December 9, 2020
Dear participants of the conference,
I welcome you at the opening of the International Research-To-Practice Conference “Geopolitical picture of the World: Threat and Challenges” which has been organized by the Moscow State Linguistic University and the CIS Anti-Terrorism Center this year.
The agenda covers the burning issues of safe existence and sustainable development of the entire humanity.
International terrorism is those issues. Being a multifold destructive social-political phenomenon, the contemporary terrorism has turned to be a large-scale threat to security of the entire world community.
Terrorist crimes committed in the CIS states, Europe, Central-Asian region and Middle East, African countries remain a serious factor destabilizing public security.
Escalating of terrorist threats is driven by a number of external and internal factors leading to increase of radicalization of people and creating conditions for geographical and information expansion of the terrorism, improvement in tactics and strategic of the terrorist organizations’ operations.
Active terrorist use of advantages of the media, IT, PR technologies, complex financial and marketing schemes for criminal purpose has recently become a critical aspect of increasing terrorist threats. This has translated to rise of cyber-terrorism, hybrid threats, ecological and bio-terrorism, as well as to significant strengthening of ideological pressure by the terrorist organizations on certain social groups of population due to quality and scaled dissemination, first of all via Internet, of the propaganda materials professionally designed by the terrorists.
A series of terrorist attacks conducted in Europe this year is very illustrative of the efficiency of such activity of the terrorist organizations.
It needs to be noted that an interest of the international terrorist organization to the Commonwealth states as a source of human and financial resources is among significant enhancement factors of the terrorist threats in the territory of the CIS. This interest produces high activity of the international terrorist organizations, including dissemination of the terrorist ideas in the CIS states for the purpose of recruitment, creation of “sleeper cells”, attempts to establish regular terrorist financing sources in the CIS territory.
In this context, the CIS Anti-Terrorism Center is focusing on finding new ways of adequate response to terrorist threats.
This issue demands a broad multilateral cooperation, strengthening of national mechanisms, active participation of not just special services and law enforcement agencies in this process but civil society, educational organizations and youth.
In this regard we should not leave unmentioned the contribution made the Moscow State Linguistic University into the anti-terrorism and anti-extremism activity by carrying out scientific researches and international research-to-practice events of anti-terrorism topic, bolstering a role of the scientific community, youth forums in countering terrorism and extremism and offering a platform for multilateral expert-level dialog.
The today’s conference held at the University has brought together representatives of the governmental agencies, respected international bodies, non-governmental organizations, academia and experts, students from different countries.
We expect that during this conference the participants will hold constructive, significant discussions on most topical counter-terrorism and counter-extremism issues, exchange their valuable best practices and draw new lines of further joint activities and mutually beneficial cooperation.
I wish you all success and good luck!
