Strengthening the Compliance of the OIC Member States
to International Standards
43
Sierra Leone
Corresponding
Member
Somalia
Sudan Associate
Corresponding
Member
Suriname
Syria Associate
Corresponding
Member
Tajikistan
Togo
Tunisia Member Member
Turkey Member Member
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Source: Author
4.3 Accreditation
As noted above, another important aspect of quality infrastructure is accreditation, the process by which
laboratories are recognized as producing reliable test results for use in conformity assessment. As for
standardization and metrology, there is also an international accreditation community that influences
developments at the national level.
Two international organizations are of particular interest from the point of view of accreditation. The
first, the International Accreditation Forum (IAF), manages accreditation arrangements in areas
including product standards, with a broad remit in terms of conformity assessment. The IAF has two
primary purposes: to ensure that its accreditation body members only accredit qualified bodies with no
conflict of interest; and to establish mutual recognition arrangements between accreditation bodies. The
underlying motivation for the IAF is that it is trade facilitating to put in place a system whereby
accreditation certificates issued in one country are recognized in others, having been granted on the
basis of agreed standards and procedures. As noted elsewhere in this report, standards and conformity
assessment are intimately related, and just as international product standards can reduce trade costs, so
too can streamlined accreditation arrangements.