The sixteenth SAARC summit
Wednesday, 28 April 2010
The two-day sixteenth summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) begins today in the Bhutanese capital Thimpu, coinciding with the 25th birthday of the regional forum. The pre-summit meetings at the levels of foreign secretaries and foreign ministries were held to finalise the issues that the heads of state and government would discuss and decide on during the summit meeting. This year, the summiteers are expected to focus mainly on two issues: one, on trade in services and the other, on convention on cooperation in environment management and sign two accords in this connection. The permanent secretariat of the SAARC Development Fund (SDF) will also be inaugurated on the first day of the summit. The Fund, formed with an initial capital of $300 million, will serve as the umbrella financial institution for all SAARC projects.
The SAARC leaders on the sidelines of the summit meeting are expected to discuss among themselves the issues of political and economic relevance to the South Asia. The summit would also provide an opportunity to the leaders to discuss informally their bilateral issues that the SAARC charter does not permit them to take up in the SAARC forum. Since the period of twenty-five years is a pretty long time for any entity to show or indicate its worth, it would not be out of place to look at what the SAARC has delivered in terms of socio-economic benefits to 1.5 billion plus population of the region. Many tend to liken the SAARC to a talking shop-most regional and global forums have, actually, proved to be so, mainly because of the political mistrust among some of its members. To avoid stand-offs, a number of objectives that had been originally conceived of were dropped from the SAARC charter adopted in Dhaka in 1985.
The SAARC leaders this time have chosen to deal, mainly, with trade cooperation and socio-economic development issues. Unfortunately, the performance of SAARC in those areas has not been up to the expectations of the peoples of the member countries while some other regional trade cooperation forums have flourished, the ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) being in the forefront. The trade cooperation talks dragged on for years together as a number of big and influential members were not that willing to open up their markets to products from the least developed members of the South Asia cooperation forum. Though the members managed to strike a deal on a free trade area in the middle of the last decade, not much progress could be achieved in boosting trade between the SAARC member nations. Here, too, the political relations have come into play and clouded the prospects in enhancing the trade cooperation.
For instance, Bangladesh, being a least developed country (LDC) does deserve trade concessions from the relatively affluent member countries of SAARC. But non-tariff and para-tariff barriers are being erected to obstruct entry of its products to those markets. Besides trade, the cooperation in areas of agriculture, human resource development, food security etc., has failed to meet the expectations despite the fact the South Asian leaders during all past summit meetings pledged to speed up the pace of cooperation in all these areas. The current summit, thus, provides the leaders yet another opportunity to review their achievements made so far in the context of the objectives incorporated into the SAARC charter and do the needful to make up for the failures in the past years. The leaders do need to remember the fact that a vast majority of their populations are still mired in abject poverty and they are pledge-bound to ensure basic minimum necessities to the poor through their collective efforts.
The SAARC leaders on the sidelines of the summit meeting are expected to discuss among themselves the issues of political and economic relevance to the South Asia. The summit would also provide an opportunity to the leaders to discuss informally their bilateral issues that the SAARC charter does not permit them to take up in the SAARC forum. Since the period of twenty-five years is a pretty long time for any entity to show or indicate its worth, it would not be out of place to look at what the SAARC has delivered in terms of socio-economic benefits to 1.5 billion plus population of the region. Many tend to liken the SAARC to a talking shop-most regional and global forums have, actually, proved to be so, mainly because of the political mistrust among some of its members. To avoid stand-offs, a number of objectives that had been originally conceived of were dropped from the SAARC charter adopted in Dhaka in 1985.
The SAARC leaders this time have chosen to deal, mainly, with trade cooperation and socio-economic development issues. Unfortunately, the performance of SAARC in those areas has not been up to the expectations of the peoples of the member countries while some other regional trade cooperation forums have flourished, the ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations) being in the forefront. The trade cooperation talks dragged on for years together as a number of big and influential members were not that willing to open up their markets to products from the least developed members of the South Asia cooperation forum. Though the members managed to strike a deal on a free trade area in the middle of the last decade, not much progress could be achieved in boosting trade between the SAARC member nations. Here, too, the political relations have come into play and clouded the prospects in enhancing the trade cooperation.
For instance, Bangladesh, being a least developed country (LDC) does deserve trade concessions from the relatively affluent member countries of SAARC. But non-tariff and para-tariff barriers are being erected to obstruct entry of its products to those markets. Besides trade, the cooperation in areas of agriculture, human resource development, food security etc., has failed to meet the expectations despite the fact the South Asian leaders during all past summit meetings pledged to speed up the pace of cooperation in all these areas. The current summit, thus, provides the leaders yet another opportunity to review their achievements made so far in the context of the objectives incorporated into the SAARC charter and do the needful to make up for the failures in the past years. The leaders do need to remember the fact that a vast majority of their populations are still mired in abject poverty and they are pledge-bound to ensure basic minimum necessities to the poor through their collective efforts.