In response to increasing polarization and heightened global risks, the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI) think tank has created a platform it says will help grassroots groups and civil society organizations engage in dialogue internationally.

FPCI founder Dino Patti Djalal said forums like its Global Town Hall were needed as the world became more divided and dangerous, with governments in “fighting mode” as high inflation, food and energy crises exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and lingering issues from the COVID-19 pandemic battered nations from all sides.

“This is the philosophy of Global Town Hall: While governments are in a contentious mode of their own, grassroots groups across nations should connect and have meaningful conversations. We hope this will contribute to some degree of stability,” Dino said last weekend.

The aim of this year’s event, which is to be held virtually on Nov. 5, is to offer connections and drive conversations all over the world.

“Providing a forum in which north-south and east-west voices can be heard is quite politically significant,” Dino told The Jakarta Post.

This year’s Global Town Hall will be jointly hosted by New York-based advocacy group Global Citizen, which its chief policy, impact and government affairs officer Michael Sheldrick said would be an opportunity to engage with citizens from around the world and familiarize them with the processes of the Group of 20 Summit.

“The G20 can often seem opaque and focus on lofty world leaders and summits. But the reality is they make decisions that impact us all,” Sheldrick told the Post on Saturday.

He said the Global Town Hall had come at an important moment, as the COP27 United Nations climate summit in Egypt and the G20 Summit in Bali would soon be convened. Sheldrick said he hoped the conversations at the Global Town Hall would inspire concrete action from world leaders at those summits.

Separately, Timor Leste President Jose Ramos-Horta said he appreciated the Global Town Hall as an initiative for people worldwide who were facing extraordinary challenges such as extreme poverty.

“That's why I support this initiative for sustaining peace and development in a divided and dangerous world,” Ramos-Horta told the Post on Monday.

He said he would participate in the event virtually and deliver a pre-recorded message encouraging citizens of the world to mobilize and face global challenges together.

“I hope through this initiative launched by FPCI together with Global Citizen, we can leverage the collective voice of millions of people all over the world,” the Timorese leader said.

He also hoped the event would inspire governments, philanthropic organizations and corporations to make meaningful policies to address the root causes of poverty, as well as to stop waging wars and selling the weapons that fueled them.

The Global Town Hall has grown out of the FPCI’s annual Conference on Foreign Policy, one of the largest grassroots-oriented foreign policy forums in the world.

This year’s theme for the event is “Sustaining Peace and Development in a Divided World”, featuring 10 separate discussions over the course of 15 hours on topics ranging from geopolitics and economics to the environment.

Participants from at least 122 countries, seven universities and 17 think tanks, as well as those from the Southeast Asia Lecture Hall network, are expected to drive the conversation this year.

Besides Ramos-Horta, the event’s speakers include Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne; former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon; former Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) secretary general Angel Gurria; former UN Security Council president Kishore Mahbubani; former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd; former Polish foreign minister Jacek Czaputowicz; and the chair of the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Middle East Institute, Bilahari Kausikan.

Dino also noted that the UN Secretary General’s Office had “responded positively” to an invitation to speak.

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