Prime Minister Narendra Modi participated in the third in-person Quad Leaders’ Summit in Hiroshima along with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and US President Joseph Biden.

What is Quad?

• The Quad, or the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is an informal grouping of four countries — Australia, India, Japan and the United States. 

• It is a diplomatic partnership of four countries committed to promoting stability, resilience and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific. 

• Established in the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami to coordinate humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, the Quad has since become a leading regional partnership dedicated to advancing a common vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific through practical cooperation on diverse 21st-century challenges. 

• The foreign ministers of the four countries held their first meeting under the Quad framework in New York in September 2019.

• The first Leaders’ Summit of the Quad was held virtually in March 2021.

• The Quad recognises that international law, peace, and security in the maritime domain underpins the development and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific. 

• The countries are determined to deepen engagement with regional partners, including through capacity-building and technical assistance, to strengthen maritime domain awareness, protect their ability to develop offshore resources, consistent with  the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

• The Quad is exchanging information on ever-evolving threats and working with Indo-Pacific countries, and in multilateral fora, to counter all forms of terrorism and violent extremism.

• Quad partners champion the free, open, and inclusive rules-based order, rooted in international law, that protects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of regional countries.

• The Quad has been focusing on cooperation in areas such as producing vaccines, connectivity projects, facilitating the mobility of students and looking at promoting startups and technology collaboration. 

Highlights of the Quad Leaders’ Summit:

• The leaders had a productive dialogue about developments in the Indo-Pacific which affirmed their shared democratic values and strategic interests. 

• Guided by their vision for a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific, they reiterated the importance of upholding the principles of sovereignty, territorial integrity and peaceful resolution of disputes. 

• PM Modi emphasized the importance of consolidating Quad’s constructive agenda and delivering tangible outcomes for the region. 

• The leaders agreed to continue their regular dialogue and maintain the momentum of Quad engagement. In this context, PM Modi invited Quad leaders to India for the next summit in 2024.

New initiatives

To strengthen the resilience and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific the leaders announced following initiatives which would complement the development priorities of the region:

i) Clean Energy Supply Chains Initiative, which would facilitate research and development and support the Indo-Pacific’s energy transition. In addition, the Quad Principles of Clean Energy Supply Chains were approved to guide engagement with the region on clean energy supply chain development.

ii) ‘Quad Infrastructure Fellowships Programme’ to support policy makers and practitioners in the region to design, build and manage sustainable and viable infrastructure in their countries.

iii) ‘Partnership for Cable Connectivity and Resilience’ to leverage Quad’s collective expertise in design, manufacturing, laying and maintenance of undersea cables to secure and diversify these critical networks.

iv) Quad support for a small-scale ORAN deployment in Palau, the first in the Pacific region. They also released the ORAN Security Report to support industry investment in open, interoperable and secure telecom platforms.

v) Quad Investors’ Network has been launched as a private sector led platform to facilitate investments in strategic technologies.

vi) The leaders welcomed progress of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, announced at their Summit last year in Tokyo. They noted that data sharing with partners in the South East and the Pacific under this programme is underway and would soon include partners in the Indian Ocean Region. 

vii) The leaders agreed on the need to preserve the integrity of the UN, its Charter and its agencies. They agreed on continuing their efforts to strengthen and reform the multilateral system, including through an expansion of the UNSC membership in both permanent and non-permanent categories.

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