“Most precious and scarce resource of our time is dialogue” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Doha Forum.
This was the underlying theme when thousands of opinion leaders, policy makers, non government organisations and government officials gathered in Doha to discuss and brainstorm international issues and formulate a better understanding in resolving conflicts and find innovative and viable solutions to various challenges across the world.
Doha Forum has become one of the top destinations for policy makers across the world as it is one of the main global dialogue platforms. The popularity and respect the platform commands can be gauged from the fact that around 1,800 people from all over the globe attended the two-day forum, where nearly 100 experts from different fields gave speeches and presentations in more than 15 sessions.
Under the theme ‘Shaping Policy in an Interconnected World’, the forum hosted panels, plenaries and workshops around four key themes - security, economic development, peace and mediation, and trends and transitions.
Qatar hosting such an important international forum, which promotes dialogues among various stakeholders is only apt as Doha is considered a pioneer in the region in many aspects like education, media and labour reforms.
While addressing the forum during the opening ceremony Amir H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani outlined Qatar’s vision of approaching the challenges facing the international community.
“Out of our belief in the importance of views, the necessity of dialogue and the inevitability of diversity, we have been keen to keep the dialogue forums and networking platforms active and open to exchange views in a free environment for all, irrespective of their intellectual affiliations and political perceptions, and this forum is a relevant epitome,” he said.
Doha Forum offered a great platform to discuss such varied topics like ‘Enforcing norms in cyberworld’ to ‘Struggling for “Justice”: Palestine, Syria and Yemen’. It covered topics from regional conflicts, gender equality, violent extremism to Geopolitics of Natural Resources. It listened to all the voices without prejudice or judgement and tried to put forth an actionable policy or at least a framework to begin with.
It is not feasible or possible to find solutions for the problems in the world at one forum, but what it gives is direction and more importantly hope.
This vision of hope was visible in the words of Guterres at the closing of the forum. “Despite times of chaos and confusion, and a deficit in trust, I see winds of hope around the world,” UN chief’s words sums up the two-day forum perfectly.
