Mediating Alongside the System: Gulf States, the United Nations, and the Future of Conflict Diplomacy
Gulf states have become prominent intermediaries in conflicts extending from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa to Afghanistan and Europe. Yet their mediation is usually bilateral or conducted through small groups, even when it intersects with conflicts formally addressed by the United Nations and regional organizations. This workshop examines that institutional interface. It asks when Gulf-led mediation works with established bodies, whe ...
Abstract
Gulf states have become prominent intermediaries in conflicts extending from the Middle East and the Horn of Africa to Afghanistan and Europe. Yet their mediation is usually bilateral or conducted through small groups, even when it intersects with conflicts formally addressed by the United Nations and regional organizations. This workshop examines that institutional interface. It asks when Gulf-led mediation works with established bodies, when it fills gaps left by institutional paralysis, when it creates parallel tracks, and when it competes with official mandates or other diplomatic initiatives. The workshop is conceived as the next step after the GRM 2026 workshop on Humanitarian Diplomacy and Mediation in the Gulf: Pathways to Regional Stability and the third Qatar Mediation Forum (December 2026), Mediation in a Fractured World. Rather than repeating country-by-country accounts or general debates about Gulf mediation, it focuses on how Gulf initiatives relate to the wider conflict-management system. Comparative and process-based studies will examine coordination, sequencing, legitimacy, information sharing, implementation, and the movement of agreements between informal channels and formal institutions. By bringing Gulf foreign-policy research into conversation with scholarship on mediation, institutional adaptation, and regional order, the workshop will explain whether Gulf initiatives are reinforcing, bypassing, or reshaping the architecture of contemporary conflict diplomacy. It will also identify the conditions under which flexible Gulf channels and institutional mandates can become complementary rather than fragmented or competitive.
Description and Rationale
The international conflict-management structure is increasingly fragmented. Geopolitical rivalry constrains collective action in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), regional organizations often face internal divisions, and conflicts involve armed groups and external sponsors that cannot easily be brought together through formal diplomacy (Deely 2026; Richmond & Mac Ginty 2026). These conditions have increased demand for states able to communicate across political and ideological divides. Gulf states have responded through discreet bilateral channels, leadership-level engagement, small-group diplomacy, humanitarian negotiations, and relationships with actors excluded from conventional diplomatic forums (Akpınar & Öztürk 2026; Al-Ansari, Aras & Yorulmazlar 2021; Milton & Elkahlout 2026).
These initiatives do not take place outside an institutional environment. They frequently intersect with UN special envoys, peace operations, sanctions regimes, humanitarian agencies, the Arab League, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the African Union (AU), the European Union (EU), and major-power diplomacy (Abdelkhalek 2022; Ruggie 1992; Keohane 1990; Convergne 2016; Badache, Hellmüller & Salaymeh 2022). A Gulf state may open a channel that the United Nations (UN) cannot establish, host talks under an informal format, broker a limited agreement, or provide material support for implementation (Aras & Akpınar 2026). At other times, parallel initiatives may generate rivalry, forum shopping, inconsistent incentives, or uncertainty over mandates and ownership.
This workshop builds directly on two bodies of work. GRM 2026 workshop on Humanitarian Diplomacy and Mediation in the Gulf: Pathways to Regional Stability which generated an edited volume with chapters on Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Bahrain. The third Qatar Mediation Forum (December 2026), Mediation in a Fractured World, which examines the wider pressures confronting mediation under conditions of geopolitical and institutional fragmentation. The proposed workshop advances beyond both by making the relationship between Gulf-led initiatives and the established international and regional system its principal object of inquiry. The relevant scholarly gap is therefore not whether Gulf states mediate or why they seek mediation roles. Existing work has already developed important accounts of soft power, hedging, status, strategic autonomy, humanitarian diplomacy, and small-state statecraft (Ulrichsen 2021; Kamrava 2013; Akpınar 2026; Alarabeed 2023; Milton & Elkahlout 2026; Alqashouti 2021). What remains less well understood is how predominantly bilateral or small-group initiatives connect to multilateral institutions: who sets agendas, how mandates are negotiated, how tracks are sequenced, where information and agreements move, and which actor provides legitimacy, monitoring, resources, or implementation capacity. These questions require comparison across processes rather than another collection organized principally around individual GCC states.
The workshop treats the relationship between flexible diplomacy and institutional multilateralism as an empirical question rather than assuming either harmony or competition. It will investigate when Gulf mediation complements formal mechanisms, substitutes for institutional absence, bypasses blocked processes, or creates competing tracks. It will also consider how agreements reached through Gulf channels are transferred to institutional frameworks and whether such interaction improves inclusion implementation, durability, and accountability. This focus connects Gulf international relations to wider debates about regional agency, institutional adaptation, and the future of conflict diplomacy.