Pakistan team leaves to attend Saarc moot

Munir A. Malik, Ex-President of Supreme Court Bar Association; Syed Iqbal Haider, Co-Chairman Human Rights Commission of Pakistan; members of the Pakistan National Assembly including Nafisa Shah (PPP), Bushra Gohar (ANP), Sufian Younus (MQM); Ch Manzoor Ahmed (PPP), Senator Dr. Abdul Malik (National Party), Farooq Tariq, Spokesperson for Labour Party of Pakistan and member of the Regional Steering Committee; Karamat Ali, Executive Director of Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) & member of the Regional Steering Committee; Anusha Alam, member of the Regional Steering Committee of Pakistan; Mohammed Tehseen, Executive Director of South Asian Partnership; Shamimur Rehman, Ex-President Karachi Union of Journalists, Zahida Hina, Younus Iqbal of Anjuman-e-Mazareen-e-Punjab, Ghulam Fareed Awan, General Secretary Pakistan Workers’ Confederation, Sindh; Mian Abdul Qayyum of Power-loom Workers’ Union Faisalabad; Ghulam Fatima of Bonded Labour Liberation Front are also part of the delegation.

Khadim further said that Peoples’ Assembly is a process parallel to the official South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (SAARC) where the heads of states from South Asia meet annually in a South Asian country under SAARC’s umbrella.

However, SAARC failed to fulfil its aim of a better South Asia. The process of Peoples’ SAARC started in 1993 as a small parallel event which achieved a big success in 2007 when more than 20,000 people participated in Peoples SAARC held in March last year in Kathmandu. It concluded issuing a 31-point Kathmandu Declaration urging all the parties concerned to act together to fight against poverty, injustice, imperialism and discrimination of gender, caste, religion, language and ethnicity.