The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will host a one-day academic symposium to study the multifaceted aspects of the two-month old crisis in Gulf relations and the blockade imposed on Qatar on Wednesday, August 9, 2017. Beginning with a media campaign aimed against Qatar by Saudi and Emirati state-owned media, the crisis in intra-Gulf relations has now escalated to take on political, economic and legal dimensions. Following the severing of diplomatic relations, the governments of Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates imposed a land and sea blockade on Qatar, forbidding their nationals from visiting the country and giving Qatari nationals two weeks to leave their own territories.

The ACRPS symposium will explore the various actual and predicted repercussions of the crisis from political, economic and legal perspectives. It will bring together a select group of Qatari academics, including Khalid Rashed Al-Khater, a monetary policy expert; Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, Dean fo the Faculty of Law at Qatar University; and Majed Al-Ansari, a Professor of Sociology at Qatar University. Speakers at the event will be specificially invited to explore how this latest crisis will influence the evolution and continued operation of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The meeting will also build on the expertise which the ACRPS has accumulated over the years through the Gulf Studies Forum, an annual event held by the ACRPS since 2013 which has become recognized as the leading venue for scholarship on the Arabian Peninsula. The 2017 Gulf Studies Forum, which will be held in December, will also be dedicated to studying the repercussions of the present Gulf Crisis.

Symposium Venue: Cultural Foundation Building, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

Start time: 18:30 hours (6:30 PM) on Wednesday, 9 August