On 25 August 2022, the Counter Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) will hold its first Insight Briefing aimed at enriching Member States’ understanding of current developments relating to acts of terrorism and violent extremism, as well as responses to such acts.
The Insight Briefing will offer Member States an opportunity to learn and examine the development and recent use of the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) “Incident Response Framework”, a suite of protocols which guide the use of various technologies to ensure that its member companies have the ability to respond in a coordinated manner to terrorist incidents with a significant online aspect, particularly where perpetrator-produced content is circulated.
The Insight Briefing features representatives of CTED, GIFCT and Tech Against Terrorism, which is working on behalf of CTED to support the global tech industry to tackle terrorist exploitation of their technologies.
In March 2019, following the broadcasting and livestreaming of the terrorist shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, GIFCT launched the Content Incident Protocol, a centralized communications tool among its members for sharing information about ongoing incidents that could potentially spread violent extremist content online.
Since then, this tool has been used to identify the publication and dissemination of online content relating to violent extremist and terrorist attacks and then remove related content, including in May 2022 following the domestic terrorism shooting attack in Buffalo, New York, which was livestreamed on Twitch and then proliferated across multiple social media platforms. The tool was deployed again in June 2022 following the uploading and viral online spread of a video depicting a terrorism-related murder in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.
The Security Council has long recognized the far-reaching risks associated with the exploitation of the Internet and information communications and technologies (ICT) for terrorist purposes. More specifically, the Council stressed, in resolution 2617 (2021), the need for Member States to act cooperatively to prevent terrorists from exploiting ICT alongside the need for Member States to continue voluntary cooperation with the private sector and civil society to develop and implement more effective means to counter the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes. The Council further took note of the industry-led GIFCT, calling on it to continue to increase engagement with Governments and technology companies globally.
This is the first in a series of Insight Briefings, developed in accordance with Security Council resolution which reaffirms the essential role of CTED within the United Nations to identify and assess issues, trends and developments relating to the implementation of its resolutions , , , , , among other relevant resolutions.
The briefing will be streamed live via Microsoft Teams on Thursday 25 August 2022 from 13:30 to 14:30 EDT (17:30 to 18:30 UTC).
The draft concept note is available here.
The draft agenda is available here.
To attend, please register via the link below by no later than Wednesday, 24 August 2022: