More Proactive Role Needed to Implement Makkah Declaration

KUALA LUMPUR, 4 September 2007 -- Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi yesterday called on Muslim countries to play a more proactive role in the implementation of the "The Makkah Declaration" and its 10-Year Plan of Action adopted by The Third Extraordinary Summit of the OIC held in Makkah on Dec. 7-8, 2005 to help boost the lot of Muslim countries especially in economic development, empowerment of women, raising literacy and poverty alleviation.

The prime minister, who is also the chairman of the OIC, regretted that "after 20 of the 120 months we have allocated ourselves, we have not been able to move significantly beyond the preparatory planning and coordination stages. Many solemn declarations gather dust on the shelves of history, because the will to implement was weak and follow through slackened. The Makkah Declaration should not become one of these."

Economic and social development will help resolve not only the problems of poverty, illiteracy, disease and debt, but also promote quality of life, prosperity, peace and stability, and return dignity to the Muslim world, he added.

Premier Badawi was speaking at the opening of a top-level international forum on The Makkah Declaration on Sept. 1-2, 2007.

Organized by the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia, the forum focused on the economic and social development agenda of the Muslim world as contained in the Makkah Declaration. The was also held on the occasion of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of Merdeka, Malaysia's independence.

The Makkah Declaration, said Badawi, was the "exercise of the collective political will among the leaders of the Ummah". But this political will must be sustained to pre-empt the initiative dissipating into obscurity. He stressed that besides economic development, which remains of fundamental and central importance, the Muslim world cannot consider itself "developed" until it was free from oppression and occupation; strengthened democratic governance and the rule of law; respected the rights of all, Muslims as well as non-Muslims; and strove for justice and equity.

"People whose legitimate needs and aspirations are met, will see little cause to commit crime, join an insurgency or engage in terrorism. It is in the interests of the Muslim world and indeed the entire international community that these conditions necessary for human dignity prevail in all societies," he stressed.

He highlighted five core areas that needed to be addressed in the successful implementation of the declaration: sustained political will; the reform within, in Muslim minds and hearts; the vital importance of developing human capital; allocation of necessary resources; and mobilization and partnership with the international community, including the developed nations, to promote development.

He proposed a "close partnership between the West and the Muslim world to help achieve the developmental goals of the Makkah Declaration". Such a partnership, he said, "will go a long way toward restoring confidence in each other and closing the dangerous divide that has developed between them. The West has much to gain from the emergence of a more peaceful, stable and prosperous Muslim world."

Former WTO director general Mike Moore supported Badawi's call for a close partnership between the West and the Muslim world to foster development and understanding.

Unfortunately, the statistics of poverty in the Muslim world is that of despair. Some 24 OIC countries are classified as LDCs (least developed countries). The collective GDP of Muslim countries accounts for only five per cent of that the world. Intra-Islamic trade accounts for 6 per cent of world trade.

Intra-Islamic trade accounts for about 12.5 percent of the total trade of the OIC member countries.

Of the 64 low income countries in the world, half are Muslim countries with a combined population of 845 million or 67 percent of the Muslim population.

The 1.3 billion Muslim population of course account for 22 percent of the world population.

But 40 percent of the world's out-of-school children are Muslim including 8 million in Pakistan; 4 million in Bangladesh and 1 million in Mali.

OIC share of world exports declined from 15.9 per cent in 1980 to 8 per cent in 2001.

On the positive side, Muslim countries control 60 percent of the world's natural resources.

There is an estimated $1.2 trillion of private liquidity in the GCC countries alone, although the caveat is that most of these funds are parked in western financial institutions.

Real GDP growth rates of OIC countries, for instance, has almost doubled from 2.9 percent in 201 to 5.6 percent in 2005, Badawi said.

By Mushtak Parker