Established in 1969, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an intergovernmental organization the purpose of which is the strengthening of solidarity among Muslims. Headquartered in Jeddah, the OIC today consists of fifty seven states from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The OIC's longevity and geographic reach, combined with its self-proclaimed role as the United Nations of the Muslim world, raise certain expectations as to its role in global human rights politics. However, to date, these hopes have been unfulfilled. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and Human Rights sets out to demonstrate the potential and shortcomings of the OIC and the obstacles on the paths it has navigated. Historically, the OIC has had a complicated relationship with the international human rights regime. Palestinian self-determination was an important catalyst for the founding of the OIC, but the OIC did not develop a comprehensive human rights approach in its first decades. In fact, human rights issues were rarely, if at all, mentioned at the organization's summits or annual conferences of foreign ministers. Instead, the OIC tended to focus on protecting Islamic holy sites and strengthening economic cooperation among member states. As other international and regional organizations expanded the international human rights system in the 1990s, the OIC began to pay greater attention to human rights, although not always in a manner that aligned with Western conceptions. This volume provides essential empirical and theoretical insights into OIC practices, contemporary challenges to human rights, intergovernmental organizations, and global Islam. Essays by some of the world's leading scholars examine the OIC's human rights activities at different levels—in the UN, the organization's own institutions, and at the member-state level—and assess different aspects of the OIC's approach, identifying priority areas of involvement and underlying conceptions of human rights. Contributors: Hirah Azhar, Mashood A. Baderin, Anthony Tirado Chase, Ioana Cismas, Moataz El Fegiery, Turan Kayaoglu, Martin Lestra, Ann Elizabeth Mayer, Mahmood Monshipouri, Marie Juul Petersen, Zeynep Şahin-Mencütek, Heiní Skorini, M. Evren Tok.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is the world’s leading international Islamic organization. Turan Kayaoglu provides the first accessible and concise introduction and overview of this important organization. This book details the OIC’s struggle to address popular Muslim demands balanced against the member states’ reluctance to support the OIC politically and materially. Despite this predicament, the organization has made itself increasingly relevant over the last decade through increasing its visibility as the representative body of Muslim unity and promoting its role as a reliable interlocutor on behalf of Muslims in global society. Outlining the history, workings and goals of the OIC, the book also highlights key issues that may influence the OIC’s ability to realize its potential in the future. This will be of great interest to students and scholars of international relations, international organizations and islamic studies.

The Europa Directory of International Organizations 2021 serves as an unequalled one-volume guide to the contemporary international system. Within a clear, unique framework the recent activities of all major international organizations are described in detail. Given alongside extensive background information the reader is able to assess the role and evolving functions of these organizations in today's world. The contact details, key personnel and activities of more than 2,000 international and regional entities have again been thoroughly researched and updated for this 23rd edition. Highlights in this edition include: - a fully revised Who's Who section with biographical details of the key players in the international system. - the response of the international community to crises and conflicts throughout the world. - specially-commissioned introductory essays cover topics including global environmental governance, transboundary water management, and multilateral governance and global action on health.

Group Politics in UN Multilateralism provides a new perspective on diplomacy and negotiation. UN multilateralism is shaped by long-standing group dynamics as well as shifting, ad-hoc groupings. These intergroup dynamics are key to understanding diplomatic practice at the UN.

This book discusses ideas for stakeholders to develop strategies to access and use financial products and services such as deposits, loans, and fund transfer mechanism, insurance, payment services, and intermediaries, distribution channels at economical prices in order to cater to the needs of the poor and underprivileged people. Financial inclusion ensures ease of access, availability, and usage of the financial products and services to all the sections of the society. The book will help in recognizing the role of financial inclusion as one of the main drivers in reducing income inequality and thus supporting sustainable economic growth of the countries, especially of an emerging economy. The book provides conceptual and practical ideas from the practitioners, best practices from the experts, and empirical views from the researchers on the best practices and how to mitigate the challenges and issues plaguing the development of the financial inclusion.

This book explores the volatility, efficiency and integration of stock markets in Islamic countries. It presents recent trends, growth and performance, before moving on to explore how patterns change during different business cycles for short-term and long-term investors, and ranks the efficiency of the various markets. It addresses how the level of market integration has been affected during different economic periods, and concludes by summarising the performance of the stock markets, suggesting potential future directions for these markets.

In June 2011 the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation established the Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission, with the objective to "advance human rights" and "support the Member States' efforts to consolidate civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights". This report provides an introduction to the new human rights commission, presenting the background to its establishment, its objectives, activities and experts, as well as its relation to the international human rights community and its conception of human rights. The report concludes by discussing some of the potentially problematic aspects of the Commission, as well as some of its strengths, seen from a Danish perspective.