Calling for a shared response against extremism, French President Francois Hollande today asked corporate leaders to join the global fight against terror and also urged the international community to resolve existing conflicts.
Addressing participants at the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meet, weeks after his country witnessed one of the worst terror attacks, Hollande said there should be a shared response by both governments and businesses to terrorism.
"You, the lifeblood of the economic world, the biggest bosses of companies around the world, I ask you not only to be watchful but to also get involved," Hollande said here.
"I call on the financial system to ensure that the sources of financing for terrorists are dried up," he added.
Two weeks after attacks in Paris against magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket killed 17, Hollande said it was not only France that was attacked, "freedom itself was attacked".
"It is the very foundation of our society which has found itself under assault," he added.
Terrorism fuels itself by way of illicit flows of drugs, money and people, he said. "Terrorists are also using the Internet as a weapon of indoctrination, manipulation and confusion".
He also urged "major digital corporations to play their role, to identify illegal content and to make them inaccessible and to establish clear rules, because you are also stakeholders".
"You cannot have prosperity without security," said the French leader.
Europe must strengthen its border protection, enhance its tracking capabilities and invest in cyber defence and cyber security, he said.
According to him, the international community needs to do more to resolve existing conflicts and stabilise simmering global hotspots.
"Every time the world lets a conflict linger, terrorism flourishes... France will always be present. Whenever it can act, it will," Hollande said.
