Participants in the GCTF working group plenary meeting.
In the context of growing terrorist activity in West Africa, the Global Counterterrorism Forum (GCTF) Capacity-building in the West Africa Region Working Group (GCTF WAWG) held its fourth plenary meeting in Accra, Ghana. Organized from 21 to 23 June 2022 and attended by 120 participants, the meeting took stock of the delivery of the working group’s 2019-2022 work plan. The plenary also allowed participants to consider ongoing challenges and needs to be included in its forward-looking work plan for 2022-2023.
According to the 2022 Global Terrorism Index report, 48 percent of all terrorism deaths in the world occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa, and four out of the top ten countries with the largest increases in deaths can be found in Africa: Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, and Niger. Between 2007 and 2021, terrorism deaths in the Sahel rose by over 1,000 percent. Al Qaeda-affiliated Jama'a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin' (JNIM) and ISIL-affiliated Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP) and Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) are very active in the region, operating also in the coastal States, all of which – except for Ghana – have suffered attacks on their own soil.
The participation of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) in the plenary meeting additionally served to reinforce key recommendations resulting from its assessments and analysis. On behalf of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, CTED has conducted 57 assessment visits, including eight in West Africa; completed Overview Implementation Assessments (OIA) and Detailed Implementation Surveys (DIS) for all States in West Africa; played an active role in the facilitation of technical assistance; and engaged in thematic and trend analysis. The latter includes the joint open briefing of the Counter-Terrorism Committee and the 1267/1989/2253 ISIL (Da’esh) and Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee that took place in April 2022 and which focused on the spread of ISIL throughout Africa. Moreover, CTED is engaged in several active partnerships in West Africa, particularly in the Lake Chad Basin and Nigeria, and continually contributes its expertise to the efforts of United Nations and other partners to promote understanding and implementation of the requirements of the relevant Security Council resolutions.
The eight key areas of the current work plan of the West Africa Region GCTF Working Group included: enhanced international police cooperation; border management; countering the financing of terrorism; national actions plans on preventing and countering violent extremism; gender and youth; foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs) and preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Looking forward, five areas were established as proposals for the 2022-2024 work plan: a comprehensive framework on countering terrorism, radicalisation and violence extremism and ensuring the integration of gender and youth perspectives; national and regional law enforcement cooperation to prevent and counter terrorism; border security and management and movements of FTFs; preventing the acquisition of weapons, improvised explosive devices, and unmanned aerial systems by terrorist groups; and countering the financing of terrorism.