The eight nations of South Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) have come a long way in forging regional cooperation. Yet numerous conflicts and challenges impede full cooperation and economic development among them. The academic community interested in South Asian cooperation issues needs a portal to realize what is going on in different countries and research institution globally. Keeping this in view the McGill University—Universite de Montreal Research Group in International Security (REGIS) (http://www.gersi.umontreal.ca/defaulten.aspx) in collaboration with the Asian Study Center for Political & Conflict Transformation (ASPECT), Kathmandu, Nepal, is creating an online searchable database. We hope that scholars, students, policy makers, NGOs and all others interested in the region would find this free portal useful.

The project is called South Asian Regional Cooperation Academic Network (SARCAN), and will be coordinated by Dr. T.V. Paul, McGill Director of REGIS (http://www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience/faculty/paul/) Manish Thapa of ASPECT will be the Regional Coordinator of the network, working from Nepal. It is sponsored by the projects on “Globalization and the National Security State,” and “When Regions Transform: From Conflict to Cooperation,” both funded by the Fonds de rescherche sur la societe et la culture (FQRSC) Quebec (http://gnss.mcgill.ca/). The network will bring together the diverse groups of academics; organisations and practitioners working on multi-faceted issue areas of South Asian regional cooperation around the world by putting together a large online and searchable database of academic work, publications, organisations and their work profiles into one central site, where they can come together, increase their online presence and share information.