AUK Hosted the 2023 MEPS Forum

The American University of Kurdistan successfully collaborated with partners to host the fourth Middle East Peace and Security (MEPS) Forum from November 19 to 21 in Duhok, titled “Renewal, Revision, and Resiliency: The Future of the Middle East.”

MEPS 23 gathered over 800 high-level experts from around the globe, including governmental leaders, academics, and members of leading think tanks for in-depth debates on the most pressing issues confronting the MENA region.

Keynote and plenary speakers included H.E. Nechirvan Barzani, President of the Kurdistan Region; H.E. Masrour Barzani, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region; and two former Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom, Rt. Hon. Boris Johnson and H.E. Sir Tony Blair.

During a featured session, H.E. Masrour Barzani announced that the Kurdistan Region will begin exporting products to the United Kingdom, and he symbolically presented a box of pomegranates from the Kurdish city of Halabja and Kurdish honey to the Rt. Hon. Boris Johnson, who stated, “I’d much rather visit Kurdistan than most places in the world, and I will do so in the future, regardless of new roles and positions.”

In his welcoming remarks, Dr. Randall Rhodes, President of the AUK, commented on the role of the University in fostering respectful and inter-cultural debate that aims to address contemporary issues. Such events as MEPS provide students with the opportunity to observe conversations that serve as models of scholarly professionalism.

Dr. Jiyar Aghapouri, Director of AUK’s Center for Peace and Human Security (CPHS), contributed to the development of the workshops’ agenda. “This year’s MEPS was notable for its inclusion of diverse perspectives, ideologies, classes, genders, and religions. The workshops were more detailed and yielded better policy-oriented outcomes for addressing challenging issues in the Kurdistan Region and Iran. I hope we can learn from these lessons and strive to make next year’s event even better,” he stated.

Dr. Honar Issa, Secretary of the AUK Board of Trustees, and Dr. Ranj Alaaldin of the Bookings Institution designed the conference including inviting participants for the eighteen panels on Days Two and Three, which included discussions on the future of Iraq, the economic revival of Kurdistan, the geopolitics of energy and climate change, armed groups in the Middle East, and the Western-led international order.

This year, more than 30 national and international media outlets, including Kurdistan 24 and AVA Media as the event’s official media partners, broadcasted live news programs from AUK’s campus during MEPS. Sponsors included the KAR Group and Taurus Arm.

Since its establishment in 2019, the MEPS Forum has served as an annual summit hosted by the AUK to provide a forum for open dialogue on the most pressing issues confronting the Middle East and North Africa. The American University of Kurdistan, as the host of Kurdistan’s and Iraq’s premier forum, is a critical venue for official and non-official initiatives, intellectually rigorous debates, and policy analysis aimed at addressing a wide range of political, economic, and socioeconomic challenges in Iraq and the Middle East.