In conjunction with the OIC Day Celebration, Director General of SESRIC Prof. Savaş Alpay addressed to a roundtable discussion on “South-South Cooperation: the role of regional and intergovernmental organisations and multilateral institutions in promoting and intensifying cooperation among developing countries – lessons learned and best practices” organized by the Permanent Delegation of the OIC to the United Nations Office in Geneva on 29 September 2014. The main objective of the discussion was to share the opinions of the various partners on how to best improve South-South cooperation both inside and between specific regional groupings, as well as getting valuable knowledge from the different experiences acquired by some developing countries, in order for other countries to benefit from it, in building their strategic plans and reaching their sustainable development goals.

In his keynote address the Director General highlighted that sharing knowledge and experience that was accumulated over years in developed countries with the emerging and developing countries plays a significant role in facilitating a speedy and hassle-free path towards attaining internationally agreed development goals. He emphasised that the lack of adequate interaction among the emerging and developing countries, both within and across, in this context, should be given special attention. This lack of interaction among these groups of countries in the context of their developmental efforts becomes even more critical in this century of unprecedented changes. In this regard, he mentioned, the OIC plays a very constructive role in facilitating a new model of collaboration among the emerging and developing countries. Intra-OIC knowledge and experience sharing has become one of the critical agenda items of the OIC, and the functional exchange of useful experiences among national institutions now strengthens the linkages among the member countries.

Director General informed the audience about the OIC Capacity Building Programme, which was originally designed and developed by SESRIC, in a view to contributing to the specialisation efforts of institutions and the improvement of human capital in the OIC Member Countries. He stated that SESRIC has initiated this programme as an apex programme for knowledge and expertise sharing among its member countries, and it is based on the idea of identifying the already available knowledge and experience in member countries that have the capacity and willingness to exchange, and sharing this stock of knowledge and experience with others who are in need.

Prof. Alpay also touched upon the very recent initiative of SESRIC on Mapping OIC’s South-South Potential, as part of its efforts in documenting and facilitating knowledge and experience accumulated by national institutions, and line up their strategies towards common developmental goals. Being conducted in collaboration with the Islamic Development Bank and United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation (UNOSSC), this study aims to document best practices, successful models and approaches, which have potential to be emulated by other institutions in developing countries. The study aims at providing an analysis on the emerging technical role of partner institutions in international development and South-South Cooperation, and showcases their strong potential as one of the leading individual actors. The study will provide a comprehensive profiling of Centres of Excellence in OIC member countries, whose expertise can be tapped into for the benefit of other developing countries.

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