Global politics is becoming increasingly combustible. The recent Doha Forum offered a survey of the world’s most persistent fractures—and tentative avenues for stitching them together. From the promises of artificial intelligence to the perils of Middle Eastern fragmentation, the conversations revealed both the limits of international diplomacy and the surprising capacity of small states, philanthropists, and emerging economies to shape the global agenda. It was a gathering defined as much by ambitious visions as by sobering realities.
Opening the proceedings, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, delivered a pointed reflection on the erosion of justice in global affairs. His thesis was stark: that the world’s mounting crises stem less from resource scarcity than from a deficit of accountability. International promises, he argued, have outpaced implementation to such a degree that the global order risks becoming a theatre of unkept commitments—where force supplants law and partiality corrodes norms.
Qatar’s role, in his telling, is shaped by a conviction that mediation must be matched by moral consistency. Justice, he said, is not a rhetorical flourish but the essential architecture of peace. Such framing is not merely philosophical. He highlighted a breakthrough reached the previous day, when Qatar—working with Norway, Spain and Switzerland—brokered an agreement between the Colombian government and the self-designated “EGC” group. The accord, he suggested, demonstrates that sincere mediation can protect civilians and create the political scaffolding for disarmament, counternarcotics efforts and sustainable peace. For Doha, this was not an isolated success but evidence that widening common ground, rather than ostracising inconvenient actors, is the only durable path to conflict resolution.
The Prime Minister’s remarks also touched on the region’s most intractable crises. The suffering of the Palestinians and the atrocities in Sudan, he maintained, expose a glaring absence of accountability in the international system. On Syria, he gestured to the country’s fragile transition—still scarred by years of impunity—and called for a model of transitional justice that avoids sectarianism and builds cohesion. Without such approaches, he warned, crises merely metastasise: unresolved conflicts return in more complex forms, while temporary deals become the diplomatic equivalent of kicking the can down the road.
His appeal was ultimately a call to rebuild trust in international law. Institutions, he argued, must be strengthened; humanitarian actors must be treated as partners, not accessories; and policymaking must place human dignity at its centre. The world, he insisted, does not need more declarations but “justice practised by all without double standards” and courage that translates principle into action. It was a reminder that even as Qatar positions itself as a facilitator among rivals, it sees moral coherence as a geopolitical asset—and perhaps the only antidote to a fragmenting world.
A keynote appearance by Bill Gates offered a characteristically data-heavy diagnosis of the global south’s development prospects. The chairman of the Gates Foundation lamented that the once-steady decline in child mortality has stalled; indeed, deaths among children under five have ticked upwards to 4.8m annually. Fragile health systems and wavering donor commitments share the blame. Yet he insisted that most of these deaths—95%, by his estimate—could be prevented through robust primary health care costing less than $100 per person each year.
To that end, Gates pledged an eye-watering $200bn over the next two decades for health, nutrition, education and economic self-sufficiency across Africa and other low-income regions. His vision is unapologetically technocratic: use AI as a great equaliser, not a new frontier of inequality. In the near future, he argued, the poorest farmer in the Sahel should have access to the same agricultural advice as a landowner in Iowa, delivered via a virtual assistant in Wolof or Amharic. Likewise, children in rural clinics should benefit from AI-augmented tutors and diagnostic tools. The goal, he emphasised, is not charity but empowerment—an innovation pipeline that allows countries to become self-sustaining rather than perpetually dependent on outside benevolence.
If Gates presented a world where technology narrows divides, the Forum’s geopolitical panels were a reminder of how wide those divides have become. Qatar—host of the event, and something of a serial mediator—defended its approach to diplomacy in a region where trust is scarce and armed actors plentiful. Doha’s officials argued that speaking with everyone, from Western capitals to movements like Hamas and the Taliban, is not ideological indulgence but necessity. Critics have long accused Qatar of offering legitimacy to unsavoury groups. In response, its diplomats countered that conflicts do not resolve themselves through moral distancing. Someone, after all, must keep channels open.
