Tajikistan

15-17 May 2019 Dushanbe, Tajikistan

International and Regional Cooperation on Countering Terrorism and its Financing through Illicit Drug Trafficking and Organized Crime

The conference aimed to strengthen the efforts of the international community to promote regional cooperation, identify effective practices to prevent and disrupt terrorism financing and create a forum for expert discussion on how to respond to evolving methods used by terrorist and terrorist organizations to fund their activities and structures. The event served as a platform to deliberate complex and multidimensional challenges faced by Member States and facilitated the exchange of experience, lessons learnt and good practices in countering terrorism financing.

The conference concluded with a declaration emphasizing that “illicit drug trafficking continues to pose one of the major threats to international peace and security and undermine sustainable development, human rights and the rule of law”. It calls upon “all States to promote and strengthen international co-operation in accordance with all their obligations under international law”. Through the adoption by consensus of the “Dushanbe Declaration”, now an official document of the General Assembly, the conference reinforced counter-terrorism cooperation in Central Asia. The outcome of the Dushanbe conference will contribute to the second High-Level Conference on Counter-Terrorism planned for June 2020 in New York.

The Dushanbe Conference was the first UNOCT Regional Conference in a series of follow-up events to the first High-Level Conference on Counter-Terrorism that was convened in June 2018 in New York by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres. It was jointly convened by the Government of the Republic of Tajikistan in cooperation with the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).