Regional CT TECH Awareness Raising Workshop for Europe and North Africa
The UNOCT/UNCCT Global Counter-Terrorism Programme on Cybersecurity and New Technologies held a Regional CT TECH Awareness Raising Workshop for Europe and North Africa in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Herzegovina from 10-11 October. The workshop focused on developing national counter-terrorism policies and operational responses to counter the use of new technologies for terrorist purposes, while protecting human rights. The workshop gathered 19 officials from 5 CT Tech partner states along with 8 participants from the EU, IOM and Embassies of Japan, the Netherlands, and France to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
During the opening session, Ms. Ivana Veselcic, the Assistant Minister of Security of Bosnia and Herzegovina, emphasized that “for Bosnia and Herzegovina, the prevention and suppression of all challenges that may lead to terrorism is high on the list of security matters, primarily as technological progress has also brought the spread of intolerance, hate speech, and the other extreme activities on digital platforms”. "We support such meetings and initiatives aiming at a better and safer future with full protection of human rights and freedoms,” she added.
The Deputy Head of European Union Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mr. Adebayo Babajide, stressed that “new technologies have made it possible for terrorists to more widely spread their hateful ideologies, use innovative features such as crowd-funding and digital currencies, as well as the dark web to finance terrorist operations. As such, it has made our efforts in combating it more complex, but it has also given us new tools to fight terrorism.”
Deputy to the Under-Secretary General and Director of UNOCT, Mr. Raffi Gregorian echoed that “Despite our efforts, terrorist actors, unconstrained by morality or law, continue to use technology to sow fear and disrupt entire communities. We must have responses that counter these threats effectively. Last year, we kicked off the CT TECH initiative to strengthen Member States’ law enforcement capacities to counter the exploitation of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes and support the leveraging of these technologies in the fight against terrorism,” he said.
During the workshop, CT TECH Partner States shared good practices, and cases on countering the use of new technologies for terrorist purposes and gave an overview of their country specific legislations with regards to new technologies in countering terrorism.
The UNOCT/UNCCT Global Counter-Terrorism Programme on Cybersecurity and New Technologies, together with INTERPOL presented the seven knowledge products launched under CT TECH initiative during the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Week held earlier in June.
The workshop in Sarajevo was the third in a series of five CT TECH regional awareness raising workshops organized by UNOCT between September and November. The next workshop will be convened later this month in Bangkok, Thailand, and host CT TECH Partner States in South Asia and Southeast Asia.
The CT TECH initiative was launched in 2022 as a joint UNOCT/UNCCT and INTERPOL undertaking, implemented under UNOCT/UNCCT Global Counter-Terrorism Programme on Cybersecurity and New Technologies and funded by the European Union. It aims to strengthen the capacities of law enforcement and criminal justice authorities to counter the exploitation of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes, as well as support the leveraging of new and emerging technologies in the fight against terrorism.