Based on qualitative research, using an empirical, historical approach, this thesis reconstructs and recounts how the UNSC responded to foreign terrorist fighters (FTF) between 2014 and 2017. It positions this response in the wider context of UNSC-led and UN-led counterterrorism efforts. Leaning on primary sources from the UNSC, this systematic examination demonstrates how the response unfolded and why. It contextualizes the unfolding UNSC response with ISIS-related developments on the battlefields in Syria and Iraq. This approach identifies dynamics and factors that influenced the initially slow response to foreign individuals that had and were traveling to Syria and Iraq to join terrorist organizations, in particular ISIS: a definitional debate in the Council about the phenomenon, influenced to some extent by the Syrian Civil War and its geopolitical consequences, and the outbreak of the Israeli-Hamas War in summer 2014. It further identifies the leading role of the US – beginning in August – to get the Council to attend to the matter, culminating in the adoption of S/RES/2178 (2014). The resolution, in concert with S/RES/2396 (2017), established the framework on FTF. The analysis shows that while it continued previous UNSC efforts of codifying specific aspects of terrorism to criminalize them, the framework connected new legal and practical or technical measures in an unprecedented way. As a result, an “outsourced” sanctions regime – the INTERPOL foreign terrorist fighters database – was created. This was based on a global travel monitoring system which the new technical measures enabled. Thus, the framework changed the UNSC-built counterterrorism infrastructure. If positioned into the wider context of UN-led counterterrorism efforts, the thesis demonstrates that this UNSC problem-specific approach to FTF is reminiscent of how UNGA and UN specialized agencies have responded to terrorism from 1970 onwards, displaying an unexpected trait of continuity.
Simon Johannes Schwesig (2026) studied this question.