GFCE Regional Efforts: Regional Meetings for South-East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa
The GFCE is strongly focused on being closer to all regions and providing more targeted and tailored assistance in cyber capacity building. Africa serves as a pilot region with the most GFCE dedicated activities and mechanisms. Other regions with GFCE presence include Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), Pacific and South East Asia. Specific activities in cyber capacity building coordination are also conducted for another smaller region in Europe, the Western Balkans.
By the end of 2022, three of the four GFCE Regional Hubs will have held regional meetings, which will provide an opportunity for regional stakeholders to further shape the regional cyber capacity building agendas, to connect and exchange ideas.
Last week, this was kicked off with the GFCE Southeast Asia Regional Meeting which took place in Singapore on 18 October in partnership with the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore during Singapore International Cyber Week (SICW). The focus was on the UN development agenda and the role of the region in it, as well as the Southeast Asia cyber capacity building landscape more generally. It was great to see that members of the GFCE Community in attendance at the SICW participated in the Southeast Asia regional meeting. During SICW, Singapore’s Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for National Security, Mr. Teo Chee Hean, announced the creation of a GFCE Southeast Asia liaison who will connect the region and ASCCE’s existing efforts more closely with other GFCE member and partners including GFCE Liaisons and Hubs from other regions. More information on this announcement can be found in the official press release.
Just a month later, on 14 November, we will gather with our community in Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, for the GFCE Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Meeting. This event will be a full day of exchanges on priorities of the region in the field of cyber capacity building and discuss issues such as cyber workforce development. The event is delivered together with the Organization of American States (the GFCE Hub for the LAC region) and its Secretariat of the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism (CICTE) and the Latin American Cyber Competence Center (LAC4), an EU CyberNet project. More information and registration can be found on the event website.
In the end of November, we are organizing the GFCE Africa Regional Meeting in the margins of the Internet Governance Forum (28 November – 2 December) in Addis Ababa. The focus of this meeting will be to discuss the GFCE’s Africa-focused projects and activities, such as the AU-GFCE Collaboration Project and the African cyber capacity building agenda. The exact date will be announced in the coming weeks. The GFCE Secretariat will also be present with two sessions in the program and a GFCE booth in the IGF village. Stay tuned to learn more!
Our GFCE Pacific Hub, already in full swing, with a dedicated team in place, is planning its regional meeting for Q1 or Q2 of 2023
