Strengthening the Compliance of the OIC Member States
to International Standards
3
member states are often active in only a few such committees in ISO, which greatly limits their ability to
exercise an effective influence over the organization’s work. Of course, small countries cannot expect to
have the human and financial resources to participate in the same number of technical committees as
large countries, so it is natural to choose based on the economic interest of different sectors. But even
given this point, the evidence suggests that many poorer countries play only a marginal role in the work
of international standards bodies. As a result, it may be difficult for them to ensure that the work
product of those bodies is indeed appropriate to their developmental level and economic and
geographical circumstances. There is surely a role for development assistance to play in helping
facilitate greater participation by developing OIC member states in the work of ISO, IEC, the Codex, and
other international standards bodies.
In terms of concrete examples of the use of international standards in the context of the OIC, this report
looked at three case studies: Bangladesh, Egypt, and Senegal. These three countries are at different
income levels, and have distinct trajectories in terms of the nature and extent of national quality
infrastructure. They are also different in size, which has implications in terms of resource availability for
standards and quality-related activities. Nonetheless, in all three cases, there is significant evidence that
international standards play an important role as part of the overall context in which standardization
activities take place within each country. Legal and factual harmonization are present to a significant
degree in all three countries. The case is particularly striking for a small country like Senegal, where
national standards are relatively few, and international standards are used to fill the many gaps where
national standards have not been passed. This practice—which is also present in other OIC member
states—is consistent with the WTO preference for internationally harmonized standards, and is a
sensible way of ensuring a degree of quality control for imported goods even when national standards
infrastructure is under-developed.
In all three OIC case study countries, technical assistance and capacity building, largely from outside the
region, have played an important role in the development of standardization practice and quality
infrastructure. External funding can be important in terms of promoting the participation of lower
income countries in international standards bodies, as well as for the development of standardization
capacity at home. There are clear differences of capacity between Egypt, the case study country with the
highest income per capita, and the other two countries: standardization infrastructure is more
developed, there is a larger accumulation of standards practice, and there is the ability to ensure
implementation at different points in the economy. In all cases, however, there is still room for technical
assistance and capacity building to help the countries develop standards, including those based on
international harmonization, and to ensure that they are implemented in practice on the ground.