Topic: Preventing Recruitment of Foreign Fighters by International Terrorist Groups
Country: United Kingdom
Delegate Name: Audrey Gilmour
School: Flint Southwestern Classical Academy
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All United Kingdom position papers GLIMUN 2014 committees
Terrorism is growing and festering in the world like a cancerous tumor, rapidly increasing in size and taking the life from its body as it grows. Attempts have been made to shrink the tumor or eliminate it as a whole but none of our known forms of treatment have proven successful. We saw hope when the leader of Al Quaeda, Osama Bin Laden, was taken out in 2011 but this was only a short period of remission. The international terrorism situation was not ameliorated but came back with a vengeance with the mobilization of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Since its claim of power, the Islamic State has caused havoc in Iraq holding hundreds of Iraqi citizens hostage without food or water, destroying Shi’ite temples, murdering all those unwilling to convert to their Sunni denomination of Islam, and beheading Western reporters for the world to observe. The Islamic State has drawn thousands of extremist Sunni Muslims from around the world, growing their forces from roughly 5,000 in September of 2014 to nearly 30,000 in September of the same year.
The United Kingdom has been the target of terrorist attacks for a long time going back to the countless bombings from the Irish Republican Army, the 2005 London bombings as a result of Islamic extremists, and the 2007 United Kingdom Letter Bombs. Due to this history of attacks, the United Kingdom has had to be proactive in the fight against terrorism. Never again do we wish to witness an occurrence like the 2005 London Bombings so the country has had an emphasis on early recognition of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State which was officially recognized by the United Kingdom Home Secretary of the Home Office in 2001, three years before the United Nations recognized the group in 2004. The United Kingdom recognizes the need to identify a group of concern in order to act accordingly and make all attempts at prevention. As the United Nations has come to fully realize the damaging nature of international terrorism and held the recent summit recognizing these concerns, the United Kingdom spoke on the dangerous of international terrorist recruiting and voted in favor of resolution 2178.
This resolution was not enough though; the United Kingdom would like to see resolutions passed focusing on action. Resolution 2178 displayed concerns as to the spread of international terrorism and international recruiting but this is not enough. The United Kingdom wants to see member states creating a database of suspected terrorists and members of no-fly lists which would be available to all participating countries and all modes of international travel. Along with the increased surveillance of international transportation, the United Kingdom would like to see other states using tools to increase the safety within their own borders such as Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) which has been instrumental in creating a safer environment within the United Kingdom.
