São Paulo – On December 16th and 17th, Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, will host the Arab-Latin American Forum – Building a Partnership for Development and Peace. The event is organized by the UAE University and Fundación Global Democracia y Desarrollo (Funglode), and will feature participants from Brazil and 28 other countries in both regions.
The forum will tackle forms of cooperation and partnership between Arab and Latin American countries in trade, investment, education, culture, science, international relations, mutual interests, and global issues. It will take place at the Emirates Palace Hotel.
Welber Barral, a consultant and former Brazilian Foreign Trade minister, will participate in the panel Exploring Untapped Opportunities for Arab-Latin American Investment and Trade Partnerships. “I will present investment opportunities in the Mercosur, especially in Brazil, in finance, infrastructure, company acquisition, and I will also discuss the evolution of the middle class over the last few years,” he says.
“There are many challenges, particularly excessive paperwork in Brazil and the lack of mutual knowledge from different markets. I will show that although Brazil is not an easy market, it is worthwhile. Economic agreements may be signed, such as the one now being negotiated between the Mercosur and the Gulf Cooperation Council, and that creates opportunities that are not found in neither Europe nor the United States,” he says.
Francisco Rezek, a former Brazilian minister of Foreign Relations, will mediate the panel Working Together to Promote Arab and Latin American Mutual Interests at the Global and Multilateral Levels.
“The positions and points of view of Arab and Latin American countries converge with regard to the major problems of contemporary society, on the part of Arab and Latin American countries,” he says. “Brazil and Latin America’s stance of non-alignment [with the United States] is also the stance of Arab countries at this time,” he says.
“There might be diverging opinions on certain issues, such as that of Iran, but with regard to the United Nations’ prestige, the importance of multilateralism, the very serious issue of Palestine which has been dragging on for years; in all of those, the Arab countries think just like Brazil and the other Latin American countries, and have done so for years,” he explains.
Panels at the event will also feature the Brazilians Carlos Antônio Levi da Conceição, president of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; José Pissolato Filho, the International Relations coordinator for the University of Campinas; Hernan Chammah, a partner of company Prospects Investments Brazil; Elena Lazarou, director of the International Relations Centre at Fundação Getúlio Vargas; Sidney Alves Costa and Karen Jones, respectively the general manager and intelligence analyst at the Business Centre of the Brazilian Export and Investment Promotion Agency (Apex) in the Middle East.
The forum will also feature speakers from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Palestine.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
