The Global Agenda 2025: Memos to Policymakers

Editor and Convenor: Dr. Muqtedar Khan

The Ibn Khaldoun Center for Collective Human Advancement is pleased to present 35 memos designed to offer analysis and insight to policymakers worldwide on key contemporary issues and challenges. While the list of topics is not comprehensive, it includes some of the most critical issues that countries, corporations, and international civil society institutions will have to come to terms with in 2025 and going forward. We convened a diverse international roster of 35 international scholars and experts from over 20 countries. These memos collectively provide a truly a global perspective and present a global agenda.

The Ibn Khaldoun Center aspires to convene policy dialogues on global challenges to make this world a better place indeed. We are inspired by the intellectual legacy of the great Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldoun, who combined empirical analysis, civilizational vision and historical perspective to studying the world. You can read more about him and how his vision is relevant in my essay Why Ibn Khaldoun Still Matters. Through these memos, which unpack issues and suggest policy solutions, we hope to initiate a global dialogue that combines empirical analysis with normative concerns. This is a beginning, and we hope to both deepen and expand the scope of our deliberations.

I have classified the memos into three categories: Geopolitics & Global Order , Geoeconomics & Global Commerce, and Geosocial & Global Governance. Memos in the first category deal with issues of balance of power, geopolitical developments, and international security, and their impact on the global order. In the second category we look at issues from a political economy perspective and explore how they are influencing the global order. Finally, memos in the geosocial category deal with social change, democratization, and international law, and their role in global governance. We recognize that we have not touched upon challenges presented by the environmental crisis, AI and technological development, and pandemics. We will visit these issues in future dialogues.

I want to thank the Ibn Khaldoun team, President Ahmed Alwani, Directors Kamran Bokhari and Kareem Makhlouf, Managing Editor Robin Blackburn, and Emily Zheng for their support in making The Global Agenda possible. We are also grateful to all our authors for their contributions.