Founded in 1969, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is an intergovernmental organization whose purpose is the strengthening of solidarity among Muslims. With expectations as to the OIC's role in global human rights that are, to date, unfulfilled, this volume demonstrates the potential, obstacles, and shortcomings of the OIC.
The blockade of Qatar that began in June 2017 has not only had important long-term implications for life in Qatar, but also cast a giant shadow over future relations between Gulf neighbors. The social, political, and economic impact across the wider international community has also been significant.
Geographies of the Islamic world manifest stark disparities in terms of social and economic development. While some of the countries of the Ummah (Islamic community) benefited from Western donors and their development aid, there have been efforts to build endogenous capacity. A relatively well-known example is the case of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), one of the major but not the only actor in Islamic development assistance. This study is an attempt to showcase Islamic development aid emanating from the Ummah, its geographical and organizational fractions and conditions.
This chapter scrutinizes the fragmentation of the OIC aid system. It is argued that this fragmentation is a result of the asymmetrical intergovernmental relationship between a small number of aid donors (notably the hydrocarbon-rich Gulf States) and a large and increasing pool of aid recipients. The chapter illustrates that this process is empowered by the asymmetrical setting of the OIC (there are very few donors with whom to compete), donors have “bilateralized” the multilateral by supporting their own “aid recipients”. This has progressively fragmented the OIC aid system.
There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, represented on the world stage by 57 states, as well as a host of international organizations and associations. This book critically examines the engagement of these states in systems of global governance and with a variety of policy regimes, including climate change, energy, migration, humanitarian aid, international financial institutions, research and education.
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have been engaging in diversification efforts, yet the types of efforts suggest that the primary interest is regime security. Regional foreign policy is complex; hence we propose a multi‐lens approach to analyze overlapping and complementary political, economic, and social forces.
This article studies the political economy of Turkey’s relations with sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) since 2002 while Turkey was under the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rule. It argues that Turkey has focused its engagement in Africa mostly on humanitarian assistance and the economy. Contextualizing Turkey’s relations with SSA vis-à-vis other emerging market economies, especially the BRICS (Brazil/Russia/India/China/South Africa), provides ample insights into the nature of Turkey’s engagement in SSA.
The paper addresses the migrant-refugee debate in relation to recent refugee flows from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries gaining unauthorized entry into Europe. This is compared with the accusations (and denials) that the wealthy countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council ( GCC ) states have not accepted any refugees from Syria in particular. It is argued that the definition of migrants and refugees is problematic in that they often converge with respect to livelihood needs and rights.