What is the primary focus of the ICIRA 2027?

The conference aims to bring together leading academic scientists, researchers, and research scholars to exchange and share their experiences and research results on all aspects of International Relations and Affairs.

What type of event is the ICIRA 2027?

It is an international conference, providing a forum for the presentation of new advances and research results in the field of International Relations and Affairs.

International Conference on International Relations and Affairs (ICIRA)

Name: International Conference on International Relations and Affairs (ICIRA)
Start: 2027-02-08T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-02-08T00:00:00Z
Location: Lisbon

Feb 8–8, 2027Lisbon, PortugalIn-person

Registration open

The International Conference on International Relations and Affairs (ICIRA) 2027 is set to convene in Lisbon, Portugal. This event serves as a critical forum for academics, researchers, and practitioners to disseminate and discuss advancements in the broad field of international relations. Participants will engage with contemporary issues, theoretical frameworks, and empirical studies that shape global interactions and policies.

Committees & topics

Topics
Human Security: From State-Centric Defense to Protecting People · International Conflict: Drivers and Patterns in a Multipolar Era · International Politics in a Contested Global Order · International Law Under Strain: Sovereignty, Accountability, and Reform · International Organizations and the Reform Agenda · International Relations: Theory and Practice in a Polycrisis · Foreign Policy in an Age of Strategic Competition · Geopolitics: Resources, Geography, and Strategic Competition

Why it matters

In an increasingly interconnected world, understanding the nuances of international relations is paramount. Events like ICIRA provide a platform for rigorous academic discourse, fostering intellectual exchange that can inform policy-making and public understanding. The conference's focus on diverse aspects of international affairs contributes to a more comprehensive and nuanced appreciation of global challenges and opportunities.

The gathering in Lisbon, PRT, offers a unique opportunity for professionals to network, collaborate, and share insights on pressing global matters. Such interactions are vital for developing innovative solutions to complex international problems, ranging from geopolitical conflicts to transnational cooperation. The exchange of ideas among a global cohort of experts helps to bridge geographical and conceptual divides, enriching the collective understanding of international dynamics.

How to prepare

For those preparing to engage with the themes presented at ICIRA, a thorough understanding of current geopolitical trends and theoretical approaches in international relations is essential. Participants should consider how their research or perspectives contribute to ongoing debates within the field. Engaging with the Model Diplomat's lessons on "Dynamic Analysis" and "Engagement Strategies" can provide a robust framework for understanding complex international phenomena.

Additionally, considering the "Hidden Stakeholders" and employing a "Stakeholder Mapping Workshop" approach in research can enhance the relevance and impact of presentations, offering valuable perspectives on the multifaceted nature of international issues. Furthermore, understanding "Gender Dynamics Across Cultures" can offer a critical lens for analyzing various international relations topics. These resources can help attendees frame their contributions in a way that resonates with the diverse and evolving landscape of international affairs.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Portugal

As the host nation, PRT provides a European perspective on international relations, often emphasizing multilateralism, transatlantic cooperation, and engagement with Lusophone countries.

Role in topic

PRT's historical ties and current geopolitical position make it a relevant backdrop for discussions on international relations, particularly concerning European integration, maritime security, and relations with emerging economies.

United States

The USA often approaches international relations through the lens of global leadership, security alliances, and economic influence, with a focus on maintaining a liberal international order.

Role in topic

Discussions at the conference will likely feature analyses of US foreign policy, its impact on global stability, and its role in various international conflicts and collaborations.

China

CHN's perspective on international relations is increasingly shaped by its growing economic power and its pursuit of a multipolar world order, often emphasizing non-interference and South-South cooperation.

Role in topic

The conference will provide a platform to examine CHN's Belt and Road Initiative, its strategic partnerships, and its evolving role in global governance and regional security dynamics.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Human Security: From State-Centric Defense to Protecting People

The concept of human security emerged formally in the 1994 UNDP Human Development Report, which reframed security away from purely military defense of states toward the protection of individuals from chronic threats such as hunger, disease, repression, and sudden disruptions to daily life. Championed initially by Canada, Japan, and Norway, the doctrine underpinned the 1997 Ottawa Treaty on landmines, the 2001 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) report, and the 2005 World Summit Outcome, which embedded human security in UN discourse. General Assembly Resolution 66/290 (2012) provided an agreed definition, emphasizing people-centered, comprehensive, and prevention-oriented responses. In practice, human security has expanded to encompass climate displacement, pandemic preparedness, food and water insecurity, and protection in conflict zones from Sudan to Gaza to Ukraine. Critics, particularly from the Global South and major powers wary of interventionism, argue the concept can be instrumentalized to justify infringements on sovereignty, while advocates counter that traditional state security frameworks have failed civilians in protracted crises. The debate today centers on operationalizing human security in UN peace operations, climate adaptation finance, and the WHO Pandemic Agreement negotiations.

