From ISIS to climate change: How G20 plans to take on the two terrors
The tenth Summit of Group of Twenty (G20) countries was held in the Turkish seaside resort of Antalya on November 15-16, 2015.
The G20 was established as a meeting of finance ministers and governors of central banks of 20 major economies of the world in 1999 in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis two years earlier. This was upgraded to summit level in 2008 in the wake of the international economic and financial crisis. G20 represents around 85 per cent of global GDP, two-thirds of the world population and 75 per cent of world trade. It focuses on achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth, promoting job creation, strengthening financial regulations that reduce risks and prevent future financial crises, and modernising the international financial architecture.
It was felt that the G20 Summit was being held at a most opportune time, coming as it did between the UN Sustainability Summit that took place in New York in September 2015 in which 17 Sustainability Development Goals to be realised by 2030 were adopted, and the COP 21 in Paris which takes place later this month and early next month to deliberate upon the growing challenge of climate change and protecting the environment.
Events
The Antalya summit was initially designed to focus on the current state of the global economy, sustainable growth, development and climate change, investment, trade and energy. Leaders were also expected to discuss political issues such as global terrorism and the refugee crisis. However, as so often occurs in international diplomacy, official agendas get blown off course by events - but rarely in such appalling circumstances and so comprehensively. The regular subjects of the summit were forced aside, at least temporarily, as world leaders confronted the scale and audacity of the terror attacks in the French capital on Friday.
Leaders zeroed in on three urgent, interlinked issues connected with Syria: ending the war, stemming the flow of refugees, and stopping terrorist outfits such as the Islamic State (ISIS). Leaders strongly condemned the dastardly attacks and pledged a renewed fight against the ISIS but offered little concrete details on how the strategy would change. They resolved to prevent and suppress terrorist acts through increased international solidarity and cooperation with the UN being provided a central role.
They reaffirmed commitment to "tackle the financing channels of terrorism, particularly by enhanced cooperation on exchange of information and freezing of terrorist assets, criminalisation of terrorist financing and robust targeted financial sanctions regimes related to terrorism and terrorist financing".
Approach
They agreed to adopt a comprehensive approach by "addressing conditions conducive to terrorism, countering violent extremism, combating radicalisation and recruitment, hampering terrorist movements, growing flow of foreign terrorist fighters, countering jihadi propaganda and to prevent terrorists from exploiting technology, communications and resources to incite terrorist acts, including through the internet".
They resolved to prevent direct or indirect encouragement of terrorism, the incitement of terrorist acts and glorification of violence. This would be achieved by enhancing cooperation, including operational information sharing, border management, preventive measures and appropriate criminal justice response.
PM Narendra Modi in his address focused on global terrorism and also dealt with climate change, global cooperation to unearth black money, tax evasion, reducing transaction costs for remittances and bringing greater transparency to the financial system. He elaborated on measures that India is taking to reduce consumption of fossil fuels and enhance production and use of green energy. He exhorted developed countries to provide finance and technology to help developing countries pursue a green industrial path. Leaders issued a communiqué identifying further collective actions towards achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth to raise the prosperity of the people.
France called for tighter controls on Europe's borders to prevent terrorists from entering and using free movement laws to travel across the continent.
However, despite growing public unease over numbers of migrants arriving in Europe, and threat that the influx is being exploited by the ISIS, the European Commission chief Jean Claude rejected an overhaul of the EU's migration policy. He urged leaders not to start treating asylum-seekers as terrorists.
Expansion
The ISIS has been reinforcing and widening its sway far beyond its original areas of operations in Iraq and Syria. Over the last ten days, it has successfully carried out four major assaults on its principal adversaries - downed a Russian civilian airliner over Egypt killing 224 people, massacred Hazara Shi'ites in Afghanistan, bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut, and now carried out the attacks in Paris. It has issued warnings to Washington and European countries that they will also have to face attacks similar to the ones in Paris if they indulged in launching bomb strikes against Syria. Emergence of the ISIS over last two years is a result of conflicting, short-sighted and narrow-minded policies pursued by the Western and regional powers like the US, Europe, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and others.
World leaders seized the opportunity presented by the ghastly Paris attacks to arrive at a wide measure of agreement to effectively deal with the ever-increasing threat of the ISIS. The challenge now is to implement the decisions arrived at sincerely and seriously. Only single-minded determination and full cooperation will yield the desired results. Otherwise, the leaders will have no one but themselves to blame for the rising incidents of terrorism and violence in their own territories and other regions of the world.