New Year's blog ambassador Kees Rade in Bangkok

The Dutch Ambassador to Thailand, Kees Rade.

De Dutch ambassador in thailand, Keith Rade, writes a monthly blog for the Dutch community, in which he outlines what he has been doing in the past month.

Dear compatriots,

First of all, of course, on behalf of the entire embassy team, I would like to offer you all our very best wishes for this new year! Much has already been said about the hopefully atypical year 2020, which will not go down in the history books as a pinnacle of well-being and prosperity. Let's focus on the current year, hoping that the situation in both Thailand and the Netherlands will only improve. Of course, it would be wonderful if receiving a vaccination for Covid-19 in a year's time would be as common and easy as getting a flu shot now.

Due to the silence around the holidays, this working month was a bit shorter than usual, but the agenda was nevertheless well filled. It already started on December 1, World AIDS Day, intended to reflect on the many victims that this disease still causes. Of course, all attention is now focused on the Covid-19 pandemic, but it is useful to realize that in 2019 there were still around 690.000 AIDS fatalities worldwide. More than 2 million people become HIV positive every year. In order to support awareness about this and to help the victims, we offered a stage in the residence that evening to a few NGOs who wanted to launch a fundraising campaign.

On December 4, I visited Chiang Mai with my other European colleagues. This trip, organized by the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was intended to introduce us to the economic and touristic potential of this region, which has obviously been severely affected by the large loss of tourism due to the pandemic. In addition to a meeting with the governor, the conference on the smart city concept organized by the Thai Agency for Creative Economy was particularly interesting. There I discovered, among other things, that a company that is currently leading in Europe in the development of hydrogen-based transport originally started in Chiang Mai. And furthermore, it always remains a special experience to see with what enthusiasm and commitment foreign diplomats are received during their travels in this country!

In preparation for a global conference on press freedom, which the Netherlands organized together with UNESCO on 9 and 10 December, we organized a debate on the regional media situation the day before, together with and in the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand. Journalists from the BBC and Reuters, among others, painted a not too positive picture about this, some governments have seized the opportunity of the pandemic to impose further restrictions on their national media. We took the opportunity to give a Dutch NGO, the Next Movement, the opportunity to exhibit about fifteen political cartoons from around the world. It remains interesting to see how one cartoon can sometimes be more telling than many long articles.

And on December 9, together with the head of a newly established Thai police department specifically charged with violence against children and women, I launched a new app that should make it easier for victims to obtain information and report the crime. Unfortunately, violence against women is still prevalent in the world, with research showing that one in three women will experience physical or sexual abuse in her lifetime. In practice, the threshold for going to the police appears to be very high, partly because the police officer on duty does not always have the right training to effectively deal with a victim. By making this app available to victims, partly thanks to support from the embassy, ​​the hope is that it will be easier for them to find support and be immediately sent to the right police department.

At the end of this blog also a few comments about the coming months. First of all, the Dutch elections. These will take place on March 17. No postal voting desks will be opened at embassies, but you can of course vote by post and, if desired, send this vote to the Netherlands via the embassy. Because some deadlines are quite early, it is useful to use the website www.nederlandworldwide.nl to make sure your vote is counted!

Preparations are also progressing steadily to further improve services to Dutch people around the world. The main objectives are to bring together as many services as possible in one counter and to offer as many services as possible digitally. The intention is to have all products and services of the Dutch government connected to this counter by the end of this year. We will of course keep you informed through the usual channels. More information can also be found on the aforementioned website.

There will also be some personnel changes in the diplomatic relations between Thailand and the Netherlands in the near future. First of all, a new Thai ambassador is expected to take office in The Hague within a few weeks, the current Director-General of Consular Affairs of the Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During an informal meeting with him, I found that he is already very familiar with many issues that play out between the two countries, and his consular knowledge will be very useful to him given the extensive bilateral consular relations. And furthermore, I myself will leave for the Netherlands next summer around my 67th birthday after having served in this beautiful country for three and a half years. My successor, our current Consul General in Shanghai, has already been appointed, we are waiting for the Thai approval. But before this change will take place, we still have a full half year to go, for which we already have many great plans! Hopefully Covid won't be too much of a bummer...

Regards,

Keith Rade