External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar described terrorism as “one of the gravest threats” to humanity, lauding the counter-terror sanction measures taken by the UN. He also touched extensively upon the use of new technologies by terror groups, saying that the internet and social media platforms have turned into potent instruments in the “toolkit of terrorists and militant groups”. The remarks came at the beginning of a two day meeting of the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee in Delhi.
“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. This has been very effective in putting those countries on 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 said.
“Terrorists are abusing new technologies to spread disinformation, foment discord,” opined UN Chief Antonio Guterres in a message at the UN meet.
“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. Being a relatively low-cost option, with an increasing ease of accessibility, misuse of these unmanned aerial platforms for this nefarious purposes by terrorist groups such as weapons and explosives delivery and targeted attacks have become an imminent danger,” Jaishankar added.
“Terrorism is a global problem and a global threat. I’m incredibly grateful to Minister Jaishankar for using India’s Security Council presidency to focus on this crucial issue and advance his eight-point plan….We’re also working with the G7 and Global Internet Forum to counter-terrorism and we continue to press tech companies amongst whom are also the internet’s biggest players to crackdown even harder on the extremist content online,” added UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
