KARACHI, Sept 2: ‘The Karachi Declaration’ adopted at the conclusion of the two-day ‘South Asian Labour for Peace Conference’ on Tuesday called upon India and Pakistan to reduce their defence budgets and minimise chances of armed conflicts.

It stressed the need for adopting a South Asian charter of labour rights as well as a SAARC code of conduct for transnational corporations.

The conference, attended by delegates from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, was organised by the South Asian Labour Forum in collaboration with PILER.

The declaration called upon the people and governments of the region to press forward for peace and reduction of tension of all kinds by initiating a process of demilitarisation and moving towards global and regional denuclearisation and elimination of weapons of mass destruction.

It also stressed the need for increasing people to people contacts through political, economic and cultural events to promote friendship and reduce prejudices, making travel facilities friendly and faster.

The declaration said that developments since 1996 had added urgency to the need for adopting a South Asian charter of labour rights as well as a SAARC code of conduct for transnational corporations based on the ILO’s Tripartite Declaration. “Labour organisations in the region must redouble their efforts towards realising these objectives,” it added.

Noting the widening gap between workers in the formal sector and the informal sector caused by a huge expansion of the latter, it called for special efforts by the organised labour community to effectively coordinate with workers in the informal sector with a view to defending and promoting their fundamental rights.

Proclaiming the right of the people to move freely across the region to earn livelihoods through a system of work permits for immigrant labour, conference emphasised the need to ensure non-discrimination between national and immigrant workers and national legislation for special protection of women workers. The declaration also called for mobilising labour against all hatred, prejudice and divisions based upon ethnicity, race, caste, religion and nationalism.

The declaration, demanding more employment opportunities for women, said sexual harassment and exploitation of women at the workplace must be stopped and all social laws, customs and practices militating against gender equality must be removed. It also demanded elimination of child labour from all hazardous occupations that deprived children of healthy physical and mental development.

Rejecting contract farming and corporatisation of agriculture, it called for equitable land reforms and other measures to make agriculture more productive and sustainable.

The conference was of the view that privatisation of large industries and withdrawal of the state from social, economic, education, health, housing and welfare spheres must be given up to reject the ideology that privatisation was more responsive and more efficient than the public sector in those fields. The deceleration said the WTO perpetuated a subtle and pervasive form of recolonisation through economic warfare and sham negotiations.

The conference denounced the so-called poverty reduction strategies prepared for South Asia as a perpetuation of the neo-liberal programmes of structural adjustment that have already intensified mass poverty and foreign debt. It called for a South Asian labour commission to implement the Karachi Declaration and prepare an action plan for 2004.