westzonenews

Qal´eh-ye-Now, Afghanistan(29 July). The second meeting of the Development & Governance Working Group (DGWG) took place yesterday at the Spanish base “Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo” home to the Provincial Reconstruction Team of Badghis. The conference was facilitated by ISAF’s Regional Command West.

More than 50 distinguished representatives from the main organizations involved in the development process in Western Afghanistan attended the meeting, including: GIRoA, ISAF, UNAMA, Herat´s provincial governor, Badghis´s provincial governor, representatives from Farah´s provincial government and international cooperation agencies as USAID, AECID and Cooperazione Italiana.

Aim of the meeting was to find tools to leverage Development and Governance in Western Afghanistan and to synchronise projects and develop strategies to fill critical gaps, especially in the fields of education, health and public works. Likewise, the meeting focused on solutions to the daily problems that the Development and Governance process is facing every day.

The meeting was not conceived as a mere delivery of speeches, but as an open forum to exchange projects, ideas and opinions. Several issues were brought up to be discussed, like roads construction, water access, aid management or education.

Colonel Gabriel Martinez-Valera, RCW Chief of Staff, chaired the meeting, and during his opening speech he stated: “this is a valuable occasion to exchange information and ideas to synchronise all the development efforts in Western Region, where ISAF’s is playing an important role and is currently implementing - through its 4 Provincial Reconstruction Teams - 85 projects worth over 12M Dollars ”.

The meeting was scheduled in two different parts: in the first part, representatives from the Ministries of Education, Finances and Public Works, as well as the provincial governors or their representatives briefed the attendees and answered questions. Afterwards, the participants split in working groups at provincial level, where they dealt with specific provincial issues.

Eventually, every provincial working group shared their outcomes, solutions and suggestions for the incoming sessions of the DGWG.

Dr. Attaullah Wahidyar, Ministry of Education representative, remarked the importance of partnering to be successful in our objectives: “We have to plan, implement and take responsibility together. We have a lot to teach and learn from each other.”