The Relevance of SAARC Today: Achievements and Future Prospects

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, better known as SAARC, was founded in 1985 with an ambitious goal: to bring together eight neighbouring nations under one cooperative umbrella. Decades later, the organisation is often described as stalled, even irrelevant. Yet writing it off entirely would miss the bigger picture. SAARC has quietly delivered results in areas that matter to ordinary people, from food security to disease control. So is SAARC still relevant today? This post examines what the bloc has actually achieved, where it has fallen short, and what its future might hold.

What SAARC was built to do 🔗

SAARC brings together Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The charter was signed on 8 December 1985 in Dhaka, and the Secretariat was set up in Kathmandu in 1987. The core idea was simple: South Asian countries share borders, rivers, climate patterns, and many of the same development problems, so they should solve them together rather than separately.

The region, however, remains one of the least economically integrated in the world. Intra-regional trade sits at under 5 percent of total trade, far below the roughly 25 percent seen in Southeast Asia. This gap is the backdrop against which all of SAARC’s achievements and failures must be read.

Where SAARC has actually delivered 🔗

Despite the political friction, SAARC has produced concrete cooperation in several social and developmental sectors. These wins rarely make headlines, but they reveal what the bloc is capable of when members choose to act together.

Tackling drug trafficking 🔗

South Asia sits near major narcotics-producing zones, and drug trafficking fuels both addiction and organised crime across borders. SAARC responded with a dedicated convention on narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, signed in 1990, which committed members to coordinate enforcement, share intelligence, and harmonise their approach to a problem that no single country can solve alone.

Expanding education and knowledge sharing 🔗

Education has been a steady priority. The establishment of the South Asian University in New Delhi created a shared institution where students from all member states study together, while distance-learning and consortium initiatives have aimed to widen access to quality education across the region. These efforts build human capital and, just as importantly, create people-to-people links that survive political downturns.

Working towards poverty eradication 🔗

Poverty remains one of South Asia’s defining challenges, and SAARC has treated it as a collective concern rather than a purely national one. Programmes focused on community empowerment, livelihood promotion, and social mobilisation have sought to reach marginalised groups. The bloc has repeatedly identified poverty alleviation as a regional goal, recognising that prosperity in one country is fragile if neighbours remain trapped in deprivation.

Confronting climate change 🔗

South Asia is highly exposed to climate risks, including rising sea levels that threaten the Maldives and Bangladesh, glacial melt in the Himalayas, and increasingly erratic monsoons. SAARC has held ministerial meetings on the environment and adopted declarations on climate change, framing it as a shared survival issue. Because rivers, coastlines, and weather systems ignore national borders, regional coordination here is not optional but necessary.

Strengthening food security 🔗

Perhaps SAARC’s most practical contribution is the SAARC Food Bank, designed to provide emergency food assistance to members facing shortages caused by disasters or crop failures. The mechanism builds a regional reserve of grain that countries can draw on, offering a buffer against famine and price shocks. It is a tangible example of cooperative regionalism turning into a real safety net.

The pandemic that revived the conversation 🔗

If anything proved SAARC’s continued relevance, it was COVID-19. In March 2020, leaders held a video conference to coordinate their response, the bloc’s first high-level meeting in years. Out of that meeting came the SAARC COVID-19 Emergency Fund, built on voluntary contributions, with India pledging an initial 10 million US dollars.

Other members followed: Sri Lanka contributed 5 million dollars, Bangladesh 1.5 million, and Nepal and Afghanistan 1 million each, among others. By April 2020 the fund had crossed 21 million US dollars. Beyond money, members discussed an integrated disease surveillance portal, shared best practices, and ran training webinars for healthcare professionals across the region. For a bloc often called dormant, this was a striking display of what it could still mobilise in a crisis.

