Sana’a Hosts International conference 3rd Asian conference on women and sports [Archives:2005/843/Community]
By Fahmia al-Fotih
For the Yemen Times
Under the title “Empowering Women to benefit from Sports and Physical Education”, Yemen hosted for two days the 3rd Asian conference on women and sport (AWG Conference) that concluded on Thursday 12 May and took place at Sheraton Hotel. Around 23 Asian countries participated in the conference.
Mr. Abdualqader Bajammal, the prime minister, attended the conference opening ceremony in which he welcomed all the women delegations and he insisted on the importance of sport for women and consider it as one of their rights.
He called to remove all kinds of violence against women and uproot the complex ideas and cultural concepts that degrades the woman' status.
He also called for paying more attention to woman as they play a vital role in building the societies.
Mr. Abdualrahman AL-Akwa'a, the minister of Youth and Sport, also called in his speech for encouraging women to be involved in the sport activities and he said the ministry would provide women with special and private clubs to practice their sport activities. He also revealed that the ministry of youth and sport cooperating with the ministry of education would actively integrate the physical education in schools. Beside, the ministry of youth and sport will have contract with a number of female coaches to come to Yemen and train the local cadre.
AL-Akwa'a also stressed on the importance of the conference as to it is a chance to benefit from others' experience and come up with fruitful recommendations and actions.
The conference aimed mainly at raising awareness among the public on the importance of physical education to women via exploiting the services of various mass media facilities before and during the conference as well as encouraging girls to enroll in physical education faculties that are available in the various parts of Yemen which will later enable women to practice sport and physical activities.
It is worthy to mention that the 1st Asian conference took place in Osaka, Japan in June 2001 that aimed at assembling the global movement and sport in Asia through which fourteen Asian countries and regions participated and it was the first starting point towards the preparation for the “2006 World Conference on Women and Sport in Kumamoto. Japan.”
The 2nd Asian Conference was held in Doha-Qatar in December 2003 in which 38 countries and regions participated. That conference adopted declarations called “Doha Conference Resolutions” which encouraged all the relevant parties and sport authorities to undertake effective support towards women sport, thus aiming at building a better society by playing an important role towards the success of future sports activities in Asia.
A number of working papers were submitted tackling different topics such as “empowering women to benefit from sport and physical education” “Achievements and needs of the Asian women and sport movement” “Promoting the participation of women at the 15th Doha Asian Games 2006” “The cultural, social obstacles and the challenges towards changing the beliefs and attitudes” “Progress of women sport in Yemen between the reality and ambition” “The importance of leadership, training and promotion of women's competence programs in sports” and “Women with disability and sport”
Full report within next issue
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