On Sunday, September 18, IPI held its Eleventh Ministerial Dinner on the Middle East in its Trygve Lie Center for Peace, Security, and Development. The working dinner drew the participation of foreign ministers, United Nations officials, special representatives of the Secretary- General to countries in the region, heads of humanitarian agencies and other high level representatives from the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and beyond.

The working dinner was chaired by Terje Rød-Larsen, President of IPI, and co-hosted by the United Arab Emirates and Luxembourg, represented respectively by Reem Al Hashimy, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation, and Christian Braun, Luxembourg’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

In the roundtable conversation, conducted under the Chatham House rule of non-attribution, participants exchanged views on the changing political landscape in the Arab world, including Syria, Libya, Yemen, Iraq, Israel and the Palestinian territories, and the flow of refugees and migrants to Europe.

Attendees included the foreign ministers of Austria, Belgium, Canada, Greece, Italy, Jordan, Lichtenstein, the Netherlands, Norway, Slovakia, Sweden, and Turkey.

Also present were Ahmed Aboul-Gheit, Secretary-General of the League of Arab States; Turki Al-Faisal, Chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies; Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, Secretary-General of the Gulf Cooperation Council; Jeffrey Feltman, UN Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs; Jean-Marie Guéhenno, President and CEO of the International Crisis Group; Thorbjorn Jagland, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe; Iyad bin Amin Madani, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation; Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Federica Mogherini, European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy; David Miliband, President of the International Rescue Committee; Kevin Rudd, chair of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism; Ghassan Salamé, Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs, and Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.