KARACHI, March 30: The two-day regional conference on ‘Building Partnerships for Strong Consumer Protection in South East Asia’ concluded on Wednesday after adopting a declaration on consumer protection.

The adopted declaration said that billions of consumers needed to have products and services fulfilling their basic rights while keeping in view sustainable consumption without exhausting natural resources or causing irreversible damage to nature.

The participants of the conference called upon the South Asian and Pacific region countries, in particular, and the international community, in general, to work towards consumer protection by evolving the international law on consumer protection.

They also called for developing a five-year action plan for establishing an international framework for consumer protection on the lines of the UNEP, ENESCO, UNIDO, UNDP, WHO and other UN bodies with linkage to sustainable consumption.

It was also observed that the implementation gap in consumer laws, among the developed, developing and under-developed nations should be bridged while ensuring quality of life with efficient use of natural resources.

The declaration also stressed that effective and efficient sustainable consumer protection initiatives, largely unavailable in the developing world, which houses majority of the world’s consumers, were needed to be developed.

While it also emphasized practical steps towards establishing and implementing consumer protection laws in the South Asian and Pacific countries.

Another point of the declaration included comprehensive research and information programme on the present state of consumer protection in the region, assistance to governments in the formulation of a consumer policy and its implementation.

Meanwhile, the signatories of the declaration also called upon policy makers in the South Asian and Pacific region to develop an action plan for consumer protection.

They demanded that each country should establish and promulgate consumer protection laws in the next two years besides creating a strong consumer awareness and education programme.

They also saw the need for establishing a research programme focused on sustainable consumer protection, which called upon all South Asian and Pacific countries to set up adequate monitoring and measurement processes for assessing the effectiveness of consumer protection policies so that timely corrective actions could be taken.—APP