ISLAMABAD:The Centre for Strategic and Contemporary Research (CSCR) on Tuesday conducted the second edition of the Young Researchers’ Convention (YRC) on the National Security Ecosystem of Pakistan 2023.
The convention brought together outstanding young minds from Pakistan’s academic, research and policy circles to generate research agendas and propose action plans on national policy issue areas. The latest edition centred on themes based on the Great Power Competition, Climate Change, Technology and Politics of Identity, said a press release.
During the inaugural speech of the closed-door convention, Executive Director of CSCR, Anas Abdullah said the nation is still in need of an intellectual compass which motivated the centre to conceive the idea of a researchers’ convention.
Highlighting the convention’s significance, keynote speaker, Dr Adnan Rafiq, Member of Governance, Innovation and Reforms at the Planning Commission of Pakistan, stated that inclusivity is a perennial question in Pakistan’s policy-making system; therefore, having a critical mass of pragmatic people to offer ideas is significant.
Dr Asim Sajjad Akhtar, Associate Professor Quaid-i-Azam University, while elaborating on “Entangled Binaries in the Absence of a Value-based Political System”, pointed out that our public perspectives focus more on rhetoric. He remarked on the widespread lack of will or capacity to improve the system. The modalities of violent accumulation were discussed, whereas the need to think of the problems on a systemic level was highlighted.
Fellow at the Transformations of the Human (TotH) at the Berggruen Institute, Dr Hussain Nadim underscored the need to give some definitional clarity to the theme of “Curating Future Technologies’ Landscape”. He noted that ecosystems should be allowed to develop organically. For technology, the problem of integration was pointed out as the major roadblock for the state.