Bangladesh’s career diplomat Mohammad Ghulam Sarwar has been appointed as the Secretary-General of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The Bangladesh government announced the appointment on Thursday.
Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry stated on Thursday. In his statement, he said that Sarwar is fifteenth on the list of successors. With this, Sarwar will be the third Bangladeshi to hold this position in the regional organisation. Presently Sarwar is serving as the Ambassador of Bangladesh to Malaysia. Earlier, Sarwar served as Ambassador to Oman and Sweden.
What is SAARC?
SAARC was established in 1985, whose main objective is economic, social, cultural and technical regional cooperation. It was initiated by Bangladesh. SAARC includes India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Pakistan as member countries. However, SAARC ceased to be effective after 2016. The main reason for this is the biennial summit not being held after the 2014 summit in Kathmandu.
In 2016 the SAARC summit was to be held in Islamabad. But due to the Uri attack in Jammu and Kashmir on 18 September of the same year, India expressed its inability to attend the summit. Along with India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan also refused to attend the meeting in Islamabad, due to which the summit itself was cancelled.
