UN in Turkmenistan reaches out to youth and transfers knowledge on UN organizations in the field
 Ashgabat, 29 November 2011 – The decision of the UN Country Team to expand UN visibility in the country has been translated into an initiative to deliver lectures to the students of the Foreign Relations Institute of the Foreign Ministry of Turkmenistan. Heads of each agency stationed in the country, including UNDP, UNFPA, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNODC, WHO, International Organization for Migration (IOM), World Bank Group (WB), and the United Nations Regional Centre for Preventive Diplomacy in Central Asia (UNRCA), received an opportunity to speak to the faculty and students of the Institute and tell about the mission, goals and activities of their organizations at the global and country levels.
This activity was part of the celebration of the UN Day in Turkmenistan this year. During the whole month of November 2011, heads of all abovementioned UN agencies introduced the students to the basic concepts of development in general and sustainable development and human development in particular, human rights including those of refugees, children and people with disabilities, gender equality and health of all populations in the world including of mothers and children, as well as to activities aimed at maintaining regional peace and stability, fighting drug and human trafficking, preventing HIV/AIDS, and capacity building of national institutions and people in various areas of the UN mandate.
All the lectures were very interactive and this experience turned into the mutual learning exercise that benefited both the Institute and the UN agencies. The Institute representatives expanded their knowledge of UN system activities in Turkmenistan and received access to the UN resources and materials, whereas the UN agencies accomplished one of the important objectives of the UN system such as knowledge transfer. More important is the fact that there are high expectations that this type of activity is going to become sustainable in the future since there is strong interest of the Foreign Relations Institute’s management to continue this practice in 2012 with lectures to be focused on more specific issues of international development.
Below are the links to the stories devoted to these lectures:
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