BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 4. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met with head of the UNESCO office in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) Rita Bissoonauth, Trend reports via the Foreign Ministry.
According to the ministry, Bayramov also met with the general secretaries of national commissions of Guinea, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Benin, Togo, Burkina Faso, Equatorial Guinea, Djibouti and Gabon for UNESCO.
Bissoonauth visited Azerbaijan to participate in a workshop organized jointly by ADA University, the Azerbaijan National Commission for UNESCO and the Institute for Development and Diplomacy.
During the meeting, issues on the agenda of multilateral cooperation between Azerbaijan and African countries, including within the framework of UNESCO have been discussed.
Noting contribution of Azerbaijan’s chairmanship in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) to the further development of relations, the minister stressed that at the Summit of the NAM Contact Group in response to COVID-19, held in March this year in Baku, Azerbaijan announced global appeals in support of recovery of Africa and the developing small islands states from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Emphasizing the importance of Azerbaijan's cooperation with the UN and its specialized structures, Bayramov said that Azerbaijan, as a donor country, closely cooperates with UNESCO in the fields of education, culture, sports and science.
He expressed confidence that the seminar held for the general secretaries of the national commissions of African countries for UNESCO will be useful for further expanding cooperation in this direction.
Besides, the minister noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, Azerbaijan, as a member of the Global Education Coalition, supported educational projects implemented in various countries of the world, and that one of the priorities is to encourage activities aimed, in particular, at the education of girls in a number of countries.
Bayramov also informed about the situation in the region after the 2020 second Karabakh war, large-scale reconstruction and construction work carried out by Azerbaijan in the post-conflict period in the region, and the peace process with Armenia.
He noted that, despite the provocations of Armenia that impede the peace process in the post-conflict period, Azerbaijan is determined to advance the peace agenda.
Bissoonauth thanked for organizing the training for the general secretaries of the national commissions of the mentioned African countries. She noted that this program will play an important role in expanding ties between Azerbaijan and African countries within the framework of UNESCO.
