Eradicate Poverty and Injustices by Building Bridges and Connecting People
PEOPLE’S SAARC-2011
Press Release
November 10, 2011, Addu City, Maldives
The 17th South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit that is being held in Addu City, Maldives on 10-11 November 2011 is expected to ink several deals covering the areas of food security, collective response in natural disasters as well as trade, customs and good governance. This year’s summit appropriately titled “Building Bridges” by the host nation, strives to improve communication and collaboration among the eight members of the South Asian grouping.
We, at the Peoples’ SAARC, a parallel process to the official SAARC aimed at presenting the South Asian civil societies’ collective voices on pressing regional issues, have convened a series of country processes to evolve consensus on the future direction of the SAARC and consolidated the outcomes of these country initiatives into this regional Civil Society Memorandum which is submitted today to the official 17th SAARC Summit for its urgent consideration.
The Summit is taking place at a time when South Asian states are beginning to look inward to realize the region’s immense political, economic, and diplomatic potential. This is reflected in a number of initiatives undertaken by the SAARC countries to forge closer alliances to harness these potentials. While the agenda of economic and social development might have moved up as a priority item for the SAARC countries, South Asian states, at the same time, continue to veer towards their aspirations for superior military might which prompts them to scale up their military budget, diverting resources away from developmental goals, thereby compromising the basic living standards of a large section of the region’s population.
As the representative of the civil society of the South Asian states, we believe the SAARC process should be more pro-people and committed to eradicating of poverty and injustices through regional developmental processes. In the outset, we do underline the need for the SAARC to expand its ambit to cover all areas of political, environmental, economic, social, and human rights, peace, and justice spheres of the South Asian region. The SAARC must also strengthen its structures to deliver on the aspirations for growth and progress of the people of South Asia through the creation of an enabling environment for enhancing connectivity of the common people and by building mutual trust and easing visa regime that ensures (barrier) free mobility of people across the region.
The potential of the region should be harnessed through an equitable share of natural resources between nations and within nations to eradicate poverty and reduce the income gap by drastically dropping wasteful expenditure on militarization and relocating resources for human and social development. We understand that the guarantee of informed and effective participation of indigenous people, minorities and marginalized sections of society in all spheres of life is cardinal to development, peace, justice, and regional harmony.
We demand that the rights of migrant workers and their families as well as refugees should be protected by immediately ratifying relevant international instruments and creating appropriate regional mechanisms. Similarly, the long-cherished regional human rights mechanism should be established without further delay in conformity with the principles of universally accepted standards, norms, and values in order to safeguard and promote the human rights of people in the region. We also urge the SAARC member states to consider creating an independent climate commission with a view to promoting more effective mitigation and adaptation programs to curtail the adversarial impacts of climate change. We would also like to see the establishment of a regional monitoring body with a mandate to assess the compliance of the member states in installing, safeguarding, and institutionalizing democratic governance based on the provisions of the proposed SAARC “Democracy Charter”.
Since women bear the brunt of all forms of inequality and rights violation, the SAARC must adopt every possible measure to ensure zero tolerance for violence against women and exhaust an enabling environment to promote women’s economic security and leadership in decision-making, peace-building, security, and conflict transformation endeavors. Finally, SAARC should encourage the member states to adopt competent and credible constitutional‚ legal, and administrative frameworks to end all forms of discrimination, displacement, deprivation, and the deeply rooted culture of impunity to secure a better future for the billions of inhabitants of the region.
Signed
Dr. Gopal Krishna Siwakoti
People’s SAARC Secretariat
Kathmandu, Nepal
Tel. +977 1 4004507, Fax: +977 1 4004508
URL: http://www.peoplesaarc.org
Mr. Ahmed Nizam
President, Maldives NGO Federation
2nd FL – G. Uthurubin, Alikilegefaanu Magu
Male, Republic of Maldives
Tel: +960 3345818, Fax: +960 3345817
