The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) organised the First Meeting of the Statistical Working Group (SWG-1) at the OIC level on March 25- 26, 2008 at its Headquarters in Jeddah. The SWG has been initiated in accordance with the recommendation of the Expert Group Meeting on Statistical Capacity Building organised by IDB on April 29, 2007 which called on IDB to “establish a working group, in collaboration with the relevant OIC Institutions, to meet regularly in order to harmonise statistical activities, exchange experiences and best practices, develop common methodologies for collecting and processing data from Member Countries”. Similar proposal in the form of a project for establishing SWG was made by the Director General of SESRIC, Dr. Savas Alpay, during his visit to the IDB on December 3, 2007.

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The Arab Planning Institute, Kuwait (API) organised the International Conference on “The Unemployment Crisis in the Arab World”, which was held in Cairo, Egypt on March 17- 18, 2008. The major objectives of this conference were to analyse the nature of persisting, high and increasing unemployment rates in the Arab countries, to evaluate the policies pursuing these issues, as well as to search for future applicable policy options.

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The agenda for the 11th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference held in Dakar, Senegal on March 13-14, 2008 focused on four items:

• Implementation of the OIC Ten-Year Program of Action
• Adoption of the revised OIC Charter
• Two brainstorming sessions on economic cooperation among Member States especially African
• Knowledge-sharing among Member States.

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The 39th Session of the UN Statistical Commission was held at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, on February 26-29, 2008. The Commission elected South Africa as the Chair of the Statistical Commission and Finland, Colombia, Oman and Hungary as the members of the Bureau. During the working Sessions, the Commission discussed the reports prepared by the designated institutions on employment statistics, education statistics, national accounts, tourism statistics, industrial statistics, trade statistics, health statistics, informal sector statistics and environment statistics.

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The 11th Meeting of the Committee for the Coordination of Statistical Activities (CCSA) was held in New York, at the United Nations Headquarters, on February 25, 2008. The Director of the United Nations Statistics Division and Co-chair of the committee, Mr. Paul Cheung, welcomed the participants. The meeting was chaired by Mr. Pieter Everaers, Director of Agriculture and Environment Statistics, Statistical Cooperation of Eurostat and also Co-chair of the Committee.

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The 3rd Core Group Meeting on OIC University Ranking was held on February 21-22, 2008 in Tehran, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Mr. H. Hakan Eryetli and Mr. Esat Bakımlı represented the Centre thereat.

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The Centre organised a training course on “Census and Survey Processing System (CSPRO) & Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS)” at the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Sudan on February 4-6, 2008. The course was provided by an expert from the Department of Statistics in Jordan and was attended by 12 staff members of the Central Bureau of Statistics of the Republic of Sudan.

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The 1st Meeting of the Heads of National Statistical Offices of ECO Member Countries was held on January 28-29, 2008, in Tehran, the Islamic Republic of Iran and was attended by the ECO Deputy Secretary-General, Heads of National Statistical Offices of the ECO member countries, the representatives of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), Islamic Development Bank (IDB), Statistical, Economic and Social Research and Training Centre for Islamic Countries (SESRIC), the Deputies, Director Generals and Senior Experts of the Statistical Centre of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Dr. Sıdıka Başcı represented SESRIC thereat.

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Launched in 1999, the GDN is a global network of research and policy institute dedicated to building high-quality social science research capacity across the developing and transition world. GDN aims to generate policy relevant, local research and build the capacity of research institutes and individual researchers in the developing and transition world. The 9th Annual Global Development Network (GDN) Conference on the theme 'Security for Development: Confronting Threats to Survival and Safety' was held in Brisbane, Australia, on January 27, 2008.

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