Urgent need to finalise a global convention on terrorism: India

United Nations: India has said the multiple terror attacks in Paris and Beirut highlight the urgent need to finalise a global convention on terrorism, asserting that the financing being provided to terrorist groups such as ISIS and LeT needs to be addressed collectively.

"The terrible events of last week, in Beirut and Paris, demonstrate to us that the greatest threat to peace and security comes from violent extremism and religious fanaticism, not from the absence of economic and social development," India's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Bhagwant Bishnoi said here yesterday.

He told the UN Security Council that the terror attacks also highlight the international community's unfinished business in the fight against terrorism.

"Leaders had, in the 2005 Summit, decided that expeditious action would be taken to finalise the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism. That has not happened. The price that we pay for procrastination is often in human lives.

"That should not be allowed to continue. Terrorism takes away the foremost of human rights, the right to life. It is truly a crime against humanity," he said at the UNSC session on 'Maintaining of International Peace and Security.
 

Bishnoi also underscored the need to address the issue of financing that terrorists obtain saying that ideology alone is not sustaining the terror groups.

"All terrorist organisations - Daesh, or Al Shabaab or Lashkar-e-Tayyaba or Al-Qaeda - have an ideological basis that contradicts the basic tenets of humanity. Ideology alone, however, is not enough to sustain terrorists. They need financing and space to operate. That is, unfortunately, provided to them. And that is what needs to be addressed collectively," he said.

"It is the purveyors of hate and those who characterize others as infidels who are responsible for the violence that threaten our civilizational values. We need to also acknowledge that it is the absence of state authority, or weak state authority, that provides the breeding ground for extremist organizations to operate," he said.

"Terrorism is evil, as is violent extremism. The lack of economic and social development cannot be justification for either. Terrorism has to be eliminated. The events of last week have shown so tragically that there can be no other alternative," he added.

The UNSC held the already scheduled debate on conflict prevention amid added urgency fuelled by last week's terrorist attacks in Beirut and Paris, with UN Secretary-General?Ban Ki- moon stressing that counter-terrorism must also tackle such root causes as bad governance, injustice and exclusio