8-9 June 2021
Terrorists commit severe human rights abuses—including sexual and gender-based violence, recruitment and exploitation of children—and engage in crimes that qualify as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. It is important to hold accountable those responsible for terrorist acts, abuses of human rights and violations of international humanitarian law. The primary responsibility for the prosecution and prevention of these terrorist acts and other crimes rests with states.
On 8-9 June, the GCTF Criminal Justice and Rule of Law (CJ-ROL) Working Group, co-chaired by Nigeria and Switzerland, held a Review Meeting to discuss the draft Memorandum, which is the result of the second part of the Initiative on Criminal Justice Responses to the Linkages between Terrorism, Transnational Organized Crimes and International Crimes. Participants from GCTF Members and non-member countries and organizations provided feedback on the draft document during the meeting.
This proposed Memorandum specifically addresses Criminal Justice Approaches to the Linkages between Terrorism and International Crimes (War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, Genocide), Sexual and Gender-Based Violence, Human Trafficking and Migrant Smuggling.
The recommendations contained in the Memorandum cover a broad range of topics including applicable legal frameworks, prosecutorial strategy, collecting evidence from conflict zones; interagency coordination and international cooperation; and, the roles, rights and needs of victims and witnesses.
This GCTF Initiative aims to support states, practitioners and policymakers in strengthening their efforts to end impunity for terrorist-related offences, to provide justice and restore dignity for victims, and to prevent the commission of these serious crimes in the future.
The first part of the Initiative resulted in the Addendum to The Hague Good Practices on the Nexus between Transnational Organized Crime and Terrorism: Focus on Criminal Justice, which was endorsed in September 2020 by GCTF Members at the GCTF Ministerial Plenary Meeting. The Addendum explores criminal justice responses to the linkages between terrorism, financing of terrorism and transnational organized crime from a criminal justice perspective.