What is the primary focus of the conference?

The conference focuses on the intersection of counter-terrorism strategies and human security, exploring how to effectively combat terrorism while upholding human rights, and will be held in Crete.

International Conference on Counter Terrorism and Human Security (ICCTHS)

Name: International Conference on Counter Terrorism and Human Security (ICCTHS)
Start: 2026-05-25T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-05-25T00:00:00Z
Location: Crete

May 25, 2026Crete, GreeceIn-person

Registration open

The International Conference on Counter Terrorism and Human Security (ICCTHS) is an academic forum dedicated to exploring the complex interplay between counter-terrorism strategies and the protection of human security. Held in Crete, GRC, this conference brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to discuss contemporary challenges and innovative solutions in a field marked by evolving threats and ethical considerations. The event emphasizes a multidisciplinary approach, encouraging dialogue across various academic disciplines and professional backgrounds.

Committees & topics

Topics
Revisiting the 1948 Genocide Convention in the 21st Century · BRICS and the Reshaping of Global Leadership · Stochastic Terrorism and the Incitement-to-Violence Gap · Climate Change and the New Geography of Conflict · Attacks on Energy Grids and Critical Infrastructure · Regulating Armed and Civilian Drones · State-Sponsored Terrorism in the Modern Era · Regulating Cryptocurrencies and Illicit Finance

Why it matters

The intersection of counter-terrorism efforts and human security is a critical area of global concern. While states have a fundamental responsibility to protect their citizens from terrorism, the methods employed in this pursuit can sometimes impinge upon human rights and fundamental freedoms. This tension necessitates careful consideration of policy frameworks, legal instruments, and operational practices to ensure that security measures are both effective and compliant with international human rights standards. The conference provides a platform for this essential deliberation, fostering a deeper understanding of how to balance these often-competing imperatives.

Furthermore, the global landscape of terrorism is constantly shifting, with new ideologies, tactics, and technologies emerging regularly. This dynamic environment requires continuous re-evaluation of existing counter-terrorism paradigms and the development of adaptive strategies. The conference serves as a crucial venue for sharing cutting-edge research, identifying emerging trends, and proposing forward-looking approaches that can address these challenges while upholding the principles of human security. It aims to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical application, informing policy decisions and operational responses worldwide.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for the conference should focus on developing a nuanced understanding of the various dimensions of counter-terrorism and human security. This includes familiarity with international legal frameworks, ethical debates surrounding surveillance and intervention, and the socio-political factors that contribute to radicalization and violent extremism. A strong grasp of these foundational elements will enable more productive engagement with the diverse perspectives presented at the conference.

Consider utilizing frameworks such as "The Power-Interest Grid" to analyze the various stakeholders involved in counter-terrorism efforts, from state actors to civil society organizations. Understanding the motivations and influence of these groups, including "Hidden Stakeholders," can provide valuable insights into the complexities of policy implementation and international cooperation. Delegates should also be prepared to discuss case studies from different regions, examining how specific counter-terrorism measures have impacted human security in varied contexts. This comparative approach will enrich discussions and contribute to a more holistic understanding of the subject.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Greece

As the host nation, GRC is likely to emphasize regional security challenges, maritime security, and the impact of migration on counter-terrorism strategies.

Role in topic

GRC, situated at a geopolitical crossroads, faces unique challenges related to border security and migratory flows, which often intersect with counter-terrorism concerns. Its perspective will likely highlight the need for international cooperation in managing these complex issues while upholding human rights.

United States

The USA often prioritizes robust counter-terrorism measures, emphasizing intelligence sharing, military intervention, and technological solutions, while also engaging in debates about civil liberties.

Role in topic

The USA has historically been a leading actor in global counter-terrorism efforts, shaping international policy through its significant military and intelligence capabilities. Its perspective will likely focus on strategic partnerships, the evolving nature of terrorist threats, and the balance between national security and individual freedoms.

United Kingdom

The GBR balances strong domestic counter-terrorism legislation with a commitment to human rights, often engaging in multilateral efforts and addressing online radicalization.

Role in topic

The GBR has extensive experience in combating both domestic and international terrorism. Its approach often involves a combination of intelligence-led operations, community engagement, and legal frameworks, aiming to prevent radicalization while safeguarding civil liberties.

