IAF Chair Emanuele Riva represented IAF at the 9th Annual Meeting of International Organisations (IOs), which was held from 05-06 December in Paris, France. The meeting brought together members of the IO Partnership, which strives to support effective, efficient, trusted and transparent international instruments, and build confidence among regulators and legislators that international instruments can meet their policy aspirations and needs.
 
The meeting included a high-level event on 05 December with IO leadership and OECD ambassadors, and a working-level closed event on 06 December with focused sessions among IO Partners. Sessions on 05 December focused on working towards common goals with more agile, effective and inclusive international solutions; evolving global governance; and the multilateral rules-based system in the face of uncertainty. On 06 December, IOs discussed issues and experiences relating to the themes of the IO Partnership, agility, inclusiveness and impact.
 
Mr. Riva participated in a panel on 05 December, speaking on the topic of inclusive engagement throughout international rulemaking. Mr. Riva highlighted the strong involvement of stakeholders in IAF, including through voting, representation in committees, and the User Advisory and Conformity Assessment Body Advisory Committees specifically for stakeholders. Through gathering stakeholder input, IAF can help ensure that users have confidence in the results of accredited conformity assessment, that accreditation bodies are not both unilaterally providing the rules for conformity assessment and implementing them, and support good governance.
 
Mr. Riva further noted the importance of considering the needs of stakeholders that have no voice, such as future generations and species dependent on increasingly threatened ecosystems. To achieve sustainability will require balancing the needs of these stakeholders with the input of more vocal individuals contributing to the international discourse.
 
In 2021, OECD published the IO Compendium, bringing together the experiences of IAF and other IO Partners to highlight the varied landscape, key principles and practices of international rulemaking. The IO Compendium is available to download here.