SAARC initiatives on
Regional cooperation--3
Q.A.M.A Rahim, Secretary-
General of SAARC
The eleventh Summit also mandated me to
prepare a Regional Poverty Profile (RPP). The RPP which is expected to be completed by the
end of this year would, among other things, provide an up-to-date pen picture of the
poverty situation in the region, including its recent trends and future projections; serve
as a monitoring tool as far as the poverty scenarios of the SAARC Member States are
concerned; enable governments to tackle poverty in a systematic manner; serve as an
advocacy tool to stir up policymaker's into action; an act as a policy tool to promote
regional cooperation, especially with regard to designing a regional program/project for
tackling poverty.
The eleventh Summit underlined the urgent
need to make the South Asian Development Fund (SADE) effectively operational by utilizing
the exciting resources for implementation of specific priority regional poverty
alleviation projects.they also instructed me to explore the possibility of obtaining
assistance from regional and international sources for the implementation of such project
.I have initiated the process of dialogue with regional and international founding
sources, namely the world bank and the Asian Development Bank and various interested UN
agencies. However, in the absence of any specific project found it rather difficult to
pursue this initiative. Therefore, we at the Secretariat with our limited technical
expertise came up with some project ideas dealing with education, healthcare, micro-credit
and renewable energy, and presented these to the Council for its consideration. I am glad
to say that the Council endorsed my proposal of utilizing funds under the Third Window of
SADF on priority projects for regional poverty alleviation and accordingly directed the
Seventh Meeting of the Governing Board of SADF to consider the feasibility and the
modalities of financing of the projects proposed by me. It may be mentioned that the
recently held Seventh Meeting of the Governing Board of SADF in Kathmandu in September
2002 accordingly considered these proposals and decided to commission a feasibility study
on a comprehensive poverty alleviation project with all the elements of our project ideas.
Once we have the study, and if Member States are willing to implement these as regional
projects, it would be easier for me to pursue additional funding from outside the region
for implementing the projects.
III. Social issues: You all
will appreciate that economic development can’t be sustained by neglecting social
issues. Over the years SAARC has devoted much attention on cooperation in the fields of
health, education, women and children. A focus on child development and health related
issues under the broad heading of Health and Population Activities was one of the original
five areas of cooperation decided by Member States, even before the formal launching of
SAARC in 1985. The primary focus of the Technical committee thus set up in 1984 was on
maternal and child health, primary health care, disabled and handicapped persons,
controlling and combating major diseases in the region, such as Malaria, Leprosy,
Tuberculosis, Diarrhea, Rabies and AIDS. These issues are now addressed under the
Technical Committee on Social Development. The SAARC Tuberculosis center, STC, established
in Kathmandu in 1992 is playing an important role in the prevention and control of
tuberculosis in the SAARC region by coordinating the efforts of the National TB Control
Programs of the member states. A SAARC project with the Canadian International Development
Agency, CIDA, aims to enhance the capacity of STC to coordinate the joint efforts of the
SAARC countries in meeting a major concern of the region—the combined toll of TB and
AIDS.
Women: Initiatives under the area of women in
development included pursuing a Regional Plan of Action for Women, publishing the SAARC
solidarity journals on specific themes on women, highlighting the plight of the Girl Child
in South Asia, and holding gender related workshops, seminars and training programs.
Concerned at the trafficking of women and
children within and between countries, member countries signed a Regional Convention on
Combating the Crime of Trafficking in Women and Children for prostitution on 5 January
2002 during the eleventh summit. The Convention calls for cooperation among member states
so that they may effectively deal with the various aspects of prevention. Interdiction and
suppression of trafficking in women and children for prostitution, of repatriation and
rehabilitation of victims of trafficking, and of prevention of use of women in
international prostitution networks, particularly where the countries of SAARC region are
the countries of origin, transit and destination.
Children: The development and well being of
children are principle areas of cooperation identified by SAARC from its very inception.
The objective of building a region-wide consensus on social action for achieving the
rights of the child was addressed during the three ministerial conferences on children
health in Delhi in 1986, Colombo in 1992 and Rawalpindi in 1996.
Pursuant to the decision of the Ninth Summit,
the SAARC Convention on regional arrangements on the promotion of child welfare in South
Asia was signed on 5 January 2002 during the eleventh Summit. The purposes and objectives
of the convention include facilitating and helping in the development and protection of
full potential of the South Asian child. Accordingly, the summit directed the council of
ministers, inter-alia, to (a) take necessary measures to ensure the enjoyment by girl
child of her inherent potential, and (b) take concrete steps to give priority to investing
in children as an effective means for poverty reduction in the long run.
(To be continued)
Forty years old: the Elysee
Treaty
By Martin Koopmann, Germany
On January 22, 1963, Chancellor Konrad
Adenauer and President Charles de Gaulle signed the Franco-German Friendship Treaty at the
Elysée Palace in Paris. The agreement, which went down in history as the Elysée Treaty ,
has brought the two neighbours ever closer together following many years of
"hereditary enmity" and bloody wars. Today, France and Germany are linked by a
dense network of relations: joint research institutes and universities, an intensive youth
exchange, more than 2000 town twinning schemes and innumerable personal contacts. A
success story which also laid the foundation stone for the political integration of
Europe. 40 years of the Elysée Treaty: three experts write on the importance and the
future of the treaty. Seven prominent people talk about their special relationship between
Germany and France Martin Koopmann on the significance and future of the treaty.
