The sixth Global Security Forum 2024 began yesterday in Doha and will continue until May 22. This year’s theme, “Strategic Competition: The Complexity of Interdependence,” focuses on examining global security challenges through the lens of strategic competition, highlighting the risks and opportunities presented by complex interdependencies. Key topics include supply chain management, climate change as a threat multiplier, energy security, and essential technologies like high-end semiconductors, food insecurity, and the practice of hostage-taking by state and non-state actors.
The forum convenes numerous officials, heads of government, and representatives of different institutions to exchange their perspectives on contemporary security issues and the associated global challenges. The Global Security Forum 2024, organized by the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies (QIASS) and The Soufan Center, is held in collaboration with several high-level agencies and institutions, including the United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED), New America Foundation, Defense One, and The Soufan Group.
In his opening address, Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs H E Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani emphasised that rising geopolitical tensions among global powers, leading to the resurgence of nuclear proliferation threats and new conventional wars, pose significant challenges with catastrophic consequences extending beyond national and regional borders into cyberspace.
This year, the Forum is being held under dangerous security conditions due to the genocide in the Gaza Strip, and its repercussions are reflected in southern Lebanon and the Red Sea destabilizing the entire region.
As the Prime Minister highlighted, the emergence of multiple competing centres of influence and conventional wars between major powers as serious threats to the international system, citing the war in Ukraine as an example. This conflict has disrupted global energy markets and severely impacted food security, with the crisis in Sudan further destabilizing Africa. Additionally, political polarization and escalating tensions between the United States and China have profound effects on global supply chains and international trade.
The forum is taking place while the world is facing unprecedented threats to global peace and security that include wars, cyber-attacks, espionage, environmental disasters, humanitarian crises, and mass migrations. The ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip which has resulted in thousands of casualties and continues to worsen the humanitarian crisis is a real-world example of regional peace threats. The Prime Minister pointed out that policies of occupation, forced displacement, and collective punishment do not resolve conflicts but exacerbate them. Intensifying conflicts lead to increased humanitarian consequences, such as mass exodus and illegal immigration driven by poverty, state failure, collapsing political structures, and extremism fueled by despair and hopelessness.
