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The Role and Contribution of OIC in the Development of Educational and Scientific Facilities in the Muslim World - II
Second Ten Year Plan (2015 to 2025 )
The 2nd Ten Year Plan is drawn between the following two aspects
Intellectual and political goals
- Development, socio-economic and scientific goals
The second issue of development, socio-economic and scientific are of greater interest for this article. The policies that comprise this section that we would like to focus on are the sectors of Higher education, science and technology. The goals set are almost the same as the 1st ten year plan.
The Higher Education, Science and Technology component of the 2nd Ten year program has nine goals.
- Effectively improve and reform educational institutions and curriculum at all levels
- Prevent brain migration by providing opportunities for highly-qualified Muslims.
- Trust the General Secretariat to create an OIC Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievements by Muslim scientists.
- Call upon Islamic countries to encourage research and development programs.
- Take advantage of the call for Muslims to openly engage in closing the digital gap between developed and developing Member States.
- Encourage public and private national research institutions to invest in technology capacity building.
- Review efficiency and effectiveness of OIC Member State universities.
- Urge Member States to fund the Islamic University of Technology in Bangladesh of the OIC.
- Urge the Islamic Development Bank to increase funding for scholarships for outstanding students and Hi-Tech specializations that are aimed at developing the scientific, technical and research capabilities of scientists and researchers in Member states.
Even though the two ten year plans of the OIC are similar in wording,[12] they indicate the intense and powerful need for this infrastructure that OIC members are struggling to implement. This struggle isn't one of weakness but of moving Member States to inexhaustibly utilize their resources to increase movement towards free and compulsory education for all. The time has arrived to critically evaluate the performance of the first 10 year plan and set strict deadlines, concrete deliverables and continuous follow ups to ensure that the second 10 year plan doesn’t do as miserably as the first one.
ISESCO, an OIC organization, had a three-year action plan for 2013 to 2015 that addressed two main agenda items. The first was to support the efforts of Member States to achieve sustainable development and the second pertained to providing correct information about Islam and Muslims and addressIslamophobia. While the second was equally important, education should be the primary focus of ISESCO yet general affirmations that lack action are included in the three-year plan. I was unable to find if ISESCO has implemented the various conferences and symposiums on a regular basis. It has an elaborate website however there are no action items listed.
In January 2015, the OIC held a round table regarding cooperation and coordination of humanitarian action. [5] The author believe that humanitarian action also includes providing support to countries that are in need of solid, working health and academic programs which help people learn about their talents that in turns leads to an increase in thriving communities and a secure socioeconomic status for all countries.
The political plans and ambitions of the OIC are very important but it is also important to focus on building opportunities in health and education in developing countries such as Pakistan and Nigeria who need the support to increase infrastructure. At OIC strategic vs. tactical thinking is amiss. Muslim countries like Pakistan and Nigeria have the human resources but lack financial support from other Muslim countries and the OIC. When the funds are provided these are not utilized properly for the Human Development hence a tighter control on how the funds are utilized must be a key focus. These funds come from sources such as the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) which gives loans and grants depending on the need and type. The IDB acts much like the World Bank in that it is heavily invested in contributing to the educational and scientific facilities in “creating greater awareness of several innovative projects invented by the IDB Member Countries using local resources”. [9]The OIC need to make concrete efforts to point Muslim countries towards accomplishing grand health and education schemes which is depicted in their declaration:
- “significant policy-measures need to be applied to effectively reduce the gender gap among men and women (in terms of access to education) to a standard 2% level by 2025”. [7] They need to be strong in their stand towards increasing learning opportunities for all people yet they believe that education reform should be in the form of promoting “culture of tolerance and understanding”.
- This means educating those who don’t understand the importance of education.
- This means teaching people basic health care.
- This means that more communities will gather together and grow both personally but professionally.
