Combatting Lone Wolf Terrorism

Lone wolf terrorists pose a unique threat to the international community because they operate in isolation, do not fit a standard profile, and often do not take actions to arouse the suspicions of law enforcement or intelligence agencies. However, the SIPA Capstone team believed that the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) can capitalize on the UN’s strategic positioning as a global information-sharing platform to help combat this phenomenon.

The team proposes four specific ways that CTED can assist with reducing incidents of lone wolf terrorism (LWT), being mindful of the political and logistical constraints faced by the organization:

• Creating a ‘hate speech matrix’ to compare thresholds of prosecutable language in different Member States, with a goal of building an international consensus on what constitutes unacceptable speech and incitement
• Monitoring radical chat rooms and websites for trends, and publishing a quarterly report on online extremist activity, to be delivered securely to Member States
• Developing counter-narratives to extremism through research and target-specific messaging
• Tailoring existing youth and community trust-building programs to new member states and regions.

In crafting and proposing recommendations, the team was mindful of Member States’ obligations to uphold human rights standards, and noted instances where improper implementation of the recommendation could potentially lead to human rights or civil liberties violations. Ultimately, the idea is to decrease the risk factors and opportunities that would persuade an individual to carry out LWT, while upholding the methods of combating LWT to international human rights norms.