South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
Regional · SAARC
Afghanistan joined at the New Delhi summit of April 2007. The founding members had signed the charter in Dhaka on 8 December 1985, and it bars bilateral and contentious issues from every deliberation the association holds. Decisions are taken by unanimity. Summits are meant to be annual. The last one closed in Kathmandu on 27 November 2014, and the meeting due in Islamabad in November 2016 was never held.
8 countries
Common questions
Questions about SAARC
Which countries are in SAARC?
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, which is 8 in all. Seven of them signed the charter at Dhaka on 8 December 1985. Afghanistan applied in 2005, was approved at the summit held in Dhaka on 12 and 13 November 2005, and took its seat at the summit in New Delhi on 3 and 4 April 2007. No member has left, and the roster has not changed since.
Why has there been no SAARC summit since 2014?
The eighteenth summit closed at Kathmandu on 27 November 2014. The nineteenth was scheduled for Islamabad on 9 and 10 November 2016 and was postponed following communications from India, Afghanistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh, according to India's Ministry of External Affairs. Under the charter every decision is taken by unanimity, and there is no provision for holding a summit without a member present. The date has not been reset.
What does the SAARC charter say about disputes between members?
Article X excludes them. It reads, in two sentences: "Decisions at all levels shall be taken on the basis of unanimity" and "Bilateral and contentious issues shall be excluded from the deliberations." The effect is that a quarrel between two members cannot be brought to the association at all, whether or not the other members would hear it. That was the condition on which the founding states agreed to meet.
Has BIMSTEC replaced SAARC?
Both exist. The Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation dates from the Bangkok Declaration of 6 June 1997 and draws in Myanmar and Thailand from outside South Asia. Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka belong to both bodies; Afghanistan, Maldives and Pakistan belong only to the association here. Summits have gone on at one table and stopped at the other, and no member has renounced either.
What has SAARC actually agreed?
A Regional Convention on Suppression of Terrorism, signed at Kathmandu on 4 November 1987, and the Agreement on South Asian Free Trade Area, signed at Islamabad on 6 January 2004 and in force from 1 January 2006, under which each member keeps a sensitive list of goods outside the tariff cuts. The World Bank put intraregional trade at about 5% of South Asia's total trade in its 2018 study, A Glass Half Full.
Sources
- Charter of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation · The full text signed at Dhaka on 8 December 1985: Article III on annual meetings and Article X on unanimity and the exclusion of bilateral and contentious issues.
- A Research Guide on the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) · GlobaLex, New York University School of Law. The accession of Afghanistan at the fourteenth summit in April 2007 and the record of summits.
- Nepal and SAARC · Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nepal. The secretariat established at Kathmandu on 16 January 1987, the alphabetical rotation of the chair, the nine observers, and the terrorism convention of 4 November 1987.
- Kathmandu Declaration, Eighteenth SAARC Summit, Kathmandu, Nepal, 26 to 27 November 2014 · Ministry of External Affairs, India. The dates of the last summit held and the text adopted at it.
- Question No. 1341: SAARC Summit · Ministry of External Affairs, India, answering in the Lok Sabha. The nineteenth summit scheduled for 9 and 10 November 2016 at Islamabad and postponed following communications from four members.
- Regional SAARC summit postponed amid rising Pakistani-Indian tensions · Reuters, 27 September 2016. The postponement of the Islamabad summit and the sequence of withdrawals.
- Differences over Afghanistan scuttle SAARC Foreign Ministers meet in New York · The Hindu, September 2021. The informal meeting on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly called off over the representation of Afghanistan.
- Agreement on South Asian Free Trade Area · Ministry of Commerce, Pakistan. Signature at the twelfth summit in Islamabad on 6 January 2004, entry into force on 1 January 2006, and the sensitive lists.
- One South Asia: Trade · World Bank. Intraregional trade at about 5% of South Asia's total trade, the figure published with the 2018 study A Glass Half Full.
- Monetary Policy · Royal Monetary Authority of Bhutan. The ngultrum pegged at par to the Indian rupee since its introduction in 1974, and the peg as the nominal anchor.
- Benefits of the Pegging Arrangement Between Nepali and Indian Currencies · Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. The rate of 160 Nepalese rupees to 100 Indian rupees fixed by Nepal Rastra Bank.
- History · BIMSTEC secretariat. The Bangkok Declaration of 6 June 1997 and the four states that signed it.