Meeting with Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, 30 September 2009
By Stephanie Castanie on Thursday, October 1 2009, 16:00 - Local projects - Permalink
After a long time, we finally succeeded to meet on Wednesday 30 September 2009 in his office, H. E. Mr. Kabir Frahi, acting Minister of Foreign Affairs in Afghanistan.
We met the minister together with Afghan members of the Cluster Munition Coalition (CMC), Advocacy Committee members, the Deputy Minister of MOLSAMD and a Member of the Parliament. The agenda of the meeting was on the ratification process of the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM) to be started as soon as possible, the need for Afghanistan to participate in the Cartagena Summit, and the need for the Afghan government to sign and ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). But we focused the discussion mainly on the Cartagena Summit and the ratification of the CCM.
Mr. Frahi pointed that “we were involved since the beginning of the Oslo process and with a lot of pressures on Afghanistan, we signed the CCM and now we try to start the ratification process but due to the election process it goes forward a little slowly”.
About the Cartagena Summit, he said that “we need to discuss with H. E. the President and the Minister of Foreign Affairs himself when he is back, it is clear how it is important for Afghanistan to participate in this conference and I try my best to do something to convince H. E. the President and the Minister to nominate some one to participate, but I cannot promise you concretely.”
Some support documents translated into local language with the key messages were handed over to Mr. Frahi.
On the same day there was the Disabilities Stakeholders Coordination Group Meeting in ALSO, and I raised those issues to push the government to participate in the Cartagena Summit and now we have to use different resources through meetings, lobbying, media, publication, partnership and other possibilities...
Next week there will be a roundtable with the participation of landmine and cluster munition survivors in 1 - 2 public TV to call on the government to ratify the CCM and participate in the Cartagena Summit, which is really important for everyone.
Suliman Safdar
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