The blind side of SAARC

AS a region, South Asia has achieved targets or is on track for nine out of 21 indicators for the global Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This includes reducing gender disparities, halting the spread of HIV and tuberculosis and providing clean water, ensuring forest cover and protecting biodiversity.

More than 38% of South Asia’s population of 1.62 billion is younger than 18 with 177.1 million younger than five years of age. This represents an enormous development challenge as the region is hampered by rising food costs, political insecurity, environmental degradation and recurrent natural disasters.

It is disappointing that the recently-concluded South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) focused almost entirely on trade and investment, rather than directly on the burning issues of poverty, gender and other basic human rights issues. However, it is heartening that they moved forward on agreements on connectivity, climate change, trade and taxation that have been languishing for many years. Perhaps the time has come for SAARC to emerge from the sidelines of world dialogue.

During the summit, SAARC together with UNICEF launched a report on the assessment of child rights and their advancement over the last 10 years. It was observed that all South Asian countries have improved their national constitutions, laws and social protection methods towards children. Persistent challenges of malnutrition and anaemia, higher enrolment in primary school and victim support systems have improved, but as is always the case, much more needs to be done.

At the same time, slow progress and consideration variations still exist both between and within South Asian countries, which will need to be urgently addressed to enable the region to achieve MDGs with equity. It is a relief that Sri Lanka is a country that has been very successful in having high levels of child rights, but there are daunting discrepancies.

The very large proportion of the region represents a key distorting factor. For example, while South Asia is ranked overall as an “early achiever” of the MDG target for clean water, some 227 million people remain deprived. In particular the under-five mortality rate in rural areas and issue of underweight children need to be addressed immediately.

From a broad perspective, the report calls on authorities to address several issues such as child malnutrition, access to safe water and expand access to free primary health. Ensuring that education leads to employable skills, improving education quality and strengthening health systems are all points that Sri Lanka can pay attention to. There should be equitable share of resources between nations and within nations to eradicate poverty and reduce income gaps by drastically dropping wasteful expenditure on militarisation and relocating funds for human development, according to the People’s SAARC Secretariat. This organisation embodies the civil society voice regarding actions taken by SAARC. In his memorandum to the SAARC leaders, he demanded that a regional human rights mechanism should be established along with protection for migrant workers and refugees. An independent climate commission is also a must in his opinion.

Gender equality, women and child rights as well as measures to end all forms of discrimination, displacement and deprivation should be adopted, but these goals are not likely in the short-term, leaving SAARC in danger of ignoring important issues.