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Rabat – When the Paris Peace Forum held its Spring Meeting in Benguerir in 2024, the focus was on “fair transitions.” The overarching ambition was to ensure that the shift toward greener, more sustainable economies would not deepen inequalities between the Global North and the Global South.
Two years later, the conversation has changed.
At the Paris Peace Forum’s 2026 Spring Meeting in Rabat, Founder and Director General Justin Vaïsse said the world is now operating in a far more unstable geopolitical environment, which has forced policymakers to think not only about fairness but also about resilience.
“The debate is still on,” Vaïsse said of the discussions around fair transitions. “But it has sort of receded in favor of a sort of emergency or urgency of the geopolitical situation.”
Engaging with Morocco World News during a press conference on the sidelines of the forum, Vaïsse pointed to growing international tensions and disruptions to global trade routes, including the ongoing crisis surrounding the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy corridors.
The situation has raised concerns about energy security, supply chains, and economic stability far beyond the Middle East, including in Africa. Recent disruptions in the Strait have affected global oil markets and showed how vulnerable economies remain to geopolitical shocks.
According to Vaïsse, this changing context explains why the Forum’s theme evolved from “fair transitions” to “resilient transitions.” Two years ago, discussions centered on how developing countries were being left behind following the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Many governments in the Global South argued that development financing was shrinking while wealthy nations focused resources elsewhere.
“The South is sort of blaming the North for basically running a very unfair deal on the countries in the South,” Vaïsse said, noting that the argument had “a lot of merits” when it came to issues such as climate finance, development aid, and trade.
While those concerns remain, today’s environment is increasingly defined by geopolitical uncertainty. As a result, the Forum is asking how critical transitions in agriculture, development finance, and resource management can continue despite global disruptions.
Yet Vaïsse argued that resilience does not mean abandoning international cooperation.
Multilateralism under strain
Asked whether the current international system can still be reformed or whether the world is moving toward parallel systems of governance, he described the state of multilateralism as “a mixed bag.”
As he sees it, “multilateralism is suffering a lot simply because there’s more competition, less cooperation.” Countries are becoming more reluctant to contribute to the “global public goods” that benefit everyone, he argued, citing climate monitoring, pandemic warning systems, scientific data collection, and other forms of international cooperation.
Still, Vaïsse rejected the idea that multilateralism is no longer functioning.
“It’s still producing results,” he said, pointing to recent international agreements on biodiversity and ocean governance as examples of successful cooperation despite growing tensions.
Rather than replacing existing institutions, Vaïsse said the Paris Peace Forum aims to complement them through what he described as “polylateralism,” a model that brings together governments, businesses, international organizations, philanthropies, NGOs, and academic institutions.
“We’re trying to complement the work of the UN and others, which we recognize as indispensable and central,” he said.
That approach is reflected in several initiatives discussed during the Rabat meeting, including ATLAS, the Agricultural Transitions Lab for African Solutions, which seeks to mobilize investment and cooperation around African agriculture, and discussions on critical minerals, development financing, and child well-being.
For Vaïsse, the challenge facing the international community is no longer simply making transitions fair. It is ensuring that they can withstand a world increasingly shaped by conflict, economic shocks, and geopolitical fragmentation.
The question, he suggested, is not whether cooperation is necessary, but how it can adapt to a more uncertain world.
