Regional arrangements:

The foreign ministers of the seven South Asian countries during the inaugural session signed two conventions. One on preventing and combating trafficking in women and children for prostitution and the other on regional arrangements for the promotion of child welfare in South Asia. Trafficking of women and children, and child welfare, have remained a common problem to the South Asian region, home to one-fifth of the world population. Expressing hope that the signing of the conventions would contribute in welfare of women and children, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba laid foremost priorityon poverty reduction in the region where more than half a billion people earn less than $1 a day. “We must expand production and markets, increase trade, raise incomes and consumption, as well as pro-poor policies,” he said. Deuba highlighted the need to empower people with better education and health services, widening of job market . While we seek to expand trade outside the region, efforts must be exerted to stimulate regional trade. To achieve that, we should finalise the South Asian Preferential Trade Arrangement (SAFTA)framework treaty, fix priority and sequence execution, he said. Deuba also took up the “visionary goal” of establishing South Asian Economic Union.

Globalization

Globalization is what we call the process of the world becoming a smaller place. This is happening more and more and in many different ways, with results both good and bad: people move around more than ever; our society is increasingly ethnically and culturally diverse; we have instant access to information from anywhere in the world via satellite television and the