There is no place for terrorist and violent extremist content anywhere, whether it be online or offline.
This is why New Zealand and France launched, two years ago, with Leaders of Governments and Tech companies, the Christchurch Call to action.
The Christchurch Call to action is a series of measures to prevent the downloading and dissemination of terrorist and violent extremist content, to improve transparency in the detection and removal of content, to ensure that algorithms do not direct users towards these content.
Tragedies happened. Again. It happened in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine and Nice in France last year. It happened in Vienna, in Halle. It happened in Glendale. For each of these, the Internet was abused by terrorists as a weapon to propagate their hateful ideologies.
The Internet was abused to inspire further attacks. I am thinking here in particular to the online calls to violence that led to the killing of a French school teacher. His name was Samuel Paty. This cannot and will not be forgotten. This cannot and should not happen again.
Our Call has been heard: 55 States, including all of the EU Member States, the European Commission, two international organizations and ten companies are in! Reinforced by the Christchurch Call Advisory Network made up of 47 civil society organizations with strong expertise.
All together we are stronger!
I would like to thank the new States providing their support to the Christchurch Call to action. I am pleased to announce that the United States, Tunisia, Peru, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, and Estonia have now joined the Christchurch Call Community.
We share a belief: the fight against terrorist and violent extremist content cannot be waged at the cost of our values: open societies, the rule of law, and a free, open and secure Internet. It is up to us, democracies and defenders of freedoms, to find the right solutions.
It is our duty to protect our citizens. We all have a role to play in continuing to implement the engagements of the Christchurch Call. This evening, we reaffirmed our willingness to continue down this road, together.
