On 27 November 2023, Mrs. Ureerat Chareontoh, Director-General of Thailand International Cooperation Agency (TICA) had a bilateral meeting with Mr. Sarkhan Ismayilov, Deputy Director of Azerbaijan International Development Agency (AIDA) during the 5th Asia-Pacific Directors General Forum for South-South and Triangular Cooperation convened between 27-28 November 2023 at the United Nations Conference Centre in Bangkok, Thailand. Director-General of TICA welcomed Deputy Director of AIDA to the 5th APDG Forum and expressed her appreciation for the opportunity to meet and discuss with Mr. Mehdiyev Elmaddin, Director of AIDA during the Global South-South Development Expo 2022 and the 4th Asia Pacific Director-General Forum between 12-14 September 2022 at the United Nations Conference Center, Bangkok, last year.

Deputy Director of AIDA expressed AIDA’s willingness to collaborate with TICA as seeing potential with TICA’s on-going development cooperation in various forms such as projects and training courses, given to other developing countries. There may be an exchange of visits to facilitate both sides understanding of the potential of each country, and to further discussions together. Azerbaijan has the idea of opening the Embassy for its diplomatic missions in Thailand as well.

Deputy Director of AIDA looked forward to initiating concrete bilateral cooperation and trilateral cooperation projects for other regions, then the Director-General of TICA proposed to focus on strengthening the capacity of member countries under Regional cooperation frameworks that Thailand and Azerbaijan are mutual members, such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA). She also saw AIDA as a gateway to the Central Asia for Thailand while TICA could be a gateway to ASEAN for Azerbaijan. AIDA was interested in the South Pacific islands too. Director-General of TICA suggested to utilize training facilities in Thailand and Azerbaijan could send experts to share their best practices. In addition, the two sides discussed possible areas of cooperation such as agriculture, food security, climate change, energy and the public services, and AIDA offered to organize study visits for Thailand.

Both sides agreed to sign the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) as raised by AIDA, in order to put into writing the political will to carry out cooperation and development work together. AIDA will send a drafted version of standard MoU that AIDA had signed with other cooperation partners, for TICA’s consideration. Director-General of TICA urged that after MOU’s signing, development cooperation activities, such as training course, or study visit should be kicked off to maintain cooperating momentum afterward.

Deputy Director of AIDA addressed the challenge in building awareness and mutual understanding of Official Development Assistance (ODA) with both international and domestic partners. Director-General of TICA informed a similar challenge that Thai side has faced. As a solution, TICA has collaborated with the OECD to organize a Workshop on Development Cooperation: Strategic Planning and Programming in order to create mutual understanding between agencies that work together on development cooperation within Thailand.