Participants of a townhall meeting held as part of the sixty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women. The townhall served as an opportunity for civil society representatives to engage with Secretary-General Ant¨®nio Guterres and his senior leadership. Photo: Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ Photo/Ryan Brown
Since the 2004 Report on United Nations-Civil Society Relations, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ entities have made great strides to institutionalize the way they relate and work in cooperation with CSOs at the global, regional and national levels.
In the fields of development, human rights, economic and social affairs and development, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ relations with civil society are well defined and valued.
The Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ recognizes the importance of partnering with civil society, because such a partnership can help to advance the Organization¡¯s goals, and support our work at the global, regional, national and community ¨C or local level.
Given that both the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and the United Nations PVE Plan of Action have recognized the need to engage civil society, engaging CSOs has become an important element of Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵOCT¡¯s implementation of mandates related to preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism that can be conducive to terrorism.
Engagement with CSOs is particularly important in the areas of protecting and promoting human rights, as well as engagement with youth and women to ensure that the views of civil society are fully reflected in the Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ¡¯s counter-terrorism policies and programmes.
To ensure systematic, coherent, and structured engagement with civil society, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵOCT developed and adopted a Civil Society Engagement Strategy to support Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵOCT and Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact working groups to better engage with a wide variety of civil society actors at the global, regional and national levels.
The Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵ General Assembly adopted by consensus the on 8 September 2006. The strategy is a unique global instrument to enhance national, regional and international efforts to counter terrorism. The General Assembly reviews the Strategy every two years, making it a living document attuned to Member States¡¯ counter-terrorism priorities.
