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Qatar’s approach across the Triple Nexus in conflict-affected contexts: the case of Darfur
... Qatar had previously built a reputation as a neutral and effective mediator in high-stakes negotiations, such as brokering peace between Sudanese factions in 2010 and facilitating the release of hostages in various conflicts. However, the blockade cast doubt on Qatar's impartiality, as the accusing states labeled it a supporter of terrorism and extremist groups (Alarabeed, 2024). ...
Qatar has utilized soft power to amplify its global influence through cultural diplomacy, media, and sports. Al-Jazeera and events like the 2022 FIFA World Cup have positioned Qatar as a modern, forward-thinking state despite controversies over labor rights, LGBTQ+ policies, and alleged ties to extremist groups. These contradictions challenge its soft power credibility, as efforts to project modernity often clash with conservative domestic policies. By critically examining Qatar's strategies through Joseph Nye's soft power framework, this study highlights the paradoxes inherent in its approach and explores the limits of cultural and sports diplomacy in achieving sustainable influence.
... Doha's presence in Darfur as a humanitarian actor during and after al-Bashir remained a meaningful element in Qatar's strategy to act as a mediator and donor (rather than a political actor) in the country (Ulrichsen and Cafiero 2023), especially after losing its connection with the Sudanese government. The geographically decentralised and socially diversified approach to aid through its state-based charities allowed Qatar to maintain its presence in Darfur even after the fall of the al-Bashir regime and despite the emerging role of the UAE's support, enabling Doha to play a mediating role in the drafting of the Juba Agreement (Alarabeed 2024). ...
... Such frameworks, while insightful, often fail to capture the granular intricacies of aid delivery in particular geopolitical contexts. Recognizing this gap, a scholarly movement has emerged that looks to examine concrete aid practices in specific country contexts, including studies of Qatari and Emirati aid to Syria (Pericoli, 2023), Qatar's humanitarian response in Darfur (Alarabeed, 2023), and Saudi aid to Yemen (Bordón & Alrefai, 2023). This evolving approach heralds a deeper understanding of how humanitarian and development initiatives are inextricably linked to the complex realities of the recipients and how these are negotiated within the ambit of global humanitarian principles and local conditions. ...
Motivation
Qatar's humanitarian role in Afghanistan, a less‐explored example of a non‐traditional actor, is crucial in understanding international responses to geopolitical crises. Examining Qatar's involvement provides insights into the complex dynamics of humanitarian assistance, diplomatic efforts, and post‐crisis challenges.
Purpose
The study examines Qatar's multifaceted role in Afghanistan since 2021, highlighting its impact as a non‐traditional actor in complex humanitarian operations and diplomacy.
Approach and methods
The research combines a desk review of online sources, academic literature, reports, non‐governmental organization documents, and media articles with first‐hand observations and informal stakeholder interviews. It also analyses international aid statistics from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' Financial Tracking Service and the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee.
Findings
Qatar emerged as a key humanitarian player in Afghanistan, adopting a whole‐of‐society approach. Its efforts encompassed emergency relief, evacuations, educational support, and humanitarian diplomacy, effectively bridging the Taliban with international actors after the takeover.
Policy implications
This research highlights the impactful role of non‐traditional donors, as seen with Qatar in Afghanistan, emphasizing their potential in complex humanitarian scenarios. The study advocates recognizing and leveraging the unique capabilities of smaller states and non‐traditional actors in humanitarian responses, promoting capacity building to harness their institutional agility and societal resources effectively.
The State of Qatar played a substantial role in mediation efforts for the conflict in Darfur through the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur (DDPD). This article provides a comprehensive analysis of Qatar's role as a mediator and a donor in Darfur, over the context of its occurrence as a key regional political and humanitarian actor at the time of the conflict. This article also contrasts Qatar's approaches to the war in Sudan with mediation efforts by the African Union and the United Nations, which reveals how Qatar was able to overcome resource constraints to incentivise opposing factions to negotiate. Finally, this article explores differing arguments on Qatari impartiality and effectiveness during the Darfur mediation process. Qatar never attempted to hide its economic incentive in Darfur, and many Sudanese factions and large sections of the Sudanese public favoured Qatar's potential investment post-war Darfur.
