South Asian Speaker’s Summit kicks off in capital

A two-day South Asian Speaker’s Summit-2016 on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals has begun with a special focus on tobacco control campaign on Saturday morning.

The Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU), Bangladesh Parliament and Washington-based organization Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids (CTFK) are jointly hosting the summit at Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel.

Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, Speaker of Afghanistan Abdul Raouf Ibrahimi, Speaker of the House People (Lok Sabha, India) Sumitra Mahajan, Speaker of the Majlis, the Maldives Abdulla Maseeh Mohamed and Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) President Saber Hossain Chowdhury spoke at the inaugural session of the summit.

The summit will focus on five issues like importance of SDGs for the South Asian region, role of parliaments in implementing SDGs and review of its implementation progress, global health and well-being goals of SDGs, controlling tobacco epidemic and strategy and policy for controlling the use of tobacco in the South Asian countries.