Bhutan (2) -- Analyses -- 2010

More about SAARC

28.04.2010

The SAARC is a regional forum launched in 1985 with eight countries in South Asian region. The forum has the mandate to work for some important areas like agriculture, rural development, health, transport, science and technology, telecommunications, meteorology, sports, arts and culture. Dhaka, the Bangladesh capital hosted the first SAARC summit on December 7-8 (1985).
Thimphu summit will primarily highlight the issue of climate change and theme of the summit will be ‘Conservation of Environment and Climate’ and also issues like poverty reduction, connectivity and sharing of water resources, quoting the Bhutanese ambassador to Bangladesh Dasho Bap Kesang, the media reported.
Mentionable that this is the first time, Bhutan has organized the SAARC summit and it’s the 25 years of its existence of the regional political forum too. Transformed into a multiparty democracy two years back, the Himalayan nation earlier was skipped of the opportunity for various reasons including the lack of infrastructure and logistic support in Thimphu.
The summit, where observers from China, Iran, Japan, Australia, Mauritius, Burma, South Korea with the European Union and United States will be present, is supposed to provide adequate space for discussion on its theme of climate change. The summit will greatly enhance Bhutan’s international image as a sovereign, independent, responsible and equal member country of SAARC, expressed the Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigmi Y Thinley. Talking to media recently, the prime minister also added that in Thimphu was now preparing ‘in terms of the administration, infrastructure and the foreign ministry being ready to host the summit’. Kuensel, the pioneer newspaper of Bhutan has made some critical comments in one of its editorials on the performance of SAARC, saying that the regional grouping had been lambasted for getting nowhere after all these years and ‘is often compared to other regional groupings that started much later but have moved far ahead’.
“Home to almost 1.5 billion people, the SAARC region is extremely rich in history and culture, yet has millions of people living in extreme poverty. One of the founding goals of the SAARC regional cooperation was to improve the quality of life of South Asians, specifically to address poverty through improved economic cooperation. Unfortunately, very little has happened with regional politics generally casting the long dark shadow,” the editorial commented.

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