On 16 August 2018, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Thailand by Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) co-organized the 4^th TICA Connect under the theme “Five Decades of Thailand and UNFPA Partnership: Advancing towards Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)” to showcase and share feature aspects of Thailand and UNFPA successful partnership with a focus on population development at Vithes Samosorn, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Over 200 members of the diplomatic corps, international organizations, counterpart agencies together with academic and think tank institutions participated in the event.

          On this occasion, H.E. Mr. Virasakdi Futrakul, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, gave the opening remarks emphasizing a global development partnership between Thailand and UNFPA and UNFPA’s valuable contribution to Thailand’s population development particularly on reproductive health related issues for decades. He stressed Thailand’s determination to promote the Global Partnership for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Goal 17 as a key driver to the attainment of other SDGs including Goal 3 to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

          As an active partner, Thailand together with UNFPA have been working to realize and accelerate the implementation of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) agenda in any related emerging population issues through South-South and triangular cooperation in the region and beyond. He also highlighted that Thailand has been sharing some of the good practices based on the application of the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP) in health and other sectors with our friends and development partners around the world under Thailand’s initiative “SEP for SDGs Partnership”.

          Activities at the event included a panel discussion under the topic “Development of Thailand: from recipient to global partner of UNFPA” with speakers from TICA, the Ministry of Public Health, and Chulalongkorn University where successful stories of Thailand on population and development in public health sector including lessons learned from the past and present and future collaboration with UNFPA towards achieving the SDGs was discussed and shared.

          Participants also witnessed the launch of “Thailand-UNFPA Network for Making Motherhood Safer” to scale up the work of South-South Solution Network on Safe Motherhood and the exhibition from TICA-UNFPA counterpart institutions. Participating at the launch and the exhibition was Khon Kaen University, Chiang Mai University, Mahidol University, Prince of Songkla University, Ramathibodi Hospital, the Planned Parenthood Association of Thailand (PPA) and the Thailand Midwifery and Nursing Council.

          The event was also an opportunity to disseminate information on the achievements of collaboration between Thailand through TICA and other relevant agencies working with UNFPA, in providing technical assistance to strengthen institutional capacity and human resources development including sharing Thailand’s appropriate technology and best practices to reduce maternal mortality rate in Bhutan and Lao PDR under South-South and triangular platform.