3 February 2022
Building upon existing GCTF resources and the April 2021 GCTF exploratory dialogues, the United States and Norway launched the GCTF “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism” (REMVE) Toolkit Initiative. The objective is to develop a GCTF Toolkit that the Forum’s Members and other stakeholders can use to help address and contend with “REMVE” challenges and threats.
Though terminology and focus differ, there is consensus that the “REMVE” threat landscape encapsulates a wide range of violent ideologies. It involves individuals or groups that promote or perpetrate terrorist attacks in the name of defending against perceived threats to their racial or ethnic identity or ensuring the superiority/supremacy of this identity, but they can also be rooted in gender-based grievances, anti-authority narratives, or a mixture of motivations and grievances.
GCTF Members, the Inspired Institutions, United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Coordination Compact entities, non-GCTF member countries, and civil society, academic and private sector representatives participated in the launch event to discuss various aspects of the “REMVE” threat. The discussion revolved around the legal, policy, and operational objectives in developing a GCTF toolkit and addressing key issues relating to countering “REMVE” such as online radicalization to violence, financing, information sharing, and respecting human rights and privacy while making use of counterterrorism tools to address “REMVE”-related activities.
A series of subsequent workshops will complement the launch and contribute to the development of the toolkit, which will build on existing GCTF Framework Documents such as the Memorandum on Good Practices on Strengthening National-Local Cooperation in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism Conducive to Terrorism, the New York Memorandum on Good Practices for Interdicting Terrorist Travel, and the Antalya Memorandum on the Protection of Soft Targets in a Counterterrorism Context as well as the Criminal Justice Practitioner’s Guide for Addressing REMVE developed by the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law (IIJ)—a GCTF Inspired Institution.
The T.M.C. Asser Institute and Valens Global serve as implementing partners for this GCTF Initiative.
Other related GCTF resources: