21 September 2016

The Seventh Ministerial Meeting took place two days after the Tenth GCTF Coordinating Committee Meeting, where GCTF Members reviewed the Forum’s strategic priorities, discussed progress and ongoing and planned initiatives. One of the highlights of the Coordinating Committee Meeting was the scenario based discussion – an unprecedented and innovative exercise in the CT and CVE contexts- which aimed to enhance the understanding of the life cycle of radicalization to violence and focused on the practical application of the Life Cycle Toolkit at the local, national, regional and international levels. The Toolkit is a web-based instrument designed for policy-makers and practitioners to draw guidance and inspiration in developing tailor-made responses for their own regional-, state-, and local contexts. The Toolkit will house existing and new GCTF tools that address the life cycle of radicalization to violence.

At the meeting, the Toolkit of the Initiative to Address the Life Cycle of Radicalization to Violence was officially adopted, along with new GCTF framework documents addressing various stages of the Life Cycle, as well as Good Practices in the area of border security and management in the context of counterterrorism and stemming the flow of foreign terrorist fighters, and recommendations relating to contributions of Parliamentarians in developing an effective response to terrorism. Furthermore, the Foreign Terrorist Fighter Knowledge Hub was officially launched. The meeting also welcomed the progress made on the International Counterterrorism and Countering Violent Extremism Capacity-Building Clearinghouse Mechanism (ICCM), a database of recent and ongoing CT and CVE capacity-building assistance, to help identify gaps in programming, de-conflict overlapping programs, and to mobilize and guide donor resources through non-binding recommendations.

In addressing the challenges of 21st century terrorism, the GCTF will embark on a set of new initiatives concerning, inter alia, the protection of soft targets, strategic communications, and the strengthening of national action plans to detect and prevent radicalization at an early stage.