The first two-day South Asian Association Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Young Parliamentarians’ Conference will commence in Islamabad Tuesday (today).
As many as 50 Members of Parliament from Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will participate in the conference.
The Conference is being jointly hosted by National Assembly of Pakistan and Pakistan Institute for Parliamentary Services which will offer the region’s young parliamentarians’ narrative as a prelude to the 19th SAARC Summit that Pakistan is going to host in November this year.
The SAARC Secretary General Arjun Bahadur Thapa will be attending the conference as well as 25 young MPs from across all parliamentary parties from Pakistan.
Read more: India to attend SAARC Young Parliamentarians Conference in Islamabad
For two days the young parliamentarians will share ideas, deliberate upon confronting challenges, identify avenues for cooperation and finalise a strategy to implement their consensus-based ideas in future.
The young parliamentarians conference will also help build a congenial environment for the upcoming SAARC summit, to be held in November, in Islamabad.
The NA Speaker, Sardar Ayaz Sadiq, welcomed the delegates from SAARC countries. He hoped the conference would set an exceptional example of cooperation, goodwill and harmony, which are needed to ameliorate the plight of more than one billion people.
The NA speaker already appointed MNA Malik Muhammad Uzair, as the convenor of the conference. Other young Pakistani parliamentarians like MNA Marriyum Aurangzeb and Shaza Fatimah will play a crucial role in the conference.
After the welcoming session, the delegates will first discuss the role of young parliamentarians to strategise for the youth’s voice, emancipation and prosperity in South Asia.
The Conference will lay down the foundation of strong inter-parliamentary linkages across South Asia.
The conference will conclude with an Islamabad Declaration on the final day.
