India has mentioned that the tendency to classify terrorism on the premise of motivations behind terrorist acts is “dangerous” and asserted that every one varieties of terror assaults, whether or not motivated by Islamophobia, anti-Sikh, anti-Buddhist or anti-Hindu prejudices, are condemnable.
India’s Permanent Representative to the U.N. Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj mentioned on Thursday that the worldwide group wants to face guard towards new terminologies and false priorities that may dilute its focus of combatting the scourge of terrorism.
“The tendency of categorisation of terrorism based on the motivations behind terrorist acts is dangerous and goes against the accepted principles that ‘terrorism in all its forms and manifestations should be condemned and there cannot be any justification for any act of terrorism, whatsoever’,” she mentioned on the First Reading of the Draft Resolution on eighth Review of the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy (GCTS).
Underlining that there can’t be good or unhealthy terrorists, Ms. Kamboj mentioned such an strategy “will only take us back to the pre-9/11 era of labelling terrorists as ‘Your Terrorists’ and ‘My Terrorists’ and erase the collective gains the international community has made over the last two decades.
“Moreover, some of the terminologies such as right or right-wing extremism, or far right or far left extremism opens the gate for misuse of these terms by vested interests. We, therefore, need to be wary of providing a variety of classifications, which may militate against the concept of democracy itself,” she mentioned.
India additionally asserted that states that present shelter to terrorists ought to be referred to as out and held accountable for his or her deeds, a veiled reference to Pakistan.
The U.N. Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy is a “unique global instrument” to enhance national, regional and international efforts to counter-terrorism. Through its adoption by consensus in 2006, all U.N. member states agreed for the first time to a common strategic and operational approach to fighting terrorism.
“The Strategy does not only send a clear message that terrorism is unacceptable in all its forms and manifestations but it also resolves to take practical steps, individually and collectively, to prevent and combat terrorism,” in keeping with the U.N. Office of Counter-Terrorism.
The U.N. General Assembly critiques the Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy each two years, “making it a living document attuned to Member States’ counter-terrorism priorities”.
Ms. Kamboj stressed that it is important to protect the secular nature of the strategy. She said India strongly condemns all kinds of terrorist attacks irrespective of religion, belief, culture, race or ethnicity.
“We strongly condemn terrorist attacks motivated by Islamophobia, Christianphobia, Anti-Semitism, Anti-Sikh, Anti-Buddhist, Anti-Hindu prejudices,” she said.
She noted that the 7th Review of the strategy took into account attacks motivated by Islamophobia, Christianphobia and anti-Semitism only while failing to address the rest.
“A more sagacious approach would be to keep this reference broad, abandoning thereby a list-based approach in the current Review,” she said.
The UNGA resolution adopted in June 2021 on the 7th Review had recognised “with deep concern the general rise in cases of discrimination, intolerance and violence, regardless of the actors, directed towards members of non secular and different communities in numerous elements of the world, together with circumstances motivated by Islamophobia, antisemitism, Christianophobia and prejudice towards individuals of every other faith or perception.”
Ms. Kamboj expressed concern that the menace of terrorism is persistent and rising, particularly, in Africa and Asia.
“As if we had less on our plate, the online space has become another frontier for terrorist groups to achieve their nefarious goals. The easy accessibility, affordability, anonymity, untraceability, and universal reach offered by new and emerging communications, financial, and other technologies, have played out as an exogenous multiplier factor exacerbating the terrorist threat manyfold,” she mentioned.
She additionally famous that the Special Meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, held in India in October final 12 months and the Delhi Declaration adopted on countering the use of new and rising applied sciences for terrorist functions has highlighted this menace and in addition the necessity for a holistic strategy to deal with this menace.
Ms. Kamboj appealed that “we may preserve the unity of unequivocal support to the strategy and not surrender the “consensus” to exclusivist and narrow approaches. A unified, multilateral action against terrorism has never been so inevitable as it is today.”
The world technique is composed of 4 pillars- addressing the circumstances conducive to the unfold of terrorism; measures to forestall and fight terrorism; measures to construct states’ capability to forestall and fight terrorism and strengthen the function of the United Nations system in that regard; and measures to make sure respect for human rights for all and the rule of legislation as the basic foundation for the combat towards terrorism.
Ms. Kamboj mentioned it is necessary to protect the steadiness amongst all pillars and makes an attempt to dilute the language of the second and third pillars might be a “self-defeating goal”, she mentioned.
She added that ideally, the technical replace must also have taken into consideration the actions and important contributions of some worldwide fora such because the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), resulting from which member states recognized for his or her laxity on terror financing have been compelled to take preventive actions, one other obvious reference to Pakistan.
