Waqf for sustainable development goals: A critical appraisal

Abstract

Sustainable development has recently emerged as one of the hot issues in the field of social development. This interest has been visualized in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN 2030 Agenda. Islamic social finance components fully align with the spirit of the SDGs. Particularly, the institution of waqf has played throughout Islamic history a remarkable role in supporting the sustainable development of Muslim communities. The majority of The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) members considerably lag behind other developing nations in achieving SDGs in key sectors of poverty alleviation, infrastructure, health care, education, and others. This paper surveys the existing literature on waqf implementations in developmental projects and in achieving the development goals of the UN 2030 agenda. It highlights the prospects of using waqf to bridge the financial gap in developmental projects. It does so by pinpointing two cases of waqf contributions to SDG, the first one is the General Directorate of Foundations of Turkey, and the other one is the Islamic Development Bank. Key challenges encountering the full utilization of waqf and a summary of AAOIFI good governance indicators are pointed out in the discussion section. This paper is concluded with a proposed four-point Waqf Promotion Plan (WPP) to overcome main issues in waqf and to facilitate the full exploitation of waqf in mobilizing required funds to achieve the SDG of the UN 2030 agenda.