Union External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday said that terrorism remains the gravest threat to humanity and added that India will contribute 5 lakh dollars United Nations’ counterterrorism organisation to counter the threat of terrorism.
“India will be making a voluntary contribution of half a million dollars to the UN Trust Fund for Counter Terrorism this year to augment the efforts of UNOCT in providing capacity-building support to member states in preventing and countering the threat of terrorism,” S Jaishankar said while speaking at Day-2 of the UNSC’s Counter-Terrorism Committee meeting in New Delhi.
The counter-terror meeting in Delhi is being attended by representatives from all 15 member nations of the UN Security Council.
The foreign minister also expressed his concern over the misuse of technology by saying that low-cost option and the increasing reach of unknown aerial platforms is worrying. He further said that terrorist groups recently have used unmanned platforms like drones and quadcopters for carrying drugs and arms across international borders.
“Another add-on to the existing worries for governments around the world is the use of unmanned aerial systems by terrorist groups and organised criminal networks,” Jaishankar said.
“The UN Security Council, in the past two decades, has evolved an important architecture, built primarily around the counter-terrorism sanctions regime, to combat this menace,” he said.
“This has been very effective in putting those countries on notice that had turned terrorism into a state-funded enterprise,” he added.
“Despite this, the threat of terrorism is only growing and expanding, particularly in Asia and Africa, as successive reports of the 1267 Sanctions Committee Monitoring Reports have highlighted,” he further added.
The minister said the ethos of open societies is being used to attack freedom, tolerance and progress.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for concerted global efforts to deal with the challenge of the use of new technologies by various terror groups to radicalise people and foment discord in societies.
He expressed concerns over the abuse of new technologies by various terror groups to spread disinformation, foment discord and radicalise youths.
Earlier on Friday, representatives from all 15 UNSC members were present at the conference held at Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel, one of the sites of the 2008 terror attack.
During the inaugural session in Mumbai, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the issue of listing planners of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack as global terrorists. Jaishankar said that the 26/11 attack would never be forgotten.
The photographs of all major accused in different terror attacks on India, including Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Hafiz Saeed and Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, were shown on the screen to all the members present. The delegates sat at a replica of the iconic horse-shoe table at the UNSC chamber in New York.
However, China blocked listing the five terrorists with its representative asking the countries to “avoid mutual accusations and politicising technical issues.” The listing of Sajid Mir as a global terrorist, an initiative of India and the US, was earlier blocked by China at the UN in September this year.
India, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, is currently holding the chair of the Counter-Terrorism Committee. The UN Security Council established the Counter-Terrorism Committee in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks by adopting resolution 1373 of 2001 concerning countering terrorism.
This is the first such meeting of the UNSC-CTC in India since its establishment in 2001. The Permanent Representative of India to the UN holds the Chair of the CTC for 2022.
Delegates from Albania, Brazil, China, France, Gabon, Ghana, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, Norway, Russia, United Arab Emirates (UAE), United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) are participating in this UNSC meeting.
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