Key players

International Conflict: Drivers and Patterns in a Multipolar Era

International conflict has shifted markedly since the end of the Cold War. While interstate war declined in the 1990s, the 2020s have seen its resurgence: Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 broke the European post-1945 norm against territorial conquest, while the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023 has destabilized the broader Middle East, drawing in Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and US-led coalition forces. Civil wars in Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen, and the Sahel persist with significant transnational dimensions, including foreign fighters, sanctions evasion, and arms flows. Scholars point to several converging drivers: great-power competition between the United States and China, the erosion of arms control regimes (INF, Open Skies, New START), contested resource frontiers in the Arctic and South China Sea, and the proliferation of drones and cyber capabilities that lower the threshold for use of force. The UN Security Council has been frequently paralyzed by P5 vetoes, prompting renewed interest in the General Assembly's Uniting for Peace mechanism and regional bodies such as the AU and ASEAN. The core question is whether the post-1945 collective security architecture can adapt or whether the world is settling into a more conflict-prone, fragmented order.

Key players

International Politics in a Contested Global Order

International politics in the 2020s is characterized by the unwinding of the unipolar moment that followed the Cold War. The United States remains the world's leading military and financial power, but China's economic rise, Russia's military assertiveness, and the growing agency of middle powers such as India, Brazil, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa have produced what many analysts call a multipolar or 'multiplex' order. BRICS expansion in 2024 to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the UAE signaled a more institutionalized non-Western alignment, even as the bloc remains internally diverse. Key political contests now play out over technology standards (semiconductors, AI, 5G), trade and industrial policy (US CHIPS Act, EU Green Deal, China's dual circulation), currency and sanctions architecture (dollar dominance vs. de-dollarization), and contested narratives about democracy, sovereignty, and development. Domestic polarization in major democracies, illiberal turns in several states, and the weaponization of interdependence have made international cooperation harder. Whether the post-1945 institutions can be reformed to reflect this distribution of power—particularly UNSC reform and IMF quota shares—remains a defining question.

Key players

International Law Under Strain: Sovereignty, Accountability, and Reform

Modern international law rests on the UN Charter, the Vienna Conventions, the Geneva Conventions and their Additional Protocols, and a growing body of treaty and customary law spanning human rights, trade, the law of the sea, and international criminal law. The post-Cold War period saw rapid institutional expansion, including the WTO dispute settlement system (1995), the International Criminal Court (2002), and a permanent International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Landmark ICJ proceedings—South Africa v. Israel under the Genocide Convention, Ukraine v. Russia, and the advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel's occupation—have placed the Court at the center of contemporary disputes. The regime today faces serious stress. Major powers have rejected ICC jurisdiction (US, Russia, China, Israel), the WTO Appellate Body has been blocked since 2019, and selective compliance with ICJ orders has eroded credibility. At the same time, new legal frontiers are emerging: the ITLOS advisory opinion on climate change and the law of the sea (2024), negotiations on a high seas biodiversity treaty (BBNJ), debates on lethal autonomous weapons under the CCW, and the proposed crime of ecocide. The central tension is between sovereign consent as the basis of obligation and the need for binding rules on transnational problems.

Key players

International Organizations and the Reform Agenda

The dense network of international organizations built after 1945—the UN system, Bretton Woods institutions, and specialized agencies—was designed primarily by Western powers to manage interstate cooperation, finance reconstruction, and prevent another world war. Decolonization expanded membership, and the post-1990 period saw a proliferation of new bodies, including the WTO, G20, and regional organizations like the African Union (2002) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (2001). These institutions delivered significant public goods, from smallpox eradication to peacekeeping deployments to global trade rules. Today, nearly all the major IOs face legitimacy and capacity crises. The UNSC's composition reflects 1945 power realities; the IMF and World Bank remain heavily Western-weighted despite reforms; the WHO's authority was tested by COVID-19; and the WTO's negotiating function has stalled. Parallel and complementary structures—BRICS, the New Development Bank, the AIIB, the Belt and Road framework—offer alternatives or supplements, particularly for Global South financing. The Summit of the Future (2024) Pact for the Future and ongoing UNSC reform negotiations (G4, Uniting for Consensus, African Common Position) frame the current reform debate.

Key players

International Relations: Theory and Practice in a Polycrisis

International relations as a field and as a practice has been shaped by successive waves of theorizing—classical realism, liberal institutionalism, constructivism, and critical and postcolonial approaches—each reflecting the dominant crises of its era. The post-1945 liberal international order embedded markets, alliances (NATO, US bilateral treaties in Asia), and multilateral institutions, while the post-1989 period saw debates over democratic peace, humanitarian intervention, and globalization. The 2008 financial crisis, the rise of China, the 2014 annexation of Crimea, Brexit, and the COVID-19 pandemic progressively eroded confidence in the inevitability of liberal convergence. Contemporary international relations is increasingly framed as a 'polycrisis': overlapping shocks from great-power rivalry, climate change, technological disruption, demographic shifts, and democratic backsliding. Policy practitioners are grappling with the return of industrial policy, friend-shoring, sanctions as a primary tool of statecraft, and contested narratives between 'rules-based order' and 'true multilateralism.' Diplomatic practice itself is changing, with summit diplomacy, minilateral groupings (Quad, AUKUS, I2U2), and digital statecraft supplementing traditional bilateral channels.