France

FRA emphasizes a firm stance against terrorism, often implementing stringent security measures and engaging in military interventions abroad, while also addressing social cohesion.

Role in topic

FRA has faced significant terrorist threats and has adopted a comprehensive approach that includes robust security laws, intelligence gathering, and international military cooperation. Its perspective will likely highlight the importance of secularism and national unity in countering extremist ideologies.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Revisiting the 1948 Genocide Convention in the 21st Century

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust, was the first human rights treaty of the modern UN era. It defined genocide as acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, and obliged states parties both to prevent and to punish the crime. For decades, however, enforcement lagged: the Convention was barely invoked during the Cambodian killings of the 1970s, and only after Rwanda (1994) and Srebrenica (1995) did the ad hoc tribunals and later the International Criminal Court give the definition operational meaning. In the 21st century the Convention has returned to the center of international legal debate. The International Court of Justice has heard genocide cases concerning Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya (filed by The Gambia in 2019), Ukraine's countersuit against Russia (2022), and South Africa's case against Israel over the conduct of hostilities in Gaza (2023). Allegations have also been raised regarding China's policies in Xinjiang and Sudan's war in Darfur. These proceedings have exposed persistent gaps: the high evidentiary threshold for proving specific intent (dolus specialis), the limited reach of the duty to prevent, the exclusion of political and cultural groups from the protected categories, and the awkward fit between state responsibility before the ICJ and individual criminal responsibility before the ICC. Delegates are asked to consider whether the Convention's text remains fit for purpose, or whether interpretive guidance, an optional protocol, or stronger early-warning mechanisms tied to the UN Office on Genocide Prevention are needed. The debate sits at the intersection of sovereignty, universal jurisdiction, and the credibility of the post-1945 legal order.

Key players

BRICS and the Reshaping of Global Leadership

The BRIC grouping, coined by economist Jim O'Neill in 2001, became a formal political bloc in 2009 when Brazil, Russia, India and China held their first leaders' summit; South Africa joined in 2010. Initially framed as a club of large emerging economies seeking greater voice in the IMF, World Bank and G20, BRICS gradually built its own institutions, most notably the New Development Bank (2014) and the Contingent Reserve Arrangement, and pursued initiatives on local-currency trade settlement and alternatives to SWIFT. The 2023 Johannesburg summit marked a strategic shift, inviting Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates to join from January 2024, with Saudi Arabia's status ambiguous and Indonesia formally joining in 2025. The expanded grouping now accounts for nearly half of the world's population and a substantial share of global oil production and trade. Yet BRICS+ is internally heterogeneous: China and Russia push an explicitly anti-Western, multipolar agenda, while India, Brazil and the UAE prefer multi-alignment and continued engagement with the G7. Debates over a common currency, de-dollarization, and coordinated positions on Ukraine and Gaza have revealed both the bloc's growing weight and its limits as a coherent actor. The committee will examine whether BRICS+ represents a genuine alternative governance architecture, a coalition for reforming existing institutions from within, or primarily a diplomatic stage. Questions of expansion criteria, decision-making by consensus, and the bloc's relationship to the UN Security Council reform debate are central.

Key players

Stochastic Terrorism and the Incitement-to-Violence Gap

Stochastic terrorism describes the phenomenon in which public figures, media outlets or online influencers demonize a target group or individual in ways that statistically increase the probability of violence by self-radicalized actors, without issuing any direct or operational command. The term emerged in academic and journalistic discourse in the 2010s and was applied to a series of lone-actor attacks: the 2011 Oslo and Utøya killings, the 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks, the 2022 Buffalo shooting, and assaults on election workers, public health officials and LGBTQ+ venues. In each case attackers cited mainstream conspiracy narratives — the 'great replacement,' QAnon, anti-trans rhetoric — circulated by figures who deny any responsibility for the resulting violence. Legally, stochastic terrorism falls in a gap. Most jurisdictions criminalize direct incitement (the Brandenburg standard in the United States, Article 20 ICCPR's prohibition on advocacy of hatred constituting incitement), but indirect, probabilistic incitement is rarely prosecutable. Platform liability regimes such as the EU Digital Services Act, Germany's NetzDG and the UK Online Safety Act create duties of care over algorithmic amplification, while the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (2019) and the Christchurch Call (2019) propose voluntary norms. Critics warn that broad regulation risks chilling protected political speech and could be weaponized by authoritarian governments. Delegates must reconcile counter-terrorism imperatives with freedom of expression, define thresholds for state and platform responsibility, and consider whether the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy should be updated to address algorithmically amplified, decentralized radicalization.

