The conference ‘China’s Foreign Relations: New Challenges and Financial Instability’will be held on 3 December at Palau Macaya. It will begin at 4:00 pm.
More information here
On 12 November, CEI International Affairs held the conference ‘The refugee crisis: is a joint European response still possible?’
The following press release provides a summary of the event.
11/12/15 Press release on the conference
On 22 and 23 September, CEI International Affairs organised and hosted a meeting of international experts to discuss the content of a draft international treaty to regulate the privatisation of force by states. The group consisted of two current members of the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries, Dr Elzbieta Karska, president of the group, and Patricia Arias; one former member of the group, José Luis Gómez del Prado; Dr Helena Torroja, professor of international public law at the University of Barcelona (UB) and academic director of the CEI; and Arturo Pallardó, a UB doctoral student. The meeting was very productive and considerable progress was made on the content and scope of the future treaty. The CEI will continue to provide international assistance to the group.
CEI International Affairs has joined the Euro-Mediterranean Study Commission (EuroMeSCo) network. EuroMeSCo is the main network of research centres on policy and security in the Mediterranean. Founded in 1996, it aims to promote research, information and social relations amongst its members, as well as to foster confidence within the context of the Barcelona Process. It is made up of a total of 102 institutes from 32 of the 43 member countries of the Union for the Mediterranean.
The following link offers a brief summary of the conference ‘Catalonia and the European Union’, held on 8 September at Palau Macaya.
For additional information, see the expanded document in which the moderators of each roundtable analyse the conference in detail.
On Wednesday, 14 October, the Centre for International Studies Foundation (CEI International Affairs) and the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies held the fourth edition of the Conference on Security and Defence in Barcelona. The conference examined the main strands of action of the group known as the Islamic State or ISIS.
Following a magnificent introduction by Jordi Quero, a professor at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), offering an initial overview of ISIS, several renowned specialists spoke about the cornerstones of the group’s actions. Colonel Emilio Sanchéz Rojas offered a precise description of its military capabilities; Jesús A. Nuñez, co-director of the Institute of Studies on Conflicts and Humanitarian Action, discussed the difficulty of identifying and quantifying its sources of funding; and Gabriel Garroum, a political scientist specialised in the Middle East, gave an excellent presentation on how the sophisticated communication network the group has created through its dextrous use of social networks works. It was ultimately concluded that the triad of religion, violence and social services has allowed the group to gain a foothold in significant portions of the territories of Iraq and Syria. The repercussions of the Russian intervention and the role of the United States in this complex game in which nothing is what it seems were also examined.