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International NGO Established in 1989 Supported by UNFPA and the Kobe City Government |
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Shiv Khare, Executive Director,
Asian Forum of
Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD),
Spoke with AUICK About Its Missions and Challenges
and Development Held in Kobe It is obvious that population is one of the urgent global issues which requires the collaboration and commitment of many countries. Thus, the coordinating bodies that promotes and supports parliamentarians who affect policy planning and implementation within countries has enormous potential to influence the manner in which the solutions to problems are approached. The Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD) is one of those coordinating bodies. Shiv Khare, Executive Director of AFPPD and an organizer of several regional and international parliamentary meetings, spoke with AUICK about its missions and challenges. The AFPPD, formed in 1981, currently has 19 national committees, full time offices in 6 countries and its permanent secretariat and operations in Bangkok. In addition, in India, AFPPD has established New Delhi Center for Parliamentarians on Population and Development which is equipped with a library, document center and conference rooms. One of its main missions is to educate, motivate, and involve parliamentarians in the field of population and development. By holding parliamentarians' meetings and parliamentary exchange visits, the AFPPD is trying to highlight population concerns and related issues, and create a greater awareness amongst them. Thus, AFPPD has influenced various policies at local, national, regional and global levels. In addition, the AFPPD has taken the initiative in organizing parliamentarian meetings, not only from Asian region but also, the world. This is in cooperation with other international parliamentarian organizations such as the Forum of African and Middle Eastern Parliamentarians for Population and Development (FAMEPPD) and the Inter-American Parliamentary Groups of Population and Development. For example, the AFPPD has organized international conferences for parliamentarians who were to attend the UN sponsored conferences and summits such as "The International Conference on Population and Development" in Cairo, "The World Summit on Social Development" in Copenhagen and "The Fourth World Conference on Women" in Beijing in order to shape the international agenda that emerged from those conferences. So far, Asian countries have taken a leading role in the forum of world population and development. While recently, active involvement of the Pacific region to AFPPD's activities has become apparent. It tends to be thought that population concerns of Pacific countries is relatively insufficient, however, on the contrary, due to the limited land availability, they have rather strong concerns about the delicate balance between the population increase and resources. In addition, they consider HIV/AIDS and adolescent reproductive health to be priority issues. In tackling population and development issues, one of the advantages of working with parliamentarians lies in the magnitude of its impact. Considering the significance of the role parliamentarians can play in helping to solve problems related to over-population and development within their countries, the outcome of their awareness-raising will be enormous. However, the difficulty lies in making a consistent and systematic approach to parliamentarians who belong to ever-changing groups. At the same time, however, it will be a special challenge for us to target and reach those changing groups and integrate existing ideas with those from newcomers. Every year the AFPPD and Asian Population and Development Association (APDA) holds the Asian Parliamentarians' Meeting on Population and Development. The important point is that population has not been discussed in a vacuum at those Meeting. Taking into account the fact that population issues have a dynamism which affects every aspect of people's life, the Meeting always has had a sub-topic. For example, this year the theme of the Meeting was "Population and Water Resources". In the past, sub-topics included gender, food security, environment. Shiv Khare concluded by noting that to have parliamentarians' agreement on population and development at the international level will be critical for ensuring sustainable development. Also, the AFPPD is working closely with Japan, which has made a big contribution to the population issues from its ODA. In this context, the AFPPD's work is expected to increase exponentially and will face an ever-challenging role. AUICK plans to promote an active partnership with the AFPPD and to explore how cities can collaborate with parliamentarians towards the solution of population issues. PREV
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