Topic: 2025 – No First Use Policies and Nuclear Disarmament
Country: Canada
Delegate Name: Mason Velie
GLIMUN-DISEC 2025
Committee: Disarmament and International Security Committee
Topic: Reducing the Recruitment Capabilities of Terrorist Groups
Country: Canada
School: Forest Hills Central High School
Terrorism has defined the 21st century, sparking wars and leaving death and destruction in its wake. Defined by Merriam-Webster as “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims,” terrorism has been a point of contention in global politics for decades. Terrorism, although it has been an issue for all of modern history, became more common in the early 1970s, with notable examples from pre-2000 being The Munich massacre and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. However, it was 2001 and the attacks on the Twin Towers when terrorism truly became a major global concern. Following these attacks, which were perpetrated by Al-Qaeda, groups such as the Islamic State (ISIS), Hamas, and Hizballah began forming in the Middle East, reliant on child soldiers even despite UN instruments including the CRC. Along with exploiting children, modern terrorists also use the internet to recruit new members, pushing their content upon an ever-growing amount of people through social media, some of which may be receptive to their messages. Current measures in place to slow terrorist recruitment include the aforementioned Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits child soldiers, and the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, which aims to slow the spread of terrorism.
In 2012, Canada released the “Building Resilience Against Terrorism” strategy, helping government branches to “prevent, detect, deny and respond to terrorist threats.” Additionally, following the Air India flight 182 bombing, Canada started “The Kanishka Project,” which “provided research on terrorism-related issues,” helping to provide valuable methods of counter-terrorism. Since the turn of the century, Canada has taken a strong anti-terrorist stance, one that is unlikely to change in the coming years.
Canada urges delegates to do anything in their power to prevent terrorist groups from recruiting new members, suggesting the possibility of increasing online content regulations relating to terrorist groups and increasing enforcement of child protection instruments, possibly by imposing new restrictions or by increasing punishments for defying existing restrictions. Preventing terrorist groups from using children as soldiers and spreading their ideas on social media effectively eliminates their recruitment capabilities, and, according to the Handbook of Terrorism Prevention and Preparedness, “The long-term survival of terrorist organizations relies on their ability to attract new members and maintain an ongoing terrorist recruitment cycle,” meaning ending terrorist recruitment may result in ending terrorist groups all together. Canada condemns these groups atrocities, and hopes that the committee can come together to prevent them from destroying communities in the future.
