The Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology Etidal participated in a virtual discussion session that covered “views of the civil society and media in preventing and combating terrorism under the COVID-19 pandemic”. This session was an event of the United Nations 2020 Virtual Counter-Terrorism Week, that was launched during the period from 6-10 July under the title “Strategic and Practical Challenges of Countering Terrorism in a Global Pandemic Environment”.
The participation of Etidal in this international event that took place on Friday, July 10th 2020. It came as part of its efforts in combating extremism in all of its forms, in addition to reviewing its experiences in the countering of extremism and in the making of a counter-narrative to the ideologies of terrorist groups and organizations on social media platforms.
Events of the Virtual Counter-Terrorism Week included nine virtual symposiums, amongst which were: cyber and bio-terrorism, threats and high-risk trends, addressing issues of terrorism victims, key United Nations counter-terrorism programs, human rights and counter-terrorism, combating the financing of terrorism, youth-led initiatives to build flexible societies, civil society and media outlooks to prevent violent extremism, in addition to other files.
It should be noted that Vladimir Voronkov, Executive Director of UNCCT and Under-Secretary-General for Counter-Terrorism, stressed that Saudi Arabia is “the largest donor to the United Nations Center for Combating Terrorism”, pointing out that “without the generous support of Saudi Arabia together with 31 other countries that contribute to the United Nations Trust Fund for Counter Terrorism, the Center would not have been able to continue working”. He also expressed his gratitude to the Kingdom in this regard.
Dr. Mansour AlShammari, the Secretary-General of the Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology (Etidal), received Voronkov at the Center’s headquarters in Riyadh on September 12th 2019, where the two sides discussed means of cooperation in the files shared.
During his visit to Etidal, the Executive Director of UNCCT and Under-Secretary-General for Counter-Terrorism said in a speech: “this is my second visit to Etidal. Every time I come here I stand impressed with the quality of what you do. I can say now that your work is comprehensive and is possible to be shared all around the world”.
