Where will the conference take place?

The conference will be held in Dublin, IRL.

What is the primary focus of this event?

The primary focus is on Irish and EU security in the context of global conflicts, examining how these conflicts impact the region.

Will the conference cover both Irish and broader EU security concerns?

Yes, the conference is designed to cover both Irish and broader EU security concerns, recognizing their interconnectedness.

Irish and EU Security in an Age of Global Conflict

Name: Irish and EU Security in an Age of Global Conflict
Start: 2026-04-22T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-04-22T00:00:00Z
Location: Dublin

Apr 22, 2026Dublin, IrelandIn-person

Registration open

This conference, held in Dublin, IRL, will explore the multifaceted challenges to Irish and European Union security in an era marked by significant global upheaval. It aims to foster a comprehensive understanding of the evolving security landscape, considering both traditional and emerging threats. The discussions will likely delve into how geopolitical shifts, technological advancements, and internal dynamics within the EU impact security strategies and national policies.

Committees & topics

International Press
International Press Corps
United Nations Human Rights Council
United Nations Human Rights Council
United Nations Security Council
United Nations Security Council
World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
Council of Europe
Council of Europe
United Nations General Assembly - First Committee
Disarmament & International Security (GA First Committee / DISEC)

Why it matters

The current international environment is characterized by a complex interplay of state and non-state actors, economic pressures, and rapid technological change. For IRL and the broader European Union, understanding these dynamics is crucial for maintaining stability and prosperity. This event offers a platform to analyze how these global conflicts, from conventional warfare to cyber warfare and disinformation campaigns, necessitate adaptive security frameworks.

Furthermore, the conference's focus on both Irish and EU security highlights the interconnectedness of national and regional defense. Decisions made at the EU level have direct implications for member states, while national policies contribute to the collective security posture. Examining these linkages is vital for developing cohesive and effective responses to shared threats, ensuring that both individual nations and the bloc as a whole can navigate an increasingly volatile world.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the themes of this conference, participants should undertake a thorough "Dynamic Analysis" of current geopolitical trends affecting Europe. This involves not only understanding the immediate causes and effects of ongoing conflicts but also anticipating future developments and their potential impact on security. A key aspect of preparation will be to consider the "Hidden Stakeholders" in global conflicts, recognizing that various actors, often overlooked, can significantly influence outcomes and security dynamics.

Participants should also prepare to discuss the implications of these global conflicts on specific sectors, such as energy security, supply chain resilience, and digital infrastructure. Understanding the vulnerabilities and interdependencies within these areas will be crucial for contributing meaningfully to conversations about robust security strategies. Finally, considering different "Engagement Strategies" for international cooperation and conflict resolution will be beneficial, as the conference will likely explore collaborative approaches to security challenges.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Ireland

As a historically neutral state, IRL faces the challenge of balancing its non-alignment policy with its commitments to EU collective security in a changing geopolitical climate.

Role in topic

IRL's unique position within the EU, coupled with its historical neutrality, makes its perspective on security particularly relevant. The country must navigate its national defense needs while contributing to broader EU security initiatives, especially concerning cyber threats and hybrid warfare.

Germany

DEU is re-evaluating its defense posture and increasing its military spending in response to regional conflicts, contributing significantly to EU security discussions.

Role in topic

As a major economic and political power within the EU, DEU's evolving security policy, including its increased defense spending and commitment to European defense initiatives, is central to the bloc's overall security strategy. Its perspective on energy security and economic resilience is also critical.

France

FRA advocates for stronger European strategic autonomy and plays a leading role in shaping EU defense policy and military capabilities.

Role in topic

FRA is a key proponent of a more robust and autonomous European defense. Its military capabilities and diplomatic efforts are instrumental in shaping the EU's response to global conflicts and its long-term security architecture.

Ukraine

UKR is at the forefront of a major conflict, highlighting the urgency of European security and the need for international support.

Role in topic

The ongoing conflict involving UKR serves as a stark reminder of the immediate and severe threats to European security. Its experience underscores the importance of collective defense, humanitarian aid, and the strategic implications of geopolitical aggression for the entire continent.

United States

The USA remains a critical security partner for many European nations, though its role and commitment are subject to ongoing geopolitical shifts.

Role in topic

The USA's relationship with Europe, particularly through NATO, is a foundational element of transatlantic security. Its involvement in global conflicts and its foreign policy decisions have significant implications for EU security strategies and defense cooperation.

