SAARC summit is the regular meeting of the heads of the SAARC states. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation was founded as a movement toward collective progress for the involved nations of South Asia. The idea for the SAARC was proposed on May 2, 1980, by Ziaur Rahman, the then President of Bangladesh. The founding countries met for the first time in April 1981 and then in 1985, they created the SAARC Charter.
The first summit of SAARC was held in Dhaka on 7 December 1985. In the concluding session of the conference on 8 December, the heads of the states of SAARC countries adopted a three point declaration called the historic Dhaka declaration. The next summit was held in Bangalore at the end of the year 1986. In this summit, it was decided that a permanent secretariat would be set up in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. The third summit was held in Kathmanadu. Nepal in 1987, the fourth in Islamabad in 1988, the fifth in Maldives in 1990. The sixth summit was held in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1991. The subsequent summits were held by rotation of the SAARC states excluding Bhutan. Bangladesh hosted second SAARC summit in 1993 and the third in 2005. The coming 14th summit is set to be held in India in 2007. In the Dhaka summit in 2005. The 19th SAARC summit is a diplomatic conference, which was originally scheduled to be held in Islamabad, Pakistan on 15–16 November 2016. Following the rising diplomatic tensions after the Uri terrorist attack, India announced its boycott of the 19th SAARC Summit, alleging Pakistan’s involvement in the same. Later, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Bhutan also pulled out of the summit, culminating in an indefinite postponement of the summit. The 20th SAARC summit is the 20th meeting of the heads of state or heads of government of the eight SAARC countries after their previous meeting in Pakistan. The Summit will take place in 2018.
Afghanistan has been given the membership status and there are also nine observer states: Australia, China, the European Union, Japan, Iran, Mauritius, Myanmar, South Korea, and the United States of America.
