TERRORISM NEEDS A ZERO-TOLERANCE POLICY : RUCHIRA KAMBOJ, UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL

6 December, United Nations: Terrorism continues to be a worldwide threat, and only a united and zero-tolerance attitude can defeat it, according to India's permanent representative to the United Nations, Ruchira Kamboj.

While addressing the meeting over Iraq, Kamboj said, “Terrorism in all its forms and manifestations remains a global challenge and only a unified and zero-tolerance approach to terrorism can eventually defeat it.”

“As the government of the people of Iraq continue their fight against Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL). It is also critical to fighting the impunity of terror globally,” she added.

Indian envoy to the UN also talked about the 26/11 attack and said that India believes that the credibility of the collective “fight against terrorism can be strengthened only when we can ensure accountability for the grave and inhuman acts of terror committed by terrorists and take strong measure against those who encourage support and finance terrorism.”

Earlier, Special Adviser Christian Ritscher stated that the material collected and analysed confirmed preliminary conclusions from his prior report, according to UN news.

He highlighted enslavement and forced conversion as crimes against Christians; "notable advances" in the creation and deployment of chemical and biological weapons; and inspections of the destruction of internationally protected cultural heritage sites.

“At this pivotal stage of our mandate, please allow me to state that my team has now reached the next level on the path of holding ISIL perpetrators accountable for the core international crimes they committed”, he said.

He emphasised the discovery of several ISIL-related mass graves in Iraq and explained that UNITAD has agreed with Germany to collect data and DNA reference samples from the Yazidi community in Iraq for a campaign to identify human remains in Iraq, "allowing survivors to eventually mourn their beloved ones."

“As part of this programme, psychosocial support training is provided to Iraqi authorities to ensure international best practice is maintained when dealing with victims and survivors”, UN news quoted Ritscher as saying.

His team has transformed 5.5 million physical pages of documented proof of ISIL-related crimes into digital forms so far and is actively assisting with digitization at six distinct Iraqi sites.