Zero-tolerance approach can defeat terrorism: India's envoy to UN Kamboj

Terrorism remains a global challenge and only a unified and zero-tolerance approach to this can defeat it, India's permanent representative to the United Nations, Ruchira Kamboj said.

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, on Monday, Providing justice for the communities impacted by the ISIL terror network in Iraq remains the key focus of the UN investigative team there, Special Adviser Christian Ritscher said that the evidence collected and analysed, substantiated preliminary findings from his previous report, UN news reported.

He cited crimes committed against Christians such as enslavement and forced conversion; "notable progress" on the development and use of chemical and biological weapons; and inspections on 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 highlighted the excavation of several ISIL-related mass graves in Iraq and detailed that UNITAD has agreed with Germany to collect data and DNA reference samples from the Yazidi community residing there 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.

So far, his team had converted 5.5 million physical pages of documentary evidence of ISIL-related crimes into digital formats and is currently supporting digitization at six different Iraqi sites.