India To Host Members Of United Nations Security Council For A Special Meeting On Counter-Terrorism In October

In October, India will host diplomats from the UN Security Council’s 15 member countries for a special meeting on counter-terrorism. India is halfway through its two-year term as an elected non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. India’s term on the Council will expire in December, when the country will also serve as President of the powerful UN body for the month.

India will host diplomats from the 15-member Security Council, including the United States, China, and Russia, for a special meeting of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee in October. Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, Norway, and the UAE are current Security Council members, along with five permanent members China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

In light of the growing threat posed by the misuse of new and emerging technologies, the United Nations Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) has decided to hold a special meeting on this topic in India on October 29, 2022, with the support of its Executive Directorate (CTED), according to information on the Committee’s website.

According to the statement, the special meeting will specifically focus on three significant areas where emerging technologies are experiencing rapid development, growing use by member states (including for security and counter-terrorism purposes), and an increasing threat of abuse for terrorism purposes, namely Internet and social media, terrorism financing, and unmanned aerial systems (UAS).

The Counter-Terrorism Committee rarely meets outside of New York, but the meeting in India will be the seventh time this has occurred. The most recent special meeting of the CTC outside of UN headquarters took place in July 2015 in Madrid, Spain, and focused on foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs).

The Committee also stated that, with the prevalence of technology and the rapid rise in digitisation, the use of new and emerging technologies to counter-terrorism is a topic of growing interest among member states, policymakers, and researchers, particularly in light of technology’s increasing role in terrorism and counter-terrorism.

The Security Council has addressed this in a number of counter-terrorism-related resolutions, most recently resolution 2617 (2021), which specifically mentioned emerging technologies. The special meeting would be held in the United Nations’ six official languages and would be open to the entire UN membership as well as other relevant stakeholders.

T S Tirumurti, India’s then-Permanent Representative to the United Nations, took over as Chair of the Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee in January of this year. Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj, the country’s new UN envoy, is now in charge.

Tirumurti stated at a UN Security Council briefing on ‘The Use of Digital Technologies in Maintaining International Peace and Security’ in May that there is a need to address terrorist groups’ use of digital technologies to disseminate terrorist ideologies, radicalise, incite violence, and recruit the next generation of terrorist actors, taking advantage of young people’s increased online presence.

He informed the Security Council that India intends to host a special meeting of the Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee in India soon. “The need for member states to comprehensively address and strategically address the implications of terrorist exploitation of digital technologies has never been more pressing,” he said.

“I am pleased to inform this Council that India has proposed holding a special meeting of the Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee in India soon,” Tirumurti said. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) was formed in 2001.

The UN Security Council established the Counter-Terrorism Committee as a subsidiary body in Resolution 1373 (2001). India voted in favour of a resolution to renew the mandate of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate on the eve of taking over as Chair of the CTC in December last year (CTED).

Through its written silence procedure, the UN Security Council extended the Executive Directorate’s mandate until December 31, 2025. As Chair of the CTC in 2022, India will make concerted efforts to strengthen the CTC’s role in strengthening the multilateral response to counter-terrorism, and, more importantly, to ensure that the global response to the threat of terrorism remains unambiguous, undivided, and effective, India stated in its explanation of the vote to renew the CTED mandate.