Prevention Of Terrorism Act Seychelles
Slikk Huisenga
International terrorism is one of the most serious threats to international peace and security. Since this threat has never been so strong, France is taking action at every level with its international partners to combat terrorist networks in France and abroad.
France conducts high-level dialogue with its main partners on prevention of radicalization and participates in multilateral discussions on this issue.Efforts to stop the use of the Internet for terrorist purposes remain a key focus of our counterterrorism action. France is conducting high-level dialogue with digital companies to achieve rapid and lasting withdrawal (in one hour maximum) of terrorist content online.
France is involved in different work aiming to contain the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters, in the appropriate international bodies, notably the United Nations, and within the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF), which brings together 29 countries and the European Union.
Terrorist groups need financing and they use all the means at their disposal to attain it, including new technologies to collect and transfer funds. That is why in 2018 France mobilized countries determined to identify and drain all the sources of terrorist financing. At the instigation of President Macron, an international No Money for Terror Conference was held on 25 and 26 April in Paris on combating the financing of Al-Qaeda and Daesh. Representatives from 70 countries and leaders of some 20 international and regional organizations and specialized agencies attended the first No Money for Terror Conference. In their final statement, the participants committed to reinforce their legal frameworks and their intelligence cooperation. Several clear priorities and tangible measures were defined in in a summary document called the Paris Agenda.
In recent years, several terrorist groups have sought to broaden their regional hold in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Africa. Terrorist safe havens are a threat to the international community. They are hotbeds of terror and oppression for local populations and centres for disseminating murderous ideology. It is from these havens that many terrorist attacks targeting local populations and foreign countries have been planned and organized.
Present in the Sahel since 2013 (Operation Serval in Mali), France has played a leading role in blocking the advancement of terrorist groups in the region. French troops participating in Operation Barkhane provide vital assistance to the G5 Sahel countries (Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad) in their action to fight terrorism.
In addition to military action, French diplomats and their partners actively seek political solutions, which are the only way to end conflicts and prevent the emergence and strengthening of terrorist actors.
In Syria, France supports and finances many projects helping to stabilize the regions taken back from the terrorist group Daesh and actively works at the diplomatic level to find a credible political solution to the Syrian crisis. It is the only way to address root causes that have led to the emergence of terrorism in this country
France is also taking action at European level to improve and strengthen the tools available to the European Union for combating terrorism. In recent years, France and its partners have made several notable advances:
We need a new strategy to prevent extremism in fragile states. If we can mitigate the underlying conditions that allow extremism to emerge and spread in these states, the United States will be closer to breaking out of the costly cycle of perpetual crisis response, pushing back against the growing threat of extremism, and positioning itself effectively for strategic engagement with its competitors. Recent successes in the fight against the Islamic State makes this a unique opportunity to focus on prevention. We must move from defeating terrorists, to preventing extremism.
Established in response to a request from the U.S. Congress in 2017, the Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States has developed a new strategy that represents the insightful and bipartisan foreign policy thinking of fifteen leading former policymakers, legislators, and other experts on how to empower fragile states to resist extremism on their own.
We need a new strategy to prevent the spread of extremism, which threatens our homeland, our strategic interests, and our values. Our current focus on counterterrorism is necessary, but neither sufficient nor cost-effective. Congress has charged this Task Force with developing a new approach, one that will get ahead of the problem.
We need a new strategy because, despite our success protecting the homeland, terrorism is spreading. Worldwide, annual terrorist attacks have increased fivefold since 2001. The number of self-professed Salafi-jihadist fighters has more than tripled and they are now present in nineteen countries in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa, and the Near East.
We need a new strategy because the costs of our current approach are unsustainable. Over the last eighteen years, ten thousand Americans have lost their lives and fifty thousand have been wounded fighting this threat, at an estimated cost of $5.9 trillion to U.S. taxpayers.1
Second, to ensure that agencies have the resources, processes, and authorities they need to operationalize this shared framework, the Congress and the Executive Branch should launch a Strategic Prevention Initiative to align all U.S. policy instruments, from bilateral assistance to diplomatic engagement, in support of prevention. The Initiative should set out the roles and responsibilities of each department for undertaking prevention. Its principal objective should be to promote long-term coordination between agencies in fragile states. It should grant policymakers new authorities to implement a preventive strategy. In particular, because local conditions and needs differ widely, it is important that U.S. diplomats and development professionals on the ground in fragile states be given direct responsibility, flexibility, and funding to experiment with and develop effective and tailored solutions.
However, the United States neither can nor should prevent extremism by itself. It is not the only country with a vested interest in doing so and can build more effective partnerships with fragile states if other countries cooperate. Thus, our Task Force calls on the United States to establish a Partnership Development Fund, a new international platform for donors and the private sector to pool their resources and coordinate their activities in support of prevention. This would ensure that the work being done by the United States as part of the Strategic Prevention Initiative is matched by other international donors working jointly toward the same goals. It would create a mechanism for other countries to share the burden and incentivize an enterprise-driven approach. A single, unified source of assistance might also entice fragile states that would otherwise look elsewhere for help.
Through targeted, evidence-based, strategic investments where the risks are the highest, our interests the greatest, and our partners the most willing, prevention provides a cost-effective means to slow, contain, and eventually roll back the spread of extremism. The United States needs to enable fragile states and societies to take the lead in averting future extremist threats. If we succeed, our children and grandchildren will live in a more peaceful world.
2 National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States (Washington, DC: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, 2004), 364.
The bipartisan Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States will recommend a new approach for U.S. policy that harnesses existing U.S. programs and international partnerships to target the underlying causes of extremism and limit the ability of extremist groups to exploit fragile states.
Terrorism incidents inflicted on societies almost always feature an international element, including in the context of terrorist financing. Consequently, international cooperation among countries is an indispensable tool for combatting terrorist financing. The challenges vary for each jurisdiction but the most common are (1) capacity limitations, (2) inadequate information sharing and prioritization at the domestic and international level, (3) lack of trust among partners, and (4) underdeveloped legal regimes.
A lack of agreement exists among international partners on the application of counterterrorism tools. Often, security classifications hinder the information-sharing process and limit Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) efforts. The contrasting application of terrorist financing-combating measures among countries impedes the formation of successful international partnerships. Further, terrorist financing typologies are constantly evolving, and the nature of information identified by a certain type of agency (such as intelligence agencies) differs from that identified by supervisory authorities. However, communication between the two types of agencies is not always optimal, a situation that creates blackholes in global CFT efforts. As a result, even if bilateral cooperation were established among international counterparts, terrorist financing-related information would remain lacking.
This chapter discusses countries efforts in forming a comprehensive information-sharing framework at the domestic level. These frameworks may have a potential multiplier effect on other countries. As a next step, countries should identify the most important international partners with a view toward entering into bilateral/multilateral informationsharing agreements to facilitate CTF efforts. To be effective, such practices must start and be promoted at the domestic level.
c80f0f1006