Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus on Friday called for the revival of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, or SAARC, during his address at the United Nations General Assembly.
Established in 1985, SAARC is an intergovernmental organisation of eight South Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Maldives, Bhutan and Afghanistan.
However, the grouping has been inactive for almost a decade because of tensions between India and Pakistan. Its last biennial summit was in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 2014.
The 2016 summit was scheduled to be held in Islamabad but was cancelled after India withdrew following the Uri terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir. Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan had also declined to participate.
On Friday, Yunus said in his address that there is no alternative to regional cooperation among neighbours except for shared development.
He added that SAARC had made notable progress in its early years and had laid a strong foundation for regional collaboration.
He said that despite political deadlock, the grouping’s institutional structure had remained intact.
“We believe SAARC still holds the potential to deliver welfare to the hundreds of millions in our region,” Yunus said.
This came days after his meeting on Tuesday with Sergio Gor, the United States’ special envoy for South and Central Asia and ambassador-designate to India, where Yunus said Bangladesh had “intensified” efforts to revive the grouping, The Hindu reported.
He had described SAARC members as “close family” and added that “the whole idea of SAARC was born in Bangladesh”.
“We promoted this idea from capital to capital in the South Asian region, promoting SAARC,” The Hindu quoted Yunus as saying on Tuesday.
“Our history gives us the opportunity but somehow it did not fit into the politics of one country,” Yunus was quoted as saying in an apparent reference to India. “We feel very sorry for that.”
Yunus, a Nobel laureate economist, took over as chief adviser of Bangladesh’s interim government three days after Sheikh Hasina resigned as the prime minister and fled to India in August 2024. Hasina fled after several weeks of widespread student-led protests against her Awami League government.
She was ousted from power after being the prime minister of Bangladesh for 16 years.
Bangladesh’s relations with India have deteriorated following the change in government in Dhaka.
New Delhi is widely considered to have viewed Hasina’s leadership as more favourable to its strategic interests.
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