This research delves into the dynamic interplay between strategic leadership and diplomatic agility in conflict resolution, juxtaposing Nelson Mandela's transformational leadership in post-apartheid South Africa with Qatar's diplomatic navigation through the 2017 geopolitical blockade. It aims to uncover how leadership dynamics are crucial in guiding nations through conflicts and crises in diverse geopolitical landscapes, employing a qualitative comparative methodology that includes case study analysis and thematic literature review to investigate leadership virtues, diplomatic engagements, and the strategic use of international law. By comparing Mandela's commitment to reconciliation and unity with Qatar's resilience and economic ingenuity, this study seeks to articulate core principles underpinning strategic leadership and diplomatic agility, highlighting their applicability across various geopolitical challenges. Anticipated outcomes include the identification of key leadership traits such as ethical governance, strategic foresight, and the ability to foster unity, alongside effective diplomatic engagement and adherence to international norms. This investigation enriches the academic discourse on conflict resolution by providing insights into the synergy between leadership and diplomacy in managing complex disputes, underscoring the adaptability of leadership strategies in changing geopolitical dynamics, and setting a foundation for future leadership efforts aimed at achieving global peace, stability, and progress. Furthermore, it opens avenues for further scholarly inquiry into leadership dynamics in conflict resolution, enhancing the academic understanding and offering practical guidance for policymakers and leaders, thereby emphasizing the critical importance of visionary leadership and diplomatic finesse in achieving sustainable resolutions to international conflicts.
How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the foreign aid behavior of new donors on humanitarian cooperation? The non–OECD-DAC donors, such as Qatar, try to adapt to the new environment of development and humanitarian aid under COVID-19 pandemic. Qatar has successfully used public diplomacy to deal with regional geopolitical challenges. In this sense, the current situation presents an opportunity to Qatar for opening up to new geographies. This research analyzes Qatar’s foreign aid, utilizing a novel dataset on Qatar’s foreign aid interactions before and during the pandemic. These interactions show Qatar’s main recipients of foreign aid, with which country, income group and geography it interacts more. This dataset is essential to demonstrate Qatar’s priorities in humanitarian diplomacy as well. The pandemic makes this dataset even more interesting because it is worthwhile to investigate how a global health shock might affect the aid behavior of a new donor. Our analysis shows that Qatar has increased its foreign aid interactions compared to the pre-pandemic period. Qatar’s foreign aid regime is evolving according to income group and geographical differentiation, new communications with different recipients, revealing the country’s aspirations to be a global donor. However, Qatar’s foreign aid also has many limitations that negatively affect its global status. These factors are related to Qatar’s insistence on providing aid to specific regions and countries. Although Qatar has increased its humanitarian aid interaction with underdeveloped countries and disadvantaged geographies, the country privileges certain countries and geographies. The income group diversification in Qatar’s foreign aid policy does not manifest a strong positive inclination toward LDCs.
What does or does not work in implementing the humanitarian–development–peacebuilding (HDP) triple nexus to address protracted and repeated crises? And what implications does this have for durable solutions for the internally displaced? This article seeks to address these questions by, first, highlighting conceptual linkages between the triple nexus and durable solutions for internally displaced persons and, second, analysing emerging effective practices and challenges in nexus implementation to date and their relation to the issue of durable solutions with respect to the centrality of context and communities; national and local ownership; coordination and analysis; and funding. Findings here indicate that there are both conceptual and practical linkages between the triple nexus and durable solutions, with the latter potentially able to help in shaping the collective outcomes of the former, as internal displacement is a hallmark of protracted crises and resolving it involves addressing needs and governance gaps across the nexus.
COVID-19 has exacerbated factors influencing international support for peacebuilding, including a more volatile geopolitical order and changes in domestic priorities in donor countries. Peacebuilding and a conflict-sensitive approach have not yet been at the forefront of the international responses to COVID-19, undermining attempts to ‘build back better’ in a world where negative conflict dynamics are increasingly apparent.
This paper takes stock of trends in financial support for peacebuilding, building on ECDPM’s 2018 study ‘Supporting peacebuilding in times of change’. While official aid for peacebuilding has never been higher going into the crisis, peacebuilding is a comparatively low priority which relies on a small number of donors. As such, peacebuilding is vulnerable to shrinking aid budgets and donors’ shifting priorities as a result of COVID-19. Philanthropic support – while having a unique role – has so far been limited compared to support to other areas and the scale of official support.
The pandemic, together with growing questions about racial justice and the decolonisation of international relations and development, will also push the overall aid system to evolve. These developments will profoundly impact the predominantly Western-funded international peacebuilding sector in 2021 and beyond.
