At the UN General Assembly, India urged nations to reject any justification for terrorism and act collectively. It said double standards, weak financing checks and delays on a global legal framework are hurting the fight against terror.
India has told the international community that there can be no justification for terrorism and called for collective action to defeat what it described as a “murderous ideology”. Speaking at the UN General Assembly on the adoption of the Ninth Review of the United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni, said terrorism must be condemned in all its forms and manifestations.
He said the global response to terrorism must be free of double standards and false equivalences, and stressed the need to hold perpetrators, organisers, financiers and sponsors accountable. India also underlined the need for stronger action on terror financing, the misuse of emerging technologies by terrorists, and the long-pending Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism.
“India has been a victim of cross-border terrorism for decades. Our people have paid the price of terrorism in lives lost, families scarred, and societies shattered. This experience has shaped India’s approach: there can be no justification for terrorism,” Parvathaneni said. “Irrespective of any grievance, political cause or strategic calculation, terrorism in all its forms and manifestations must be condemned unequivocally,” he added.
He said member states must ensure full cooperation in bringing those involved in terrorism to justice. “A terrorist is a terrorist!! We must work hand in hand to root out the murderous ideology without finding any grievance to justify terrorism,” he said. India added that counter-terrorism efforts should not be weakened by politicised narratives. “We must address the conditions conducive to the spread of terrorism, but we must never confuse context with justification. We must uphold human rights and the rule of law, but we must also recognise that the first human right is the right to life, and terrorism is the most direct assault on this human right,” it said.
India said countering terror financing must remain central to international efforts. “The international community must improve financial intelligence sharing, strengthen implementation of Financial Action Task Force standards, and ensure that no jurisdiction remains a safe conduit for terror financing,” Parvathaneni said. On technology, India said it was “disheartening” that negotiations on the review could not reach an acceptable outcome on denying terrorists access to technological tools for their acts.
Calling the adoption of the review important as it comes 20 years after member states came together on the global strategy, Parvathaneni said the international community had affirmed that terrorism is a threat to humanity and can only be defeated through international cooperation. He recalled that India had called for the adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism a decade before the strategy was first adopted in 2006, and said the lack of a universally agreed legal framework continues to hamper collective action. “Nearly three decades of delay have hindered our collective efforts to combat terrorism. The time has come to demonstrate political will to conclude the CCIT,” he said.
India also said it had consistently contributed to global counter-terrorism efforts and hosted major international discussions, including the Delhi Declaration on countering the use of new and emerging technologies for terrorist purposes and the No Money for Terror Conferences. It criticised the absence of any mention of the Delhi Declaration in the strategy review in 2023, saying this “reflects the unfortunate situation of how this Assembly is held hostage to petty bean counting! It is doubly unfortunate when the international community continues to tolerate this behaviour”. India also reiterated that it condemns all acts motivated by prejudice against any faith or other attribute such as ethnicity, nationality, geography or race. “As this is the United Nations, a multilateral forum of universal membership, our lens too should be universal. While we condemn all acts motivated by Islamophobia, Christianphobia and antisemitism, this august body must acknowledge that such phobias extend to other faiths as well,” he said.
In his closing remarks, Parvathaneni warned of the risks of weak international cooperation against terrorism. He said the threat can be tackled only if there is political will to counter it in all its forms, no double standards, no distinction between good and bad terrorists, and greater transparency and objectivity in sanctions regimes so that genuine and evidence-based listing proposals are secured.
With PTI Inputs
