Zeina Hilal, manager of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Gender Partnership Programme speaks to media at the press conference. — VNA/VNS Photo

HÀ NỘI — The ninth Global Conference of Young Parliamentarians is a very good opportunity for young parliamentarians to meet with each other, to learn from each other and to show their colleagues how they are doing in their country, not only good things but also challenges, said Zeina Hilal, manager of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Gender Partnership Programme.

Speaking to Vietnamplus about the conference’s theme “The Role of Young People in Promoting the Realisation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) via Digital Transformation and Innovations”, she said every country is putting in place strategies, programmes, policies, legislation to advance innovation and implementation of SDGs.

The idea of the conference is to have all parliamentarians from countries here in Hà Nội to see how each one is doing and sharing in legislation, policy making for youth empowerment and innovation to allow development, she said.

She also highly valued the effective integration of the conference’s theme into panel discussions.

Showing her impression on Việt Nam’s preparations for the event, Hilal said the organising committee, the leadership of Vietnamese National Assembly (NA) and IPU have been very creative in preparations for the conference by adding an exhibition and by holding special seminars.

The conference is expected to attract attention by young people, give young people from Việt Nam and the world the opportunities to be empowered, she said.

She showed her interest towards level of organisation, impressive organisation of side-events as well as level of participation.

Young parliamentarians from around the world are happy to come to Việt Nam and enthusiastic about the conference, she said.

“All of these are very impressive testimonial of how this conference is well organised,” she said.

She also hailed the Vietnamese NA for organising the first "Children's National Assembly" hypothetical session last weekend, highlighting the importance of making the younger generation to be interested in, engaged in and understand politics.

“Việt Nam has huge young population. There needs to be spaces for these young people to be interested in politics and engaged,” she said.

Returning Việt Nam this time since 2015 when the country hosted the 132nd IPU Assembly, Hilal said she can still feel the same energy from Việt Nam.

Việt Nam in 2015 was already looking ahead especially at the SDGs and how best to implement them. And now it’s an opportunity for this conference to look out what has happened to achieve the goals, she said. — VNS