Secretary-General of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Indra Mani Pandey on Tuesday emphasised that the organisation remains development-focused while also addressing security challenges that hinder the developmental aspirations of its member states.
“The point about whether we are focusing more on security, I would like to reiterate that our focus is to deal with the sustainable development goals of the member states, and also in that context, the security challenges which impact developmental aspirations of our members, we could deal with them also,” he said.
The BIMSTEC Secretary General made the remarks while responding to a question during an interactive session with the members of Diplomatic Correspondents Association, Bangladesh (DCAB) at the BIMSTEC headquarters.
He said with Bangladesh as Chair and location of secretariat in Dhaka, there are opportunities for close coordination between the Chair and the Secretariat.
“BIMSTEC member States are keen to utilise BIMSTEC as their preferred regional platform for addressing their shared security and developmental challenges. BIMSTEC is shifting its focus to implementation, from plans of action to action,” said the Secretary General.
Noting that security is one of the sectors in their agenda, Pandey said he would not tend to agree that there is shift in progress and what he would say that their focus continues to remain on development and covering almost all the Sustainable Development Goals.
“If you look at our agenda, the effort of the member states has focused more on development, and almost all the dimensions of development have been covered in our agenda,” he said.
In BIMSTEC, regional cooperation progresses with consensus of all the member states. “And if all the member states find that they would like to deal with a specific issue, they would decide to deal with,” the Secretary General said, noting the aspects of the security they are dealing with - human trafficking, drug trafficking, cyber security challenges and maritime security challenges.
“If you look at all these challenges that we face, if you don't deal with them, and because they have a transnational dimension, then they will have an impact on development. So that is why member states have also identified a few aspects of the security for cooperation among themselves,” he added.
Through the existing mechanisms, Pandey said, they will identify what are the challenges and where they need to deal with at regional level, and what are the challenges that they would continue to deal with at the national level.
Asked whether he sees any challenge due to recent tensions between Bangladesh and India, the Secretary General underlined the commitment by all the governments, including India and Bangladesh, to work together through BIMSTEC.
“The Member States, when it comes to their bilateral relationship, are competent to deal with challenges in those relationships, and I'm sure the countries find ways to deal with those challenges,” Pandey said.
He said their success depends on how often and how frequent their different mechanisms meet, how regular they are in their meetings.
“We have different working groups, expert groups, subgroups under these groups. So, I think the Secretariat's effort is focused on working closely with our member states to make sure that we continue to have all these meetings taking place on a regular basis, and then we are able to make progress through these meetings,” said the Secretary General.
Pandey said there is a commitment by all the member states.
The challenge for the Secretariat, as well as Member States, is to translate those decisions into concrete action, and that is why they want to focus more and more on implementation of the decisions, he said.
“Because, we have a very vast agenda…we do have a number of concrete initiatives for cooperation in different sectors,” he said.
