Foreign diplomats at a geopolitical conference in the capital Dhaka on Monday called for more regional and international cooperation in addressing inequalities for ‘equitable growth’.
Addressing a plenary session titled ‘From Growth to Fairness: Re-imagining Prosperity After the Great Inequality’ on the concluding day of the three-day Bay of Bengal Conversation, they said that inequality was no longer a social issue, it was rather a structural wound that shaped politics, anger and faith in the future.
The pandemic, debt crises, and cost-of-living shocks had revealed a deeper poverty hidden beneath prosperity, they mentioned.
German ambassador to Bangladesh Rüdiger Lotz said that the regional cooperation was the key, but there was less cooperation among the countries in the South Asia.Â
‘Fair society is more stable and resilient. Unfair society is more unstable,’ the diplomat observed.
‘Growth’ was an economic term, not a moral one, he said, adding that who was growing and who was left behind should be taken into consideration.
Australia’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh Susan Ryle said that today’s challenges were interconnected and had a compounding effect.
‘Climate change and natural disasters are increasing in scale, regularity and cost of debt, inflation and fiscal pressures are converging and developing countries, and their most vulnerable citizens, are bearing the greatest costs of change,’ she said.
‘It won’t be a surprise to anyone if I say we are living in an era of increased geostrategic competition which has the potential to threaten our shared security,’ she said.
‘Australia advocates for an Indo-Pacific where all countries are free to exercise their own agency, and contribute to a regional balance of power where no country dominates and no country is dominated,’ the Australian envoy mentioned.
She, however, said that in the nearly one year since her arrival, she had witnessed the profound changes that had occurred since the July uprising in Bangladesh.
‘I look forward to seeing free, fair and participatory elections in February 2026,’ she said.
Non-government think-tank Centre for Governance Studies organised the fourth Bay of Bengal Conversation attended by about 1,000 participants, including politicians, researchers, diplomats and journalists, from home and abroad.
In his special address, High Commissioner of Canada to Bangladesh Ajit Singh said that Canada was working to build conditions for shared prosperities.
He said that Canada had a long-term commitment for Bangladesh and wanted to continue supports in key areas — health, education, climate resilience, inclusive government and economic development.
Underlining the need for unity among small countries, Kosovo ambassador to Bangladesh Lulzim Pllana said that Kosovo stands ready to build ‘a society where fairness is not a slogan, but a practice’.
Korean ambassador to Bangladesh Park Young-sik presented the development journey of the Republic of Korea at the event.
He said that there was no shortcut way of addressing the economic disparities. The emergence of artificial intelligence, he warned, would render many people jobless.
Moderating the session, CGS president Zillur Rahman said that real progress might depend less on expanding wealth than on rediscovering fairness as the foundation of stability in a shifting geopolitical landscape.
About 200 speakers from 85 countries joined the conference inaugurated by chief justice Syed Refaat Ahmed at a city hotel on Saturday.       Â