South Asia People’s Assembly 2008
17 July 2008 8:21 am

The South Asia People's Secretariat is calling for delegates and guests from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan and across Sri Lanka to the South Asian Peoples Assembly (also known as Peoples SAARC) in Colombo, Sri Lanka between 18 and 20 July 2008.

 South Asia People's Assembly 2008

The South Asia People's Secretariat is calling for delegates and guests from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan and across Sri Lanka to the South Asian Peoples Assembly (also known as Peoples SAARC) in Colombo, Sri Lanka between 18 and 20 July 2008.

Since 1993, there has been a regular and ongoing process of collaboration, discussion, strategising and action across South Asia.

This was most visible at the regional assembly of hundreds of people representing women, organised and unorganised labour, peasants and fisher-folk, urban and rural poor, ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, marginalised social groups and communities, cultural activists, radical intellectuals, students, and youth in parallel to the annual meeting of heads of government of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

They converge in parallel to the SAARC summit to raise their collective voice before heads of state and government to remind them that their basic problems and issues of hunger, poverty, inequality and discrimination, violence and human insecurity are unaddressed despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary.

The hopes and dreams of South Asian people for SAARC and for regional unity remain unrealised. The platform on which their process is based brings together those who struggle: for secularism, democracy and federalism in the national and regional context; for demilitarisation, denuclearisation and reallocation of defence budgets to social welfare; for women's rights, against patriarchy and all forms of violence against women; for regional unity in South Asia based upon a peoples agenda; for free movement of persons and visa-free travel across South Asia; for alternatives to neo-liberalism, capitalist globalisation and imperialism; and for Planet Earth.

Their vision is to strengthen peoples' solidarity and friendship across South Asia with the perspective of envisioning and constructing an alternative political, social, economic and cultural order that defends and deepens democracy, justice and peace in the region.

Join them on 18, 19 and 20 July 2008 in Colombo, Sri Lanka! For more information, please go to this website.