SAFMA conference ends focusing on poverty issue

---

COLOMBO, Aug 19 (UNB): The two-day conference of the South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) ended here Sunday with a resolution to bring into focus rampant poverty in the region and support pro-poor, poor-centred strategies of eradicating poverty at grassroots level by breaking anti-people power nexuses.
"The poverty is the most serious issue that has to be handled both at national and regional level. The South Asian region has all the resources. Economies are growing but poverty is also worsening," noted SAFMA, a SAARC-affiliated body of journalists.
Its observations came in the Colombo Declaration adopted at the conclusion day of the conference on Media, Peace and Poverty Alleviation in South Asia.
Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ratnasri Wickramanayake inaugurated the conference while Nobel Laureate Mohammad Yunus delivered the keynote speech as guest of honour.
About 250 senior journalists from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka attended the meet.
The declaration identified increasing defence budgets and heavy debts as two major contributing factors to the phenomenon of worsening poverty despite economic growth.
"Therefore, we demand an early resolution of all conflicts and a considerable moratorium by the lending agencies and countries for the repayments of the debts," the declaration states.
It observed that globalisation has increased social vulnerability in South Asia and has seen deterioration of conditions on job market and food security.
The Colombo Declaration calls upon SAARC member-countries to ultimately move towards South Asian Human Security by placing people, their well-being and rights to peaceful life and development at the centre of the security concerns rather than intensifying the arms race.
It also urges the governments in South Asia to take concrete steps to implement the SAARC Social Charter and give priority to poverty eradication.
The declaration extends support to democratic aspirations and ongoing struggles of the people in those countries of the region where fundamental rights and democratic values are either under attack or are yet to be introduced or restored.
"We demand restoration of full-fledged democracy, independence of the judiciary, the rule of law and media freedom," the declaration of the conference states.
The meet condemned the punitive and prohibitive measures taken by both state and non-state factors against the media and demand undiluted media freedom, right to know and freedom of expression in all countries in the region.