Subject: [CivilSoc] Aga Khan signs treaty to launch regional university
From: Karim Khan Qamar (kkqamar@compuserve.com)
Date: Wed Aug 30 2000 - 04:31:11 EDT
Central Asian States, Aga Khan signs treaty to launch regional university
08/29/2000
Business Recorder
Copyright (C) 2000 Business Recorder; Source: World
Reporter (TM)
DUSHANBE : The University of Central Asia is being
established by an international treaty being signed
here on Monday and in Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic on
Wednesday.
Twenty five million people who depend for their lives
and livelihoods, on highest mountain ranges, will
benefit from the world's first university dedicated
exclusively to education and research on mountain
regions and societies.
At the ceremony here, the Aga Khan announced an
initial endowment of $5 million allocated for the
university's programmes in Tajikistan.
Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmonov and Kyrgyz
Republic President Askar Akaev, who will represent the
first founding states, will sign the treaty in their
respective capitals with His Highness the Aga Khan,
Imam (spiritual leader) of the Ismaili Muslims.
The establishment of the university was recommended by
an international commission of mountain experts,
academicians and regional specialists appointed in
1995 shortly after President Rahmonov and the Aga Khan
signed an agreement to facilitate the work of the Aga
Khan Development Network (AKDN) in the region.
"Mountain populations experience extremes of poverty
and isolation as well as constraints on opportunities
and choice," said the Aga Khan in announcing the
launch, "but at the same time, they sustain great
linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious pluralism,
and show remarkable resilience in the face of
extraordinarily harsh circumstances."
"By creating intellectual space and resources," he
continued, "this university will help turn the
mountains that divide the nations and territories of
central Asia into the links that unite its peoples and
economies in a shared endeavour to improve their
future well-being."
The university is intended to serve people in the
mountainous parts of Tajikistan, the Kyrgyz Republic,
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, China, Iran, Afghanistan and
Pakistan.
The regional university will be distinctive in a
number of ways. Its charter, academic standards,
curricula, faculty and students, academic partnerships
and linkages will be international.
It will emphasise distance learning and the use of
information and computer technologies, and will create
satellite facilities and programmes across the region.
The post-graduate programme will foster research on
issues critical to sustainable development e.g.
geology of mountains and mining, hydrology,
seismology, mountain ecology, natural resource
management, high-altitude agriculture and development
economics.
An interdisciplinary residential undergraduate
programme will cover a wide range of subjects e.g.
forestry, environmental engineering, disaster
management, agronomy, civil engineering, mining,
energy, computer sciences, economics, business,
accounting, sociology, regional languages,
anthropology, history, philosophy and ethics.
The university will draw on the expertise and
experience of the AKDN in operating educational
facilities. The Aga Khan University already created
under an international charter in Pakistan in 1984,
and its academic programmes in East Africa and Europe,
will contribute in a number of ways to the new
university.
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