More adaptation and engagement is needed from an already vulnerable peacebuilding community. Transformational change – towards building consistent political and financial support – will require articulating the relevance of peacebuilding in a (post-)COVID-19 world for the dominant economic and climate-related themes of recovery. In the long run, these evolutions may well lead to more locally-led, diverse and sustainable approaches to peacebuilding, but the transition will certainly be turbulent, and the forces for change don’t necessarily all point in a positive direction.
The Qatar Gulf crisis of 2017 saw a number of mediation initiatives, including those of the United States and Kuwait. However, the two countries present two substantially distinct models of third-party intervention: superpower mediation (the United States) and small-state mediation (Kuwait). Comparing the two types of intervention in this crisis in terms of their ability to de-escalate tension and effectively resolve the Gulf crisis with respect to three variables – timing of mediation, leverage of the mediator (hard power versus legitimacy) and interest of the mediator – it would seem that small-state mediation has been more effective in crisis de-escalation, while superpower mediation has further exacerbated the crisis.
Qatar has, over the past several decades, been transformed from a little-known oil producer in the Gulf to become a major power in the Arab region, with a global role far exceeding expectations for a state of its size. This move from the periphery to the center of global affairs has been spurred by Qatar’s vast wealth derived from gas exports and its staunchly independent foreign policy. Qatar’s role in conflict mediation – which it has pursued since the late 1990s – is one of the most high profile manifestations of this independent stance. Qatar has also emerged as a significant actor in post-conflict reconstruction assistance, in particular in the Middle East. This chapter explores the changing relationship between Qatari mediation and reconstruction efforts in order to contribute towards a better understanding of Qatar as an ‘emerging power’ in conflict response.
Resumo
The Arab uprisings have changed the regional order of the Arab world. As traditional leading powers likeIraq,SyriaandEgypthave lost influence in theMiddle Eastdue to internal security issues and economic difficulties, a few states were able to take advantage of the recent regional turmoil. Seemingly, the mini-state Qatar has managed to benefit from the uprisings more than any other Arab state. Many IR authors explain this phenomenon with the concept of soft power. This paper tests systematically the validity of the soft power argument by examining three “soft power resources” as defined by Joseph Nye: culture, political values, and foreign policies. It is argued that the soft power concept fails in all three aspects to grasp the nature of Qatar’s regional and international influence. Instead, it is suggested to consider Qatar’s ‘hard power’ potentials which define more accurately the actual international influence of the Gulf state.
This paper argues that Qatar exercises soft power influence in a troubled region via
attraction and “carrots”. The sources of attraction includes: Qatar’s political stability derived
from its military alliance with the U.S and effective income redistribution policies and a
progressive higher education system which have greatly enhanced the stature of Qatar in the
Middle East. Qatar offers the following “carrots” for influence: the potency of its Aljazeera
Network, “carrot diplomacy”, sports investments and a generous foreign aid policy. However,
the efficacy of these tools could be undermined, by the lack of a democratic culture in Qatar,
questionable associations and causes, the unsustainable trajectory of “carrot” diplomacy and a
creeping shift towards hard power in resolving conflicts and its attendant backlash.
This paper investigates the role played by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in mediating disputes since its creation in 1981 to 2011, the year of the outbreak of the ‘Arab Spring’. It analyzes the contributions of the GCC as a conflict mediator by cross-checking this sub-regional group's institutional structure and policy approach, and presents two major findings. Firstly, the GCC was hardly designed as a conflict mediator, given that the Gulf Arab states created it as a vehicle to respond to intra-Gulf and external security threats and challenges. Secondly, in order to promote its foreign policy independence and boost its regional and global diplomatic profile to ensure its security and survival in the dangerous environment of the Gulf region, it is Qatar that has extensively attempted to mediate conflicts in Lebanon, Yemen and Sudan, with varying degrees of success, under the banners of the GCC and the Arab League. Finally, the paper presents a series of policy recommendations, based on critical insights from Qatari mediation experiences, to enable the GCC to be a proactive dispute mediator.
