As SAARC celebrates the 40th landmark birthday, the historic occasion may provide a fine context to resume engagements at a higher level.
The overall world trend is that global multilateral institutions, despite their importance, are increasingly facing difficulties to function due to growing geopolitical rivalries and contestation. Whereas, there is an increased focus on regional and plurilateral agreements as a means of finding modus operandi of cooperation and co-existence.
Today marks the historic 40thCharter Day of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The SAARC Charter was signed on December 8, 1985 at the first ever SAARC Summit in Dhaka and hence, December 8 is deemed to be the day of SAARC’s foundation and is also celebrated as the SAARC Charter Day every year. As this important initiative of regional cooperation is set to complete four decades and given the challenges it is facing in the past few years, it becomes pertinent to reflect upon the foundational imperatives and aspirations of the Organization, its achievements, its standing today, and the way ahead.
The creation of SAARC in 1985 was rooted in the noble desire of the region’s leaders to promote peace, stability, amity and progress in the region. While getting into this historic task of setting the substructure of regional cooperation, the leaders then wisely remained “conscious that in an increasingly interdependent world, the objectives of peace, freedom, social justice and economic prosperity are best achieved in the South Asia region by fostering mutual understanding, good neighbourly relations and meaningful cooperation among the Member States which are bound by ties of history and culture”[SAARC Charter]. They were strongly “convinced that regional cooperation among the countries of South Asia is mutually beneficial, desirable and necessary” [SAARC Charter]. The leaders determined that promoting welfare of the peoples of South Asia and improving their quality of life would be the top objective of SAARC as a regional organization. These strong imperatives and the well-meaning objectives are still relevant as SAARC enters the 40th milestone year of its existence.
The high aspirations spelled out in the Charter testifies the high level of expectations, on the part of leadership and people alike, that the process of regional cooperation instituted in the region would yield positive results and contribute to elevate the region’s socio-economic stature through collective endeavours. The phenomena of geographic contiguity, cultural and civilizational proximity, and the long history of intra-regional exchanges of peoples and pilgrims, traders and tourists, saints and sages provided the solid precedence and served as irrefutable enablers to usher the notion of regional cooperation in modernized form.
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It is true that in 40 years of its functioning, SAARC may have earned a mixed grade in the assessment of its performance against the foundational promises. It is equally true that an inter-governmental process, directed and driven by member states, can only function to the level that they intend, permit and empower to do. In the past 40 years, member states have made a lot of investment in nurturing and reinforcing the SAARC process; in building the structure and the institutions. For example, the idea of a regional project-funding mechanism (SAARC Development Fund) or a regional institute of world-class higher education (South Asian University) or regional food security mechanism (SAARC Food Bank) are quite sophisticated. South Asia is one of the few regions in the world to be able to materialize these dream institutions.
SAARC has ascertained priority areas of cooperation and modalities of such cooperation are fairly well-developed. The areas range, for example, from the grandiose vision of achieving South Asian Economic Union to the matters that concern people’s immediate needs such as access to health and education.Other priority areas include trade and connectivity, energy and environment, agriculture and food security, youths, women and children, migration, science and technology, terrorism and trans-national crimes, tourism and culture, and governance. If pursued with collective will and due sincerity, these priority agendas have the potential to transform the socio-economic landscape of the region.
The network of regional centres and specialized bodies are also quite advanced, and they can significantly contribute to bring about positive impacts in the lives of people at grassroots level. These regional centres and specialized bodies have been established to serve the region in the vital areas like agriculture, trade promotion through standard setting and arbitration, health through control and prevention of common diseases, energy cooperation and environment, disaster management and promotion of cultural connection. A matter of pride for SAARC, the structures, institutions and the normative framework it developed over the years are being followed by some of the other regional organizations in their process of institutional strengthening. Above all, SAARC has provided a platform to engage among member states even at a time of difficult bilateral situations. Particularly on the sidelines of the higher SAARC meetings, bilateral conversations are enabled, which might otherwise not have happened.
By all means, in these four decades, SAARC has earned the success in becoming a term of population parlance among the common people as well as professionals in the region. Emergence in the past of regional professional platforms such as SAARC Teachers Federation, Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature, SAARC Diploma Engineers Forum, SAARC Federation of Oncologists, SAARC Academy of Ophthalmology, SAARC Surgical Care Society and many more affirm the kind of popular brand SAARC has become. These and several other organizations once served as SAARC Apex Bodies or SAARC Recognized Bodies.
In its more active days, it was seen that SAARC could become a solid embodiment of South Asian identity, regional solidarity and the carrier of the voice and sentiment of South Asia internationally. Active SAARC has, therefore, the potential to integrate the region on economic, social and cultural terms – and above all, in terms of the people’s sentiments. The vision of the leaders from this region of a South Asian Economic Union in a phased and planned manner through the creation of a free trade area, a customs union, a common market, and a common economic and monetary union is still pertinent. Besides, the growing number and magnitude of the challenges the region confronts today including the unique impacts of climate change in the high mountains and coastal areas, and the vast ecosystem in between, necessitates even stronger regional collaboration.
The overall world trend is that global multilateral institutions, despite their importance, are increasingly facing difficulties to function due to growing geopolitical rivalries and contestation. Whereas, there is an increased focus on regional and plurilateral agreements as a means of finding modus operandi of cooperation and co-existence. For example, increased interest on G-20, addition of BRICS membership, and expansion of Shanghai Cooperation Organization are some of the developments pointing to this direction. At a time when importance and relevance of regional cooperation is growing in other parts of the world, it becomes sensible for South Asia too to push gear on the SAARC process. After all, this region has no substitute for SAARC.
In the past one year, there have been some positive developments. The SAARC Programming Committee that comprises heads of SAARC Division in Foreign/External Affairs Ministries held its in-person session after a gap of four years in March this year. Governing mechanisms of all regional centres and specialized bodies have held annual meetings, outlining their annual programmes and activities. In specific sectors like climate change, health and education, sustainable development, customs, regional integration and connectivity,working level initiatives are moving on, including in cooperation with external partners like Asian Development Bank. Nonetheless, in absence of higher level engagements, other things are yet to gain the desired degree of strength, impetus and directives.
As SAARC celebrates the 40th landmark birthday, the historic occasion may provide a fine context to resume engagements at a higher level. After a gap of several years, a question may naturally arise: where should we restart from? Prudence dictates that the restart should happen with something easy, more comfortable and takes less time to decide on and prepare for. And this something might be an informal retreat of the foreign secretaries of the SAARC member states. For a re-beginning, such informal set-up provides ease and a level of comfort. In such retreat, free floating of ideas could be encouraged without being confined by the perimeter of specified agendas. After all, what is now needed is the restart of the engine, not necessarily an immediate high gear breakthrough in big agendas.
Happy Birthday, SAARC!
(The author is the director at SAARC Secretariat. Views expressed in this article are personal)
