The symposium on “Measures and Specific Indicators to Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals from a Family Perspective in OIC Member States” concluded by emphasizing the need to establish special study centers on the family in OIC countries to provide reliable data and statistics on its conditions that contribute to the evaluation of development indicators.

Participants in the symposium, held in Jeddah and organized by the Family Affairs Council in Saudi Arabia in cooperation with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), stressed that advancing the family in Islamic countries requires the integration of efforts between government institutions, civil society organizations and the private sector. They stressed the importance of intensifying marriage rehabilitation programs, establishing special centers to protect the family, and preserving its traditional structures in Islamic culture.

Dr. Hala bint Mazeed Al-Tuwaijri, Secretary General of the Family Affairs Council in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, said that the symposium comes within the important steps to empower the institution of marriage and family in the member countries in line with the principles of the true Islamic religion. She said: The Sustainable Development Goals announced by the United Nations are a plan to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all by addressing the global challenges we face, especially those related to poverty, inequality and environmental degradation, but they are almost devoid of any talk about the family.

She added: We meet in this specialized seminar to discuss mechanisms that can be activated in order to come up with national plans through which member states can achieve the SDGs from a perspective that preserves the institution of marriage and the family on the one hand, and enables countries to build an integrated system of sustainable development that is compatible with the cultural and social identity of Islamic countries on the other hand. Al-Tuwaijri emphasized the importance of including family-focused indicators in all the SDGs, even if they appear on the surface to be environmental or economic indicators that are far from the family. For his part, Ambassador Hisham Youssef, Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs at the OIC, said: It should be recognized that many development efforts in OIC countries are more related to the components of the family, including women and children, than to the family itself, calling for pushing these efforts towards the family as a whole to protect its values and interests. He added: The symposium does not want to add new burdens on the OIC countries regarding the family, and said: There are currently 169 indicators within the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and we do not want to add new indicators, but only want to reconsider some of these indicators in order to serve the interests of the family. He added: We cannot forget the circumstances that some families live in, as is the case in Palestine, and some countries that are witnessing conflict situations or waves of migration. Youssef emphasized that the outcomes of the symposium will be issued in a report to be distributed to all member states to guide national family policies. On its final day, the symposium witnessed presentations by participating countries on their experiences in the field of family empowerment, including Saudi Arabia, which reviewed in its intervention the highlights of the Kingdom’s ambitious Vision 2030 in this regard.