The 2016 World Economic Forum on the Middle East and North Africa region will be held in Egypt next May, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Friday addressing the 2015 World Economic Forum on the MENA region.
The forum is run in Jordan from May 21 – 23 under the banner of "Creating a Regional Framework for Prosperity and Peace through Public-Private Cooperation."
"The arab region is undergoing radical transformations on the political, economic, and security levels, and grave challenges… which require combined effort on part of the international community to face them," Sisi said in his opening remarks in a session titled "Egypt in a Transforming Region.
No party within or outside the region, should therefore seek to impose particular visions or subdue countries of the region to a certain discourse, taking advantage of the current "fluid" situation in the region, Egypt's President added.
The severity of "intellectual stagnation caused by extremism" increased as a result of "despair, frustration and decline in the values of justice," Sisi said, adding that efforts to eradicate terrorism must be coupled with efforts towards a future "full of freedom, equality and pluralism, free from oppression, injustice, and exclusion."
However, these efforts cannot be accomplished without being paralleled with solid plans to eradicate poverty, according to Sisi.
