Institutional Structure

The Charter of the Association provides for the following:

The Summit
The highest authority of the Association rests with the Heads of State or Government, who meet annually at Summit level. To date, eleven meetings of the Heads of State or Government have been held respectively in Dhaka (1985), Bangalore (1986), Kathmandu (1987), Islamabad (1988), Malé (1990), Colombo (1991), Dhaka (1993) New Delhi (1995), Malé (1997), Colombo (1998) and Kathmandu (2002)

The Twelfth SAARC Summit is scheduled to be held in Pakistan.

The Heads of State or Government during the Ninth SAARC Summit agreed that a process of informal political consultations would prove useful in promoting peace, stability and amity and accelerated socio-economic cooperation in the region. This was further reiterated at the Tenth SAARC Summit.

The Council of Ministers
Comprising the Foreign Ministers of Member States, the Council is responsible for formulating policies; reviewing progress; deciding on new areas of cooperation; establishing additional mechanisms as deemed necessary; and deciding on other matters of general interest to the Association.

The Council is expected to meet twice a year and may also meet in extraordinary session by agreement of Member States. It has held twenty-two regular sessions. The Twenty-third Session of the Council will be held in Kathmandu.

A Commemorative Session of the Council, to mark the First Decade of SAARC, was also held at New Delhi on 18 December 1995, during the Sixteenth Session of the Council of Ministers.

Informal meetings of the Council are also held as agreed, during Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly.

The Standing Committee
The Standing Committee comprising the Foreign Secretaries of Member States is entrusted with the task of overall monitoring and coordination of programmes; the approval of projects and programmes and the modalities of financing; determining inter-sectoral priorities; mobilising regional and external resources; and identifying new areas of cooperation. It meets as often as deemed necessary and submits its reports to the Council of Ministers.

The Committee has held twenty-seven regular sessions and three special sessions, the latest in Colombo in August 2001. The Twenty-eighth session of the Committee will be held in Kathamndu.

The Standing Committee may also set up Action Committees comprising Member States concerned with implementation of projects involving more than two Member States.

The Standing Committee is assisted by a Programming Committee comprising senior officials to scrutinize the Secretariat Budget, finalise the Calendar of Activities and take up any other matter assigned to it by the Standing Committee. The Programming Committee has also been entrusted to consider and submit to the Standing Committee, recommendations for action on the Reports of the Technical Committees, SAARC Regional Centres and the SAARC Audio Visual Exchange (SAVE) Committee. The Programming Committee has held twenty-one sessions.

The Technical Committees
At the time SAARC was formally established in 1985, the core of its work programme was the Integrated Programme of Action (IPA), consisting of a number of Technical Committees on agreed areas of cooperation. However, as the agreed Agenda of SAARC expanded, new areas were identified for regional cooperation. The IPA too expanded correspondingly.

The Technical Committees formulate specialised programmes and prepare projects in their respective fields under the IPA. They are responsible for monitoring the implementation of such activities and submit their reports to the Standing Committee through the Programming Committee.

Given the emphasis by successive Summits on the need to consolidate and streamline the IPA and make it more result oriented, a set of guidelines and procedures was adopted in 1992 for the rationalisation of SAARC activities. The objective was to focus more on activities that would yield tangible benefits to the people of South Asia.

The Standing Committee in 1996 reviewed the institutional mechanisms and activities of the Association. This included an evaluation of the mandate and functions of the Technical Committees, as well as an examination of the role of the Secretariat. An Independent Group of Experts set up by the Secretary-General in 1997 also undertook an extensive review of the functioning of the IPA and made wide-ranging recommendations. These were considered at its Twenty-sixth Session held in Nuwara Eliya, Sri Lanka in March 1999 by the Standing Committee which proposed a newly restructured SAARC Integrated Programme of Action. The Council of Ministers approved this subsequently.

Under the new SAARC Integrated Programme of Action (SIPA), the number of Technical Committees has been reduced from eleven to seven mainly through the amalgamation of the different sectors covered by the various Technical Committees and eliminating overlapping, duplication and waste. The prime objective of the reorganisation has been to enhance clarity in terms of the goals and targets of the activities undertaken, as well as to improve its quality and efficacy.

The seven Technical Committees under SIPA now cover:

1. Agriculture and Rural Development;
2. Communications and Transport;
3. Social Development;
4. Environment, Meteorology and Forestry;
5. Science and Technology;
6. Human Resources Development; and
7. Energy.

An in-built mechanism for automatic review of activities under SIPA has been provided for. The review will be undertaken every three years by an independent multi-disciplinary Expert Group that would be constituted by the Secretary-General in consultation with Member States.

The Secretary-General is authorised to propose activities and programmes under the Integrated Programme of Action, and to make specific recommendations to the Standing Committee regarding the mobilisation of necessary resources for the approved activities. This enables the Secretary-General to explore funding possibilities for specific activities from within the region and from other acceptable sources.

The Secretary-General reports to the Standing Committee on the progress of the implementation of the IPA both at its inter-Summit and pre-Summit sessions.

Specialised Ministerial Meetings
Since the establishment of the Association, a number of SAARC ministerial meetings have been held, to focus attention on specific areas of common concern, and have become an integral part of the consultative structure.

Six meetings of planners have been held so far, i.e. one in 1983 and five annually from 1987 to 1991. These meetings initiated cooperation in important areas such as trade, manufactures and services; basic needs; human resources development; database on socio-economic indicators; energy modeling techniques; plan modeling techniques and poverty alleviation strategies. The following ministerial-level meetings have been held so far:

 International Economic issues - Islamabad (1986)
 Children - New Delhi (1986), Colombo (1992), and Rawalpindi (1996)
 Women?s issues - Shillong (1986), Islamabad (1990), Kathmandu (1993), and Dhaka (1995)
 Environment - New Delhi (1992 & 1997), Malé (1997), and Colombo (1998)
 Disabled Persons - Islamabad (1993)
 Youth - Malé (1994)
 Poverty - Dhaka (1994), New Delhi (1996) and Islamabad (2002)
 Housing - Colombo (1996)
 Agriculture - Islamabad (1996)
 Commerce - New Delhi (1996), Islamabad (1998), Dhaka (1999), Malé (1999) and New Delhi (2001)
 Tourism - Colombo (1997)
 Information - Dhaka (1998)
 Communications - Colombo (1998) and Islamabad (2002)