On 15 October 2014, the Chair of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC), H.E. Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Lithuania to the United Nations Raimonda Murmokaité, and CTED convened a meeting with Ambassadors and other senior diplomats from East Africa to exchange views on the threat of terrorism in the region and on measures to address and prevent it.
The Chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee stressed the importance of dialogue with Member States, including through the country visits undertaken by CTED on behalf of the Committee.
The gap assessments made during the visits and the Committee’s resulting recommendations on ways to address those gaps serve to strengthen Member States’ counter-terrorism capacities.
Diplomats said that increased regional coordination over recent months had improved the response to terrorism in the region.
There was, however, a need for more effective information sharing both among countries of the region and outside the region, and a need for States with significant counter-terrorism experience to share their knowledge with States of the region on a more consistent basis.
They also emphasized the importance of systematic and consistent capacity-building efforts.
Representatives of Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda attended this meeting.