Topic: Countering the Threat Posed by Improvised Explosive Devices
Country: Chad
Delegate Name: Ruark Wicka
School: Royal Oak High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Chad position papers GLIMUN 2017 committees
IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) are a major issue affecting the Republic of Chad. In the last year alone 488 people have died due to these kinds of attacks. As the figure shows IEDs do harm to the people of Chad and it is an issue that is very important to our country. In other parts of the world not only do more people die from IEDs per year, but more are dying. We must understand the causes of why citizens of these countries would make IEDs and how we can prevent them from being made. There is no feasible way to stop every person from making a IED in their home. We cannot search every house daily to see if someone is putting a nail bomb in a shoe box and putting it under a police cruiser. Chad has seen too often radicalized people resorting to terrorism to deal with their unfortunate lives. This is why we must ask a very simple question. Why do people resort to making IEDs? Why do people turn to radicalism to try and find meaning in their lives? In Iraq for instance, when the coalition came people were scared of them, and when their country was bombed every day, and living in fear that one day a soldier from a foreign land would come and kill them they resorted to the message of radicalism and used IEDS against the Coalition forces, to deadly effect. We reaffirm that their is no way we can stop everyone from making a IED, but we ask how can we prevent people from being radicalized to the point where they do make IEDs. Chad believes that the first step for stopping radicalization is community engagement projects. When Chad was given funds for radio stations and job training centers from the TSCTP (Trans Sahara Counterterrorism Partnership) it empowered youths to better their lives and seek new employment opportunities. When you are engaged with friends and family working to make your lives better or sitting in your living room listening to the radio it gives people hope. The more we invest in radio stations and job training centers and other community engagement projects we can much more easily take people's minds off radicalization. Another way to cut off radicalization attempts is to invest in countries locally combating terrorist groups that attempt to seduce people into their group. For example, in Chad when it was realized the Boko Haram was helping to create IEDs and plan attacks on Chadian soldiers, the Chad government invested in new weapons to root out the Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Region, and while it was costly, the Chadian army was able to root out many of the supporters of the Boko Haram and the area became safer. If we follow this approach in other countries, by arming soldiers to root out terrorists we can cut off the radical messages from the source. As we have seen funds seemingly go nowhere before, the transactions will be audited every 6 months to make sure they are going to the right places, the same applies to the community engagement projects. Chad realizes the success of the UN Security Council resolution 2178 point 16 states “Encourages Member States to engage relevant local communities and non-governmental actors in developing strategies to counter the violent extremist narrative that can incite terrorist acts, address the conditions conducive to the spread of violent extremism, which can be conducive to terrorism, including by empowering youth, families, women, religious, cultural and education leaders, and all other concerned groups of civil society and adopt tailored approaches to countering recruitment to this kind of violent extremism and promoting social inclusion and cohesion.” Spoken more plainly this resolution encourages non governmental community engagement projects to help people stay away from the ideas of radicalization, and encourages actors, youth, families and education leaders to help keep the ideas of radicalization away with positive needs. Chad urges more funding to be presented for community engagement projects such as these, with equitable donations from nations based on their GDPs. Chad is ecstatic to be apart of a committee discussing a topic that affects its citizens every day, and hopes to work with other nations on how to solve the problem of Improvised Explosive Devices.
