UNITED NATIONS: A top Pakistani diplomat has called on the UN Security Council to shift some of its focus on combating Al-Qaeda and ISIS/Da'esh to Hindutva extremists in India terrorizing Muslims, as he stressed the need for the 15-member body to reform its counter-terrorism work.
"Terrorism has proliferated across the world," Ambassador Munir Akram told a virtual meeting of the General Assembly which discussed the annual report of the Security Council on its actions to maintain international peace and security.
Pointing out deficiencies in the Council's work, the Pakistan envoy said that while keeping focus on Al-Qaeda and Da'esh, it had "ignored terrorism by extremist and fascist organizations, including the Hindutva groups terrorizing Muslims.
"It has allowed the labels of terrorism to compromise the legitimate struggles of peoples under colonial and alien domination for self-determination. It has also ignored state terrorism which is used for oppressing and brutalizing peoples under occupation."
The Council, Ambassador Akram said, has also failed to implement its own resolutions and decisions, including on the decade-old Jammu and Kashmir dispute.
"For over seventy years, India has illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir in blatant violation of the resolutions of the Security Council; it is perpetrating a reign of terror in a territory occupied with 900,000 troops; it has imposed a complete siege on 8 million Kashmiris in the valley and it is perpetrating massive violations of human rights against them and against its own minority communities, he told the council.
"In the wake of its illegal and unilateral actions of August 5, 2019, the BJP-RSS government is putting in place what they have themselves called the 'final solution' for Jammu and Kashmir - demographic flooding of occupied Kashmir by settler communities to completely disempowered and disenfranchise the Kashmiri people and to obliterate their Muslim identity and that of the occupied territory."
In this regard, the Pakistani envoy said that the Council met thrice in one year on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, reaffirming its disputed status and that a final settlement based on Security Council resolutions.
In his comments, Ambassador Akram also underscored the need to improve transparency as much of the Council's real work and decision-making takes place behind closed doors.
The role of the non-members, he said, has been reduced amid the coronavirus pandemic to the 'perfunctory' submission of written statements to the few open meetings held by the Council.
The Pakistan envoy also called for a comprehensive reform of the Security Council to provide it greater legitimacy and credibility. "Openness, transparency and inclusiveness should be introduced in the working modalities of the Security Council and its subsidiary bodies, especially the 'Sanctions Committees' and those dealing with generic issues, such as terrorism and non-proliferation."
He added, "The international community cannot succeed in its efforts to strengthen conflict prevention and promote pacific dispute settlement if the Security Council's own resolutions are held in abeyance willfully. What is, at stake is both the Council's credibility as well as the objective of durable peace in our region. "I hope that the Council will not fail these tests."
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