User blogs

We organised our September WebDebate, ‘The UN at 75: Evolution or revolution?’, to mark the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. By looking back at the past 75 years of the world organisation, we zoomed in on two key questions. 

On June 11, UN Secretary General António Guterres launched the Roadmap for Digital Cooperation based on the report of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. The launch was accompanied by a series of discussions on the Roadmap’s key recommendations.

In May we ran our new online course, ‘Artificial Intelligence: Technology, Governance, and Policy Frameworks’ for the first time. It was a fantastic experience to develop and deliver a course around such a timely topic. In this blog post, we want to share some of our experiences and lessons-learned.

The event The impact of AI on diplomacy and international relations, organised by the Center for Data Innovation and DiploFoundation, brought together over 150 people – diplomats, policy makers from EU institutions and member states, researchers, journalists and others – with an interest in the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI), diplomacy, and foreign policy.

In the debates surrounding the sustainable development goals (SDGs), a huge emphasis has been placed on having the right kind of data in working towards the global goals. We are encouraged to ‘measure what we treasure’ to achieve the 2030 development agenda and to have appropriate policies in place.

Last Friday, the German newspaper Die Zeit organised its third Artificial Intelligence (AI) conference. I was born in Germany and have just moved back after a nine-year stint in Great Britain, so I went to get my first direct impression of the country’s relationship to AI and to hear debates about digital politics in general.

What is diplomacy? Who is a diplomat? And what is it that diplomats do? The answers to these questions will always be contingent. We can only ever give them from the vantage point of a particular place and time. We tend to forget this when we debate these questions. We also tend to forget that things could be otherwise and that by raising these questions we not only debate what is but also have a chance to rethink how things could or even should be.

‘We must end the obsession with creating new “types” of diplomacy.’ writes Shaun Riordan in his recent post for the blog of the Center on Public Diplomacy. Indeed, those practices we describe as diplomacy are expanding. We are seeing discussions on digital diplomacy, climate diplomacy, health diplomacy, business diplomacy, education diplomacy, and sport diplomacy to name a few.

In our March WebDebate, we explored the contribution of diplomats to literature and cultural heritage and also looked at how art and diplomacy can be usefully combined. We asked: What can we learn from diplomats who also engage in the arts? What role does creativity play for diplomacy? Are there are any overlaps between poetic and diplomatic language? Are there certain lessons in the diplomatic craft that can only be expressed through literature and art?