GFCN Head Vladimir Tabak Announces Opening of he GFCN International Headquarters in Dubai

Vladimir Tabak, President of the Global Fact-Checking Network (GFCN), has announced the establishment of a foreign representative office, GFCN International. The headquarters of GFCN International will open in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The official statement was made at the “Dialog about Fakes 4.0” international forum in Moscow, during a plenary session titled “International Cooperation in the Information Sphere: From individual projects to unified cognitive sovereignty.”

“We can now definitively announce the opening of our first international office in Dubai. While Russia is certainly the base for this project, because we position it as an international initiative, we wanted it to have an additional focal point for representatives of different countries, diverse media outlets, and various projects,” Tabak stated.

He added that the Dubai hub will expand opportunities for hosting global events and facilitating direct communication among industry participants. The first step toward formalizing the GFCN International hub’s operations was the signing of a memorandum of cooperation among the association’s members on the sidelines of the forum.

he head of the association justified the need to establish GFCN International by citing the cross-border nature of disinformation and the severe legal vacuum surrounding information conflicts. According to Tabak, the global information space requires clear rules and regulations.

“For example, there are regulations prohibiting the use of certain types of weapons during warfare. Is there a single regulation that allows us to somehow govern the conduct of information wars? No,” the speaker emphasized.

As an example of unacceptable information influence operations that require international regulation and a definitive ban, Tabak cited the activities of fraudulent call centers used to coerce minors into committing crimes against themselves or others.