SAARC: A glimpse

By Rudra Sharma

When the member states formally adopted the Charter of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) on December 8,1995, the regional organisation was established with the objectives of accelerating the process of economic and social development among the member states. Its evolution, indeed, cost a lot of lobbying at regional and international levels. Ten summits of SAARC have been concluded and the 11th summit is scheduled to be held on Jan 4-6. Now, SAARC has a comprehensive organisational structure. The following table on the right shows its general organisational structure and Summits held so far respectively.

The apex body of SAARC is the Summit that meets annually comprising the Heads of the State or Government. Next to the Summit are the Council of Ministers comprising the Foreign Ministers of the member states. The Council is responsible for formulating policies; reviewing progress; deciding on new areas of Cooperation and the additional mechanism as deemed necessary. Similarly, next to the Council of Minister, adhoc ministerial meetings sometimes may be held, otherwise there is standing committee comprising foreign secretaries of the member state who are collectively entrusted with the task of overall monitoring and co-ordination of the modalities.

After the Standing Committee, there are the Technical Committees comprising the representatives of the member states which are tasked with the formulating programmes and preparing projects in their respective fields. There are several Technical Committees and Integrated Programmes of Action on various subjects like agriculture, education, health and so on.

Another prominent feature of the SAARC organisational structure relates to its regional centres. They are: SAARC Agricultural Information Centre (SAIC), SAARC Tuberculosis Centre (STC), SAARC Documentation Centre (SDC), SAARC Meteorogiacal Research Centre (SMRC) and SAARC Human Resource Development Centre (SHRDC).

More importantly, SAARC has accomplished some important conventions and agreements. Some of them are SAARC Convention on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic substances, SAARC Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism and Agreement on SAARC Preferential Trading Organization (SAPTA).

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