The South Asia Satellite 🔗

Another standout initiative is the South Asia Satellite, GSAT-9, launched by the Indian Space Research Organisation on 5 May 2017. Proposed at the 2014 Kathmandu summit and funded entirely by India as a regional gift, the satellite carries twelve Ku-band transponders and supports telemedicine, tele-education, weather forecasting, disaster management, and broadcasting across participating countries. During the pandemic, this kind of communications infrastructure became especially valuable for delivering remote healthcare and education.

The political wall SAARC keeps hitting 🔗

For every achievement, there is a structural obstacle, and most of them trace back to politics. The fault line that has done the most damage is the long-running rivalry between India and Pakistan.

The India-Pakistan deadlock 🔗

The two nuclear-armed neighbours have fought multiple wars since 1947, and their mutual distrust spills directly into SAARC’s functioning. The most visible casualty was the 2016 summit scheduled for Islamabad, which collapsed after India and several other members pulled out following a terror attack. No full SAARC summit has been held since. India’s External Affairs Minister has publicly cited cross-border terrorism as the central reason SAARC is not moving forward, a charge directed at Pakistan.

This rivalry repeatedly turns promising initiatives into casualties. Pakistan stayed away from several COVID-19 coordination efforts, objecting that they were led by India rather than the SAARC Secretariat. The satellite project itself dropped the “SAARC” name and became the “South Asia Satellite” after Pakistan opted out. When any single member can stall collective action, the whole organisation suffers.

Consensus rules and economic gaps 🔗

SAARC’s charter requires decisions to be taken by unanimity, and it explicitly keeps bilateral and contentious issues off the table. In principle this protects smaller members; in practice it lets one reluctant country block progress for everyone. On top of this sit wide economic disparities between members, which make it hard to agree on cost-sharing and integration. The result is a long list of declarations and a much shorter list of implemented projects.

Why SAARC still matters 🔗

It would be easy to conclude that SAARC is finished, especially as some members lean towards alternative groupings like BIMSTEC. But that view overlooks why the bloc was created in the first place. The challenges binding South Asia together have not disappeared; if anything, climate change, public health threats, and poverty have grown more urgent.

SAARC remains the only forum that brings all eight countries to the same table. Its institutions, from the Food Bank to the Disaster Management Centre, already exist and can be activated when political will allows. As scholar S.D. Muni has noted, SAARC has succeeded in conceptual groundwork, generating ideas about cooperative regionalism even where implementation has lagged. The framework is built; what is missing is the commitment to use it.

What a relevant SAARC would require 🔗

For SAARC to fulfil its promise, a few shifts are essential. Prioritising collective goals means members must separate shared development needs from bilateral disputes, so that progress on food or health does not hostage itself to political quarrels. Deepening regional integration requires genuinely lowering trade barriers and improving connectivity, since economics, not just diplomacy, binds regions together. Building trust through dialogue means using regular summits and councils to keep channels open even during tense periods. The path forward depends less on new institutions and more on the willingness to make the existing ones work.

What do you think? If political tensions continue to block summits, should South Asian countries invest their energy in revitalising SAARC, or shift towards smaller groupings that exclude reluctant members? And can a regional bloc that operates by unanimous consensus ever stay effective when its members fundamentally distrust one another?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAARC_COVID-19_Emergency_Fund
2. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/reinvigorating-saarc-indias-opportunities-and-challenges/
3. https://www.sau.int/
4. https://theprayasindia.com/south-asian-association-for-regional-cooperation-saarc/
5. https://www.lse.ac.uk/international-relations/centres-and-units/global-south-unit/COVID-19-regional-responses/South-Asia-and-COVID-19
6. https://www.isro.gov.in/GSAT_9.html
7. https://www.pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=161611
8. https://www.ijrti.org/papers/IJRTI2504014.pdf
9. https://www.deccanherald.com/world/pakistan-again-boycotts-indias-covid-19-training-programme-for-saarc-healthcare-professionals-826657.html
10. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/emerging-dimensions-of-saarc/saarc-prospects-the-changing-dimensions/987000BD6F7142D75C1AF60933C2C7CB