European participants struck a more conventional tone, extolling the virtues of the rules-based order and insisting on the importance of mediation and prevention. Yet even they acknowledged that Europe’s security landscape has been reshaped by Washington’s shifting posture. The latest U.S. National Security Strategy, with its occasional impatience toward Europe, drew mild protest—tempered, however, by recognition that American power remains the continent’s indispensable shield. Spain reiterated its commitment to defence obligations but bristled at calls for NATO members to spend 5% of GDP on military budgets, arguing that capabilities matter more than arbitrary targets.
Turkey, meanwhile, used the platform to remind attendees of its exposure to regional turmoil. It hosts millions of refugees and faces periodic spillover from conflicts in its neighbourhood. Turkish officials urged greater international support for mediation efforts and defended Ankara’s controversial security views—especially its stance on Kurdish militias in Syria. The country also expressed conditional openness to participating in a Gaza stabilisation force, insisting that any such deployment must focus first on separating combatants along a designated buffer, the so-called “yellow line”, rather than immediate disarmament of Hamas.
The Gaza conflict loomed over nearly every panel. Ministers from Spain, Egypt, Norway and Saudi Arabia described a humanitarian catastrophe in dire need of impartial aid and international oversight. Ceasefires, when they exist at all, are tenuous. The Palestinian Authority, they argued, must be placed back at the heart of Gaza’s governance and reconstruction, lest a patchwork of new institutions duplicate failures of the past. A stabilisation force—an idea now circulating in Washington and Arab capitals—should begin as a monitoring mechanism before evolving into something more ambitious. Disarmament, in their view, is not a precondition but a destination, contingent on political progress and credible guarantees.
The ministers also voiced alarm at Israeli settlement expansion and the uptick in settler violence, describing these as structural impediments to any two-state solution. They warned that Gaza and the West Bank cannot be treated as separate political entities; a unified Palestinian governance structure is essential for long-term peace. Several speakers drew attention to the plight of Palestinian prisoners, alleging torture and other abuses, and insisted that international law demands accountability from all parties, Israel included.
Beyond Gaza, Syria’s post-Assad trajectory received scrutiny through a rare interview with President Ahmed Ashara. His government, still seeking international legitimacy, pledged to rebuild institutions in a country fractured by ethnic tensions, warlordism and foreign interventions. Ashara promised inclusiveness, participatory governance and women’s rights, though the absence of electoral timelines raised eyebrows. His past as a militant commander—once a source of Western unease—was acknowledged but dismissed as irrelevant to his current role. Economic recovery, he insisted, hinges on lifting American Caesar Act sanctions, which he portrayed as the primary obstacle to stabilisation.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, offered his own perspective on the Syrian imbroglio. He criticised the Syrian Democratic Forces’ reliance on foreign fighters and argued that only after these elements are removed could the group be folded into a national Syrian army. His remarks underscored the delicate triangulation required to manage relations with Washington, Moscow and various Kurdish factions. On Gaza, he again blamed Israeli breaches of ceasefire agreements for repeated breakdowns in negotiations, while insisting Turkey remains willing to play a stabilising military role—despite what he described as Israeli resistance to such involvement.
The Forum was not solely about conflict. A panel on culture, business and philanthropy highlighted a different story emerging from the global south: one of creativity and economic reinvention. Qatar’s Sheikha Al-Mayassa Al-Thani championed cultural investment as a form of nation-building, from museums to film industries. Africa’s industrial magnate Aliko Dangote, by contrast, emphasised factories, value-added production and agricultural modernisation. Gates again returned to AI, describing it as the most promising tool for democratising access to expertise—provided it is deployed in local languages and designed for those with the least.
A common refrain among the panellists was that the global south no longer accepts a development model driven from abroad. Economic sovereignty, local talent pipelines and long-term institutional investments matter more than donor-driven quick fixes. Culture, they argued, is not a luxury but an economic asset; philanthropy is not a substitute for state capacity but a catalyst for it; and industrialisation remains the surest path to broad-based prosperity.
Across its many sessions, the Doha Forum oscillated between hope and realism. The world is messy, divided and in some places aflame. Yet the gathering revealed a remarkable appetite for problem-solving—from small states seeking leverage through diplomacy to philanthropists deploying AI in the service of public goods. Whether these ambitions will survive contact with political realities is another matter. But in a turbulent era, merely charting a path toward stability counts as progress.
