GIFCT keen to work with Bangladesh on online terrorism

Speaking at a seminar organised by the Cosmos Foundation in Dhaka’s Baridhara on Friday morning, GIFCT Executive Director Naureen Chowdhury Fink said extremist and terrorist groups are increasingly using online platforms to sustain and expand their activities.

Cosmos Foundation Chairman Enayetullah Khan inaugurated the seminar, which was chaired by former foreign adviser and Cosmos Foundation President Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury.

Naureen Chowdhury said such activities often start online but later move into offline organisational operations. “The biggest bridge between online and offline extremist activity is the internet—particularly social media platforms. GIFCT works specifically to help filter terrorist and extremist content from these platforms.”

The GIFCT Executive Director explained that terrorist activities and their online strategies vary widely across contexts. “There is no single map that can effectively contain terrorist activities today. Whether it was the spread of ISIS across Iraq and Syria in 2014 or the mosque attack in New Zealand in 2015, each terrorist incident and its online presence involved different methods and propaganda strategies. Identifying these differences without specialised counterterrorism platforms is extremely difficult.”

She also warned that in the current era of artificial intelligence, extremist groups have developed new tactics to spread terrorism and violent extremism online, often using disinformation to sow distrust among the general public.

“The emergence of AI will create both threats and opportunities,” Naureen said, stressing that early planning and cooperation with the private sector and civil society experts are crucial for effective risk and mitigation assessments.

She added that “red teaming” would be a key component of such efforts, highlighting GIFCT’s approach, she said the organisation works in line with United Nations guidelines to counter terrorism and violent extremism online in an objective and human-rights-compliant manner. “From global tech giants like Meta and Microsoft to newly established startup companies, GIFCT works with a wide range of technology actors."

Naureen emphasised that understanding evolving trends and patterns is critical to mitigating online harms. “For us, that means working with our members to understand behavioural patterns and build a 360-degree picture of user behaviours, while fostering human-rights-compliant approaches.”

Expressing particular interest in South Asia, she said Bangladesh holds special importance for GIFCT. “There has been some work at the government level in Bangladesh on counterterrorism in the online space, but the private sector remains significantly behind. This is concerning, as the largest portion of the internet ecosystem lies within the private sector.”

On partnership with Bangladesh, Naureen said, “Partnership is the key to our work. They ensure regional and global perspectives shape our understanding of threats and trends, and that we can share with our member updates and developments that will help deepen their understanding of harmful content that may be on their platforms.”

Thanking the Cosmos Foundation for organising the seminar, she added, “I am grateful for the opportunity provided by the Cosmos Foundation to share insights from our work at GIFCT. I invite you to be in touch with us if you know of any tech companies that may be interested in GIFCT membership, or if you wish to contribute to our research and analysis through GNET.”

Naureen Chowdhury Fink is the Executive Director of GIFCT. Prior to this role, she served as Executive Director of the Soufan Center in New York, and earlier as a Senior Policy Advisor on Counterterrorism and Sanctions at the UK Mission to the United Nations, where she led negotiations in the UN Security Council and General Assembly.

She also previously worked at the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) and was Head of Research and Analysis at the Global Center on Cooperative Security. She has led multi-stakeholder projects across West Africa, Europe and South Asia, published widely, and regularly speaks at international high-level events and conferences involving policymakers, civil society, academia and the private sector.

Inaugurating the seminar, Enayetullah Khan said Bangladesh is currently going through a critical phase of special significance for both the country and its people.

In the age of disinformation, he noted, media houses in Bangladesh are facing major challenges, with doubts being raised daily over various content. Khan emphasised the need to give special attention to content filtering.

Expressing optimism about the role organisations like GIFCT can play in strengthening cyber security in Bangladesh, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury said there is no alternative to robust cyber security to curb online terrorism and extremism.

Former foreign secretary and Cosmos Foundation Advisory Board member Farooq Sobhan, writer and journalist and Principal Research Fellow of the Cosmos Foundation Asad-ul Iqbal Latif, Dhaka University Professor of International Relations Imtiaz Ahmed, journalist and columnist and Dhaka Courier Advisory Editor Afsan Chowdhury, and former National Defence College Commandant Lt Gen (retd) Tayeb Muhammad Zahirul Alam attended the seminar, along with local and foreign diplomats and technology experts, reports UNB.