New Delhi: 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, said EAM S Jaishankar on Saturday.
In his address at the Plenary Session of the Special Meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee on countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes, Jaishankar said, "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," while adding that 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.
The minister reiterated India’s commitment to strengthen international efforts to combat terrorism, including combating the use of new and emerging technologies. The "Delhi Declaration” which is to be adopted at this Special Meeting of the CTC will exemplify the commitment of the international community to dealing with the threat of the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes. Jaishankar further noted that another add-on to the existing worries for governments around the world is the use of unmanned aerial systems by terrorist groups and organized criminal networks.
"In recent yrs, terrorist groups, ideological fellow travellers particularly in open and liberal societies and lone wolf attackers have enhanced their capabilities by gaining access to tech. They use tech, money & ethos of open societies to attack freedom, tolerance, and progress", he said. The External affairs minister pointed out that Internet and social media platforms have turned into potent instruments in the toolkit of terrorists and militant groups for spreading propaganda, radicalization, and conspiracy theories aimed at destabilizing societies.
"The technologies have also thrown up new challenges for governments and regulatory bodies due to their potential vulnerability for their misuse by non-state actors, given the very nature of some of these technologies and the nascent regulatory environment", he told the gathering. UNSC, in the past 2 decades, has evolved an important architecture built primarily around the Counter-Terrorism Sanctions Regime, to combat this menace. This has been very effective in putting those countries' notice that had turned terrorism into a state-funded enterprise.
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 explained at the special meeting of the Counter-Terrorism Committee, in Delhi. The holding of a special meeting of the CTC in India demonstrates the importance that the UNSC members, member states, and a wide range of stakeholders place on this critical & emerging facet of terrorism.
