Panelists during the session entitled ‘Reimagining Financial Markets for Humanitarian Impact: The Role of Small States and Private Sector Partnerships’ at the Doha Forum 2023, yesterday.
Doha, Qatar: Funding of public goods and financing gaps in support of the Sustainable Development Goals is an enormous challenge that is complex and transnational. Experts examined the role that private finance and capital markets play in addressing humanitarian challenges at the Doha Forum 2023 held yesterday.
Addressing the forum at the session entitled ‘Reimagining Financial Markets for Humanitarian Impact: The Role of Small States and Private Sector Partnerships’ H E Dr. Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Meraikhi: Special Advisor to UN Secretary General on Public Private Partnerships and Islamic Social Financing noted that societies today amid escalating humanitarian crises and conflicts need to reimagine financial markets and the participation of the private sector to serve the humanitarian impact.
Al Meraikhi shed light on the important role played by small countries including Qatar in alleviating the problems facing the region and the rest of the world. Many societies around the world are in urgent need of creative thinking to provide aid and “we must look to dynamic partnerships with the private sector to benefit from the expertise of companies to help provide humanitarian aid more effectively,” he said.
“We must also explore new financing models to meet growing needs, especially in light of multiple global crises competing for limited resources. We are witnessing increasing number of people who are in need and many of these people live in vulnerable countries and in small states these needs have increased because of the climate change, change in sea levels and climate patterns, Al Meraikhi added.
He further said, the governmental funding alone cannot keep up with these challenges therefore we need to engage the private sector for the smart funding mechanisms that strikes balance between different factors. This is crucial and we need partnerships. COVID-19 crisis has shown the importance of effective partnerships especially with private sector in order to respond in larger scale to the global emergencies. We need to adopt a proactive approach to meet these funding needs.
H E Nassir bin Abdulaziz Al Nasser, President of the UN General Assembly’s 66th session & Former High Representative for the UN Alliance of Civilizations pointed to the need for a joint effort between governments, the private sector and charities to raise the challenges facing humanity, especially in light of the increase in conflicts, disasters and armed conflicts.
Al Nasser stressed the important role of small countries and their soft power to contribute to building peace and security, such as business, education and mediation, similar to what Qatar is doing today in helping Gaza and many African and Asian countries
Yousuf Mohamed Al Jaida, Board Member and Chief Executive Officer of Qatar Financial Centre said, “Private capital I think has an important role to play when it comes to humanitarian causes and social finances. It is more agile, innovative, and technological whether it is impacting investing, through debt or innovative financial solutions, Islamic financial structures, crowd funding. I think all of these unique and innovative structures can have an important role when it comes to disasters, humanitarian causes and social finance in general.”
Speaking about small states encouraging private financial activities Al Jaida said, “I think regardless of size everybody has a role to play when it comes to humanitarian causes. However, when it comes to small states such as Qatar there are advantages as they are more agile, quicker, developed and endorse technology and digitalisation. They are also swifter to regulatory reforms required for social finance and humanitarian causes.”
From QFC perspective we provide the regulatory environment that allows all these technologies to build themselves and try to provide incentives for financial technology companies and ensure that they operate in most efficient and transparent environment.
Dr. Hossam Elsharkawi: MENA Regional Director, International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies said that the biggest problem is the lack of sufficient resources to meet the needs, calling for the necessity of establishing a true partnership between the various partners, whether in the public or private sector or charitable societies.
Natalie Marko: Head of Social Sustainability, Standard Chartered Bank also shared the role of private sector and banks and changes it is going through.
