Global Counter Terrorism Forum

The Global Counter Terrorism Force is a consortium of nations including emerging economies such as India, China, Russia and 11 Muslim countries along with the European Union, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and Australia. It was launched by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on 22 September 2011. GCTF is a major initiative to build an international architecture for dealing with 21st-century terrorism. It intended to provide a unique platform for senior counterterrorism policymakers and experts from around the world to work together to identify urgent needs, devise solutions and mobilize resources for addressing key counterterrorism challenges.

In a first, the forum was meant to create a venue where partners can come together and identify urgent needs in counter-terrorism around the world, devise solutions and mobilize the resources to implement those solutions.

The forum is meant to move past some of the debates that have paralyzed multilateral institutions in the past from dealing with counterterrorism, specifically the endless debate over who is a terrorist, a US State Department official said.

The official said the initiative was built on the failure of earlier such initiatives like the G-8 Counter-terrorism Action Group, which was meant to be a capacity-building organization, but failed.

The group will have a coordinating committee of Foreign Ministry officials besides five working groups.

Two functional groups would focus on criminal justice, rule of law and countering violent extremism. Three groups would be focused on the regions of Sahel, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.

The working groups will be co-chaired by members of the GCTF but will be open to other countries.