In October 2019, the IIJ – in partnership with the European Union’s CT MENA Project – convened a Specialised International Seminar on Judicial Management Post-Terrorist Attack. The Seminar, held in Abidjan with the support of the Government of Germany and hosted by the Government of Côte d’Ivoire, brought together more than 70 practitioners, among them representatives from Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Ethiopia, France, Lebanon, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Spain, and Switzerland, as well as representatives from the African Union, G5 Sahel, International Academy for Counterterrorism (AILCT) and the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP).
The Seminar provided capacity-building in four specific focus areas. First, how to coordinate and manage the first hours after a terrorist attack, including crisis management, organisation and coordination of different agencies’ efforts, victims support and protection, and crime scene preservation and management. Second, promoting cooperation with national, regional and international counterparts to prevent future attacks and to gather information that could be used for the learning process, including electronic and online scanning and investigations, intelligence use, and liaison and cooperation with neighbouring countries that may have critical information regarding the terrorist attack. Third, promoting cooperation with technical experts, including security agencies that may have critical intelligence on the attack, forensic and digital evidence technicians, and language experts critical to investigators’ ability to understand the various types of collected evidence. And, fourth, connecting practitioners from different countries and facilitating the sharing of experiences and the building of trust among regional criminal justice practitioners.
For more information on this workshop or the IIJ Judicial Capacity-Building Initiative, please contact Director, Programmatic Unit, Gail Malone.