For twenty-one days, I have stared at a blank page, caught in the throes of an existential whiplash. Last month, I was dispatched by JURIST to attend the Second World Social Summit to report on the mechanics of global development, but I returned to Ghana unsettled.
This was my first international trip—and the reality of Doha was both grounding and jarring. I witnessed a world of “crisp” efficiency and grand execution, where the silence of things working perfectly triggered a vertigo of possibility. In the pristine halls of the Qatar National Convention Centre (QNCC), I felt I was living vicariously through my own self, experiencing a version of me that exists when the friction of underdevelopment is removed.
My silence these past weeks was not procrastination; it was the paralysis of translation. How does one force a multidimensional experience of awe into two-dimensional text without shrinking it? Every sentence I tried to write felt like a reduction. With the imposter monitor hovering over my shoulder, this dispatch became a referendum on my worth, an entry ticket to a new world I wasn’t sure I had earned.
But the deepest cut came from the crisis of my return home to Ghana. The “ricketiness” of home—that I had accepted as normal for twenty-eight years—now felt like a betrayal. I realized that to break through writer’s block, I could not write as a detached observer—I had to write from the wound.
This dispatch is my attempt to bridge these two worlds. Through it, I acknowledge that the gap between Doha’s “crispness” and Accra’s “ricketiness” is not a matter of destiny…it is avoidable.
Now that I have said my piece, my subsequent reports from the Doha conference will cover the Summit itself. I will recount the panels, the policies, and the people, but I will do so through a new lens: as a witness to the avoidable gap between who we are and who we are allowed to be.
The pre-summit shock: the Doha Solutions Forum
My existential spiral began during the pre-summit event, the Doha Solutions Forum for Social Development, even before the official summit’s opening.
The moment I entered the QNCC, the atmosphere was not just professional—it was overwhelming. The security checkpoints were executed with action-film precision. The Qatari hosts, many dressed in immaculate white thobes with designer accessories, moved with a hospitable, driven purpose. The sheer scale of the building, with the conference flyer massive on its façade, immediately announced this wasn’t just a meeting, but a major statement of intent and capability.
This high-level forum was a collaboration between governments, the private sector, and various partners, designed to showcase groundbreaking solutions in social development.
The day before the official Summit opening on November 3, delegates convened at the QNCC. This Doha Solutions Forum for Social Development was organized by the State of Qatar, in collaboration with the Government of France, and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). Its mandate was to move past mere conversation and “amplify the focus…on advancing innovative solutions.”
While many international conferences focus on defining problems, the Solutions Forum was structured to do the opposite: to showcase public policies that have had “measurable impact” on eradicating poverty, decent work, and social integration. For a legal observer from a developing nation, the forum offered a blueprint for how the “ricketiness” of underdevelopment can be addressed through rigorous policy execution.
A focus on actionable policy
The Forum ran from 10:30 AM to 4:00 PM, structured around four high-level panels, each paired with a “Solutions Spotlight”—a segment dedicated to specific, replicable government initiatives.
Social protection as a necessity
The opening panel, moderated by International Labour Organisation Director General Gilbert F. Houngbo, addressed the urgent need for “Innovative Social Protection Systems.” The discussion was grounded in sobering statistics: while global social protection coverage has increased to 52.4%, a staggering 3.8 billion people worldwide remain entirely unprotected. The gap is most acute in low-income countries, where coverage sits at a mere 9.7%. The panel highlighted that closing this gap is not just a humanitarian gesture, but a prerequisite for “social cohesion and social justice.”
Education for a “future-ready” world
The second panel shifted focus to the workforce, confronting the “mismatch between the skills demanded by the labour market and those possessed by the workforce.” Citing the World Economic Forum, panelists noted that 59% of the global workforce will require reskilling by 2030. This session, moderated by Dr. Safwan Masri of Georgetown University Qatar, emphasized that education systems must align with “digital, demographic and decarbonization transitions.”
The role of private partnerships
After an absolutely scrumptious lunch, the discourse moved on to execution mechanisms. Panel 3 explored “Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) for Social Development,” noting that private investment commitments in infrastructure in developing countries reached US$91.7 billion in 2022. The session argued for expanding these frameworks to include “social and solidarity economy” actors, such as cooperatives, to address informality.
Participatory governance
The final panel, “Strengthening Social Dialogue and Participatory Governance,” underscored that development cannot be imposed from the top down. Moderated by Mary Beth Goodman of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the session examined how involving citizens in policymaking leads to more “legitimate, effective, and sustainable development outcomes.”
The Doha Solutions Forum was more than a prelude to the Summit—it was an evidentiary hearing. By spotlighting initiatives like Bangladesh’s “Lifecycle Approach to Social Security” and the “Partner2Connect” initiative by the International Telecommunications Union, the Forum demonstrated that the tools to fix broken systems already exist.
Opinions expressed in JURIST Dispatches are solely those of our correspondents in the field and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST’s editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.