Jakarta (VNA) – Ambassador Nguyen Hoanh Nam, head of the Vietnamese mission to ASEAN, attended the 11th Coordinating Conference on the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community in Jakarta, Indone📖sia, from March 29-30.

The conference centred on orientations and measures to implement a blueprint on the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community (ASCC) to 2025, especially coordination between relevant agencies in joint sectors. ASCC is one of the three pillars of the ASEAN Community, together with the ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) and the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). In his opening remarks, ASEAN Secretary General Le Luong Minh suggested agencies and organisations concerned within the ten-member group, team up with each other to conduct activities stated in the blueprint in a comprehensive and effective manner. More attention should be paid to raising public awareness and building an ASEAN with people as its centre, he stressed. At the conference, participating countries reviewed their socio-economic achievements, with the rate of people living on or below 1.25 USD per day dropping from half to one eighth over the past two decades. Between 1999-2012, 94 percent of the regional population of children were enrolled in elementary education, the percentage of women in parliament reached 18.5 percent and more than 98 percent of the population aged between 15-24 in the region were literate. Alongside this, as many as 25 ASEAN cultural heritage examples have won UNESCO recognition. The delegates agreed to revamp ways to mobilise resources, enhance information exchanges and make the best use of dialogue mechanisms and commitments with foreign partners and organisations. ASCC needs contributions made by all ASEAN agencies, including those of the remaining pillars, they said. They were unanimous in priority areas proposed by Laos as this year’s ASEAN Chair, focusing on generating jobs, particularly for women, and preserving and developing cultural heritage. Other topics raised on the agenda of the conference included a smoke-free ASEAN, rights of guest workers, drugs, contagious diseases, food safety, natural disasters, climate change and gender equality. Activities to mark the bloc’s 50 th founding anniversary in 2017 was also discussed at the event. As part of the ASEAN Vision 2025, the blueprint spans 18 areas with 109 strategic measures aiming to consolidate the ASEAN Social-Cultural Community by 2025.-VNA