Nepali activists arrive in city as part of global ‘Jai Jagat 2020’ march

A six-member delegation from Nepal arrived in Karachi on Sunday to take part in a global peace march titled ‘Jai Jagat 2020’.

The Karachi Press Club (KPC) hosted a lunch in honour of the guests. Representatives of the media and civil society organisations were also present. KPC’s acting president Saeed Sarbazi and senior member Tahir Hasan Khan, welcomed the delegation.

Jai Jagat is an international campaign to respond to the deepening economic, social and environmental crisis. The campaign is an urgent appeal for people to transform and achieve ‘One Planet and One People. The themes of the global march are: eradicating poverty, eliminating social exclusion, ameliorating the climate crisis, halting conflict, and violence,” a press statement said.

Speaking at the KPC reception, Jagat Bahadur Basnet, a member of the delegation, said “most of the delegation members belonged to land rights movement in Nepal”. “The Nepalese peasants are facing poverty due to lack of resources and opportunities,” he said.

Karamat Ali, executive director of the Pakistanis Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER), underlined the need for the revival of SAARC. He said the last summit was held in 2014 and the 2016 summit was to be held in Islamabad but it could not happen.

He said the civil society had “a platform of People's SAARC, which meets on the occasion of the official SAARC summit”. The members of the visiting delegation were Basnet, Geeta Pandit, Bhawani Ghimire, Jagat Bahadur Deuja, Lyam Bahadur Darjee, Somparsad Bhandari and Ghimire Bhabani.

Civil society activists and academics who attended the lunch were Fahim Zaman, Dr Riaz Shaikh, Farhat Parween, Saeed Baloch, Nazim F Haji, Zahid Farooq, Imran Sherwani, Nasir Mansoor, Shujauddin Qureshi, Habibuddin Junaidi, and Qazi Khizar.