UNITED NATIONS, May 12: India has criticised the “disaggregated” counter terrorism infrastructure of the UN, saying the world community has failed to address the menace of terror and there is a need to have a seamless structure in the world body to tackle the global scourge.
“Terrorism does not fit into the conventional paradigm of threats to peace and security. Yet, today it affects us all, across continents, whether we are from developing or developed world,” India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said at a high-level UN General Assembly thematic debate on peace and security.
He expressed concern that terror thrives on and is sustained by its trans-boundary networks for ideology, recruitment, propaganda, funding, arms training and sanctuary.
“However, the global community has failed to address this menace effectively. Here at the United Nations there is a disaggregated counter terrorism infrastructure with no effort to tie them together in a seamless weave under a high level functionary. We need to address this,” Akbaruddin said.
India has been pressing for early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT), a long-pending legal framework which would make it binding for all countries to deny funds and safe haven to terror groups.
With the objective of providing a comprehensive legal framework to combat terrorism, India took the initiative to pilot a draft CCIT in 1996 but the convention has not yet been adopted as nations have “entangled” themselves on the issue of definition of terrorism.
The Indian envoy also lamented the “endless” process of trying to reform the Security Council even as the world grapples with challenges more diverse in nature than they were when the world body was created 70 years ago.
He emphasised that the structures of global governance have to be made representative to deal with current threats and challenges or else the UN risks becoming “irrelevant”.
“On the one hand we find a growing tendency where issues much broader than the conventional peace and security context are being considered as germane.
“Issues related to the international system of criminal justice, large scale human rights violations, and monitoring compliance with disarmament arrangements are brought onto the agenda of international peace and security stretching the canvas of collective action by the Security Council. At the same time, we are faced with efforts to spin issues of Reform of the Security Council in an endless manner,” he said.
Akbaruddin said while technology, social media and instantaneous transfers of funds have unprecedented benefits, these very same inter-linkages are now also being used for the spread of radical propaganda, extremist ideologies, recruitment of followers beyond national boundaries and spread of terrorist networks.
“While we are increasingly aware of the growing inter-dependence of economies; there is insufficient realisation of the commonality of threat that these other challenges pose to our collective security,” Akbaruddin said.
He added that the world has moved on from the time when the UN was created and when the main focus of the world organisation was maintaining peace between the then established powers.
The “centre of gravity” of the globalised economy continues to shift.
“Today, the challenges are more diverse. Even as we update tools and improve our understanding of emerging threats, a more representative global governance system is essential to deal effectively with today’s concerns. If we do not do so we run the risk of making the UN ineffective and irrelevant in addressing the most important challenges of our times,” Akbaruddin said.
He further expressed concern that peacekeeping, the “most frequently used tool to address complex and multidimensional challenges”, has been blunted given the instances of sexual exploitation and abuse by peacekeepers.
He said rising concerns about peacekeepers’ safety and security and questions about perceptions about the impartiality of UN troops are all “symptoms of peacekeeping under great stress”.
“We need to attend to these fault lines, if peace keeping is to remain a beacon of hope,” Akbaruddin said.
He noted that the geopolitical climate in 2016 seems to be running into “headwinds” and there is a feeling of pessimism about the present as well as a sense of foreboding about the future.
Pointing out that while the adoption last year of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has been a remarkable step, Akbaruddin said sustainable development will also have to be seen in the context of peace and security.
“If economic, social, environmental and other causes of international tension are now important to questions of peace and security then we need to address these holistically and not only on the basis of primacy to politics,” he said. (PTI)
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