Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

ISESCO & Future Exploration


Tue 18 Feb 2020 | 09:15 AM
Yassmine Elsayed

Experts in international relations understand that we live in an ever  rapidly changing world, and we live more than ever under one roof and we see a variety of TV screens that transmit to us multiple news and various pictures, and our views and reactions differ according to who we are.

Indeed, the world was not constant and suddenly changed, but rather, it we witness the rapid but also deep changes that happen.

We, thus, get confused when we tend to analyze a regional or international system, which is already changing deeply inside. We also expect some kind of stability deep inside a system and therefore, we can conclude why different theories are necessarily limited when they come to deal with international system phenomenon, that is, rapid changes turn ideas useless. Accordingly, exploring the provisions of the future is somehow difficult, but rather, more difficult that we could imagine. 

The question, therefore, is: to what extent the Arab and Muslim world get impacted by the global changes and transformations, even before it gets impacted by the regional changes itself? The problem of the Arab world is that it is located in a very sensitive area, that is the meeting point of three continents a very desirable region because it has a huge stock of oil available under its desert and a sensitive geographical area and its direct neighbourhood to the Zionist entity.

All these factors placed the Arab world at the heart of international concern and interest. The other problem is that the Arab world, though all of the above, is a quite weak player on the international arena, due to the lack of unity and strength, that could have allowed it to face regional and international blocs ...

The problem, therefore, is not mainly because of our geographical location as it is in our lack of unity, which makes us weak players. This is what our region has been through in the past and is living in the present and will be in the future if the mechanisms of joint cooperation are not reformed.

It should not be thought that this cooperation should be political, but rather, there are many other factors that could achieve prosperity for the regional members, most notably, science, education and culture, which indeed, should be the most concern for players in international relations, especially the regional and international organizations.

Worth noting is that our university students quite know that among those players, are MNCs and even inpiduals.

I say these words because I was deeply impressed by the work of Dr. Salim M. Al-Malik, who is at the head of the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO). His strategy is based on the necessity of figuring out the future of things and what serves the member states in the fields of education, science and culture because they are the dynamo to develop societies and achieve knowledge prosperity and building modern cultural societies.

This is evidenced by the adoption of the Executive Council held in Abu Dhabi on January 29-30, 2020, which was authorized by the Extraordinary General Conference held in King Abdullah Economic City on May 9, 2019 with all its powers. 

Among these achievements reflecting the new vision of the organization: changing the name to the Islamic World Organization for Education, Science and Culture to serve Muslim societies outside the Islamic arena; adopting a new charter, a new job system and a new organizational structure; creating an ISESCO development endowment; establishing an international advisory council; a proactive, futuristic vision, new slogan; establishing a strategic futuristic center; establishing an Arabic language center for non-native speakers; establishing an Islamic heritage registration center, and more.

I am certain that this organization will become active in international relations through the wisdom of its affiliates. 

My students at the university always wonder when I explain to them the word “actor” and I tell them that even some inpiduals can form actors in international relations, so I tell them: How do you explain that the Chinese president, during one of his visits to America, paid a visit to the billionaire Bill Gates, founder and owner of Microsoft Corporation, even before he goes to the White House?

That is because the American billionaire is an internationally influential person in his field of specialization, and China can broker partnerships with him that might exceed those that can be achieved with combined countries ... This is the meaning of an international relations actor. 

Successful regional and international organizations such as UNESCO and others would have never be actors today, without the previous successes they achieved earlier that enables them to be "regional and international actors" in the field for which they were first founded ...