Life sciences innovation forum.
A senior Fatah leader and member of its central committee told me, last week, while the Brooking Institutions' Saban Forum was taking place in Jerusalem "everyone comes to Ramallah to see Fayyad; they add us and Abu Mazen on their programs just as an excuse".
The countries are also planning to discuss pooling their foreign reserves as a bulwark against currency crises, part of a growing effort by emerging economic powers to build institutions and forums that are alternatives to Western-dominated ones.
We believe that human rights problems should be combated locally and by means of the international human rights institutions and forums which already exist and which are designed for this purpose, for example, the UN and the Council of Europe.
But that's for another exhibition, best undertaken by a bigger, broader institution than the forum.
As for the newly founded institutions: Ministerial Council Permanent High Level Group Expert Groupup; and Forum of Electricity Rules, they are composed by energy ministers from Maghreb countries, European Commission members and some energy companies.
Further, he said, expressing a university view weakens the argument that the institution is an unbiased forum for discussion — and potentially bolsters those who claim universities are politically biased.
Phil Twyford, advocacy director of Oxfam, which helped mount the global campaign against farm subsidies, said that with the United States now the sole superpower, his group believed that multilateral institutions were a proper forum for wresting change for the world's poorest nations.
Protecting every American's right to free speech and forcing public institutions to provide a forum for hate speech are two totally different things.
At present, the EU's most powerful institution, the Council of Ministers, is a forum of national governments.
The deeper issues here are similar: Does a choreographer control her work or does the institution that provided her a forum, and even a salary?