Topics & background

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

International Press Corps

The International Press Corps (IPC) simulates the role of global media in covering diplomatic crises, drawing on the traditions of outlets such as Reuters, Al Jazeera, the BBC, RTÉ, and TASS. Since the Cold War, international journalism has been both a check on state power and a contested space — from the Vietnam-era credibility gap to the embedded reporting of the Iraq War, and now to the information warfare that has characterized coverage of Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan. Journalists today operate under conditions of intensifying state pressure, with record numbers of reporters killed in Gaza since October 2023 and ongoing detentions of foreign correspondents in Russia, China, and Iran. The core dispute facing the modern press is the collision between traditional norms of verification and impartiality and a fractured information ecosystem dominated by social media, generative AI, and state-aligned disinformation campaigns. The EU's Digital Services Act, the proposed European Media Freedom Act, and ongoing debates within UNESCO over journalist safety frame the regulatory backdrop. For an Irish and EU security conference, the IPC sits at the intersection of hybrid threats — where Russian information operations, Chinese influence networks, and platform governance shape public consent for defence policy. Delegates in the IPC will be expected to file dispatches, op-eds, and breaking news that reflect the editorial line of their assigned outlet while adhering to professional standards. The committee tests whether a free press can still produce a shared factual baseline in an age when narratives themselves have become instruments of statecraft.

Key players

United Nations Human Rights Council

The Human Rights Council was established by General Assembly Resolution 60/251 in 2006, replacing the discredited Commission on Human Rights. Based in Geneva and composed of 47 elected members, it conducts the Universal Periodic Review of every UN member state and appoints Special Rapporteurs to investigate thematic and country-specific situations. Its founding compromise — universal membership eligibility versus credible standards — remains contested, with successive controversies over the seats held by states such as Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia (the latter suspended in 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine). The Council's 2026 agenda is shaped by two structural pressures relevant to European security. The first is the human-rights dimension of emerging technology: following the 2024 OHCHR report on generative AI, member states are debating algorithmic accountability, content moderation under ICCPR Article 19, and whether to create a Special Rapporteur on AI. The second is climate displacement, where GA Resolution 76/300 recognized the right to a healthy environment but left operational questions — refugee status, cross-border protection, loss and damage — unresolved. Both intersect with ongoing country files on Ukraine, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Sudan, Myanmar, and Iran. For Ireland and the EU, the UNHRC is a primary venue for projecting normative power, but European states increasingly face accusations of double standards over Gaza and migration policy. The Council's credibility depends on whether it can apply consistent standards to allies and adversaries alike at a moment when the post-1945 human-rights consensus is under sustained challenge.

Key players

United Nations Security Council

Established under Chapter V of the UN Charter in 1945, the Security Council holds primary responsibility for international peace and security. Its five permanent members — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China — wield the veto, a structure designed to keep the great powers inside the system but which has repeatedly paralysed action on Syria, Ukraine, and Gaza. Ten elected members rotate on two-year terms, and the Council can authorize sanctions, peacekeeping, and the use of force under Chapter VII. The 2026 docket is unusually crowded. Sudan's civil war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, ongoing since April 2023, has produced the world's largest displacement crisis and renewed debate over the 1591 sanctions regime and ICC referrals. Russia's war in Ukraine continues to expose the veto's structural limits, prompting renewed use of the Uniting for Peace procedure in the General Assembly. Gaza, Yemen, the Sahel, and the Korean Peninsula remain live files. Cutting across all of these is the OEWG process on responsible state behaviour in cyberspace and the protection of critical infrastructure — a question of acute relevance to Ireland, whose subsea cables and data-centre infrastructure are central to European connectivity. For Irish and EU delegates, the UNSC frames the hard-security environment in which European defence integration, PESCO, and the Strategic Compass operate. Reform of the Council — expansion, veto restraint, and the France-Mexico initiative on mass atrocities — sits permanently in the background of every substantive debate.

Key players

World Economic Forum

Founded by Klaus Schwab in 1971 as the European Management Forum and rebranded as the World Economic Forum in 1987, the WEF is a Geneva-based public-private platform best known for its annual Davos meeting. Though not an intergovernmental body, the Forum has become a central venue for coordinating between heads of state, central bankers, multinational executives, and civil society on globalisation, technology, and systemic risk. Its Global Risks Report and Chief Risk Officers community have shaped how governments frame interconnected threats. The Forum's 2026 agenda is dominated by the unwinding of the post-Cold War economic order. Industrial policy has returned across the US (CHIPS Act, IRA), the EU (Green Deal Industrial Plan, Critical Raw Materials Act), and China (Made in China 2025), while supply-chain weaponisation — semiconductors, rare earths, energy — has become a core security question. AI governance, climate finance after COP28's loss-and-damage operationalisation, and the future of the WTO dispute-settlement system are recurring themes. For Ireland, whose economic model rests on FDI, trade openness, and the single market, the WEF agenda overlaps directly with national security: data flows, corporate tax (OECD Pillar Two), and pharmaceutical supply chains all sit at the conference's intersection of economics and security. The Forum is also under sustained critique — over governance, transparency, and the influence of unelected actors on public policy. Delegates simulating the WEF should treat it as a space where corporate, state, and multilateral interests bargain in the open about the rules of the next economic decade.

