DHAKA: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Sunday decided to form a ministerial committee to handle and monitor the Rohingya issue internationally.
The decision came on the last day of its Council of Foreign Ministers’ meeting. Abubacarr Tambadou, Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, tabled the proposal.
The committee will collect information and evidence for accountability purposes, and will support UN organizations, the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other NGOs working with Rohingya to sustain international political pressure on Myanmar, he said.
Bangladeshi Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali said: “We will come up with a proper formula for the establishment of this committee, and this will be circulated by the OIC secretariat later on.”
Mir Mohammad Nasir Uddin, former OIC vice chairman and former Bangladeshi ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told Arab News that the organization “should work as a united force and play a more active role on the world stage.”
He added: “The OIC needs to take a very bold step, and the leadership should come from Saudi Arabia.”
Former Bangladeshi Ambassador Mohammed Jamir said the formation of the committee “will help not only to create pressure, but also political and financial engagement from OIC member states that are keen to resolve the crisis in the shortest possible time.”
The OIC on Sunday condemned Myanmar for its atrocities against Rohingya Muslims, and commended Bangladesh for its humanitarian efforts.
OIC forms committee to handle Rohingya issue
OIC forms committee to handle Rohingya issue
- The Organization of Islamic Cooperation decided to form a ministerial committee to handle and monitor the Rohingya issue on an international scale
- The committee will collect information and evidence for accountability purposes, and will support UN organizations
India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale
- ‘The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius’
NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.
“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.
“And as a nation ... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.
Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.
And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data center in the same city.
Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.
But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.
“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometers wide.
Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.
“It’s not just about the data centers,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre for major investors.
