Raise capacity and multitask anti-terror

Even as the UN Security Council's Counter-Terrorism Committee (CTC) met in New Delhi last week, Somalia's capital Mogadishu came under an attack that claimed at least 100 lives. Carried out by al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabaab, the attack underlined terrorism's global supply chain. The Delhi Declaration emphasised the ways and means to break this chain. The global community cannot afford to let the effort to counter terrorism slide, even as more immediate issues, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the energy and food crises, remain centre stage.

The latest attack highlights the issues of capacity that many countries, particularly those most under attack, face in dealing with terror groups. Terrorism undermines the ability of countries to provide stability, governance and social and economic development of people. It is this context that the UNCTC's Delhi Declaration puts the focus back on. Tackling terrorism will require greater cooperation among governments, and with the private sector and civil society to develop and implement more effective means to counter the use of new and emerging technologies like weaponised unmanned aerial vehicles and the internet. The Mumbai and Delhi UNCTC meetings underlined the need for institutional reforms, especially of multilateral bodies. China, for instance, has blocked five US-India proposals to put terrorists on the UN watchlist.

The declaration stresses that governments must comply with human rights, and international humanitarian and refugee law, even as they upgrade prevention measures that include better-quality intelligence-sharing. Maintaining this balance requires greater cooperation, especially since not all affected countries have the requisite capacity.