In recent months, the Bled Strategic Forum platform has taken to the road, participating in various events around the world, forging new partnerships and enhancing existing ones. From New Delhi to Skopje, Delphi to Kigali, we have lent our knowledge and expertise to initiate discussions and roundtables on the most prominent geopolitical and geostrategic questions of today and tomorrow.
At the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, we and our partner the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) co-created a panel on the future of multilateralism and the new geopolitical reality that has shifted global power structures and raised questions about the efficiency of the current international order. As a new non-permanent of the UN Security Council, Slovenia is very interested and eager to understand different voices and positions in order to contribute as much as possible to strengthening the current rules-based international order and making it more efficient, transparent and fit for a new geostrategic reality.
In Skopje, North Macedonia, we teamed up with the ZIP Institute to set up a panel on energy diplomacy in the Western Balkans. This issue is essential in efforts to transition from coal and gas dependency to sustainable and green energy. There is still a long way to go.
At the invitation of the Delphi Forum, Greece, we travelled to Delphi to organise a discussion on the future of the European Union beyond the economy with the well-known French philosopher and writer Guillaume Klossa. The discussion showed without a doubt that Europe goes beyond purely economic discourse; its values and spirit are the basis for our resilience and sustainable future.
In Kigali, Rwanda, at the Kigali Global Dialogue we once again collaborated with our partner ORF and took part in the discussion on Feminist Foreign Policy, which is one of the backbones of Slovenia’s new foreign policy and strategy, introducing inclusivity, gender equality, human rights and the protection of the most vulnerable groups into the mainstream foreign policy discourse.
Every conference we attend and every forum we participate in brings us new ideas, new knowledge and the understanding that we are all in the same boat and that the challenges we face today can only be tackled through global cooperation and the participation of all facets of global society. No man is an island; no country can do it alone. These are phrases we hear often, they are not new; what is new is the momentum, a shift in the international community that we need to move from words to deeds, from standing still to actually building a sustainable world for all. There are many questions and doubts, but there is also hope and renewed optimism. The Bled Strategic Forum will always be part of that.
