As the national consultations in Kazakhstan on the post-2015 development agenda are drawing to a close, UNFPA increased its efforts to engage young people in the process.

In a lecture for students at the Kazakhstan National University on 11 April, Nikolai Botev, the Director of UNFPA’s Sub-regional office in Almaty, spoke about the international development debate since the 1990s. He stressed the importance of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, calling it “a landmark forum, which not only resulted in a paradigm shift in the way the international community views the interlink between population and development, but also laid the ground for the emergence later of the Millennium Development Goals”.

Following the lecture, which was organized as part of a joint programme with Columbia University, Kazakhstan’s entries in MY World, the United Nations global survey for a better world, almost doubled (from around 100 on 11 April to 200 on 15 April).

On 19 April, Mr. Botev spoke at the opening of the Silk Way International Model United Nations, hosted by the Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research, another leading university in Kazakhstan. He referred to the post 2015 consultations as a “powerful example of civic engagement in a globalized and increasingly interconnected world.” The participants, which will be involved in interactive learning exercises focusing on global issues, included over 100 students from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.