Chandigarh, November 11
Soft borders cannot be a stand-alone development. They have to be part of a political process spanning intra, inter and regional entities. Stating this in his talk, From fencing to soft borders: issues options and problems, Dr Suba Chandran, Assistant Director of the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, said that soft borders cannot be bilateral, but should be regional and extra-regional.
He was speaking at the P.N. Haksar memorial lecture-cum-seminar series at the Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development (CRRID) here.
Soft borders, which permit easy movement of people and goods and
easy access to entry visas, should start with a regional economic offensive. Without SAPTA and SAFTA, he said, soft borders would remain a distant dream.
Stating that soft borders need better appreciation and understanding of political conditions in neighbouring countries, he added that better border management should precede initiation of soft borders.
Illegal movement of people, goods, arms and drugs across borders are some of the issues confronting policy makers in this arena. Further, borders in this region are arbitrary and ill defined, he said.
In his talk on the socio-economic approach for softening borders, Prof Dong Ju Choi from the Sookmyung Women’s University, Seoul, delved on how some of the factors fuelling border conflict and civil wars have changed over the times and how economic policies have become increasingly important in preventing them.
He said that the importance of economic policy in ameliorating socio-economic disparities among different political entities has grown as a result of some recent developments, including the end of the Cold War.
