Participants in the 13th workshop.
On 11 January 2018, the 13th Regional workshop for judges, prosecutors, and police officers on effectively countering terrorism in South Asia concluded after three full days. The workshop, which was held in Bangkok Thailand, was organized by the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), in cooperation with the Global Center on Cooperative Security, with financial support from the Governments of Japan and Australia.
In regions connected by history, kinships, and shared borders, what happens in one State will impact its neighbours. Terrorism, therefore, affects not just individual States but entire regions. South Asia is one of the regions that have greatly suffered the consequences of terrorism. As part of an effort to promote greater regional cooperation to combat terrorism and other forms of serious crime, CTED has helped to organize a series of workshops that have been held throughout the region for the past six years.
The topic of the 13th workshop, which was attended by police, prosecutors, and judges from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, was engaging communities and criminal justice officials in developing strategies to counter violent extremism. Civil society organizations from Australia, Nepal, and Singapore also participated in the workshop.
Head of the CTED delegation was Chief of Section Elizabeth Joyce, who underlined that capacity-building initiatives such as this workshop “provide an important platform for regional counterparts to share their experiences, lessons learned, and good practices, as well as to discuss key challenges, and most importantly – to develop habits of cooperation.”
Over the three days, participants were engaged in interactive discussions, facilitated by resource persons from Australia and the United States of America, and which included a case study in which the judges, prosecutors, and police officers, respectively, had to present and explain their positions at the end of the workshop.