A few months ago very similar demands could be heard in Germany and France. Chancellor
Schröder came out in favour of "adjusting" the 1963 Elysée Treaty to new
realities, and both President Chirac and Prime Minister Raffarin felt that a new
Franco-German "foundation pact" was necessary. In the meantime, the two
governments have agreed to issue a declaration on January 22, 2003, with the aim of
revitalizing relations between Paris and Berlin.
Two conclusions can be drawn from these
statements. On the one hand, the treaty is regarded as a success story that is worth
continuing. On the other hand, the agreement signed by Konrad Adenauer and Charles de
Gaulle is no longer considered to be in keeping with the times. The reason seems evident:
a 40year-old text from the Cold War period can hardly still be appropriate as a basis for
a bilateral partnership today.
It might be useful to recall the main motives
behind the treaty. De Gaulle’s and Adenauer’s aim was certainly not to sign a
treaty simply to crown the bilateral co-operation that had been working well since the
early fifties. Rather, the aim was to be able to influence and, as far as possible, to
control the future European and alliance policy of the respective partner – fears
that Germany might seek to go its own way in its policy towards the East played a major
role in this context. Following the failure of the project for a political union among the
EEC states, de Gaulle and Adenauer now switched to the bilateral level with the
Franco-German treaty – without, however, losing sight of their long-term goal: the
European Union. Apart from intensified co-operation in education and youth exchange, the
treaty established regular meetings of the heads of state and government (twice a year),
the foreign and defence ministers (every three months) and top political officials (every
month). It is this obligation to consult each other, the rhythm of which was further
intensified most recently at the meeting in Blaesheim at the beginning of 2001
("Blaesheim process"), which represents the true value of the treaty.
The Elysée Treaty’s unusual
effectiveness is due to its character as a framework agreement: apart from the obligation
to engage in consultations it does not contain any concrete foreign-policy goals. Rather,
it calls on France and Germany to arrive at a uniform position "in all important
questions of foreign policy and primarily in questions of common interest." This
point was of decisive importance for the development of bilateral relations. No subject
was to be excluded and, even more importantly, the foreign-policy part of the treaty was
formulated in the conviction that bilateral conflict management would be at the centre of
co-operation.
In fact, the Franco-German engine has only
rarely functioned on the basis of identical interests. Its strength lay rather in
overcoming bilateral conflicts in the light of shared European interests and working out
compromises that were also acceptable to the other partners. This central goal of the
Elysée Treaty is just as valid today as it was in 1963.
Franco-german relations are nevertheless on
difficult ground. The causes are many and varied and have nothing to do with the Elysée
Treaty. On the one hand, the debate on the future of Europe started by foreign minister
Fischer showed that policies in Paris and Berlin are still based on different basic
concepts: France favours the intergovernmental principle – as it has done for more
than forty years – while the German side advocates a supranational approach. Of
course, this will have a direct effect, for example, on the planned institutional reform
or the development of a European security and defence policy. The main reason lies in the
change in the structure of bilateral relations: for decades the Franco-German engine
functioned on the basis of a counterbalanced equilibrium between Germany and France. The
end of the East-West conflict and German unification have changed the picture. The
Two-Plus-Four Treaty spelled the end of the status of Paris as European great power which
it had shared up to then with the three other victorious powers of the Second World War:
responsibility for Germany as a whole and thus political control over its neighbour.
Germany, by contrast, achieved its most important foreign-policy objectives with
unification and the attainment of full sovereignty.
France saw the fall of the Wall and its
consequences with some scepticism: how was it to look after its own European interests
vis-à-vis a neighbour that looked to the east and had suddenly grown by 16 million
people? The Nice summit held in December 2000 attained symbolic meaning in this context:
France regarded the German government’s stand for a greater weight in Europe as
confirmation of its own concerns that Berlin might start acting too self-confidently. The
reaction in Germany, in turn, was a lack of understanding for France’s reluctance to
grant Germany any more influence or to take the new European realities into account.
A sustainably effective way out of this
situation must in future include two approaches: in the short term France and Germany
should agree on a common denominator regarding the central questions of the enlargement
and deepening of the EU – however small that common denominator might be. The
compromise on agriculture that was found in October in Brussels is a first small step in
the right direction.
In the medium term the aim must be to
re-establish mutual confidence. At the centre there must be an intensive debate on the
legitimacy and future motive of the Franco-German relationship. It will essentially hinge
on two objectives. On the one hand, the process of European integration must continue to
go forward in an extended European Union. The European Community was successful for
Western Europe as a project of prosperity and peace. There will only be success in
transferring this project to an extended union if its ability to act is guaranteed and the
"Acquis communautaire" is further developed in a consistent manner. On the other
hand, the two partners must come to an agreement about their ideas on the future role of
Europe in the world. The "United Europe" postulated in the joint declaration on
the Elysée Treaty must not be an end in itself. What about a joint European position on
the consequences of globalization, on transatlantic relations, or development policy?
Virtually all foreign-policy questions are "of common interest" today. Both
countries must use their established structures on the level of politics and civil
society, in order to formulate European answers. The Elysée Treaty is the right framework
for this dialogue – today even more than forty years ago.
Courtesy: E No. 6/2002 December/January.
Embassy of Germany in Kathmandu. |
