20th Anniversary of the Inter American Convention Against Terrorism video remarks.

Hello everybody. I'm very pleased to join you virtually today in commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism. Thank you to the OAS's Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism, CICTE, for organizing this meeting and to Mexico and Peru for their leadership at CICTE. We marked a solemn occasion yesterday, the 21st anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks in the United States. Terrorism existed well before that in But that horrific day, when nearly 3,000 men, women, and children lost their lives, added new urgency to our region's fight against terror. Shortly after, the OAS declared the acts, and I quote, an attack against all the American states. And CICTE helped lead the Western Hemisphere in developing a coordinated regional approach to terrorism. The OAS member states soon adopted the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism, making it one of the first efforts to combat terrorism in a systematic, strategic way. Before the convention was signed, then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell put its charge this way. Our challenge is to work with all of our partners in the hemisphere to weave our cooperation against terrorism into the very fabric of our relations and into our institutions. Over the past two decades, that's exactly what we've done, weaving such cooperation into the myriad ways our nations work together across the Western Hemisphere. Law enforcement officers across the hemisphere now regularly share information and best practices to counter threats to aviation security. Customs and Border Patrol officers share the latest inspection techniques to detect drugs, weapons, human trafficking. Our governments, private sectors, and civil societies work together to quickly respond to cyber threats. The United States supports this work in several ways. We provide technical assistance to OAS member states as they develop national plans to protect their critical infrastructure. We fund skill-building workshops that train public and private sector aviation authorities on techniques to protect their passengers. And in 2019, in partnership with Chile, we launched the CITE Inter-American Network on Terrorism, an initiative that brings together counterterrorism and law enforcement authorities across the hemisphere to share real-time information about emerging terrorist threats, living up to all the commitments of the Convention. And to do so while remaining true to our shared democratic values and while respecting human rights only becomes more important each year, as terrorists develop a variety of new, increasingly sophisticated ways to threaten our people. First, terrorists are finding new ways to cross borders by land, by sea, by air. Countering these efforts is the focus of the Global Counterterrorism Forums Watchlisting Toolkit, a joint effort between the United Nations Office of Counterterrorism and the United States to give countries a set of clear recommendations to prevent and detect travel by terrorists across borders. Already, countries across the hemisphere are using this tool to strengthen their watchlisting processes. Second, terrorists are using new techniques to fund their illicit operations, which often extend beyond terrorism to include drug smuggling, human trafficking, environmental crimes that destabilize the hemisphere. To address this, we must continue to pass and implement laws that effectively counter money laundering and cut off illicit sources of financing. Countries in the hemisphere are taking steps to fill these gaps, like the set of laws Paraguay recently passed to give law enforcement additional authorities to prosecute money laundering and make transparent who owns corporations so that money launderers have a harder time hiding illicit funds in private companies. Finally, terrorists are developing new methods to disrupt supply chains and attack critical infrastructure, including by exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Here, too, we see progress across the region. For example, more than 17 OAS states have adopted national cybersecurity strategies, which will allow them to more quickly share information and respond to shared cyber threats in a coordinated way. Ultimately, that's what the convention has helped us to do over the past 20 years. Learn from and work with each other, because no country can fight terrorism on its own. Meetings like today are critical to moving our work forward so that we can continue to counter terrorist threats and protect our people for years to come. Thank you, everybody.