Montreal, 15 February 2022 (TDI): A new agreement has been made between the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office (UNOCT) and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).
Said agreement has been signed between Secretary-General ICAO, Juan Carlos Salazar, and Secretary-General UNOCT, Vladimir Ivanovich Voronkov.
The agreement is comprised on the agenda to advance the mutual cooperation in counterterrorism and to strengthen the security of international air transport, trade, and border management.
The agreement was formalized on February 12, 2022, with UNOCT under the Secretary General. This agreement builds on ICAO’s critical role in supporting the implementation of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (A/RES/75/291) and numerous Security Council resolutions on counterterrorism, aviation security, and facilitation in identity and border control management.
I had the honour to reconfirm #ICAO’s commitment to further contribute towards @ICAO and @UN_OCT efforts in preventing/countering terrorism, by signing with USG @UN_OCT Voronkov the renewal of the Arrangement on Cooperation strengthening our cooperation and joint activities. pic.twitter.com/JcqUl1ckLq
— Juan Carlos Salazar (@JCS_ICAO) February 11, 2022
It also has been planned to promote associated outputs to the Member States in a range of ICAO/UNOCT key areas, including unmanned aircraft systems (drones) and cyber security activities.
Secretary-General ICAO Statement
J.C. Salazar emphasized the importance of “future capacity-building efforts under the Threat Assessment Models Program to support States in the enhancement of their national information-sharing mechanisms, threat assessments, and risk-based decision-making,” affirming the ICAO’s commitment to continue working with UNOCT in the implementation of the UN Global Counterterrorism Strategy.
Statement of Secretary General UNOCT
According to Vladimir Ivanovich Voronkov, this Cooperation–Agreement highlights the ‘All-of-UN’ approach to assist the Member States with the execution of key counterterrorism programmes.
It increases the two partners’ information exchange by harnessing each other’s knowledge to maximize the effectiveness of capacity-building activities in deterring terrorist travel, securing civil aviation and key infrastructure.
The UNOCT agreement was reached as an outcome of a series of bilateral meetings held at UN Headquarters this week by Secretary-General Salazar to deepen collaboration and to enhance the association with UN-wide counter-terrorism activities.
Discourse between SG Salazar and Acting Executive Director Weixiong Chen
During the discourse with the Acting Executive Director of the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (UNCTED), Weixiong Chen, core issues like protection of soft targets and critical infrastructure, border management, and law enforcement have been discussed.
SG ICAO highlighted the enormous importance and positive impact of these activities. While Weixiong Chen emphasized the critical importance of ICAO’s support and specialized expertise “to determine the efficacy of States’ regulations & policies, provision of recommendations to enhance capacity building, particularly related to the aviation security, Application Programming Interface (API) and purveying of Passenger Name Records (PNRs).”
Meeting with the UN CTC Chair
Furthermore, meeting with UN Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) Chair, Ambassador T.S. Tirumurti, J.C. Salazar emphasized the importance of the incomparable support of the CTC to ICAO in indorsing ICAO’s leadership role and raising Member States’ awareness of the vital importance of aviation security and facilitation.
While ICAO has created strong and successful partnerships against terrorist threats by conducting coordinated activities, exchanging information and experiences. The Secretary General assertively said that this is being managed with the cooperation of the member states.
Secretary General Salazar further highlighted that “countries must be equally willing to collaborate and exchange relevant information.” “The successful implementation of ICAO’s security-related Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPs) is dependent on states taking common and consistent ways to deal with threats.”
It is worth mentioning that proximal incessant cooperation between ICAO and UN counterterrorism related organizations has made these meetings successful, just to ensure the ICAO’s commitments under the United Nations Charter, Chapter VII: Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breach of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression, relevant UN Security Council Resolutions, and the aforementioned UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy.
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