India to host UNSC counter terror committee meet in October

India will host 15-nation UN Security Council (UNSC) on October 29 for a special meeting on counter-terrorism with focus on three significant areas including use of technology for spreading terror.

India is halfway through the second year of its two-year term as an elected non-permanent member of the UNSC and is currently chairing the council's Counter-Terrorism Committee for 2022.

“Mindful of the increasing 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 theme, with the support of its Executive Directorate (CTED), in India on October 29, 2022," according to the Committee’s portal.


It said the special meeting would "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 the increasing threat of abuse for terrorism purposes, namely the Internet and social media, terrorism financing, and unmanned aerial systems (UAS)"

The meeting in India will be the seventh time that this is happening. The most recent special meeting of the CTC outside the UN's headquarters took place in Madrid, Spain, in July 2015, focusing on foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs).

The Committee added that with the prevalence of technology and the rapid rise in digitisation, the use of new and emerging technologies to counter-terrorism was a topic of growing interest among Member States, policymakers and researchers.

In December India will also preside as President of the UNSC for a month.

Current non-permanent members of the UNSC are Albania, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, Norway and the UAE. The five permanent members are China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US.

The Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) was established in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. The UNSC Resolution 1373 (2001) had established it as a subsidiary body of the Council.

On the eve of assuming Chair of the CTC in December last year, India had voted in favour of a resolution to renew the mandate of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED).