David Scharia is the Head of Branch, Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED), at the United Nations.
He holds a Bachelor of Law (LLB), a Master of Law (LLM with Honours) and a PhD from Tel Aviv University. From 1995 to 2006, he worked at the Israel Attorney General’s Office as a chief advocate in major counter-terrorism cases before the Israeli Supreme Court. He also chaired the interministerial counter-terrorism task force and served as the Prosecutor General’s counter-terrorism representative to the Israeli Knesset Law and Constitution Commission. He is currently Director and Head of the Counter-Terrorism Branch at the CTED of the United Nations Security Council; responsible for counter-terrorism policies and leads a large group of international experts against terrorism, Security Council adviser on counter-terrorism. It deals with issues such as anti-terrorism legislation, terrorist financing, law enforcement and border control, human rights, gender and the use of technology by terrorist organisations. He is Scholar in Residence at Columbia Law School and the NYU Center for Global Affairs. He is a member of the board of directors of major research institutes, including the International Institute of Counter-Terrorism in Herzeliya (ICT). He is a member of the US-Israel Study Group of the Council on Foreign Relations. His articles and books have been published in academic forums including Oxford University Press, Harvard National Security Journal and Hebrew University Press. His specialty is counterterrorism. He co-chaired the WEF Working Group on Security and Protection of the IOT, and is a member of the Cyber-Security Program Advisory Board of Rutgers University.
