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Mr. President, We welcome the prompt and unianimous adoption of this resolution. “We shall not live in fear”, was the proud and heart-rending response of Parisians in the midst of last week’s tragedy. And indeed, we cannot, we must not give in to fear but act with the full force of conviction against the evil that Dae’sh represents.

We stand together in solidarity with the people of France. We also share the sorrow and grief of all those affected by the carnage and slaughter perpetrated by ISIL, Boho Haram, and other terrorist mutations. Nothing can ever- ever- justify terrorism. Earlier today, my President Dalia Grybauskaitė, reaffirmed Lithuania’s commitment to working together with our anti-ISIL coalition partners in the fight against terrorism. Mr. President, The evolving nature and intensity of the threat of terrorism and violent extremism put existing counter-terrorism measures to unprecedented test. While primitively barbaric and brutal, today’s terrorists are outpacing and out-high-teching us. We find ourselves increasingly running against and behind time. There can therefore be no room for complacency or business as usual in our responses. On the contrary, there is an urgent need to reassess the effectiveness of existing CT instruments and measures, to take an honest look at the impact our actions have on the ground, and rise up to the new urgency of the task at hand. This, inter alia, requires to ensure full cohesiveness of the CT machinery by putting an end to the oft-cited silo mentality and making all the parts of the CT system, within and outside the UN, work truly as one, from assessment to assistance, delivering advice, support, and capacity building exactly where and where it is needed, with maximum impact. As today’s resolution reminds, tackling terrorism financing is a high priority. Here too a breakthrough is urgently needed – no more piecemeal measures, but a comprehensive approach that would take into account the increasing diversification and complexity of the sources and channels of financing, as well as the nefarious linkages between terrorism and cross-border organized crime. Furthermore, we have to find the right answers to the difficult questions regarding modern technologies and communications which bring huge improvements to our lives but can have deadly effect in the wrong hands. We will have to deal with the uneasy questions of how much of our liberties and freedoms we are ready to sacrifice to ensure our safety and security in a way that does not support repression and does not give the satisfaction to the terrorists of having disrupted our lives. We have to critically review our battle for the hearts and minds of potential terrorist recruits by stepping up the efforts to tackle the many root causes that push individuals into the hands of Dae’sh butchers, as well our counter-messaging efforts. For this, new and reinforced partnerships are required internationally, regionally, and locally, where the voices of women, the youth, and the vulnerable groups are well heard and heeded. Finally, the importance of resolving the Syria crisis could not be more urgent. We must restore hope to the Syrian people. While we cannot by any measure imagine the regime at the core of this crisis as a partner in the fight against Dae’sh, we are encouraged by the Vienna talks and the new momentum they seem to produce, with a hope that this will lead to the desperately needed transition and the full implementation of the Geneva Communique of 2012.