States that produced international terrorists have benefited from the absence of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said on Friday.
At the 19th Darbari Seth Memorial Lecture at The Energy Research Institute (TERI), he highlighted global terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic and sought reform in the multilateral platforms of the world.
“Nineteen years from the tragedy of 9/11 and 12 years from our own 26/11, we have a range of mechanisms in place to contend with terrorism... but we still lack a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, with the membership of the U.N. still wrestling with certain foundational principles”, he noted.
‘Pressure sometimes works’
Absence of this global convention had been exploited by the terror-exporting states that avoided accountability by “blandly” denying the role they had played in creating global terrorism, he argued. He, however, maintained that despite the absence of a global convention against terrorism, “sustained pressure through international mechanisms” sometimes worked. In this regard, he indirectly referred to Pakistan recently acknowledging the presence of 1993 Bombay blasts accused Dawood Ibrahim on its soil.
The Minister also referred to the lack of global coordination as a sign of the weakness in the present multilateral system. “There are some” who liked to believe that they could benefit from the opportunities thrown up by the COVID-19 crisis, he stated.
“We have long known intellectually that terrorism is a cancer that potentially affects everyone, just as pandemics potentially impact upon all humanity. And, yet, in both cases, globalised focussed responses to either challenge have tended to emerge only when there has been sufficient disruption created by a ‘spectacular’ event,” said Mr. Jaishankar, equating the threat of the current pandemic with that of global terrorism.
