USCMO Meets with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Ambassador Agshin Mehdiyev

On September 12, 2017, USCMO Secretary General Oussama Jammal and a delegation from USCMO met with OIC Ambassador Agshin Megdiyev. The OIC, to its credit, made a relatively early statement against the Rohingya genocide on Eid Al-Adha, 2 September, when Myanmar’s assault first gained international attention. The USCMO delegation expressed appreciation for the OIC’s denouncement and clear enunciation of Myanmar’s egregious attack on the Rohingya, but called on the OIC in a formally submitted statement to make the crisis its emergency top priority and to use its member states’ considerable economic and international influence to coordinate truly consequential political action against Myanmar, including sanctions, and to create a massive humanitarian response. While the OIC sent a fact-finding delegation in the first week of January 2018 to a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, its members have yet to take up the Rohingya ethnic cleansing and humanitarian crisis in a collective, comprehensive way.