H.E. Zehra Zümrüt SELÇUK, Director General of SESRIC, has recently launched a new initiative to conduct a series of Technical Review Meetings at SESRIC HQs to discuss and evaluate the quality and relevance of the Centre’s research work.

These meetings offer SESRIC staff an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the methodology, structure, scope, and outcomes of the Centre's research reports while also fostering open dialogue for feedback and comments.

The first Technical Review Meeting (TRM) was held on 06 April 2023, during which the latest SESRIC research report titled "Marriage and Family Institution in OIC Member Countries" was presented.

During the Meeting, Dr. Cem Tintin, Senior Researcher at the Economic and Social Research Department, made a detailed presentation on the main findings of the report highlighting that the institution of marriage and family continued to play a critical role in the social, cultural and economic development of OIC countries. Yet, the family institution is under threat globally due to late marriages, increased divorce rate, and challenging socio-economic circumstances. Dr. Tintin underlined that most of these negative trends in OIC countries have not reached the alarming levels seen particularly in developed countries. To this end, OIC countries, on average, have still relatively stronger family units where the institution of marriage is still a cornerstone in the family-building process and family members support each other.

Moreover, Dr. Tintin emphasized that the OIC pays special attention to the protection of the family and marriage institution in its member countries. In this regard, the OIC has adopted the OIC Strategy for the Empowerment of the Marriage and Family Institution in 2019, which puts forth seven strategic goals that prioritize the well-being of families in OIC countries and maximize the contributions of families towards sustainable social and economic development, he added. Given the variety of country-level experiences, Dr. Tintin underlined the need for further enhancing intra-OIC level cooperation to facilitate sharing of knowledge and best practices among OIC countries in this important domain.

During the presentation, the participants also made interventions to provide their comments and feedback on the findings of the report. Particularly, the participants made pertinent suggestions concerning the overall narrative, data sources, best practices and data visualization to improve the quality and relevance of the research report. This report will be submitted to and presented at the 2^nd OIC Ministerial Conference on Social Development to be held on 05-06 June, 2023 in Cairo, Egypt.

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