1.
Background
Belongs
the pride of ancient civilization South Asia today contains
more than 1.3 billion populations or about one-fifth of the
world’s population. In respect to geo-political context this
sub-continent stretching from the
Indian
Ocean in the south of the world’s highest range of
mountains, the 2600 kilometers long Himalayans, in the
north. The major countries of this region are namely India,
Pakistan de-colonized from the British rule in 1947 and
Bangladesh
earned independence from Pakistan in 1971. On the other hand
Sri Lanka gained its independence in 1948 through some
advantageous institutional features such as an
administrative structure and democratic tradition.
Historically Nepal has always maintained its independent
identify based on its own hilly culture. Because of being
surrounded by major countries like China, India and now
Bangladesh with divergent culture, religion and political
overtones, Nepal has always been eager to maintain political
neutrality. Bhutan, the land of thunder-dragon, is a small
land locked monarchy on the southern slope of the
Himalayans.
Each
country of this region is rich in own heritage and culture
and have unique component of a shared glorious past. Though
the vastness, biological and cultural diversity, location
and natural surroundings made this region as the most
attractive peninsula on the Earth, but its level of economic
development, in comparison to other countries, is minimal.
Almost 50% of the world’s poor and illiterate people live in
this region. It shares a very small percentage of world
trade, less than 2%, its share to export is less than 1%,
where as military spending rose in the region by 12% between
1984 and 1994 compared to less than 2% growth in the ASEAN
region.
In one
hand this region is endowed with huge natural resources, on
the other hand this region suffered with social and
political unrest, low economic progress, low literacy rate,
insufficient health facilities and extreme poverty, which
resulting wide gap between class of people i.e. very low
percentage elite and rich people and a large proportion of
growing middle class. Therefore this region is characterized
by the unjust distribution of these resources, resulting in
deep rooted inequality, conflict, destitution and systematic
marginalization. This unequal distribution of resources is
encountered by various communities within the region.
Political systems are also uneven – ranging from military
regimes, limited democracies and democracies in transition.
Even within democracies, democratic cultures and
institutions remain weak and their autonomous functioning is
questionable.
In most
of
South
Asia,
minority communities feel unprotected and are still looking
for adequate representation. A history of violation of
minority rights has left the minorities of
South
Asia
insecure and vulnerable. In many regions of
South
Asia, these minorities are amongst the most poor and
excluded.
From the
above geo-political background SAARC is formed to achieve
economical progress in Seven Countries of South Asian
Region. In 1985 by developing a SAARC Charter, the chief of
the state and government of seven South Asian countries
including
Bangladesh, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC) starts her journey to develop the socio-economic
conditions of 14 millions people of the South Asia.
The
strategic view point of SAARC was to progress ‘Regional
Development’ and its activities would be limited to
non-political, multilateral socio-economic aspects. It will
work basically a) to ensure welfare and develop living
standard of 14 millions South Asian people, b) to accelerate
social and economical development and ensure opportunity to
live with dignity of every people, c) to cooperate the
integrated self-reliance initiatives among the SAARC
countries, d) to increase mutual cooperation in economical
and technical areas and e) to build up cooperative relation
with other international institutions and organisations on
the similar issues.
But it
has failed to initiate effective measures to alleviate
poverty and to develop living standard of the people of this
region after two decades of its inception. Mistrust,
internal conflicts, insurgency etc have made SAARC only a
ritual event of the South Asian country leaders. The sprit
of SAARC ‘development through cooperation’ has turned to a
meaningless commitment. South Asian countries spent USD
25000 million only for arms imports as
South
Asia imports 20 percent of arms traded worldwide. Therefore,
the competition of militarization, arms and power
competition, unstable democracy etc. are increasingly
violating people’s fundamental rights, human rights and
consequently increasing poverty and vulnerability.
Poverty
alleviation was one of the major commitments of SAARC, but
reality is, still 40 percent South Asian people are living
under poverty line. Almost all the summit discussed
strategies of poverty reduction as priority basis and also
formed a Commission under the leadership of P.K Bhottorai,
the Ex- Nepalese Prime Minister. This commission prepared a
strategic report for poverty reduction, which has been
adopted at Dhaka SAARC Summit in 1993 with a commitment of
poverty eradication by 2002. Therefore the commitment of the
South Asian country leaders come under a big question; would
they really be able to materialize expectations, dreams of
South Asian people? Or would it be limited only to
declaration and observing cultural ceremonies? In 1989, as
per proposal of Benzir Bhutto, the ex-prime minister of
Pakistan, the SAARC countries declared that year ‘SAARC Girl
Child Year. Still girl child in all the seven countries are
facing social and economical discrimination, they are
increasingly being victimized by early marriage, trafficking
and risky labors. Till date, the only success of SAARC is
the formation of SAFTA, the step of making South Asia as a
Free Trade Zone. Development of free trade mechanism
certainly will contribute to the country’s GDP growth but it
might not have positive impact on sustainable poverty
reduction unless developing an effective and country
specific re-distribution policy. Again, the prior concern of
free trade is the development of equal capacities of
involved parties in production and distribution process.
It would
be very difficult to bring dynamism at SAARC if there is no
specific and perfect direction on these conflictive issues.
In this regard, we wish to submit the following demands to
the leaders of SAARC to build up an effective center of
regional cooperation.
1
2.
Limitations of SAARC Charter and its Conflict with
Development Goals
The
SAARC Charter clearly reflects the political crises in the
South Asian countries. It was thought that SAARC would help
building regional cooperation amidst of these political
crises and conflicts. Despite having country specific
individual strategies on sovereignty and foreign policy of
the South Asian countries, the country leaders tried to
develop a common platform for regional interest through
forming SAARC. But presently it has been thought that the
political dissidence of the member counties is the prime
factor that made SAARC ineffective. The other regional
organizations like ASEAN, EU are pioneering their interest
as the members of these organizations have minimum level of
political dissidence in relation to their national security
and sovereignty. But SAARC member countries, very
cautiously, are avoiding this fact.
Beside
these, SAARC also have the following limitations in relation
to poverty eradication.
-
The prime objective of SAARC is to reduce poverty but till
it didn’t analyze the very nature and dimension of country
specific and well as regional poverty of the South Asian
countries
-
SAARC charter will discuss multi-lateral issues but there
have bi-lateral issues which need to address for sustainable
poverty reduction and establishing peace and prosperity.
-
SAARC could not make member countries bound to implement the
measures/actions as described or identified in Charter.
3.
SAARC Leaders should have a Common Mindset.
To
strengthen internal cooperation SAARC leaders should have a
common mindset. More than two decades have passed but still
have vague scope of mutual cooperation because when one
country proposes other one strongly considers it as
unilateral benefit. The energy and water resources of Nepal
and Bhutan and its application in production and equal
benefit sharing could be one of the scopes for development
of internal collaboration. Due to suspicion and reservation
it was not able to create a common platform for all. To
fortify and pace of advancement in geometric rate SAARC
leaders should have common will to keep away from their
state of mind.
2
4.
Human Development Index (HDI) and SAARC:
Bangladesh
is Close to the Lowest Position
The 13th
SAARC Summit held in
Dhaka
declared the next decade, 2006-2015 as poverty alleviation
decade in a view to step up urgent measures to alleviate
poverty through integrated efforts of SAARC Countries. Total
22 SAARC Development Goals (SDGs) for 4 prime sector e.g.
reducing hard core poverty, health, education and
environment have been adopted in line of UN Millennium Goals
(MDGs). Dhaka Declaration has failed to initiate effective
measures due to lack of sector wise indicators to measure
poverty eradication intensity which have been indicated in
MDGs