A growing body of literature has suggested that, in the long-run, humanitarian aid, while well-intentioned, might be counter-productive to civil war conflict management because aid provides resources that help belligerents sustain their conflict, increasing the intensity of civil wars and lengthening their duration. This unintended consequence of humanitarian aid creates a paradox for policymakers. Those civil wars that are most resistant to settlement efforts generate the greatest need for humanitarian aid to limit the deadly effects of conflict on civilians. Yet, if humanitarian aid adds fuel to the fire of these same conflicts, making them more resistant to settlement and increasing the pain they impose upon civilians, policymakers might choose to avoid providing humanitarian assistance altogether in the hopes of hastening the end of the conflict. In this paper, I argue that while humanitarian aid can bring these unintended consequences, scholars have tended to overlook the way in which the combined effects of humanitarian aid and mediation can increase the likelihood of civil wars ending. I find that the combined effects of repeated mediation and high levels of humanitarian aid increase the likelihood both that conflicts will end and that they will terminate with peace agreements and cease-fires. This effect is especially strong for conflicts mediated by international organizations and major powers.
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Abstract
In today’s fast-changing international humanitarian landscape, non-traditional/new donors are prominent amongst the more diversified group of humanitarian donors operating in the same settings as Development Assistance Committee donors. Kuwait was the first ‘new donor’ in the Gulf region and was recently given the status of an ‘International Humanitarian Centre’ by the former UN Secretary-General for the role it played in responding to the humanitarian needs of Syria. Yet Kuwaiti humanitarianism remains under-analysed in academic research. This paper aims to provide a more comprehensive understanding of Kuwait’s humanitarian landscape by identifying its humanitarian actors, governing principles, preferred modalities of aid disbursement and by examining Kuwait’s humanitarian strengths, weaknesses and potential.
The 2017 Gulf crisis is one of the most challenging episodes faced by Qatar since its independence in 1971, with major economic, social, and political impacts on the Arab Gulf nation. Its economic prognosis has been brought into doubt, the map of regional alliances has been redrawn, and any prospects of deeper regional integration have been dashed. This paper analyses the little‐documented impact of the crisis on Qatar's humanitarian sector, which has unfolded as the small, gas‐rich emirate has striven to become a major humanitarian donor. It concludes that while there have been disruptions to humanitarian operations and regional coordination, the Gulf crisis has triggered and in some cases accelerated already intended reforms across the Qatari humanitarian sector. In the long term, the reorganisation and adaptation implemented to weather the storm of the crisis may help Qatar to emerge from the crisis with a more sustainable and resilient humanitarian sector.
The purpose of this paper is to document Qatar’s recent contribution of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. We consider Qatar as an example of a mini state that relies on its wealth and soft power to further its interests in the Middle East and support a beleaguered Arab-Muslim state. The paper carries out analysis of Arabic newspapers and other documentary evidence to contextualise and estimate Qatar’s financial contribution 2010–2016. Contextualising Qatar’s aid necessitates considering Israel’s military control of the Palestinian Territories, and its ability through hard power to regulate the inflow of aid to Palestine. The paper concludes by calling for adopting the political economy perspective in dealing with humanitarian aid.
This lecture is on peacemaking under the UN flag and reflections of a quarter century of mediation. I will first clarify the three main areas of my peacemaking experiences: direct mediation, humanitarian diplomacy, and multilateral negotiations. Then, during the main part of my presentation, I will explore core questions asked of peacemakers: who negotiates, who mediates, when do you mediate and how. Finally, I will offer some final concluding thoughts.
Studies of international mediation traditionally have focused on the impact and effectiveness of mediation. This study examines mediator behavior and evaluates the factors that influence mediators' behavior and choice of strategies. Three contextual dimensions that exert influence on mediator behavior are preexisting factors (the conflict context and identity of the parties), concurrent factors (the identity of the mediator and actual mediation event), and background factors (the effect of information from previous mediation efforts). An original data set of 295 international conflicts from 1945 to 1995 is used to test a contingency model of mediation behavior. The results of a multivariate analysis suggest that the conditions of the mediation environment and the identity of the parties in conflict are the most significant influences on mediator's choice of strategy.
Interest in conflict prevention blossomed throughout the 1990s, and so did the literature on the subject. Moreover, conflict prevention is rapidly becoming a prominent focus of the new global security and global governance agenda with advocacy of preventive policies by international and regional organizations and nongovernmental actors, and the implementation of conflict prevention within many long-term development and post-conflict assistance programs. Nevertheless, the question of how to move from the rhetoric of conflict prevention to one of institutionalized practice still remains the major concern. Following an overview of conflict prevention in historical and contemporary perspective, this article surveys some of the major themes currently found in the literature on conflict prevention. While there are still skeptical views on the viability, legality, and effectiveness of conflict prevention, some significant strides have already been taken in the direction of creating a new normative international climate that permits increasingly the implementation of preventive action.
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