OMU News
Feb 13, 2024
- Law
Law Professor Fumio Nagai gives lecture in Thai to party from Thailand
Professor Fumio Nagai of the Graduate School of Law has given a lecture to 61 participants connected to local governments in Thailand who visited Japan to observe the elderly care system.
Titled “Japanese Local Government and Decentralization in Comparative Perspectives,” the lecture took place at Takahara Hall on the Sugimoto Campus of Osaka Metropolitan University on December 16, 2023.
The participants are connected to the Smart & Strong Project (Project on the Development of Local Authorities of a Community-based Integrated Elderly Care Model through Networking in Thailand), which is a JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) Partnership Program.
Thailand, which like Japan has a rapidly aging society with a declining birthrate, has introduced an elderly care system modeled after Japan’s Community-based Integrated Care System.
Japan’s various attempts to support its aging society have become a “living textbook” for local governments in Thailand.
Professor Nagai has been involved in various ways with the Project for the Enhancement of Capabilities of Thai Local Authorities since 2000, when he was dispatched as a JICA expert to Thailand’s Department of Local Administration under the Ministry of Interior.
Since its inception, Osaka Metropolitan University has been a collaborating organization in the JICA Partnership Program.
For the lecture, Professor Nagai spoke entirely in Thai. With his awareness of the differences between Thailand and Japan, he touched on the history of local government in Japan, public services provided by local governments, statutory entrusted functions, and secondment among central and local governments.
After his lecture, participants engaged in a lively Q&A session.
Many OMU School of Law graduates have gone on to work for local governments. While local governments tend to focus only on domestic matters, Japanese local governments’ actions can be examples for developing countries to learn from, as Thailand is doing.
The Smart & Strong Project is of particular interest as a developing case study of public-private partnership and university collaboration by way of international NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) or NPOs (nonprofit organizations).
For interested parties, please see the links below.
The project was introduced in the White Paper on Development Cooperation 2022 by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan.
https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/100600907.pdf#page=6
In addition, the Healthy Aging Prize for Asian Innovation (HAPI), which this project received, is clearly stated in the Implementation Plan of the Joint Vision Statement on ASEAN-Japan Friendship and Cooperation, which was adopted at the commemorative summit held in December 2023 in Tokyo to celebrate 50 years of Japan’s ties with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
https://www.mofa.go.jp/files/100597130.pdf
Japanese Article
https://www.omu.ac.jp/law/info/news/entry-09630.html
Contact
Academic Affairs Division, School of Law and Graduate School of Law
Email: gr-kyik-law[at]omu.ac.jp
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