H.E. Zehra Zümrüt SELÇUK engaged in bilateral discussions with H.E. Mr. Muhammad Suleiman Aba AL KHAYL, Executive Director of the Islamic Solidarity Fund (ISF), on the sidelines of the 52^nd Session of the Permanent Finance Committee held on 31 July-03 August 2024 at OIC Headquarters in Jeddah. The meeting aimed at exploring cooperation areas for enhancing development initiatives for the benefit of OIC countries.

At the outset, H.E. SELÇUK congratulated H.E AL KHAYL on his resuming new position at the Executive Director of ISF and extended her wishes for success during his office term. The Director General of SESRIC mentioned about the activities and programmes of SESRIC in the mandated domains of statistics, research, training and technical cooperation. In the mutual areas of operation, the OIC Statistics (OICStat) Database hosts categories on education (206 indicators), health (243 indicators), social development (144 indicators), and disasters and emergency events (49 indicators). In these fields, SESRIC has conducted a total of 165 activities since the initiation of relevant capacity development programmes benefitted by around 4,600 experts from the OIC countries. To bring about more synergies, H.E. SELÇUK proposed to initiate joint projects, particularly focusing on social development, health, and poverty alleviation.

On his side, H.E. AL KHAYL mentioned that ISF is one of the oldest subsidiary organs of the OIC, established in 1974. Being one of the most important existing Islamic charitable institutions, ISF offers urgent humanitarian aid to OIC countries and Muslim communities all over the world affected by disasters and crises. H.E. AL KHAYL underlined that ISF currently focuses on Palestine, poverty alleviation, education, health, and emergency situations. ISF has financed and implemented around 2,900 projects since its inception with a total value of 250 million USD. These projects have benefited 137 countries. H.E. AL KHAYL welcomed the idea of exchanging experiences in the mutual domains and organising joint activities together with SESRIC.

The bilateral meeting ended with a common understanding to explore concrete steps for collaboration, including working together to develop a Memorandum of Understanding to materialise the cooperation between SESRIC and ISF.