The Canadian government was expected to announce Thursday Canada’s membership in a new international organization dedicated to fighting terrorism.
The new group will become “a counterterrorism network that is as nimble and adaptive as our adversaries,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at the inaugural meeting of the Global Counterterrorism Forum, or GCTF.
“Let us pledge to learn as much as we can from one another.”
Canada is a founding member of the group, whose 30 members include Britain, China, the EU, Japan, Australia, developing countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as well as leading Muslim nations like Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
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The U.S. and Turkey will co-chair the group.
Over the past few years, Canada has significantly increased its assistance to counter-terrorism efforts in developing countries. In the foreign affairs department alone, funding for such activities increased from about $9 million in 2010 to $15 million this year.
A senior U.S. State Department official told reporters on Monday that members will “come together and identify urgent needs in counterterrorism around the world, devise solutions . . . and mobilize the resources to implement those solutions.”
The U.S. State Department official said the forum was created after the failures of earlier initiatives that did not include a broad enough array of countries.
The forum will initially have five working groups, one focusing on criminal justice and rule of law; one on countering violent extremism; and three aimed at building counter-terrorism capacity in the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.
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With files from Agence-France Presse
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