CT TECH Initiative

Misuse of information and communications technologies

Advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and their availability have made it attractive for terrorist and violent extremist groups to exploit the Internet and social media to commit, incite, recruit for, fund or plan terrorist acts. Terrorists also use encrypted communications and the dark web to share terrorist content, as well as to coordinate and facilitate attacks and procure weapons and counterfeit documents. There is concern that once advances in artificial intelligence, machine learning and self-driving cars become widely available, these technologies could also be misused by terrorists to expand the range and lethality of their attacks.
 

CT TECH Initiative

CT TECH is a joint initiative of UNOCT’s UN Counter-Terrorism Centre (UNCCT) and INTERPOL and was launched on 10 February 2022 at a virtual event attended by over 150 officials from the Permanent Missions to the United Nations, Member States’ capitals, United Nations entities and regional organizations. The goal of this two and a half year initiative is to strengthen the capacities of law enforcement and criminal justice authorities to counter the exploitation of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes and to leverage these technologies in the fight against terrorism. 

CT TECH is funded by the European Union and implemented under the UNCCT Global Counter-Terrorism Programme on Cybersecurity and New Technologies.

Since CT TECH was launched, more than 1,000 officials from over 60 Member States have benefited from the initiative.

Timeline

The CT TECH initiative’s activities are divided into five phases: inception; knowledge development; awareness raising and capacity-building; training, analytical and operational support; and closing. During the inception phase, UNCCT and INTERPOL convened regional inception meetings with its 35 Partner States to better understand their needs for capacity-building support. 

Knowledge development phase focuses on developing knowledge and guidance to Member states on developing capabilities for countering the use of new technologies for terrorist purposes.  

During awareness raising and capacity building phase, project team promotes the use of knowledge products in Partner States and support requesting Partner States in conducting national threat assessments, development of national counter-terrorism policies on new technologies and assessing capabilities of law enforcement in this regard.

In the training, analytical and operational support phase CT Tech will provide tailored training to Partner Member States. 
The project closing phase will assess the impact of the project’s activities.

Focus on Human Rights and Gender

Human rights and gender mainstreaming are reinforced through all CT TECH outcomes and activities, with dedicated compliance monitoring plans to assess and measure how effectively human rights and gender are integrated. All capacity-building activities include human rights focused trainings to ensure that the human rights framework is applied to digital spaces. 

This cross-cutting approach recognizes the crucial role human rights and gender equality play in ensuring effective and sustainable counter-terrorism measures, including by empowering certain demographic groups, in particular women and youth, and by engaging and protecting specific communities, such as human rights defenders and civil society organizations.