Fadli Zon Meets UNSTAD Secretary General, Discusses Indonesia's Role In Middle Power Countries

DPR Doc

JAKARTA - Chairman of the House of Representatives' Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation Agency (BKSAP), Fadli Zon met with the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNSTAD), Rebca Grynspan. The bilateral meeting discussed Indonesia's position in the middle power country to the issue of Palestinian development.

Fadli Zon's meeting with the Secretary General of UNSTAD, Rebeca Grynspan, was held on the sidelines of the implementation of the Indonesia Africa Parliamentary Forum (Indonesian Parliamentary Forum-Africa) which was held by the Indonesian House of Representatives in Bali, Sunday (1/9). UNSTAD is one of the guests invited by the Indonesian Parliament forum with the African countries.

As for the bilateral meeting, Fadli Zon discussed the international trade system to be more balanced until the current situation between Palestine and UNSTAD. He stressed that the international trade system must be more balanced between developed and developing countries.

According to him, cooperation and mutual support is needed between developed and developing countries to meet the needs of developing countries in developing their downstream industries.

"The solution to this global development problem lies in cooperation. Multilateralism is very important, and developing countries need support to develop the downstream industry," said Fadli Zon, Monday, September 2.

"The role of UNCTAD is to facilitate cooperation between developed and developing countries," he continued.

UNCTAD itself is a United Nations (UN) agency that focuses on trade and development. UNCTAD also deals with issues related to sustainable finance, technology, investment and development.

Fadli also highlighted the position of UNCTAD in a more egalitarian structure within the UN organization. This stems from a conference and emphasizes horizontal relations rather than vertical relations.

"This agreement recognizes all countries equally, even Palestine and the Vatican are full membership, not observers," explained Fadli.

The legislator from West Java I also touched on further Palestinian issues. In addition to voicing the importance of all parties supporting peace in Palestine, Fadli also emphasized the importance of rebuilding Gaza which has been ravaged by Israeli attacks.

"I convey that rebuilding Gaza is also an important issue and must be discussed. And Rebecca agrees with us to rebuild Gaza," explained the member of Commission I of the House of Representatives.

During the meeting, Rebecca Grynspan was said to have conveyed the latest fact from the UNCTAD study that rebuilding Gaza took 70 years.

Therefore, Fadli assessed that it is important for UNCTAD to encourage South-South cooperation where the economy of Indonesia and African countries will determine more than two-thirds of the global economy.

Fadli also said that Rebecca Grynspan was interested in Indonesia's role as a middle power that could represent Global South or developing countries. Rebecca is also said to think that Indonesia can play a major role in becoming a bridge between developed countries and developing countries whose positions are sufficient to hold the key.

"Our meeting was very warm and discussed a lot about Indonesia's role as a middle power where Indonesia's voice could represent Global South or developing countries. And he is very interested," said Fadli.

Fadli added that Rebecca Grynspan, who is also the second former Vice President of Costa Rica, encouraged Indonesia to host the 2025 UNCTAD annual meeting.

"This forum is usually followed by an Investment Forum that can bring in thousands of participants to explore investment," he said.

On that occasion, Fadli Zon also introduced Investment Minister Rosan Roeslani to Rebeca Grynspan to discuss the possibility of this event.

For information, the Indonesia-Africa Parliamentary Forum (IAPF) has been completed in Bali where the conference was held from August 31 to September 2, 2024. The Indonesian House of Representatives hosted the forum which was attended by delegates from 22 parliaments of African countries with 7 parliamentary chairmen and 2 deputy parliamentary chairmen present in person.

Some of the African countries that attended included Algeria, Angola, Benin, Burundi, Djibouti, Eswatini, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Nigeria, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Libya, Mozambique, Somalia, and South Africa.

The IAPF Forum produces cooperation agreements in various fields, ranging from the health sector to food security. The IAPF also voiced peace for conflict countries such as Palestine and Ukraine, and agreed to synergize to fight the Mpox (monkeypox) outbreak or monkeypox.