HYDERABAD: Saarc forum backs people’s rights over natural resources
Bureau Report
HYDERABAD, Jan 1: With the Saarc summit only a day away, the newly-formed South Asia Alliance for Poverty Eradication (SAAPE) at its first session held at Kathmandu, Nepal, the other day issued a declaration calling upon all the governments of the region to protect the people’s rights over natural resources like land, water, forests, and minerals.
The declaration said that the bio-diversity of the region must be protected for local people.
The SAAPE was formed by senior development workers, social movement leaders, leading academics from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The declaration was released here to the press by Prof Ejaz Qureshi, chairman, Sindh NGOs Federation, and director, Indus Development Fund, who attended the above conference and was also elected the coordinator for the Pakistan chapter.
The SAAPE discussed critical issues regarding poverty eradication and creating just societies in the region.
The Kathmandu meeting resolved to establish a regional alliance for collective work on poverty eradication.
The meeting adopted a declaration reminding the governments of the region that they had a responsibility towards their citizens to ensure that they were not deprived of their basic human rights.
It said that the state collects taxes from the people and has direct responsibility to provide quality education, health services, food and security.
It said that the state should not abdicate its role by handing over the responsibility for providing social services to NGOs and civil society activists.
The conference urged all the countries of the region to implement land reforms, put in place a mechanism to ensure profitable prices for all farmers, and to initiate rural development policies which would provide further food securities to the poverty-stricken people.
The conference called for a campaign against every kind of forced and bonded labour and to ensure minimum wages for all informal sector workers, especially agriculture labourers, be they male or female.
It pointed out that the poor women in all the countries of the region were facing a high degree of exploitation in terms of denial of their rights as citizens, their exclusion from political participation and property rights.
It pointed out that trafficking in women and children had increased and expressed alarm at the lack of sensitiveness on the issue.
It expressed grave concern over violence against women, honour killings, dowry killings, and called upon the governments to protect and empower vulnerable women.
The conference also drew the attention of the SAARC governments for eradicating child labour and for providing compulsory free basic education.
It observed that debt payments were obnoxious features of the economies of the region which were the result of imposing economic policies on the world and was one of the causes of poverty.
The conference called for the cancellation of debt in the countries of South Asia and urged them to divert the resources of debt payment to women and children’s health, education, drinking water, and subsidies for farm inputs and food security.
It emphasized the need for joint resistance to external intervention that harmed equitable distribution of resources within countries and demanded that all development policies, plans and budget exercises should be opened to people’s audit.
The conference rejected the dominant idea that the best way to get the best life for the largest number of people was to promote a world economy marked through free trade, liberalization and privatization, and added that this approach would cause hardships and miseries to the people of South Asia.
It opined that alternative development approaches would better serve the people of the region.
