Day 1
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Am in Dhaka attending People's Summit for People's SAARC representing Bytesforall at the BRAC Centre. It is a very interesting event attended by 200+ people from all the South Asian countries. Dominated by development activists, practitioners, researchers, writers, feminists, technologists and representatives from grassroots, people have come with a long wish list and with an amazing belief that as if all the overnments in the region are dieing to listen from them and things would change as soon as the final declaration is received by governments. Sense of great commitment however, is dominant, and people want to change the current state of sorry affairs. Very loud and vocal summit is going through with very thought provoking discourse, agreements, disagreements, anger, consensus building, advocacy, realization, revelation and revolution... all in the air.

Traveling to Dhaka from Islamabad as expected was very interesting as well.
In one day, coming back from duty travel, immediately heading to Bangladesh
High Commission, being interviewed for visa, answering and reassuring them
that I won’t slip in Dhaka, firming up the flight schedule was all eventful.
Biman Air, as I was told would never fail to get late. In my case, it was
only 7 hours, which I conveniently spent at the Karachi Airport ;))

Another realization occurred, when I went to a nearby mosque for Juma
prayers and Imam sb. announced especially that all worshippers should switch
off the mobile phones before prayers. I had not realized earlier that mobile
phones are so very much spread in masses. However, we now see, almost
everybody is carrying a mobile in Pakistan, from taxiwala to a mohallah shop
keeper and sabziwala to a young student in college. I was wondering that
what’s the use, other than downloading ring tones, hindi/english songs, SMS
to friends, and stay in touch with “loved ones”. Probably someone need to do
a serious effort on identifying useful, relevant content, communicable
through mobile phones to various interest groups in the society. There may
be a "market" for such content. This is a missing link in Pakistan at least.

Dhaka is on “Band” Call for two days. Strike call seems very responsive as
vehicles are not plying and shops are closed but the People’s SAARC goes on.

As I mentioned before, People have come with a wish list and set of demands
from governments in south asia. The summit started with keynote speeches by
eminent scholars in plenary but the afternoon was scheduled for thematic
commissions for group work to help formulate a joint declaration from the
People’s SAARC. The thematic groups are:

- Governance, Peace and Militarization
- Livelihood, Labor, Gender and Social Justice
- Poverty, Trade and Globalization
- Trafficking and Human Security
- Mitigation and reduction of disaster and natural catastrophe

Though, it is not a technology focused event, but we now know that ICTs are
cross-cutting. I had the opportunity to work with the thematic commission on
Disaster Mitigation. Various aspects of ICT use in the region came under
discussion ranging from early warning system’s information dissemination to
role of community radios, community networking to ICTs assisted awareness
campaigns, on various aspects of disaster mitigation and disaster reduction.
The group unanimously recommended to declare the mainstreaming use of ICTs
in disaster mitigation and disaster reduction policies and practices.
Similar recommendations has also come from the other two groups on
Governance and Livelihood.

Day 2
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People's Summit for People's SAARC (Day 2)
Reported by Shahzad Ahmad in Dhaka

The second day of the summit is even more moving, vibrant, full of
enthusiasm and felt a lot friendlier. Probably group work in thematic
commissions in the later part of the first day of the summit did help to
bring people of different nationalities, religions, cultures and languages
together. The cause is common, to join hands and help the betterment of
south Asian region. Unfortunately, south Asia, one of the most densely
populated part of the world is one most troubled area on the planet. There
are all sorts of issues ranging from extreme poverty to governance,
livelihood of common people to illiteracy, environmental degradation to
globalization, militarization to human security and above all negligence of
governments and leaders to honor the peoples’ will, who wish to get rid of
all darkness in their lives. Government policies seems all lip service and
never implemented in its true spirits in the region. Another realization was
evident that people are hostage to political gains of leaders.

Continuing in the group work for the first two hours of the second day of
the summit, finalizing and properly phrasing the recommendations to the
summit declaration was standing a great challenge for the organizers to
formulate a summit declaration which should be acceptable to most
representatives in the summit on behalf of south Asian people. The
declaration will later be submitted to SAARC governments.

Draft declaration presented before the summit depicted a frightening and
horrible picture of issues and problems in the region. Honoring the civil
society traditions and in the true spirit of democracy, each and every
recommendation was opened for discussion by the summit in plenary to seek
the agreement and consensus.

The two page declaration starts with showing deepest grief on the
devastation in Tsunami and offering heartfelt sympathies to the survivors
and expresses concern over neglect of states in providing relevant
information to citizens and failing to forewarn the people. It also
expresses anger and shock over mishandling of the post-disaster situation
and failure in creating systems to reach the victims and delivery of relief
and assistance in the rehabilitation. The summit appreciated “unprecedented”
generosity and benevolence of the people of the world to help the victims
and called for an effective mechanism to supervise the relief efforts. The
summit also endorsed the priorities and commitments made at the World
Conference on Disaster Reduction and urge the governments in the region to
formulate an effective system to share expertise, knowledge and hydro-
meteorological information to avoid or minimize the risk of any such natural
catastrophe in the future.

The declaration reiterates the pledge to strengthen peoples’ struggle for
peaceful, democratic, prosperous, progressive and tolerant south Asia and
protests against all strategies, policies, mechanisms and actions of states
and non-state actors from within or/and outside south Asia encouraging
militarization, jingoism, feudalism, extremism and exploitation. It
deplores appalling trends of corporate culture promoted by neo-liberal
economies adversely affecting marginalized and poorer sections of south
Asia. It calls for immediate reduction in military expenditures of the
governments in the region to provide quality education, health services and
clean drinking water and good governance through accountability,
transparency and eradicating corruption and inefficiency.

The declaration especially called for the governments to ensure peoples’
RIGHT TO INFORMATION as fundamental right of citizens. Voice was raised
regarding peoples’ RIGHT TO COMMUNICATION. Given the current situation in
Nepal, where the government has suspended the whole communication
infrastructure for the last 8 days, summit was unanimous on urging upon the
governments in the region to honor the peoples’ basic rights to information
and communication. Issues related to emerging information society were also
flagged and requested to look into it, in the perspective of south Asian
peculiarities.

People also demanded to implement a Gender Equality Policy at the regional
level for all government policies such as education, health and inheritance
and provide constitutional guarantees and ensure gender sensitive curriculum
in education system. It was also urged upon the governments to stop the
exclusion and include the marginalized groups and ensure women participation
in decision making processes.

It seems a long wish list, many demands..., I saw many participants
distressed, weeping, full of tears but certainly there was hope and will, to
stand for their rights and looking forward to a bright future. Though, I
personally, don’t see much happening on this wish list but it did highlight
and represent peoples’ will to contribute to eliminate all the ills in the
society. At least people are concerned and raising their voices against all
evils. HOPE REMAINS FOREVER!

The summit ended observing a one-minute silence to condole the deaths in
Tsunami.

Signing off from Dhaka.

Best wishes and regards.

Shahzad Ahmad
Bytesforall

Hope remains forever!