GCTF Initiatives 2023 - 2024

Maritime Security and Terrorist Travel Initiative 

The Initiative on Maritime Security and Terrorist Travel, launched in 2019, addressed potential vulnerabilities of the maritime sector and elaborated recommendations to prevent and interdict terrorist movement or associated smuggling or trafficking. The United States led this Initiative, under the auspices of the GCTF Foreign Terrorist Fighter (FTF) Working Group with the  T.M.C. Asser Institute as the implementing partner. 

The Initiative culminated in the development of an Addendum to the GCTF New York Memorandum on Good Practices for Interdicting Terrorist Travel | Arabic | French | endorsed by GCTF Members during the Eleventh GCTF Ministerial Plenary Meeting in October 2021. The Addendum complements the GCTF New York Memorandum on Good Practices for Interdicting Terrorist Travel focusing on response actions in the maritime environment and provides additional recommended good practices for government and private sector partners to address and prevent potential terrorist misuse of the maritime sector.

Several activities were conducted during 2022-2023 within the framework of this Initiative and under the auspices of the FTF Working Group, with the following objectives:

  • Raising awareness of how terrorists currently seek to exploit the maritime sector for travel and operations;
  • Increasing counterterrorism practitioners’ understanding of how relevant authorities, collaboration, and practices may contribute to countering terrorist travel in the maritime environment;
  • Identifying efforts undertaken by GCTF Members, international and regional organizations, and other nations and partners to secure the maritime sector against misuse by terrorists, especially for potential travel; and
  • Helping implement the Addendum to the New York Memorandum of good practices to enhance the applicability and effectiveness of counterterrorism and border security frameworks for maritime sector security.

 

Watchlisting Guidance Manual Initiative 

The United States and the United Nations announced the Watchlisting Guidance Manual Initiative during the Sixteenth GCTF Coordinating Committee Meeting in September 2019.

This Initiative aimed to promote discussions of national approaches and challenges on topics ranging from the information required to watchlist an individual, to how to resolve an encounter on a watchlisted identity, how to integrate traveler data and/or biometrics into watchlisting processes, and how to share information on a watchlist int. ally as well as with international partners, consistent with international law and legal standards. The T.M.C. Asser institute was the implementing partner for the Initiative. 

In October 2021, the Initiative culminated with the presentation to the Nineteenth GCTF Coordinating Committee of the Counterterrorism Watchlisting Toolkit, which operationalizes the GCTF New York Memorandum on Good Practices for Interdicting Terrorist Travel, endorsed in September 2019. The New York Memorandum on Good Practices for Interdicting Terrorist Travel established good practices for policy makers to consider while developing a watchlisting and screening enterprise, and the subsequent GCTF Counterterrorism Watchlisting Toolkit helps countries implement these practices by providing nineteen recommendations for practitioners and frontline officials to consider when establishing and implementing a counterterrorism watchlist process.

Several activities were conducted during 2022-2023 within the framework of this Initiative and under the auspices of the GCTF Foreign Terrorist Fighter (FTF) Working Group, with the following objectives:

  • Awareness raising of how to create and maintain a watchlist of known and suspected terrorists, including foreign terrorist fighters and known or suspected terrorists;
  • Understanding current efforts undertaken by GCTF partners and other nations or multilateral organizations to strengthen countries’ capacities to create and maintain watchlists;
  • Elaborating a set of areas where partners and other nations can increase engagement, assistance, and training to address these challenges; and
  • Guiding and advising on how to implement the recommendations in the Toolkit in relation to all participants’ unique environments and challenges within their own governments.

 

Initiative to Operationalize the Berlin Memorandum 

The United Kingdom and the United States announced the Initiative to Operationalize the Berlin Memorandum during the Twentieth GCTF Coordinating Committee Meeting September 2022. This Initiative built on the Berlin Memorandum on Good Practices for Countering Terrorist Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems, which was developed through the Initiative to Counter Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Threats (2018-2019), co-led by Germany and the United States.

