Ministry of External Affairs Government of India

PM to deliver video message at Inaugural Session
"#ViralWorld: Outbreaks, Outliers and Out of Control”.
13-16 April, 2021.

1. The 6th Edition of the prestigious Raisina Dialogue will be inaugurated tomorrow. The Dialogue will be held virtually from 13-16 April, 2021.

2. The Raisina Dialogue is India’s flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics, held annually since 2016. It is jointly organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and the Observer Research Foundation.

3. Due to the exceptional circumstances of Covid-19 pandemic, the organisers have decided to the hold the Dialogue virtually.

4. Prime Minister of India will inaugurate the Dialogue through a video message on 13 April. President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame and Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen will also join the Inaugural Session as Chief Guests. Prime Minister of Australia, Scott Morrison and the President of the European Council, Charles Michel will also participate in the conference, in subsequent sessions.

5. The theme for the 2021 Edition is "#ViralWorld: Outbreaks, Outliers and Out of Control”. Over the course of four days, the Dialogue, will have panel conversations on five thematic pillars - WHOse Multilateralism? Reconstructing the UN and Beyond; Securing and Diversifying Supply Chains; Global ‘Public Bads’: Holding Actors and Nations to Account; Infodemic: Navigating a ‘No-Truth’ World in the Age of Big Brother; The Green Stimulus: Investing in Gender, Growth, and Development.

6. The event will also see the presence of Carl Bildt, Former Prime Minister of Sweden; Anthony Abbott, Former Prime Minister of Australia, and Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand. Foreign Ministers of France, Portugal, Slovenia, Romania, Singapore, Nigeria, Japan, Italy, Sweden, Australia, Kenya, Chile, Maldives, Iran, Qatar, Poland, Turkey and Bhutan will also participate.

7. The 2021 Edition will have 50 sessions with participation of 150 speakers from 50 countries and multilateral organisations. More than 2000 attendees have pre-registered from over 80 countries and a large number of participants are likely to join the Dialogue through various social media platforms.

8. In the past six years, the Raisina Dialogue has grown in stature and profile to emerge as a leading global conference on international affairs. It attracts leading minds from the global strategic and policy-making community to discuss broader foreign policy and strategic issues facing the world.

9. More details are available at www.orfonline.org/raisina-dialogue/