“Leadership can be lonely at the top. We need to come together more than ever to co-create solutions. Only together can we find solutions for today and for tomorrow”, was the opening remark of His Excellency Panos Moumtzis, the Assistant Secretary General and Executive Director of the Global Executive Leadership (GELI), in his keynote address on ‘leading into the future: the role of co-creation and collaboration in a fractured world.’
Oxford HR attended the 18th Dubai International Humanitarian Aid and Development Conference (DIHAD) this March and found leadership and collaboration to be a continual theme, with many speakers in the international development space coming together to talk about solutions in today’s world through the lens of SDG17, partnerships for the goals.
Her Excellency, Aisha Muhammadu Buhari, First Lady of Nigeria, talked insightfully on a ‘hand-holding’ approach to partnerships, whilst Dr. David Kaatrud of the World Food Programme, spoke to the audience of the importance of partnerships with research bodies, academia and think tanks. Attendees of DIHAD were also able to listen to talks from Dr. Luay Shabaneh (UNFPA), Dr Shereen El Feki (UNAIDS), Mr. Ovais Sarmad (UN Climate Change Secretariat), Ms Caroline Dumas (IOM) and Mr Abdul Haq Amirir (OCHA) amongst many other voices. As one of the first international conferences to be fully in-person in a post-covid world, DIHAD reiterated the importance of face-to-face interaction when it comes to networking and relationship building; again, a key component of working towards the 2030 agenda.
Be it zero poverty, gender equality, affordable clean energy, or any of the other SDGs, it’s clear that effective partnerships underpin the progress of the sustainable development goals. Partnerships allow for innovative thinking at the intersection of different voices.
“We still have time, before 2030, to act as individuals, as a system, as a global system.”
Ruth Davis, Digital Communications Manager, and Gloria Kamau, EDI Lead
