Bangladesh On The International Stage: Participation In 10th ASEM Summit

In all considerations, Bangladesh's participation under the leadership of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in the 10th ASEM Summit has created scope for consolidating the country's image abroad and highlighted the government's multifaceted successes in national and international arena. 

While addressing at the plenary session of the 10th ASEM Summit, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina called for for building a strong partnership between Asia and Europe in the fields of trade and technical cooperation to translate connectivity between the two continents into a reality.

"The more favorable trade regime, the more convenient technical cooperation, the more vibrant people-to-people contact will translate Asia-Europe connectivity into a reality," she said.

Prime Minister sought cooperation to address global issues including climate change, migration, terrorism, maritime affairs, disabilities, disaster risk reduction and management, socio-cultural cooperation and human rights. She also urged the world leaders to put the issues of poverty alleviation and access to education to the center of the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

While addressing at the conference, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina mentioned the successful development activities in Bangladesh. “Special economic zones are being developed across the country particularly to allow potential investors to invest in Bangladesh especially in the context of our growing integration into the regional connectivity framework," she said.

Despite being a low-income country, she said, Bangladesh has allocated 385 million US dollars from its own resources for adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Pointing to the demand of additional support, she said "We require adequate additional climate finance; access to locally-adaptable technologies; and support to capacity- and institution-building.”

Mentioning that Bangladesh has successfully achieved or on the right track in achieving the targets of MDG-1 to MDG-6, Prime Minister said that the rate of poverty has been reduced to 25 percent from 57 percent in 1991.

She also reiterated her government’s vision to transform Bangladesh into a middle-income country by 2021 and a high-income country by 2041.

Apart from the summit, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina led Bangladesh in different bilateral meetings with Germany, Greece, Italy, Russia and Netherlands.

Prime Minister met with her counterpart of the host country Italy, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and hold talks on expanding trade and investments. Mr. Renzi assured that he would encourage his country's entrepreneurs to invest in Bangladesh's various sectors, including relocation of some of the industries. He also lauded Bangladesh for maintaining an open investment policy to encourage the foreign entrepreneurs. The Italian Prime Minister highly appreciated Bangladesh's readymade garment sector, saying Bangladesh could be a "global hub" for RMGs. Connecting to this, he assured of providing continued support for the development of the sector. Matteo Renzi said Italy wants to further deepen its ties with Bangladesh and called for boosting trade and investment between the two countries.

Prime Minister also met with her Swedish counterpart Stefen Lofven at the Bangladesh Meeting Room of Milan Congressi. She sought more Swedish investment in Bangladesh particularly in shipbuilding industry, saying there are huge potentialities of investment in this sector. During the meeting, the Swedish Prime Minister mentioned Bangladesh's 40 years of its membership to the UN and highly appreciated the role of the country in the UN Peacekeeping Mission. He also lauded Bangladesh's tremendous development in various sectors in the last couple of years.

At one stage of discussion, Stefen Lofven raised the issue of Autism and lauded the role of Sheikh Hasina's daughter Saima Hossain Putul in creating awareness globally on autism.

"Her (Putul) endeavours will be replicated in his country," he said and requested to convey her best wishes to Saima.

At her meeting with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her satisfaction over the prevailing political situation and stability in Bangladesh. She also She also highly praised the role of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in settling maritime dispute with India and Myanmar terming the initiative as a model that could be followed by other nations. Merkel lauded the dynamic leadership of Sheikh Hasina in achieving socioeconomic progress of Bangladesh. After describing the government’s step for the welfare of readymade garments workers as well as ensuring their safety and security at the workplace, German Chancellor expressed her satisfaction with Awami League government’s steps.

During a dinner hosted by Italian President Giorgio Nepolitano at Sala Delle Cariatidi, prime Minister Sheikh Hasina held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Both the premiers hoped a joint effort of the ASEM members to continue the development of the two regions in a broader aspect. They also hoped for a dynamic, strong socioeconomic relation between the two countries in coming days.

At the sidelines of the ASEM meeting, PM Sheikh Hasina hold talks with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. He gave assurance of participating in more development projects in Bangladesh including investment in the deep seaport in Sonadia. Mark Rutte termed Bangladesh's innovation on agricultural research and development as well as experience in addressing climate change and flood as unique.

"The Netherlands has lot of things to learn from Bangladesh," he said.

Highly appreciating Bangladesh's tremendous success in socioeconomic development, the Dutch Premier expressed optimism that Bangladesh is going to be one of the “Next Eleven” members in terms of achieving economic prosperity.

Mentioning the government’s zero tolerance policy against terrorism Bangladesh premier said the problems could be solved by creating awareness through discussion with the community-based Imams.

At the Retreat session of the 10th ASEM Meeting titled ‘Enhancing Dialogue and Cooperation between Asia and Europe and Future Direction’, Prime Minister reiterated the government's firm stance on maintaining "zero-tolerance" policy to all forms of terrorism, violent extremism and radicalization, saying such problems remain major impediments to global peace and growth. Talking about the Israeli atrocities on the Palestinian people in Gaza recently, the Bangladesh Premier once again denounced Israeli massacre, saying such killings are not acceptable.

Prime Minister also reaffirmed her commitment to low-carbon and climate-resilient development path and urged the large carbon-emitting countries to reciprocate by robust voluntary pledges from nations like Bangladesh to face the adverse impact of climate change.

Reiterating the promise of never exceeding the average per capita carbon emissions of the developing world, expressed Dhaka's concern over the huge gap between the commitments of the developed world and their initiatives to fulfill the pledges, saying the global action of sharing the burden is absent.

Despite being a climate-vulnerable LDC, she said, Bangladesh was forced to divert the country's development budget for adaptation and mitigation of climate change. "Yet, climate change continues to affect the lives and livelihoods of millions of our people."

Apart from the Summit and other sideline meetings, Prime Ministers Sheikh Hasina also attended a reception accorded by expatriate Bangladeshis.

-Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS)