Waqf Development: The Islamic Development Bank Experience
In this chapter we briefly present several activities, projects and programs carried out by the Jeddah based Islamic Development Bank (IDB) Group to strengthen the global waqf sector. These include a range of interventions, such as creating a model law of waqf that is forward looking along with the provision of technical and support services aimed at creating an enabling policy, legal and regulatory environment; undertaking cutting edge research to document and disseminate good practices; building capacity through education and training of human resources; recovering lost waqfs through proper documentation and legal steps; engineering waqfs as part of its developmental operations to provide microfinance; and finally managing a fund to raise resources for asset development using state of the art financial structures. Such initiatives are expected to further intensify, as waqf is fully entrenched in IDB's long term growth strategy.