Last week, H.E. Yukihisa Fujita, member of the Distinguished Expert Panel of CPG’s Peace & Security Center (CPSC), spoke at the Leadership Conference 2024, “Rethinking Harmony in Asia 2024,” hosted by the Asian Network in partnership with ADB Seads & ERIA in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

H.E. Fujita is a former Japanese Senior Vice Minister of Finance, a former Member of the House of Representatives and the House of Councilors, as well as a former Shadow Foreign Minister. He currently serves as Chairman of the International Initiatives of Change (IofC) Association of Japan and is a Visiting Professor at Gifu Women’s University, Japan.

During his decade-long political career, H.E. Fujita was actively engaged in promoting global peace, transnational reconciliation, democracy, and refugee relief, particularly in Cambodia. In his capacity as the Director of the Association for Aid and Relief (AAR), the first Japanese NGO to help refugees, he launched projects to help Cambodian refugees at the Thai-Cambodian border and later inside Cambodia. Some of those projects continue to the present day. Among many other initiatives, he established the Diet members’ group to support the World Conference for Religion and Peace and initiated the “Agenda for Reconciliation” series at the Moral Re-Armament conference center in Caux, Switzerland.