Global South Experts Turn the Tables

The sidelining of Global South expertise is detrimental to critical thinking, especially in policy spaces in leading Western states, which traditionally lead on global governance and international affairs. To disrupt conventional foreign policy thinking and to prevent major powers from reproducing their past failures in the international arena, it is critical to widen the circle of experts advising on policy. The Global South in the World Order Project understands the challenges Global South experts face in accessing those policy spaces and provides solutions to build a bridge between them and decision-makers in the United States, and the West more generally.

Every month, the Project convenes experts, practitioners, and scholars from across the Global South to discuss topics of particular interest to their countries and regions. These private sessions are meant to be an opportunity to turn the tables and address international relations from a non-Western viewpoint, to build the bridge among Global South actors beyond geographic borders, and between them and policymakers in the United States. By becoming a policy hub for the Global South in Washington’s center of action, this initiative injects different viewpoints into Western conventional thinking and disrupts groupthink.