Najam Interviewed on COVID-19 in South Asia
Adil Najam, Dean of the Pardee School of Global Studies, was interviewed on Urdu television news network Public TV to comment on the regional summit of leaders from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) held via teleconference to discuss a regional approach to combatting the coronavirus pandemic. The live panel interview aired on March 14, 2020.
Najam highlighted the urgency of the situation in the South Asian context and argued that while the discussion at the SAARC teleconference was mostly limited to political statements, there was no real diction set for a real regional approach to the challenges of COVID-19. He argued that the politics of the region is so fraught with distrust and dispute that it will be unlikely for such a regional approach to be development and, therefore, it will be the individual actions of the countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and others, that will determine the future of the pandemic in the region. There was also discussion on the concerns raised by Pakistan on the incidence of coronavirus cases in Indian controlled Kashmir, which Pakistan has a claim on.
Adil Najam is the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and was the former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Read more about him here.