Implementing the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy in East Africa

Counter-terrorism Radicalization

While innovative collaborative efforts among East African states, external donors, and civil society through the establishment of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s (IGAD) Capacity Building Program against Terrorism (ICPAT) are making significant strides toward the development of a coherent approach to counterterrorism capacity building in the region, there remain significant challenges to effective cooperative action in East Africa. These include severe intra- and interstate conflict, increasing radicalization, lack of state capacity, competing priorities, and political sensitivity surrounding the very notion of counterterrorism. To date, most counterterrorism efforts have focused on short-term security and law enforcement measures to the near exclusion, even at times to the detriment, of longer-term efforts to address underlying conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism.