South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation—SAARC

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was formed by the governments of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka in 1985 to catalyze regional cooperation in economic and social development in the member countries. In 2007, Afghanistan joined SAARC. The core areas of cooperation among the SAARC countries are agriculture and rural development; health and population activities; women, youth, and children; environment and forestry; science, technology, and meteorology; human resource development (HRD); and transport. SAARC activities in these areas are implemented through the Integrated Programme of Action (IPA) and coordinated by the SAARC Secretariat based in Kathmandu, Nepal. Besides the IPAs, high-level working groups consisting of ministers are formed to facilitate cooperation, including in information and communication technologies (ICTs). However, although there has been considerable growth in connectivity, content, and capacity of the ICT sectors of South Asian countries in the last decade, SAARC’s role in this advance is diffi cult to trace. It was only at the 9th SAARC Summit held in Malé, Maldives, in 1997 that SAARC member governments noted the lack of communication facilities as a major hindrance to economic cooperation. The Malé Summit stressed the importance of developing infrastructure and adequate communications networks in member countries to facilitate economic cooperation. The need to simplify complex documentation procedures and use transactional software to facilitate economic interaction was likewise discussed. The First Conference of the SAARC Communications Ministers, held in Colombo in May 1998, dealt with regional cooperation for telecommunication sector development in the region. A Plan of Action on Telecommunications (PAT) was adopted during this conference. It took another six years for the Second Conference of the SAARC Communications Ministers to take place. This Second Conference, held in Islamabad in June 2004, adopted the revised PAT 2004 with the following aims: