Focus on youth

Manama : The Manama Dialogue in its next incarnation will be more youthful in its approach, giving greater importance to education and younger generation as suggested by the speakers in the current edition.   

“We will do our best to identify young leaders, especially from this region, who we can invite as delegates next year and ensure that they are part of the programme,” said organisers of the Manama Dialogue, International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). 

Pointing out the importance of education and the need to conduct dialogue between this region and others to improve cultural understanding, as suggested by speakers, Director-General and Chief Executive John Chipman assured that “engaging the younger generation must be an important part of the Manama Dialogue.”

“We look forward to discussing how cultural exchange and diplomacy can be appended to our Manama Dialogue efforts,” he said while revealing their four point campaign plan for Manama Dialogue 2017, with youth focus being one of them.  

Apart from that, he said the IISS will focus on inspiring the leaders in the GCC and the Middle East to use the Manama Dialogue as an ‘action-forcing’ event for strengthened international cooperation on conflict resolution. 

“This Manama Dialogue is at the service of the countries and citizens in attendance and we at the IISS will do everything we can to facilitate diplomatic contacts and to help join excellent analysis to sound policy making,” he emphasised. 

Another important move in the build up to the 2017 edition will be ‘inter-sessional’ or ‘sherpa’ meetings. 

“We will find ways to conduct small ‘inter-sessional’ or ‘sherpa’ meetings to tie in senior officials and analysts from the participating countries into the Manama Dialogue process,” he said.  

Such meeting, according to Chipman, will be fruitful in maintaining the momentum of the Manama Dialogue and engage governments and policy analysts in shaping theagenda. 

Policy relevant research will be another important aspect of the next edition of the dialogue.

Explaining further, Chipman, pointed out that an important element of the speech by the US defence secretary here was his call for enhanced missile defence cooperation in the region, a call that was made on the same day as we released here our own independent study of how the countries of the GCC might construct a stronger missile defence architecture. 

Our work in the coming year on combating extremism, regional conflict, the growing role of Asian powers in Gulf Security and the regional security architecture will help the discussion at the Manama dialogue 2017,” Chipman said.

John Chipman also announced that the exact date of the next year summit will announced before the end of this year.