VN attends 33rd AIPA meeting
JAKARTA (VNS) — National Assembly Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong is joining her counterparts from the nine other ASEAN nations at the 33rd General Assembly of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) in Lombok, Indonesia.
Observers from Australia, Canada, China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the European Parliament, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia, India and Belarus are also attending the event, which takes place from September 17-22.
Prior to AIPA 33, Truong Thi Mai, a member of the Vietnamese National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee and head of its Committee for Social Affairs attended a meeting for female parliamentarians from AIPA (WAIPA).
Addressing the conference, AIPA President and the Speaker of Indonesia's House of Representatives Marzuki Alie confirmed the key role female parliamentarians play in general and ASEAN women in particular in national construction, defence and development and educating future generations in the context of ASEAN building a community of peace, stability, democracy and prosperity.
Alie emphasised the double challenges to ASEAN member countries, namely completing the UN Millennium Development Goals and the goals set by the ASEAN community's three main pillars, politics-security, economics and socio-culture.
However challenges remain due to a development gap between ASEAN member countries, including gender discrimination and inequality and a difference in empowerment for women in ASEAN member states as well as in urban and rural areas.
At the event, Mai said that Viet Nam still faced challenges in hunger eradication and poverty reduction, reducing the mortality rate in mothers and children and maintaining its MDGs in the context of the increasing negative impacts of climate change.
She added that Viet Nam totally supported initiatives that raise the capacity and role of female parliamentarians in increasing pro-women policies and gender equality in economics, healthcare and education.
The meeting adopted a resolution to help ASEAN member states increase their coordination when implementing the MDGs roadmap, to narrow the development gaps between ASEAN member states. — VNS