SAARC and South Asia

Part of the global South, South Asian states share a colonized past and cultural affinity that makes it a classic ‘region’ with a regional organization, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). Founded in Dhaka, Bangladesh on 8 December 1985, its members include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, the Maldives, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and comprises 3.8% (US$2.9 trillion) of the global economy. SAARC maintains permanent diplomatic relations at the United Nations as an observer and has developed links with multilateral entities, including the European Union. Australia, China, the European Union, Iran, Japan, Mauritius, Myanmar, South Korea and the United States enjoy observer status. Myanmar has expressed interest in upgrading its status from an observer to a full member of SAARC. Russia and Turkey have applied for observer status membership of SAARC and South Africa has participated in meetings. The increasing ‘non-regional’ nature of its membership is a clear indication of the significance of ‘South Asia’ as a region and of SAARC as a regional initiative.

In 1983 at the international conference held in Dhaka by its Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the foreign ministers of the seven core states adopted the Declaration of SAARC and formally launched the Integrated Programme of Action (IPA) initially in five agreed areas of cooperation namely, Agriculture; Rural Development; Telecommunications; Meteorology; and Health and Population Activities. Since then, in the past twenty six years, SAARC has progressed significantly. SAARC members have advocated revival  of  the  organization  by  moving  from  just  the  issuance  of  declarations  to  practical  implementation  of  policies particularly in the fields of economics and trade. Another field of success has been terrorism. The  SAARC  Convention  on  Suppression  of  Terrorism  was  signed  in  1987  and  later  the  Additional Protocol  on  Terrorism  was  signed  taking  into  account  the  terrorist  financing  structure.  This was in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1373.  The  Additional  Protocol  on  Terrorism  was  adopted  in  2005  after much  debate  and  discussion  on  the  definition  of  terrorism. Over the years SAARC has also given priority to social and economic issues like poverty alleviation with inclusion of strategies like

•  Social mobilization
• Access to  education, safe  drinking  water
• Health  services
• Nutrition
• Policy  of  agricultural  development
• Labour-intensive  industrialization
• Human resource  development.

The  formation  of  SAARC  was  a  landmark  step  taken  by  the  leaders  of  the  region to  develop  a  conducive  co-operative environment in South Asia. However, even after more  than  two  decades  of  its  establishment,   the South  Asian  states  have  neither been  able  to  move forward with the process  of integration  nor  promote  harmony  and economic  integration  for  preventing  conflicts  in  the  region. Further, while a free trade region, South Asian Free Trade Area (SAFTA) was launched in 2006, the emerging significance of regional connectivity corridors like BIMSTEC, BBIN and BCIM-EC and the fact that SAFTA agreements were never followed in practise has brought it into question.

While this and the increasing overlap between ‘regional’ organizations on the one hand and emergence of large scale infrastructural projects creating regions of their own, on the other, tends to signal a reduced significance of SAARC, Dialogue invites responses to whether Asian regional organizations like SAARC remain important in the present context.

-Shaivi Sen and Srishti Maitra