This discussion will start at 4:00 p.m. IST. Link to the broadcast will be made available here.
As the Bay of Bengal returns to the limelight of strategic attention after years of isolation, its littoral countries are keen to re-engage with one another, to build a more collaborative future. A natural platform to reinforce these ties is the Bay of Bengal Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation or BIMSTEC — the regional organisation exclusive to the Bay, which celebrated its 25th anniversary on 6 June this year.
In recent months the organisation has attracted significant interest by adopting a Charter for the first time, at its 5th Summit Meeting. In this meeting it also rationalised its fourteen sectors of cooperation into seven broad areas of concern for better functionality. As BIMSTEC stands on the threshold of a new innings, with the Charter now guiding its path, Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata under its Neighbourhood Studies Initiative is hosting a Live Virtual Roundtable Discussion on “BIMSTEC@25: Hope for Strengthening Regionalism?” on 28 June 2022. The agenda is to have an engaging discussion with regional experts on various key issues important for BIMSTEC; ranging from security, economy, connectivity and people-to-people contact, all in the context of the adopted Charter and its terms.
