International Family Institute 2nd High Advisory Board Meeting

The 2nd High Advisory Board Meeting of the International Family Institute (IFI / UAE) was executed by UNIW on May 13, 2017, at the Esenler Golden Way Hotel in Istanbul, in joint partnership with the Ministry of Family and Social Policies and Esenler Municipality, with the participation of ministers, parliamentarians, academicians, NGO presidents, and family experts from over twenty countries to determine IFI's strategic roadmap.

The International Family Institute (IFI) is an institute established under the UNIW umbrella to generate joint solutions and formulate a collective stance against contemporary challenges and threats facing our family values and conceptual framework.

Throughout the meeting, High Advisory Board members shared their valuable insights, offering views and recommendations regarding family-centered studies while exchanging ideas on concrete projects to be executed.

Targeted endeavors within the Institute were defined as: ensuring the dissemination of best practice models across the Muslim world to overcome challenges within the family institution; formulating joint strategies for healthy family structures across different societies; developing sustainable solutions against family-centered social crises; taking measures against concepts such as social gender ideology, sexuality, and homosexuality that are attempted to be introduced into our conceptual world through international conventions and threaten our family structure and religious values; discussing clauses within international treaties—particularly the Istanbul and Jeddah Conventions—that appear advantageous from an external perspective but contradict our family structure and religious sensitivities in content; establishing specialized working groups under the International Family Institute (IFI) as a joint platform bringing together academia, decision-makers, and civil society organizations; and ensuring adequate institutional capacity across operational fields.

In this framework, by focusing its operations on our shared values, the International Family Institute (IFI) presents an opportunity to build a collective mind within a broader space of cooperation through contributions made by academicians, domain experts, and scholars according to Islamic principles and methodology.

Acting in alignment on this strategic domain with key institutions—primarily the T.C. Ministry of Family and Social Policies, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), and the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS)—UNIW aims to assemble all human and knowledge resources capable of contributing to the Institute, establishing new roadmaps based on participants' proposals. The High Advisory Board strives to build the Institute upon solid foundations and achieve a fortified position against modernity.

Consequently, through intellectual exchanges and presentations delivered throughout the meeting, targets were rendered more concrete, efforts toward creating conceptual clarity and knowledge wealth became defined, and a vital milestone was achieved for the growth and renewal of the Institute.