17 September, 2018, Vientiane Capital - The outgoing UNFPA Representative, Ms. Frederika Meijer made courtesy visits to bid farewell to different Ministries. These included the Minister of Health, Education and Sports, Labour and Social Welfare, Foreign Affairs, Vice-Minister of Planning and Investment and partners such as the Lao Women Union, the Lao Youth Union and the Lao Statistic Bureau.
(Ms. Meijer and Mr. Salermxay Kommasith, Minister of Foreign Affairs)
Ms. Meijer has served over 2 years and 7 months as UNFPA Lao PDR Representative. During this period she has worked closely with Lao Government on reproductive health and rights with a strong focus on young people towards achieving the SDGs indicators.
(Ms. Meijer and UNFPA team bid farewell to Minister of Health, Dr. Bounkong Syhavong)
Some of the key achievements in the countries’ health area with support from UNFPA include: Strengthening of the institutional capacity of midwives as well as midwife education to meet with international standards through South-South Cooperation, including the deployment of ethnic midwives in ethnic areas. Supporting the first-ever National Family Planning Conference, a high level forum where everybody joined forces to advocate and increase the investment on Family planning. The National Adolescent and Youth Friendly Service Guideline was launched and rolled out for training in several provinces.
(Ms. Meijer and UNFPA team bid farewell to Minister of Education and Sports, Madame. Sengdeuane Lachanthaboune)
Ms. Meijer also expressed her gratitude to Minister of Education and Sports, Madame Sengdeuane Lachanthaboune and her team for the excellent cooperation during her tenure in Lao PDR. The partnership with MoES, which began in 2017, focused on adolescent and young people through deployment of the Noi Approach. UNFPA works closely with MoES on Nang Noi Girls Groups Programme that aims to create safe spaces for adolescent girls and empower them to build their social, health, cognitive and economic assets. Comprehensive Sexuality Education was integrated in the study curriculum and moreover, this year MoES will host the International Day of Girl Child on 11th of October which aims to review the progress of adolescent and youth programme within the development agenda.
(Ms. Meijer and UNFPA team bid farewell to Vice Minister of Planning and Investment, Dr. Kikeo Chanthabouly)
Under her leadership, UNFPA played a key role to support the National Adolescent and Youth Policy, the revision of National Population and Development Policy, Reproductive Health Policy and the launch of Population Projection and the Lao Social Indicator Survey (LSIS) 2017-2018. In July 2018 the Voluntary National Review on the Sustainable Development Goals was presented in New York and the Noi approach was recognized at the global level.
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(Ms. Meijer bids farewell to Lao Women Union’s President) |
(Ms. Meijer bids farewell to Statistic Bureau’s President) |
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(Ms. Meijer bids farewell to Minister of Labour and Social Welfare) |
(Ms. Meijer bids farewell Lao Youth Union’s President) |
As her end of assignment, she leaves behind a very strong team at the UNFPA office with 90% Lao nationals taking the lead on all the on-going initiatives. A very cordial relationship with the Lao government continues, as well as the support to the Government of Lao PDR working toward the national and global development goals by ensuring that every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled and not to leave anyone behind, especially Noi.
She has been assigned as the UNFPA Deputy Regional Director for Arab States and her duty station will be Cairo, Egypt from the third week of September 2018.
