A seminar organized by Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, President of the United Nations General Assembly, entitled The Seminar on Dialogue, Understanding and Countering the Appeal of Terrorism, and held at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, issued a call for new approaches on countering terrorism. Mr. Al-Nasser said: “We cannot have a ‘one size fits all’ approach. We need to develop a better and deeper understanding of how to combat intolerance, ideological factors, social marginalization and the discrimination of minority communities. There are some factors that lead to radicalization and by considering them we can be in a better position to identify the best policies for addressing these challenges successfully.”

The seminar was organized in partnership with the UN Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) and the Counter Terrorism Implementation Task Force. The goal was to “give countries the opportunity to learn from existing good practices that are being used in various regional and national programs to counter the appeal of terrorism through a series of interactive panel discussions.

In his remarks to the Seminar, Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon talked of the need to “build tolerant and resilient societies that reject the hate-filled narratives of terrorism. The Secretary-General also said: “It takes more than traditional security approaches to counter terrorism. We must work together to extinguish the flames of hate and intolerance that breed violence.”

On June 28, the third review of the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (PDF) will begin. The Strategy was adopted by the General Assembly in 2006