Turkic Council Secretary General Ambassador Ramil Hasanov attended  on 18 October 2017 the opening ceremony of the Fifth Global National Evaluation Capacities (NEC) Conference co –hosted  in Istanbul  by the Government of the Republic of Turkey and UN Development Programme.  The conference partners are the Independent Evaluation Office of UNDP, the UNDP Regional Bureau for Europe and CIS (RBEC) and  the European Evaluation Society while the Government of Finland and the Astana Regional Hub for Civil Service are among the supporting partners.

The conference that will take until 20 October 2017,  is themed "People, Planet and Progress" in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Era and aims  to assist the countries in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals by supporting improvement of national evaluation capacities particularly in UNDP partner countries. 

At the opening ceremony, Indrio Naidoo, Director of Independent Evaluation Office of UNDO, Cihan Sultanoğlu, Assistant Secretary General of UN, Assistant Administrator and Director of Regional Burea for Europe and the CIS of UNDP, Ambassador Ahmet Yıldız, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey addressed the audience. Michelle Gyles-McDonnough, Director of Sustainable Unit of Executive Office of UN Secretary General was the keynote speaker at the ceremony. All speakers touched upon the significance of “the evaluation concept” to measure the achievements with regard to the implementation of the SDGs at national, regional and global levels, leaving no one behind.

On the margins of the event, Secretary General Hasanov had bilateral contacts with heads of delegations of the participating countries and UN High-level officials. 

The conference with its workshops part has been attended by more than 500 national and international experts coming from 113 countries.

Project Directors Pelin Musabay Baki, Jeyhun Shahverdiev and Chief of Protocol Emre Yurdakul accompanied Ambassador Hasanov et the event.