iPlatform for Global Change (‘iPlatform’) is an innovative initiative which promotes generational dialogue and brings diverse stakeholders and experts together to provide cutting-edge solutions to pressing public policy problems. As a genuinely global entity in background and approach, we produce useful policy tools that draw on the best practices of a variety of countries and traditions.
iPlatform will commit to generational transitions to embrace the truest embodiment of global peace and rule of law. We strive to be a cutting-edge incubator of collaborative practices and outputs that can help realise hopes for good governance, effective policy making and sustainable economic development. We believe that all generations have a role to play in solving public policy problems and enhancing human fulfilment.
The iPlatform for Global Change is an independent, not for profit, platform, connecting diverse generations of leaders and scholars and providing opportunities for young people, academics, and other thinkers, across universities, organisations and institutions around the world, to develop global thought leadership and cutting edge research and practical solutions to law and policy challenges. As an entirely global platform in background and approach, we draw on the best practices of a variety of cultures and traditions and strive to advance collaborative practices and products to help realize hopes for legal, political and economic orders and enhance human fulfillment and international peace.
iPlatform was the idea of Institution Quraysh (iQ). iQ has extensive experience in law and policy projects having facilitated the Arab Governance Project, the post-2011 “Marshall Plan” and the Qatar Law Forum of Leaders in Law in Doha, which brought several hundred of the world’s leading judges, lawyers and legal scholars together for the first time, and helped pave the way for the diverse network and legacy upon which iPlatform has expanded.
Unprecedented legal, political and economic changes around the world have had an impact on many aspects of life. The lack of genuine intergenerational dialogue has led to the emergence of a global phenomenon exemplified in events such as the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Blackberry riots in England. It is our conviction that there is much at stake for global societies and future generations.
In Arab countries, new constitutional arrangements and ambitious development initiatives have become global focal points of contestation. Over 30 percent of the Middle East’s population is between the ages of 15 and 29, representing over 100 million young people. This is the highest proportion of youth to adults in the region’s history and there is no doubt that the current demographic trends will have a major impact on the way states in the region educate, motivate and interact with their citizens.
The nexus of dynamics around the rule of law, economics and open, accountable politics needs particular study and concretization by young people eager to understand, and contribute to, policy change.
iPlatform has been established to be a truly global forum through which specific real-world rule of law and global governance challenges will be addressed using a fluid, transnational and collaborative model of research. Building on an existing network of reformers and scholars around the world with particular connections to leading global universities, think-tanks and international institutions, iPlatform will allow these stakeholders to engage their most promising and ambitious students in addressing central problems related to fairness and justice in the Middle East, the West, the BRICS and the broader world.
iPlatform’s efforts are grounded in core commitments to promote and strengthen the rule of law’s potential to foster justice and peace among people and to enhance socioeconomic development through sound law and policy.
iPLATFORM MISSION
To lead innovative and practical policy research and learning, developing young people, encouraging public policy innovation and identifying pathways to global stability, progress, development and lasting peace.
iPlatform therefore embraces the following key objectives:
- to promote and strengthen the rule of law’s potential to foster justice and peace among people;
- to enhance legal and economic development through support of sound laws and policies;
- to address other pressing global policy issues, such as Middle East peace and openness; and
- to foster new leadership capacity by supporting innovation and skill-building for young people.
iPlatform differentiates itself as:
- Open to all and not tied to any particular country, accepting research proposals from anyone who has a policy idea, fostering cross-disciplinary, cross-university collaboration, and supporting policy and learning ventures spanning economic, legal, political and other approaches and policy technologies;
- Moving beyond the mere publishing of scholarship to allow access to influence over real world policy makers;
- Seeking to provide a new policy modeling method based on “scenario” forecasting or planning;
- Focusing on the development of young people and seeking to identify and work with the rising generation of global policy scholars and specialists to help them develop their ideas as far as possible; and
- Serving as a new model for collaboration between universities, organisations and institutions across the world.