Key players

Foreign Policy in an Age of Strategic Competition

Foreign policymaking has been transformed by the return of explicit great-power competition. The United States' 2022 National Security Strategy identified China as the 'pacing challenge' and Russia as an 'acute threat,' while the EU's Strategic Compass and Germany's 2023 National Security Strategy reflected a 'Zeitenwende' away from post-Cold War assumptions. China's foreign policy under Xi Jinping has emphasized 'major-country diplomacy,' the Global Security Initiative, and deepening ties with Russia, while Russia's foreign policy concept formalizes confrontation with the 'collective West.' Middle powers have grown more consequential. India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Brazil, Indonesia, and South Africa increasingly hedge among major powers, pursuing transactional and issue-specific alignments. Tools of foreign policy have expanded to include export controls, investment screening, sanctions, sovereign tech investments, and climate diplomacy. Domestic politics—populism, election cycles, and contested public opinion on Ukraine, Gaza, and migration—shape foreign policy more visibly than in previous decades, complicating long-term commitments and alliance management.

Key players

Geopolitics: Resources, Geography, and Strategic Competition

Geopolitics—the interplay of geography, resources, and power—has returned to the foreground of strategic analysis after a post-Cold War period when globalization was thought to have flattened distance. The contemporary map features intensifying competition over the Indo-Pacific (Taiwan Strait, South China Sea, first and second island chains), the Arctic (opening sea lanes and resource frontiers), the Black Sea and Eastern Europe following Russia's war on Ukraine, the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb following Houthi attacks on shipping, and the critical minerals supply chains running through the DRC, Indonesia, Chile, and Australia. Energy geopolitics has been reshaped by Europe's pivot away from Russian gas, the rise of US LNG exports, OPEC+ coordination, and the clean-energy transition's demand for lithium, cobalt, nickel, and rare earths—much of it processed in China. Infrastructure competition is visible in China's Belt and Road, the EU's Global Gateway, the US-led PGI, and the proposed India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). Maritime chokepoints, undersea cables, and space-based assets are now treated as core strategic terrain, blurring the line between traditional geopolitics and emerging-technology competition.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on International Relations and Affairs (ICIRA).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Rahul Gandhi Defends Tamil Nadu's Autonomy

India's 131st Amendment Bill

West Bengal 2026 Election

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

Portugal February 2027

By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Conference on International Relations and Affairs (ICIRA)

Feb 8–8, 2027Lisbon, PortugalIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Human Security: From State-Centric Defense to Protecting People · International Conflict: Drivers and Patterns in a Multipolar Era · International Politics in a Contested Global Order · International Law Under Strain: Sovereignty, Accountability, and Reform · International Organizations and the Reform Agenda · International Relations: Theory and Practice in a Polycrisis · Foreign Policy in an Age of Strategic Competition · Geopolitics: Resources, Geography, and Strategic Competition

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 3 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Portugal

As the host nation, PRT provides a European perspective on international relations, often emphasizing multilateralism, transatlantic cooperation, and engagement with Lusophone countries.

Role in topic

United States

The USA often approaches international relations through the lens of global leadership, security alliances, and economic influence, with a focus on maintaining a liberal international order.

Role in topic

Discussions at the conference will likely feature analyses of US foreign policy, its impact on global stability, and its role in various international conflicts and collaborations.

China

Role in topic

The conference will provide a platform to examine CHN's Belt and Road Initiative, its strategic partnerships, and its evolving role in global governance and regional security dynamics.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Human Security: From State-Centric Defense to Protecting People

Key players

International Conflict: Drivers and Patterns in a Multipolar Era

Key players

International Politics in a Contested Global Order

Key players

International Law Under Strain: Sovereignty, Accountability, and Reform

Key players

International Organizations and the Reform Agenda

Key players

International Relations: Theory and Practice in a Polycrisis

Key players

Foreign Policy in an Age of Strategic Competition

Key players

Geopolitics: Resources, Geography, and Strategic Competition

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on International Relations and Affairs (ICIRA).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Rahul Gandhi Defends Tamil Nadu's Autonomy

India's 131st Amendment Bill

West Bengal 2026 Election

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

Portugal February 2027

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

Conferência "O Futuro da Segurança da Europa"

Conference “Hybrid Threats – Countering Complexity in an Interconnected World”

A Segurança Europeia num Mundo em Transformação

Geopolitics, Defense and Strategy: Challenges and Opportunities for Portugal

IV CI CPRI 2026 – International Congress of Political Science and International Relations

COLLOQUIA Conference 2026 – Restless World, Restless Democracies

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

Conferência "O Futuro da Segurança da Europa"

Conference “Hybrid Threats – Countering Complexity in an Interconnected World”

A Segurança Europeia num Mundo em Transformação

Geopolitics, Defense and Strategy: Challenges and Opportunities for Portugal

IV CI CPRI 2026 – International Congress of Political Science and International Relations

COLLOQUIA Conference 2026 – Restless World, Restless Democracies

Frequently asked questions