United Against Extremism: How the UN and Tech Companies are Confronting Online Hate

The SecDev Foundation is a proud co-host of a special event called “United Against Extremism: How the UN and Tech Companies are Confronting Online Hate.” The public event will be held in Montreal on 7 March 2017 at 6:30 PM.

The panel event is organized in partnership with the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (UNCTED), the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, the ICT4Peace Foundation, and the Canadian International Council and is part of a wider project on “Private sector engagement in responding to the exploitation of the internet and ICT for terrorist purposes”.

Since April 2016, UNCTED and the ICT4Peace Foundation, have brought together representatives from governments, tech and social media companies, civil society organizations, human rights groups, think tanks and academic institutions to discuss how to best counter the exploitation of internet and communication technologies by terrorist organisations.

Former Swiss Diplomat and president of ICT4Peace Foundation, Daniel Stauffacher, and Marc Porret with the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED), will discuss their work and ideas on how we can harness technology to protect human rights and disrupt extremism online.

The event will conclude with a cocktail reception.

Speaker bios

• Daniel Stauffacher is a former Ambassador of Switzerland and a founder and President of the ICT4Peace Foundation which since 2003 explores, champions the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for peace-building, crisis management, and humanitarian aid, and supports diplomatic processes for a peaceful and open cyberspace. He has a Master’s degree from Columbia University, New York and a Ph.D. in media and copyright law from the University of Zürich. After managing a Swiss publishing company, he joined the UN in 1982 and worked in New York, Laos and China. Since 2006 he has been an Advisor to the UN, Swiss and other Governments on International Cyber Security Policy, Diplomacy and Capacity Building and since 2014 he is an Affiliate of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center on Internet and Society.
• Marc Porret is the officer in charge of information and communication technologies and terrorism with the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED), a subsidiary body of the Security Council, in New York. Mr. Porret has been dealing at the UN with different aspects of terrorism since 2009, from a legal, political, social and reform of governmental structures, assessing countries responses to threat round the globe, with a particular focus with Africa. Mr. Porret also worked for the UN Office of Political Affairs on counter-terrorism, and the UN Office of Legal Affairs. Prior to joining the UN in 2005, Mr. Porret worked for the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs on cooperation with the international criminal tribunals. Mr. Porret also worked in Switzerland in private practice as a lawyer, on the implementation of the Swiss money laundering legislation and in international arbitration. Mr Porret studied common law and civil law at McGill University in Montreal (LLB and BCL) and international law at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva (DES) and is admitted to the Bar in Québec, Canada.

This event will be moderated by Alicia Wanless, Director of Strategic Communications at The SecDev Foundation. Alicia Wanless researches how we shape — and are shaped — by a changing information space. As the Director of Strategic Communications at The SecDev Foundation, Alicia develops campaigns and strategies for engaging beneficiaries in outreach and behavioural change. Her work includes developing a training program that deals with verifying information and the spread of content online, and has supported projects in the Middle East and the post-Soviet space.

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