SESRIC and the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) held a coordination meeting virtually on 31 January 2024. The meeting served as a platform for discussions, exploring various areas of collaborations and potential joint initiatives. Among the prospective collaborations discussed were capacity building programmes, research projects, and the sharing of data, with a specific focus on advancing the field of Halal Tourism.

During the session, the SESRIC team presented an overview of its planned activities for 2024 related to Halal and Tourism, to seek potential joint initiatives and invite contributions from the UNWTO. UNWTO expressed their interest in SESRIC’s initiatives, particularly highlighting SESRIC’s new Capacity Building Programme, namely “Halal Capacity Building Programme (Halal-CaB)”. They also showed their interest to participate in SESRIC activities related to the “Halal Value Chain” and “Islamic Finance”, particularly those relevant to the tourism sector.

Both institutions expressed their eagerness to strengthen and expand their collaboration. This meeting marks an important step towards leveraging the collective expertise and resources of SESRIC and UNWTO, to foster growth and innovation in the domain of Halal Tourism.