Note to Correspondents - High-level UN delegation in Indonesia
Notes to correspondents
A high-level United Nations delegation, led by Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs Miroslav Jenca and composed of Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-Wha Kang; Assistant Secretary General, Regional UNDG Asia-Pacific Chair and UNDP Regional Director for Asia and the Pacific Haoliang Xu; Assistant Secretary-General for Intergovernmental Support and Strategic Partnerships of UNWOMEN Lakshmi Puri, and Deputy Executive Secretary of UNESCAP Kaveh Zahedi met in Jakarta on 31 March 2016 with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Indonesia, H.E. Retno Marsudi, to discuss UN-Indonesia cooperation and the ASEAN-UN Comprehensive Partnership. Other topics included the United Nations Secretary-General’s Plan of Action on Preventing Violent Extremism in relation to lessons from Indonesia; gender equality and women’s empowerment in the region; global and regional ‘mixed migration’; the forthcoming World Humanitarian Summit, as well as developments in the Middle East.
The United Nations delegation also held an official meeting with the ASEAN Committee of Permanent Representatives at the ASEAN Secretariat. The meeting discussed the development of the first five-year Plan of Action (2016-2020) between ASEAN and the United Nations, which had been previously agreed at the 7th ASEAN-UN Summit. The Plan of Action will detail the future priorities of the cooperation between both organisations, including the alignment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the ASEAN Community Vision 2025. The ASEAN-UN Plan of Action will be finalised in the coming months, before the ASEAN-UN Summit in Vientiane in September 2016.
The ASEAN Permanent Representatives and the United Nations delegation also focused on regional developments in ASEAN, recent global developments at the United Nations and the Human Rights up Front initiative. Looking ahead, United Nations senior officials encouraged ASEAN to share its valuable regional experiences in global fora, including the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May 2016 and the Summit on Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants at United Nations headquarters in September.