Key players

Climate Change and the New Geography of Conflict

The link between climate change and conflict has moved from contested hypothesis to a central concern of security analysts. The IPCC's Sixth Assessment Report (2021–2023) concluded with high confidence that climate change acts as a 'threat multiplier,' interacting with poverty, weak institutions and prior grievances to elevate conflict risk. The UN Security Council first held a formal debate on climate and security in 2007 and has revisited the theme repeatedly, though a 2021 draft resolution sponsored by Ireland and Niger was vetoed by Russia. Real-world dynamics are already visible. Prolonged drought in the Sahel has been linked to farmer–herder violence and the expansion of jihadist groups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Water-sharing disputes over the Nile (the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam), the Tigris–Euphrates, the Indus and the Mekong carry escalation potential. The melting Arctic is opening new shipping lanes and resource claims, intensifying competition among Arctic Council states. Small island developing states warn of existential threats and have sought advisory opinions from ITLOS (2024) and the ICJ (2025) on state obligations regarding climate harm. Climate-induced displacement, projected by the World Bank's Groundswell report to reach 216 million internal migrants by 2050, raises further governance challenges. The committee must consider whether existing instruments — the UNFCCC and Paris Agreement, the Global Compact on Migration, the Security Council's thematic agenda — can adequately address conflict drivers, or whether new mechanisms for adaptation finance, transboundary resource management and climate-displaced persons are required.

Key players

Attacks on Energy Grids and Critical Infrastructure

Energy grids have become a defining target of contemporary conflict and gray-zone competition. Russia's invasion of Ukraine since 2022 has featured systematic missile and drone strikes on power plants, substations and district heating, intended to coerce civilian populations through cold and darkness — a pattern the OHCHR and others argue may violate international humanitarian law's prohibition on attacks against objects indispensable to civilian survival. The September 2022 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, the 2015 and 2016 cyberattacks on Ukraine's grid attributed to the Russian 'Sandworm' group, and the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack in the United States illustrate the range of kinetic, cyber and hybrid threats. Non-state actors are also involved. ISIS targeted electricity infrastructure in Iraq and Syria; Houthi forces have struck Saudi and Emirati oil facilities, most notably the 2019 Abqaiq attack; far-right actors in the United States have plotted attacks on substations. As grids integrate renewables, smart meters and cross-border interconnectors, the attack surface widens. NATO's 2023 Vilnius summit elevated critical undersea infrastructure protection, and the EU adopted the CER Directive and NIS2 Directive in 2022 to harden resilience. The committee will weigh how international humanitarian law applies to dual-use energy systems, whether the Tallinn Manual's interpretations of cyber operations are sufficient, and how to support vulnerable states — particularly in Africa and Eastern Europe — in defending grids without militarizing civilian infrastructure.

Key players

Regulating Armed and Civilian Drones

Unmanned aerial systems have transformed both warfare and civilian airspace within two decades. The United States pioneered armed drone use after 2001, conducting strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya under contested legal theories of self-defense and the law of armed conflict. The 2020 killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad sharpened debates about extraterritorial targeted killing. Since then, the technology has proliferated: Turkish Bayraktar TB2s shaped the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Iranian Shahed-136 loitering munitions have been used extensively by Russia in Ukraine, and Ukraine itself has built a domestic FPV-drone industry that has redefined battlefield economics. Non-state actors — the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, ISIS and Mexican cartels — now routinely deploy commercial drones. The regulatory landscape is fragmented. The Missile Technology Control Regime and the Wassenaar Arrangement set partial export controls; the ICAO governs civilian unmanned aviation; the CCW has discussed lethal autonomous weapons systems since 2014 without binding outcomes. UN Security Council sanctions on Iran (Resolution 2231) and on the Houthis address specific transfers, but enforcement is weak. Civilian concerns include privacy, airport disruptions (as in the 2018 Gatwick incident), and the smuggling of contraband. The committee will evaluate whether a dedicated international instrument is feasible, how to address autonomous targeting, and what role regional bodies and platform-side geofencing should play.

