“A need for collaboration rather than competition”
The COVID-19 pandemic and its challenges require new ways of international cooperation, writes Eirliani Abdul Rahman together with Suzanne Goodney Lea in an article for the Journal of Dialogue Studies Vol 8 (2020).
On the diplomatic terrain, too, it is necessary to seek other forms of exchange and solution-finding and to move away from the classical models: “Traditional views of diplomacy assert that each nation should negotiate from a ‘my country first’ perspective. But the modern social problems we face internationally, with COVID-19 being arguably a ‘dry run’ for more global management of climate change, are characterised by a need for collaboration rather than competition.”
By no longer following the previous models of second-track or even third-track diplomacy – i.e. second-track diplomacy emphasising the engagement of non-state actors, and third-track combining that with traditional diplomacy – instead, the time has come for Diplomacy 4.0. That means the stronger involvement and participation of civil society in international political issues with the help of innovative forms of communication and technological possibilities, among other things.
“A range of dialogic techniques could be leveraged to facilitate the incorporation of a much broader array of voices into the public sphere, infusing more diverse and outside-the-box perspectives into the creation of policies that directly affect citizens and their communities,” write the two authors in their abstract of the article.
The population of one country could thus help other countries in dealing with similar problems by networking more widely and further among themselves on a different level, thus attributing a new value and function to “global citizenry”.
At the Global Diplomacy Lab, the topic of innovative forms of diplomacy is constantly discussed, so GDL member Eirliani also writes:
“We call this new track Diplomacy 4.0. The core of Diplomacy 4.0 is to link global and local opportunities. We are in an age in which ALL citizens could participate directly and globally in shared governance – governance that would be decentralised, non-authoritarian, and collaborative.”
You can read the whole article on "Fourth-Track Diplomacy: Its Time Has Come" as pdf here.
Published on August 10, 2021.
About Eirliani Abdul Rahman
Eirliani is the co-founder of YAKIN, an NGO working in the field of child rights and child protection issues and she continuously aims at raising awareness for survivors of sexual child abuse, the consequences of child labor and mental health issues.
Further Articles
Eirliani Abdul Rahman is a co-founder of YAKIN (Youth, Adult Survivors & Kin In Need), an NGO working in the field of child rights and child protection issues, and a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council.
In September 2015, the #FullStop to #childsexualabuse campaign that Eirliani led on behalf of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi reached 16 million people over six weeks. She won the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Award the same year.
Eirliani edited Kailash Satyarthi’s book Will for Children, a collection of essays on child labour published in 2016. Her own book Survivors: Breaking the Silence on Child Sexual Abuse, a collection of true accounts by survivors, was published by Marshall Cavendish in 2017. It won joint second prize in the 2020 Golden Door Awards. She also contributed a case study to the medical textbook Essentials of Global Health, co-edited by Babulal Sethia, Honorary Fellow and former President of the Royal Society of Medicine, which was published by Elsevier in London in 2018. The book won first prize in the Public Health category at the 2019 British Medical Association book awards.
Eirliani worked in Singapore’s Foreign Service from 2005 to 2015, serving in Berlin as First Secretary (Political) and then in Delhi as Political Counsellor. From June 2015 to November 2017 she was a member of the Advisory Council of the Global Diplomacy Lab. She is a Fellow of the London-based Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
Eirliani is pursuing a doctorate in public health at Harvard University. She speaks Malay, English, German and Russian.
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Read more about Eirliani in her latest blog article. You can also read her articles about her polar expedition and about human trafficking and learn more about her work, activism and contribution to the Gender Alliance.
Eirliani Abdul Rahman is a co-founder of YAKIN (Youth, Adult Survivors & Kin In Need), an NGO working in the field of child rights and child protection issues, and a member of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council.
In September 2015, the #FullStop to #childsexualabuse campaign that Eirliani led on behalf of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kailash Satyarthi reached 16 million people over six weeks. She won the BMW Foundation Responsible Leaders Award the same year.
Eirliani edited Kailash Satyarthi’s book Will for Children, a collection of essays on child labour published in 2016. Her own book Survivors: Breaking the Silence on Child Sexual Abuse, a collection of true accounts by survivors, was published by Marshall Cavendish in 2017. It won joint second prize in the 2020 Golden Door Awards. She also contributed a case study to the medical textbook Essentials of Global Health, co-edited by Babulal Sethia, Honorary Fellow and former President of the Royal Society of Medicine, which was published by Elsevier in London in 2018. The book won first prize in the Public Health category at the 2019 British Medical Association book awards.
Eirliani worked in Singapore’s Foreign Service from 2005 to 2015, serving in Berlin as First Secretary (Political) and then in Delhi as Political Counsellor. From June 2015 to November 2017 she was a member of the Advisory Council of the Global Diplomacy Lab. She is a Fellow of the London-based Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.
Eirliani is pursuing a doctorate in public health at Harvard University. She speaks Malay, English, German and Russian.
......................................................................................................................................................
Read more about Eirliani in her latest blog article. You can also read her articles about her polar expedition and about human trafficking and learn more about her work, activism and contribution to the Gender Alliance.
