Unite against growing drug-terror nexus: PM Modi at G20 summit

Calling the global spread of lethal synthetic drugs the “new fuel of terrorism”, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday urged G20 leaders in Johannesburg to unite against the growing drug-terror nexus, warning that fentanyl-driven networks were destabilising societies and financing extremist groups worldwide.

Addressing the opening session of the summit, Modi said the world was confronting a crisis “far more insidious than past narcotics chains”, with newer chemicals, digital supply routes and cross-border cartels creating a security threat that could no longer be viewed merely as a public health problem.

India, he said, was proposing a G20 initiative on countering the drug-terror nexus to bring together instruments of finance, governance and security under one coordinated global framework.

“Extremely lethal drugs, especially fentanyl, are spreading rapidly. This poses a serious challenge to public health, social stability and global security. It has also become a major source of financing for terrorism,” he cautioned, calling for the world’s major economies to adopt a unified approach before the crisis becomes unmanageable.

The three-day-long G20 Leaders’ Summit, 2025, began on Friday where PM Modi used the high-table forum to push a mix of hard security concerns, long-term developmental frameworks and cultural-civilisational ideas — a blend likely to shape the G20’s discourse in the year ahead.

Striking a strong India-Africa chord, Modi said empowering the continent’s youth was in the world’s collective interest and proposed a G20-Africa Skills Multiplier Initiative under which G20 nations would jointly finance and train one million certified trainers in Africa over the next decade.

The trainers would then skill millions more, creating what he described as a “true multiplier effect” for long-term capacity-building.

He reminded leaders that the African Union’s permanent membership at the New Delhi G20 summit was only the beginning, urging that the voice of the Global South must be amplified in all international institutions. “India-Africa solidarity has always been strong,” he said, adding that Africa hosting the summit for the first time was a moment to “redefine global development priorities”.

In another key proposal, Modi called for establishing a G20 Global Healthcare Response Team — a multinational pool of trained medical experts ready for rapid deployment in any future health emergency or natural disaster. The experience of the pandemic, he said, made it clear that preparedness could not remain a national endeavour alone.

Modi used the Africa-hosted summit to question the world’s economic trajectory, saying decades of growth had left large sections of humanity deprived while encouraging unsustainable exploitation of nature. Africa, he said, had paid a disproportionate price for a development model shaped elsewhere.

To counter this imbalance, the PM rooted his argument in India’s civilisational concept of integral humanism, calling for humans, society and nature to be viewed as a single, integrated whole.

As a practical step, he proposed the creation of a Global Traditional Knowledge Repository within the G20, supported by India’s Indian Knowledge Systems, to preserve and transmit humanity’s collective ecological and cultural wisdom. “These traditions carry cultural memory, social cohesion and a deep respect for nature. They reflect remarkably sustainable lifestyles,” he told global leaders.