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UN experts to assess South Africa’s anti-terror laws

By IANS,

Pretoria : A delegation from the UN Security Council will visit South Africa next week to assess the country’s legislation, enforcement capacity and national systems to implement anti-terror measures, BuaNews reported Friday.

The 15-member team from the UN’s Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate (CTED) will assess the country’s capacity in line with the UN Security Council resolutions and international conventions, George Nene, deputy director general in the South African foreign ministry, said Thursday.

“These visits are part of the normal work programme of the CTED and are regarded as beneficial by most countries,” the diplomat said, adding that the visits would provide South Africa an opportunity to assess its national laws and the effectiveness of implementation machinery.

Nene told reporters that South Africa has ratified all 13 universal conventions on terrorism.

“South Africa adheres to a multilateral approach to addressing the issue of terrorism and, in this context, is committed to cooperating with the UN delegation,” he said.

The CTED will submit its report to the Security Council for discussion.

The directorate started the practice of visiting terrorist violence hit countries after the attacks in Sep 11, 2001 attack in New York.

Since then, the Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution that all governments criminalise assistance for terrorist activities, deny financial support and safe havens to terrorists, and share information about groups planning terrorist attacks.

The committee has already visited several other countries including Nigeria, India and Indonesia.