National Women’s Education Center of Japan

On December 14, the “7th Asia-Pacific Forum on Development and Gender” was held in Seoul, South Korea. Its theme was Gender in International Development Agenda: with Special Focus on Beijing +20 and the SDGs in China, Japan and Korea. It was sponsored by the Korean Women’s Development Institute (KWDI), and carried out in cooperation with the National Women’s Education Center.
At the beginning of the forum, the congratulatory remarks of President Utsumi were ready by a member of the Center, who thus spoke about the investigative research and joint research projects conducted heretofore based on an agreement between the center and KWDI, and confirmed that in the future, too, the Center would cooperate in efforts to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs) sensitive to gender.

Following keynote speeches by experts from UN Women and the Asian Development Bank, there was a panel discussion in which a member of the Office of Research and International Affairs delivered a report, from the Beijing Platform for Action to the Sustainable Development Goals Japan’ Efforts to Realize Gender Equality, and in which representatives of South Korea’s Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and the Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA) participated as panelists. In the general discussions, subjects related to achieving SDGs-such as setting more effective numerical goals, and gender issues after a natural disaster occurs-were addressed.