United Nations: India, close on the heels of getting Pakistan-based JeM chief Masood Azhar blacklisted, has given a clarion call at the UN for strengthening efforts to adopt the long-pending global convention on international terrorism amidst increasing terror attacks on places of worship across the globe. India proposed a draft document on the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT) at the UN in 1986 but it has not been implemented as there is no unanimity on the definition of terrorism among the member states.
India’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin, speaking at a solemn commemorative event Friday for victims of the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka, said the early adoption of the global framework to combat terrorism will be a “tribute” to those killed and injured in the “barbaric and cowardly” terror attacks in the island nation last month. “The barbaric and cowardly attacks on places of worship and recreation, that took lives of hundreds of innocent people of different nationalities, is a reminder that terrorism aims not only to disrupt livelihoods, destroy lives and traumatise people, but also rupture societies, destabilise states and undermine the fabric of human beliefs by creating panic for the sake of panic,” he said.
Akbaruddin highlighted the efforts by Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Amrith Rohan Perera over the last two decades towards achieving an outcome on the CCIT. “Perhaps, as a tribute to the victims in his country, we can all try and strengthen efforts to achieve that objective of a putting in place a global legal framework to counter a global scourge,” he said at the event co-organised by the President of the General Assembly and the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the UN.
India’s clarion call to adopt the CCIT came just a day after it won a massive victory in the fight against terrorism with the designation of Azhar as a global terrorist under the 1267 Al Qaeda Sanctions Committee of the UN Security Council. The blacklisting of the JeM chief on Wednesday came 10 years after India first moved a proposal in the UN body to sanction him. Perera underscored the need for the international community to demonstrate a “political will” to adopt the legal framework to combat international terrorism, saying “too much blood” has been spilled due to terrorism and nations can no longer remain deadlocked over the issue.
“I would be failing in my duty as Chair of the Working Group on Measures to Eliminate International Terrorism if I do not state now that the time has come for the international community to go beyond words and to demonstrate political will and commitment in taking the last remaining step to conclude the CCIT and complete the sectoral multilateral treaty regime to address the global phenomenon of terrorism,” Perera said.