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Meetings of AUICK Committees
1.
International Advisory Committee - Annual Meeting,
5-6 November 2006
From
5 to 6 November 2006, the AUICK
International Advisory Committee （IAC） held an annual meeting in Kobe.
The meeting opened with welcoming remarks by Dr. Hirofumi Ando,
President of AUICK, that the Secretariat would like to receive from IAC
useful suggestions and advice in implementing the AUICK program as
efficiently and effectively as possible. It was followed by remarks by
Dr. G. Giridhar, Director of CST in Bangkok and UNFPA Representative in
Thailand, who attended the meeting representing Mr. Kunio Waki, Deputy
Executive Director of UNFPA.
Under the chair of Dr. Gayl D. Ness, the morning session was mainly
devoted to the discussion on the review of the activities undertaken in
2006, and the afternoon session was focussed on the annual work plan
for 2007 and the direction of the project for 2008-2011.
The IAC members made the following suggestions and recommendations:
- The qualifications for workshop participants should
be specified
further and IAC members should be utilized to a greater extent in the
selection process including the consultation with the concerned Mayors.
The IAC members should meet them to discussing the suitability of
workshop participant nominations as well as the performance of the
former workshop participants. The IAC members also recognized the
difficulties in selecting appropriate workshop participants, and
congratulated the Secretariat for the excellent job it has done;
- Qualifications include the capacity of the nominee to
share
information and experience with their colleagues;
- To supplement the monitoring work of the AUICK
Secretariat, the
local UNFPA offices and the local university or research institutions
should be mobilized;
- The Action Plan Strategy has been an excellent
innovation and should
be continued. It should also be more pragmatic and implementable for
the participants. The participants should be adequately notified that
Action Plans will be expected, without being given rigid frameworks
before the workshop. They should also be encouraged to consult with the
previous workshop participants from the same city. For this purpose,
the establishment of an “Alumni Association” of
workshop participants was proposed;
- There was a specific suggestion from Dr. Giridhar
that the Action
Plans should not be forgotten as a useful monitoring too in themselves
and that the concerned Mayors should approach more proactively the
local UNFPA Offices for support to implement the Action Plans. Formal
request letters from the Mayors to local UNFPA Offices would be very
helpful. He also proposed that he would inform the UNFPA regional
planning meeting in Bangkok the following week of the uniqueness and
achievements of the AUICK project;
- It was also suggested that AUICK organize briefing
sessions on its
unique work for UNFPA representatives at regional meetings. There could
also be support from the UNFPA Country Support Team (CST) for the
preparation of case studies;
- While the information activities are viewed very
positively, the IAC
suggested that AUICK should go “beyond the web-based
database” to disseminate information more widely through such
means as the preparation of articles based on case studies by IAC
members for publication in the local newspaper and the dissemination of
more copies of the Newsletter to workshop participants so that they
will share it with many colleagues. IAC also suggested that a separate
small publication on best case practices be prepared. Review of the
data in line with MDGs and ICPD Program of Action was also suggested；
- The MIS projects (or the City University Partnership,
CUP), as part
of the mainstreaming exercise, should first be extended to other cities
within the same country and then to neigh- boring countries； and
- Concerning the workshop topic, in view of the recent
tsunami crisis
in Asian countries, a suggestion was made to organize a workshop on
emergency medical service or link reproductive health service to the
efforts of “crisis management.”
In the morning of
6 November the IAC members approved the minutes of
the meeting and the draft of the concept of the project for the years
2008-2011.
At the closure of
the meeting, IAC paid special tribute to Dr. Toshio
Kuroda and Mr. Kareem Iqbal who were not able to attend the meeting for
their continued commitment and support to the AUICK program.
After the meeting the IAC members
attended a luncheon hosted by Mr.
Kazutoshi Sasayama, who has been working for AUICK as a special advisor
since he retired from the chairmanship of AUICK.
Participants:
IAC
Members
Prem P. Talwar
Adjunct Professor,
University of North Carolina (India)
Haryono
Suyono
Former Minister
Coordinator for People Welfare and Poverty Alleviation
(Indonesia)
Krasae
Chanawongse
Former Minister of
Foreign Affairs (Thailand)
Gayl
D. Ness
Professor
Emeritus, University of Michigan (USA)
Garimera Giridhar
Representative,
UNFPA Thailand and Director of UNFPA CST in Bangkok
(Representing Mr. Kunio Waki, Deputy Executive Director of UNFPA)
AUICK
Secretariat
Hirofumi
Ando,
President
Yoshikane
Fujimoto,
Executive Director:
Nobuyuki
Morimoto,
Deputy
Executive Director
Yuko
Yamaji,
Staff
Midori
Sumiyoshi,
Staff
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