The ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN People’s Forum 2013 themed
“ASEAN: Building Our Future Together” took place in the Brunei capital
city of Banda Seri Begawan on April 6-8.
Held
by the Council of Women of Brunei under the auspice of the Civil
Society Organisations, the event was to strengthen solidarity and unity
of voices, concerns, needs and recommendations of each citizen and civil
society, towards the realisation of ASEAN Community by 2015.
Addressing the opening ceremony, Brunei Minister of Culture, Youth
and Sports Pehin bin Haji Abdullah said the successful establishment of
the ASEAN Community by 2015 critically relies on the participation and
active contributions of each citizen and civil society in ASEAN,
including youth, women and non-governmental organisations.
He stressed that each Government, citizen and civil society in the
region should work to realise common goals of poverty reduction, job
creation, health care improvement and sustainable environmental
protection.
Abdullah said civil society can assist
in bridging ASEAN gap through mutual links to improve services for the
poor, the illiterate, the ailing and the vulnerable.
On top of this, civil society can seek cooperation in human resources
development through education, training, technology and regional
initiatives on natural disaster mitigation and people-to-people
connectivity.
Participants mulled recommendation
mechanism, environmental protection and the building of ASEAN spanning
over three key pillars of politics-security, economics and
socio-culture.
They also adopted the ACSC/APF joint
declaration and transferred the chairmanship of next year’s event to
Myanmar which will chair ASEAN in 2014.-VNA