visits. According to the Trends Tracker, some 15 per cent of all recommendations in the 54 most recent country assessment reports adopted by the Counter-Terrorism Committee pertain to ensuring respect for human rights while countering terrorism. The most frequent human rights-related recommendations made by the Counter-Terrorism Committee to Member States in this context are on the topics of persons deprived of liberty, the right to fair trial, freedom of expression and opinion, and the definitions of terrorism and terrorist acts in national legislation, as well as their conformity with the principle of legality.
This Trends Tracker was produced in accordance with Security Council resolution 2617 (2021), according to which CTED conducts analytical work on emerging issues, trends, and developments, making its products available throughout the United Nations system and beyond. The full report is available here.