Key players

Council of Europe

The Council of Europe was founded in 1949 by the Treaty of London as the continent's first post-war political organisation, separate from and predating the EU. Headquartered in Strasbourg, it now has 46 member states and is best known for the European Convention on Human Rights (1950) and its enforcement arm, the European Court of Human Rights. Other key bodies include the Venice Commission on constitutional law, GRECO on anti-corruption, and the Committee for the Prevention of Torture. Russia was expelled in March 2022 following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine — the first such expulsion in the organisation's history. The Council's contemporary agenda centres on three pressures. First is accountability for the war in Ukraine: the 2023 Reykjavík Summit established the Register of Damage Caused by the Aggression of the Russian Federation, the precursor to a future compensation mechanism, and discussions continue on a special tribunal for the crime of aggression. Second is the rule-of-law backsliding within member states — Hungary, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and others face sustained Venice Commission and Court scrutiny. Third is the regulation of emerging technologies: the Council's 2024 Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence is the first binding international AI treaty, with implications well beyond Europe. For Ireland — a founding member and consistent ECHR compliant — the Council is a core venue for projecting normative influence without the constraints of EU consensus. For the wider EU security debate, it is the institutional anchor of the European legal order at a moment when that order is being contested both externally by Russia and internally by illiberal governments.

Key players

United Nations General Assembly - First Committee

Disarmament & International Security (GA First Committee / DISEC)

The First Committee of the UN General Assembly, also known as DISEC, was established in 1945 and is the principal universal forum for disarmament and international security. Unlike the Security Council, it operates on one-state-one-vote and produces resolutions that, while non-binding, set the normative agenda for follow-on negotiations in the Conference on Disarmament, the NPT Review Conferences, and Group of Governmental Experts processes. Its historical achievements include groundwork for the NPT (1968), the Chemical Weapons Convention (1993), and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017). The 2026 agenda is dominated by the erosion of Cold War arms-control architecture and the emergence of new domains. New START expires in February 2026 with no successor in sight; the INF Treaty is dead; and Russia has de-ratified the CTBT. Against this backdrop, three files are central. First, lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS): following the 2023 Group of Governmental Experts under the CCW, a majority of states now back a legally binding instrument requiring meaningful human control, opposed by a smaller group including the US and Russia. Second, outer space: repeated ASAT tests by Russia, China, the US, and India, combined with stalled PAROS negotiations, have raised pressure for new norms. Third, cybersecurity, where the Open-Ended Working Group on ICTs is negotiating norms of responsible state behaviour. For Ireland — a long-standing leader on nuclear disarmament going back to the Irish Resolution of 1958 that seeded the NPT — and for an EU navigating its first sustained land war in eighty years, DISEC is where the rules of future conflict are being written or unwritten.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for Irish and EU Security in an Age of Global Conflict.

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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

Media & Press Relations

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Frequently asked questions

Irish and EU Security in an Age of Global Conflict

Apr 22, 2026Dublin, IrelandIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

International Press
International Press Corps
United Nations Human Rights Council
United Nations Human Rights Council
United Nations Security Council
United Nations Security Council
World Economic Forum
World Economic Forum
Council of Europe
Council of Europe
United Nations General Assembly - First Committee
Disarmament & International Security (GA First Committee / DISEC)

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Ireland

As a historically neutral state, IRL faces the challenge of balancing its non-alignment policy with its commitments to EU collective security in a changing geopolitical climate.

Role in topic

Germany

DEU is re-evaluating its defense posture and increasing its military spending in response to regional conflicts, contributing significantly to EU security discussions.

Role in topic

France

FRA advocates for stronger European strategic autonomy and plays a leading role in shaping EU defense policy and military capabilities.

Role in topic

Ukraine

UKR is at the forefront of a major conflict, highlighting the urgency of European security and the need for international support.

Role in topic

United States

The USA remains a critical security partner for many European nations, though its role and commitment are subject to ongoing geopolitical shifts.

Role in topic