On 15 December 2023, Mrs. Arunee Hiam, the Deputy Director-General of Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) delivered closing remarks for the South-South and Triangular Cooperation on Global Health Diplomacy Training, and gave certificates to the participants at The Sukosol Hotel, Bangkok. The training programme held between 14 and 15 December 2023, was a triangular cooperation effort between Thailand, through TICA and the Ministry of Public Health, and World Health Organization (WHO). It aimed to share Thailand’s knowledge on global health diplomacy to health officials from the SEAR region (as categorized by WHO) to build their capacity on international negotiation especially in the health forum. Participants from India, Timor-Leste, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka attended the event.

The Deputy Director-General congratulated participants for the successful completion of their training. The knowledge gained would contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal 3 targeting health and well-being. She also hoped that the chain of robust networking and cooperation arose during and after the Training would expand South-South and Triangular Cooperation in the future.

The Training resulted in great success. Participants received lectures on several health-related subjects essential for their negotiations. These include general knowledge on international health cooperation and nature of the negotiation at the World Health Assembly, how to prepare for the negotiation, negotiation tactics as well as TICA’s works on development cooperation in public health. Moreover, the participants were able to practice their negotiation skills through the role-play scenarios and receive advices from negotiation experts from the Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as WHO.