On June 10-14, the Turkish Red Crescent Society hosted the National Red Crescent and Red Cross Societies of 49 of the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) in Istanbul for a consultative forum on the humanitarian values that should guide the International Committee of the Islamic Crescent (ICIC), an organ of the OIC whose constitutive agreement recently went into force.
The forum addressed a number of issues, but devoted one morning to discussing IDRL in the context of the OIC and how best to disseminate the new Guidelines for the domestic facilitation and regulation of international disaster relief and initial recovery assistance (IDRL Guidelines).
The participants affirmed that IDRL should be made a central concern for the ICIC and its parent body. It was also noted that the Arab League had recently been discussing the Guidelines in light of its own 1987 agreement on cooperation in disaster relief and that this could be an additional fruitful means to increase cooperation with governments.
Participants also emphasized that National Societies and the Federation (both from its Geneva headquarters and its regional “Zone” offices) must be active in disseminating and promoting the Guidelines if they are to have a real impact. In doing so, they cautioned that care should be taken to ensure complementarity with existing mechanisms of coordination within the Movement. To ensure effective advocacy, they called for on-going field research in order to gather best practices in this field.
Among other points, the consultative group’s final “Istanbul Declaration” called on all states to implement the IDRL Guidelines and to ensure the free circulation of humanitarian personnel and assistance in disaster settings. The text of the Declaration will be presented to a meeting of OIC foreign ministers to take place in Kampala, Uganda later this month.
The consultative meeting coincided with the celebration of the 140th anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Red Cred Crescent Society, whose founding in 1868 made it one of the first National Societies to be formed at the birth of the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement.