Speech at the Honorary Doctorate Award Ceremony in the University of World Economy and Diplomacy in Uzbekistan（2025.1.20）

First Deputy Chairman of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis and Rector of the University of World Economy and Diplomacy, Your Excellency, Mr. Sodyq SAFOEV, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a great honor for me to be conferred an honorary doctorate from the University of World Economy and Diplomacy.

It is my privilege to recognized by this esteemed center of the study and education on world economy and diplomacy. As a long-time student on international relations, this recognition is a great encouragement for me to continue my study on world affairs.

It is also a great pleasure to receive this honorary degree as President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency as JICA has enjoyed its continuing work of cooperation with the government and the people of Uzbekistan.

It is also a humbling experience for me to have this honor because this conferment of the degree certainly is in reflection of the great appreciation of the people of Uzbekistan on many, many Japanese, young and old, who have worked hard to contribute to the friendship of the two nations.

Thanks to these Japanese and their Uzbek counterparts, in fact, the relationship between Uzbekistan and Japan is thriving. Increasing number of Japanese private companies are expanding their operations here. In addition to rich mineral resources, Uzbekistan offers opportunity for industry and commerce. Furthermore, Samarkand City and its beautiful architecture are widely admired by Japanese and bringing increasing number of tourists from Japan.

In Japan, we also see growing number of Uzbekistan workers and students. In fact, the number of Uzbek students has grown 10 folds in the last 20 years, making Uzbekistan one of the most rapidly growing foreign student group in Japanese institutions of higher education.

For JICA, Uzbekistan has always been an important partner. Since Uzbekistan’s independence in 1991, JICA has worked to solidify the growing ties between two countries. We have supported the establishment of the Uzbekistan-Japan Center for Human Resource Development and the Uzbek-Japanese Innovation Center of Youth. These institutions not only trained human resources that strengthen ties between our countries, they are creating foundation for institutional academic-industrial collaboration.

Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers (JOCV), the management of which JICA is responsible for, have contributed to the expansion of people-to-people network between Uzbekistan and Japan. To this day, 367 volunteers have been dispatched to this country and 15 of them have been welcomed in this esteemed institution. Many have contributed to providing Japanese language education, tourism promotion and health.

JICA has also made significant investment in infrastructure development. JICA-supported energy projects contributed to 23% of Uzbekistan’s total power generation capacity. With more than 4 billion USD contribution to Uzbekistan, we are proud of our joint projects and its impact on Uzbekistan.

JICA is now implementing “Project for Development of Industrial Human Resources in Uzbekistan by Utilizing Employment Opportunities in Japan.” This project aims to promote decent work of migrant workers working in Japan by providing accurate information on working in Japan and by improving networks of quality organizations which send or receive migrant workers. Both Uzbek and Japanese experts jointly created “the Japan Career Portal,” which will be launched tomorrow.

So, the relationship between Uzbekistan and Japan is promising and expanding. But our relationship dose not exist in a vacuum. It exists in the midst of, probably, a once in a century turmoil of international relations. If only to promote this great bilateral relationship, we need to have appropriate understanding of the nature of the current world.

In my understanding, the most important feature of the current world is the compoundedness among the three systems: the global physical system, the global living system and the global social system. Traditionally, we have long studied world affairs as phenomena of social systems, systems among human actors. International politics and diplomacy have been conceived of as interaction among sovereign states. World economy has been studied as phenomena in the global markets consisting of various social players: households, business firms, and governments.
But, in my understanding, to fully understand the world of 21^st century, analyzing social actors only within the framework of social systems is insufficient.

Climate change is not simply a physical system phenomenon. It is increasingly clear that the social system is causing climate change, which in turn causes great impacts on the social system. Before industrialization, natural disasters were a one-sided impact from the physical system on the social system. Now, natural disasters may be caused by the change in the social systems and their ramifications become the issues of international negotiations.

The Covid 19 pandemic was not simply a phenomenon in the global biological system. Its spread was tremendously accelerated by the globalized transportation network, a creation of the global social system. It was a disaster caused by the interaction between the biological, living system and the global social system. In order to prevent a next pandemic, we need to create a better global health system taking complex interaction between the living system and the social system fully into consideration.

Obviously, phenomena in the social system remain very important. Wars and conflicts are killing many people. But we should not forget that those geopolitical calamities exist within the complex interaction among the physical, living and social systems.

The war in Ukraine has made extraordinary impacts on many countries. The rise in food prices worsened the general inflation, which triggered the increase of interest rates, which has worsened debt crises in a number of countries. Floods and droughts caused by climate change worsen the political conditions and sometimes bring about conflicts.

Under these circumstances, the concept of human security becomes very important. National security is obviously important as there are real danger of inter-state wars and civil wars. But the lives of individuals throughout the world are now being threatened by floods, wildfires, famines, infectious diseases as well as economic downturns compounded by natural disasters. And in many cases, any single country is not capable of coping with such crises.

Even the United States, the most powerful country in the world, is being helped by Canada and Mexico to cope with the disastrous wildfires in Los Angeles.

In order to preserve human security, that is, freedom from fear and want and freedom to human dignity, international cooperation is essential. But cooperation among traditional actors of international politics is not sufficient. We need multidisciplinary and inter-disciplinary cooperation mobilizing many scientists and engineers from diverse areas of expertise because many critical issues are interconnected among the three systems: physical, living and social.

This multidisciplinary nature is now becoming more apparent when we look at many issues on the global diplomatic agenda. Climate change and infectious diseases are obvious examples. But recently, diplomats have to struggle with the issues of regulation of Artificial Intelligence. AI is a phenomenon in the physical system, created by the works of social systems, which may become a social actor that is expected to help us but that may endanger us too. In order to make appropriate regulations, we need collaboration among diplomats, security specialists, and computer scientists and engineers.

In order to realize collaboration among scientists and practitioners of development, JICA started in 2008 a program called SATREPS: Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development. This is a scheme for collaboration between scientists and engineers from Japan and its partner countries for innovative solutions to issues of sustainable development.

Currently, two SATREPS projects are on-going in Uzbekistan. One is for development of innovative technologies for efficient generation of Green and Blue hydrogen; the other is for developing technologies to monitor and control water use efficiently in the Aral Sea region.

JICA’s traditional projects have long emphasized necessities to solve problems emerging in the physical and living systems. This morning, I and Minister Kudratov signed the Loan agreement for “Health Service Improvement Project” with the amount of 22,953 million yen. This project is one of the examples which contributes to secure human security. It will provide urgently needed specialized health services facility for Uzbekistan.

Looking around the world, however, confrontation rather than cooperation appears prevalent. Power appears more dominant than rules. Diplomats and security specialists should work hard to minimize the danger coming from such geopolitical confrontation.

This trend of the expanding sphere of power is not in the interest of the countries like Uzbekistan and Japan, both non-military powers. Facing the challenges both from such geopolitical confrontation and threats from the compounded crises, it is important for countries like Japan and Uzbekistan to make efforts to preserve and expand the sphere of cooperation based on rules globally. Uzbekistan and Japan are natural partners to argue for the necessities of collaboration to protect human security from the threats caused by the compounded nature of today’s crises. Based on the trust we have nurtured over the past decades, I am sure the two nations can play important roles to preserve the sphere of cooperation despite the increasing geopolitical challenges.