It is easily seen that the OIC takes these three tasks to heart and has laid out action items to help them reach their goal of complete free, equitable and quality primary, secondary, and tertiary education. But this goal cannot be met without the OIC first accomplishing action items set in the Ten year plans. Meetings and seminars are without action are not going to fix the issues. They need to act while there is still time in lobbying Member States on a consistent and determined basis to increase academic and employment creating infrastructure. Once it gains a foothold in this arena, it can help Member States scale back on the funding they received from the World Bank and other entities such as the UK and the United States. It must work right now to secure education for the entire Muslim world and the only way it can do this proactively is through action. Meetings and symposiums spend money that could go towards securing education for all people in the Member States. Use it wisely and watch the empire grow in faith and security.
Conclusion
Muslim Countrieshave so much hidden talent. They have vast amount of natural resources, enormous young, energetic population, and strong financial resources and yet the desire to use these resources for the betterment of the 1 billion people is missing .hence it is important to help the member countries grow by encouraging their leaders to stand fast to their educational policies that they create. This is possible by bringing in motivated and intellectuals on the OIC platform and not just the political personalities. When leaders will follow through with the policies they have created, this positive direction will secure a prosperous future for the member countries of the OIC. All we need is for the OIC to rise and speak confidently with optimism.
It is always easy to rely on humanitarian effort from richer nations, which is an extremely wonderful act of philanthropy, but truly more effort must be exerted towards securing health care and education and utilizing in-house resources. Once people start to learn more about themselves and others, humanitarian aid will not be needed in such increasing amounts as it is today. OIC needs to help build up Muslim countries by helping the governments understand this importance. Only then can Muslim countries grow socially and economically. The OIC needs to assert to the other Muslim governments that they need to spend 4% of the GDP as indicated by UN in its Education for ALL manifesto [10] to build schools and enrollment. This can be done and accomplished but first OIC needs to connect with political and community leaders to provide a framework that doesn’t allow for intrigue or financial and political corruption.
References
[1] NGO Law Monitor: Organization of Islamic Cooperation
http://www.icnl.org/research/monitor/oic.html
[2]IINA Report on Literacy – 40% of Muslim World’s Population is Illiterate
http://islamicvoice.com/iina-report-on-literacy-40-of-muslim-worlds-population-is-illiterate/
[3] World Literacy Day: Where Do Muslims Stand?
http://www.onislam.net/english/family/your-society/477195-world-literacy-day-where-do-muslims-stand.html
[4] Universities in Muslim Countries
http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_751_800/universities_in_muslim_countries.htm
[5]Islamic countries to fund science development network
http://www.scidev.net/global/migration/news/islamic-countries-to-fund-science-development-netw.html
[6] THE OIC - 2025 PROGRAMME OF ACTION
http://www.oic-oci.org/oicv2/upload/pages/typoa/en/Draft%20Programme%20OIC-2025-English.pdf
[7] Ten-Year Program of Action
http://www.oic-oci.org/oicv2/page/?p_id=228&p_ref=73&lan=en
[8] Ten-Year Programme Of Action To Meet The Challenges Facing The Muslim Ummah In The 21st Centuryhttp://www.oic-oci.org/ex-summit/english/10-years-plan.htm
[9]Changing lives Through Innovation
http://www.isdb.org/irj/portal/anonymous?NavigationTarget=navurl://62c9c97781fa810121fff20220037f62
[10] Education for All (EFA)
http://www.un.org/en/globalissues/briefingpapers/efa/
[11] OIC Summit: Ten-year strategic action plan
http://www.saudiembassy.net/archive/2005/statements/page4.aspx
[12]OIC Ten Year Programme Of Action – Economic Affairs
http://www.comcec.org/EN_YE/Yeni_Site_Dokumanlar/Basic_Documents/10_YEAR_PROGRAMME_OF_ACTION.pdf
Wajid Hassan is a Ph.D. Fellow in Technology Management at Indiana State University, USA. He currently serves as the President of Pakistani American Congress and is a concerned Citizen who has deep passion for the betterment of the lives of the people and thinks attainment of higher literacy rates and quality education is the only solution for this matter.
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