IORA Summit To Produce Four Agreements

JAKARTA, Mar 6 (Antara) - The Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) Summit will produce four agreement documents to encourage the Indian Ocean to become a peaceful, stable, and prosperous region. "The IORA summit will produce four documents to be agreed upon by the heads of member states," Director of Information and Media of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Siti Sofia Sudarma, said here, Sunday. The four documents are an IORA Concord, an IORA Action Plan, an IORA Declaration on Prevention and Combating Terrorism and Violent Extremism, as well as a Joint Declaration of the IORA Business Community To Build Partnership For Sustainable and Fair Economic Growth. The four documents have been discussed at a high-level officials meeting on Sunday (March 5) and agreed by the 21 IORA member states and seven dialogue partners. The document will be discussed at the ministerial level on Monday (Mar 6), and will be endorsed by heads of state or government on Tuesday (March 7). The most important document, the IORA Concord, which is also referred to as the Jakarta Concord, is a strategic document that contains IORA's future vision and cooperative norms to strengthen the regional architecture in facing challenges in the region. Meanwhile, the IORA Action Plan is a document that contains actions for implementing the Jakarta Concord and strengthening the implementation of priority areas and cross-cutting commitment. The third document, the IORA Declaration on Prevention and Combating Terrorism and Violent Extremism is an agreement about the importance of combating terrorism and extremist violence, while the Joint Declaration of the IORA Business Community in Building Partnerships for Sustainable and Fair Economic Growth contains efforts to strengthen cooperation and partnership for trade and investment expansion and diversification, focusing on small and medium enterprises. According to Sofia, the Indonesian government believes that IORA needs to be developed to strengthen regionalism and encourage the habit of dialogue through the development of norms, rules of engagement, and institutional capacity. She noted that the Indian Ocean is beneficial to Indonesia as it is a potential source of investment, with a total value of US$3.05 billion. "The Indian Ocean Region is also one of the world tourism center which is able to attract 121.8 million travelers with a value of US$146.8 billion. Indonesia's trade with 14 IORA countries had a surplus for the country," she added.