Kathmandu: The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Embassy of Japan in Kathmandu on Wednesday signed an addendum to the memorandum governing the SAARC-Japan Special Fund for the 2026 edition of the Japan-East Asia Network of Exchange for Students and Youths (JENESYS).
Under the agreement, the Government of Japan will provide 34.607 million Japanese yen for JENESYS 2026, according to a joint press release issued by the Embassy of Japan and the SAARC Secretariat. The document was signed in Kathmandu by SAARC Secretary-General Md Golam Sarwar and Japanese Ambassador to Nepal MAEDA Toru.
The programme will bring about 40 young participants from SAARC countries to Japan during fiscal year 2026, with this year's exchange focused on disaster management and climate change. The participants are expected to study Japan's approaches and experiences and share what they learn after returning to their respective countries, the joint release said.
The new agreement continues a youth-exchange programme that Japan has supported through the SAARC-Japan Special Fund. Japan and SAARC have used youth exchanges as a means of promoting people-to-people contact and mutual understanding for years. Japan's Foreign Ministry says the SAARC component of JENESYS was established to promote mutual understanding between Japan and South Asian countries while contributing to human-resource development in the region.
Focus shifts towards shared climate and disaster risks
The decision to make disasters and climate change the central theme of JENESYS 2026 comes at a time when disaster preparedness has become a common concern across South Asia.
The region includes countries exposed to floods, landslides, cyclones, earthquakes, droughts and other climate-related hazards. For a programme involving participants from across South Asia, disaster risk reduction therefore provides an area where experiences from different countries can potentially be compared and discussed.
Japan, meanwhile, has accumulated extensive experience in disaster risk reduction and has promoted international cooperation in the field. Its government has linked disaster-risk reduction with sustainable development and has continued to promote the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, which was adopted at a UN conference in Sendai in 2015.
That experience is one of the main practical elements that participants can examine during the exchange. Previous JENESYS programmes have included visits to disaster-management institutions and discussions on climate change and disaster prevention, showing how the programme has been used to combine educational exchange with exposure to Japanese practices.
However, the value of such exchanges will ultimately depend on what participants are able to take back and apply in their own countries. A short study visit cannot by itself address the structural problems associated with disaster preparedness, including weak infrastructure, limited resources, gaps in early-warning systems and differences in institutional capacity.
From exchange visits to practical knowledge
The joint statement says the organisers expect participants to share and apply practices related to climate resilience and disaster preparedness after returning home.
This makes the post-visit component important. If the programme is limited to exposure to Japanese institutions, technology and disaster-management systems, its wider regional impact is likely to remain limited. Follow-up activities involving universities, government agencies, local authorities and civil-society organisations could determine whether knowledge gained in Japan reaches communities beyond the participants themselves.
Previous JENESYS programmes have encouraged participants to develop action plans following their exchanges. Reports from earlier programmes show participants identifying areas such as community awareness, early-warning systems, climate-adaptive practices and disaster preparedness as possible areas for follow-up action.
For South Asian countries, the practical question is therefore not only what participants learn in Japan, but whether those lessons can be adapted to local conditions. Disaster risks and institutional capacities vary considerably across the region, meaning that Japanese approaches may require modification rather than direct replication.
A people-to-people channel for SAARC-Japan relations
The programme also provides Japan with a long-running channel for engagement with young people from South Asia. JENESYS was originally designed to promote mutual understanding through youth exchanges, while exposing participants to Japanese society, culture, technology and development experiences.
SAARC currently has eight member states—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka—with the organisation's secretariat based in Kathmandu. Its stated objectives include promoting regional cooperation in economic, social, cultural, technical and scientific fields.
Youth exchanges can provide a relatively non-political avenue for regional interaction at a time when broader regional cooperation often faces difficulties. Because the programme works through individual participants rather than formal intergovernmental negotiations, it can create contacts among young people from countries that do not always find it easy to cooperate on more contentious issues.
At the same time, the scale of the 2026 programme is modest. With about 40 participants across the SAARC region, it cannot by itself produce a broad change in regional disaster-management capacity. Its significance is better understood as a small-scale capacity-building and people-to-people initiative, rather than a regional disaster-management programme.
Japan's wider disaster-cooperation experience
The focus on disaster preparedness also fits into Japan's broader international cooperation in disaster-risk reduction. Japan has promoted the sharing of disaster-management knowledge and technology internationally and has continued to provide assistance and expertise following disasters in other countries.
For South Asia, cooperation in this area could be particularly relevant because climate change and natural hazards increasingly cross administrative boundaries and affect agriculture, infrastructure, settlements and livelihoods.
But the effectiveness of regional cooperation will depend on whether lessons from exchanges are translated into locally appropriate policies, training, early-warning systems and community-level preparedness. The 2026 JENESYS programme provides an opportunity for such knowledge-sharing, but the agreement itself does not establish that these outcomes will occur.
The signing of the addendum therefore represents a continuation of Japan-South Asia youth engagement, with a more directly practical theme this year. Its immediate output is clear: Japanese funding will support the participation of about 40 young people from SAARC countries in an exchange centred on climate change and disasters. Its longer-term value will depend on what those participants do with the knowledge and contacts gained after returning home.
