In a world addicted to the roar of guns, The Gambia at OIC meeting in Baghdad chose the quieter, harder path let’s dialogue.
At the recent 52nd OIC Council of Foreign Ministers in war-scarred Baghdad — a city that knows better than most what bombs cannot fix - Foreign Minister Sering Modou Njie delivered a message that was simple, old, and radically urgent: There is no military solution.
He said it as Chair of the 15th Islamic Summit, but he could have been speaking for every Gambian mother who has watched the news from Gaza, Sudan, Yemen and Myanmar and wondered when we will learn.
The theme of the summit said it all: Dialogue and Solidarity; two words that sound soft until you try to practice them while missiles are flying.
Minister Njie was right to warn of a complex regional war in the Middle East involving multiple states. This is no longer a series of isolated conflicts. It is a fire system, where one blaze feeds the next. In such a fire, pouring more fuel - more weapons, more revenge - will never put it out.
His commendation of Qatar and Pakistan for mediation is important. In this moment, the peacemaker is more patriotic than the warmonger.
On Palestine, The Gambia did not wobble. Its position remains clear and principled: self-determination, 1967 borders, Al-Quds Al-Sharif as capital, no demographic engineering in Gaza, and accountability under international law.
This is not radical. It is international law. And it is the only basis for a just peace.
Equally powerful was his reminder about The Gambia’s case against Myanmar at the ICJ. A small country with a big conscience taking a superpower’s crime to the world’s highest court - and calling it what it is: the Voice of the Islamic Ummah. That is what moral leadership looks like. That case must not be allowed to die from lack of funding. OIC members who can pay, must pay.
The nomination of Hon. Hassan Bubacar Jallow to the IPHRC is also fitting. If anyone understands justice - from the Rwandan Tribunal to the Gambian bench - it is Jallow.
But perhaps the most important line came at the end: “We must turn commitments into tangible cooperation.”
For too long, the OIC, like many international bodies, has been excellent at communiques and poor at follow-through. Solidarity cannot be a speech in Baghdad; it must be food in Gaza, funds for the ICJ case, investment in our youth and women, and a humanitarian fund that actually works - like the Qatar-proposed OIC Humanitarian Fund that Minister Njie signed.
The Gambia is small on the map, but in Baghdad, it spoke with the clarity of a giant.
In a world choosing division, we are choosing dialogue. In a world choosing war, we are choosing solidarity.
That is not weakness. That is wisdom - and it is the Gambian way.