Key players

State-Sponsored Terrorism in the Modern Era

State sponsorship of terrorism — the provision by governments of funding, weapons, training, safe haven or political cover to non-state armed groups conducting attacks against civilians or other states — has been a fixture of international politics since the Cold War. The 1979 US designation of state sponsors (initially Libya, Iraq, South Yemen and Syria), the Lockerbie bombing of 1988, and Iran's longstanding support for Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraqi Shia militias illustrate the pattern. Pakistan's relationship with the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, implicated in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, and Russia's use of the Wagner Group across Africa, Syria and Ukraine extend the typology toward 'plausibly deniable' proxies. International law condemns such conduct. The 1970 Friendly Relations Declaration, GA Resolution 49/60, and Security Council Resolution 1373 (2001) impose duties to deny safe haven and finance to terrorists. The ICJ's Nicaragua judgment (1986) and the ICTY's Tadić decision developed tests for attributing non-state conduct to states. Yet enforcement depends on Security Council consensus and unilateral sanctions regimes, both subject to geopolitical contestation. Designations are sometimes used as diplomatic leverage rather than evidence-based findings. Delegates will consider how to update attribution standards for the era of private military companies and cyber proxies, whether a depoliticized listing mechanism is feasible, and how to balance counter-terrorism with the rights of diaspora and humanitarian actors caught in sanctions crossfire.

Key players

Regulating Cryptocurrencies and Illicit Finance

Since Bitcoin's 2009 launch and the explosion of altcoins, stablecoins and decentralized finance in the 2010s, cryptocurrencies have grown into a multi-trillion-dollar market sitting awkwardly across the mandates of central banks, securities regulators and counter-terror authorities. Illicit use cases have driven much of the policy response: ransomware payments such as the 2021 Colonial Pipeline incident, North Korean Lazarus Group thefts that have funded the DPRK weapons program (UN Panel of Experts reports), Hamas fundraising campaigns disrupted by Israeli and US authorities, and the 2022 sanctioning of the Tornado Cash mixer by the US Treasury. The Financial Action Task Force extended its standards to virtual asset service providers in 2019, introducing the 'travel rule' requiring identification of senders and recipients. The EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), entering into force in 2024, is the first comprehensive regional regime. Other jurisdictions diverge sharply: El Salvador adopted Bitcoin as legal tender in 2021, China banned crypto trading and mining the same year, and the United States has pursued an enforcement-led approach through the SEC and OFAC. Central bank digital currencies, piloted by over 130 countries including the digital yuan and the ECB's digital euro project, add a further layer. The committee must consider how to harmonize anti-money-laundering and counter-terror-finance standards without stifling financial inclusion, the appropriate treatment of privacy-enhancing technologies, and the geopolitical implications of competing CBDC and stablecoin ecosystems.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on Counter Terrorism and Human Security (ICCTHS).

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Dynamic Analysis

The Power-Interest Grid

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Greece May 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Conference on Counter Terrorism and Human Security (ICCTHS)

May 25, 2026Crete, GreeceIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Revisiting the 1948 Genocide Convention in the 21st Century · BRICS and the Reshaping of Global Leadership · Stochastic Terrorism and the Incitement-to-Violence Gap · Climate Change and the New Geography of Conflict · Attacks on Energy Grids and Critical Infrastructure · Regulating Armed and Civilian Drones · State-Sponsored Terrorism in the Modern Era · Regulating Cryptocurrencies and Illicit Finance

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 4 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Greece

As the host nation, GRC is likely to emphasize regional security challenges, maritime security, and the impact of migration on counter-terrorism strategies.

Role in topic

United States

Role in topic

United Kingdom

The GBR balances strong domestic counter-terrorism legislation with a commitment to human rights, often engaging in multilateral efforts and addressing online radicalization.

Role in topic

France

FRA emphasizes a firm stance against terrorism, often implementing stringent security measures and engaging in military interventions abroad, while also addressing social cohesion.

Role in topic