"On the pillar of sociocultural cooperation, the government has prepared six priority issues that will be brought up when Indonesia becomes the chair of ASEAN in 2023," Effendy said at the “ASEAN Sociocultural Pillar National Consultation Forum,” which was accessed online from here on Friday.
According to Minister Effendy, there are three pillars of cooperation in ASEAN—the political and security pillar, the ASEAN economic pillar, and the sociocultural community pillar.
The six priority issues that Indonesia will raise will include health, migrant workers’ protection, climate change, education, disaster management, and rural development, he informed.
"The list of priorities and activities is still not final. We will conduct further discussions to accommodate other important issues, especially cross-sectoral ones, which can become challenges to national priorities on human development," the minister said.
For example, the impact of the pandemic has set back poverty alleviation efforts and hampered the learning of more than 60 million students in Indonesia.
"Moreover, Indonesia also has millions of migrant workers worldwide, including in Southeast Asia. In the first semester of 2022 alone, around six thousand migrant workers have been placed in Malaysia and Singapore, the two largest migrant worker recipient countries in the region," he pointed out.
The government has an important task to ensure the protection of the rights of migrant workers.
"This is an example of several important issues that need to be addressed immediately, and Indonesia must consider these issues to be raised at ASEAN," Effendy added.
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Translator: Wuryanti P, Mecca Yumna
Editor: Rahmad Nasution
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