The State Department, along with INTERPOL and the International Institute for Justice and the Rule of Law, is holding an International Conference on Mobilizing Law Enforcement Efforts to Defeat ISIS in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing together senior-level justice and law enforcement officials along with counterparts representing about 90 countries and organizations.
“Although ISIS has lost nearly all of its former territory in Iraq and Syria, we cannot underestimate the evolving threat ISIS networks and local adherents pose elsewhere,” the State Department said Monday. “While we will continue our efforts to ensure that ISIS is militarily defeated, it is increasingly important that we also mobilize justice and law enforcement agencies around the world to neutralize ISIS’s other incarnations.”
Conference participants “will seek to establish a common understanding of the depth and breadth of the evolving ISIS global threat, and discuss how we can enhance law enforcement and other civilian tools to counter ISIS, including watchlists, information sharing, biometrics, criminal laws, and the tracking of terrorist finances,” the State Department said. “The conference will also identify specific actions to help countries disrupt potential attacks, and further strengthen unity of purpose.”
The hope is that the conference “will build on our existing strategy and lay the foundation for the next phase in our effort as we work to confront the evolving ISIS threat.”
Earlier this month, INTERPOL Secretary-General Jürgen Stock and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres met to discuss areas of cooperation “including protecting critical infrastructure, preventing foreign terrorist fighter travel as well as combating all forms of transnational crime such as maritime piracy, human trafficking and drug smuggling,” according to the police agency.
“We are all too well aware of the threats which face us, and indeed for the foreseeable future, these threats are increasing rather than diminishing,” said Stock. “The partnership between INTERPOL and the UN provides a unified response in supporting law enforcement and the maintenance of international peace and security.”
INTERPOL’s global databases, which are accessible to law enforcement across its 192 member countries, hold more than 43,000 foreign terrorist profiles.