Approach

To complement and build upon previous GCTF counter-UAS (C-UAS) efforts and help raise awareness of and promote the practical use of the Berlin Memorandum on Good Practices for Countering Terrorist Use of Unmanned Aerial Systems (2019), the new GCTF C-UAS Initiative incorporated a series of online webinars in 2023. The GCTF Initiative brought together national and local governments, international and civil society organizations, academic institutions, and private sector partners for a series of webinars to:

  • Recognize the value and important applications for UAS technology and consider appropriate regulatory frameworks – including export controls.
  • Promote a concerted, whole-of-government effort to expand risk assessment and mitigation practices, increase outreach and education, and publicly condemning terrorist attacks utilizing UAS.
  • Encourage cooperation among national security and law enforcement entities, civil aviation authorities, air navigation service providers, private sector aviation and other stakeholders to continue information exchange and analyses pertaining to UAS threats and trends.
  • Call on the international community to make additional efforts to counter the use of UAS by terrorists, including a trend analysis and programmatic needs and gaps assessments in the detection of and protection against terrorist use of UAS.

 

Awareness Raising & Operationalizing the GCTF "Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremism"* Toolkit Initiative 

Building on existing GCTF outputs and the April 2021 GCTF REMVE-focused exploratory dialogues held in coordination with the GCTF CVE Working Group, the United States and Norway developed a GCTF “REMVE” Toolkit, which includes technical, concrete recommendations on how states can approach REMVE and REMVE-related challenges.

The Leads continued the Initiative to support the practical use and promotion of the Toolkit through hosting a series of virtual workshops to enhance an understanding of the challenges posed to states when addressing REMVE, support information sharing among partners to counter the spread of violent extremist messaging, hinder recruitment efforts, and help prevent acts of violence. 

The Asser Institute and Valens Global served as the Initiative’s implementing partners.

*NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY: GCTF Members and experts use a number of different expressions to describe REMVE and interrelated threats. These include “racially or ethnically motivated terrorism,” “ideologically motivated violent extremism,” “right-wing terrorism,” “far-right terrorism,” “extreme-right terrorism,” “violent right-wing extremism,” and “white supremacist terrorism,” “terrorism on the basis of xenophobia,” and “terrorism in the name of religion or belief,” among others. At the international level, “violent incidents often underpinned by racial, ethnic, political, and ideological motivations” have been expressly outlined as aspects of  “terrorist attacks on the basis of xenophobia, racism and other forms of intolerance, or in the name of religion or belief” (XRIRB). Despite differences in terminology, each of these expressions describes attacks perpetrated by individuals or groups in the name of defending against perceived threats to their racial or ethnic identity or ensuring the superiority/supremacy thereof.

 

Border Security Management (BSM) Initiative

Building off the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) Border Security Initiative (BSI) and the 2016 GCTF Good Practices in the Area of Border Security and Management in the Context of Counterterrorism and Stemming the Flow of “Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTF),” this new initiative updated, enhanced, broadened, and strengthened the existing GCTF BSI resources in light of various UN Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs) and other developments in border security that have occurred over the last seven years. This Initiative was launched in 2023 and was co-led by the FTF Working Group and UNOCT.

The goal of this new initiative was to produce a GCTF Framework Document as an Addendum to the Good Practices while modernizing and streamlining its Training-of-Trainers Manual. The objectives of the Initiative were to promote:

  1. Increased understanding on the importance of national and regional BSM strategies, on good practices and methods for states’ BSM efforts to restrict the illicit movement and activity of terrorist groups and transnational criminal organizations.
  2. Enhanced counterterrorism efforts by preventing the illicit trafficking of weapons, ammunition, explosives, drugs, goods, FTFs, and people that support terrorist groups.
  3. Increased capacity building through a series of workshops, seminars, and site visits to help ensure effective BSM over near- and long-term.