On Monday, April 1, 2013, CIRS hosted a talk by H. E. Bader Omar Al Dafa from ‎the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Al Dafa is a career diplomat, and served as ‎Qatar’s Ambassador to Egypt, the United States, France, and Russia. He was also the ‎Undersecretary General to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for ‎Western Asia (ESCWA). H. E. Al Dafa is currently Ambassador-at-Large and also ‎the Executive Director of the Global Dry Land Alliance. During his visit, Ambassador ‎Al Dafa shared his experiences as a diplomat and commented on current trends in ‎Qatari diplomacy related to regional developments.

CIRS hosted a Focused Discussion featuring the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Deputy Prime Minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dr. Zlatko Lagumdžija. The event included an in-depth discussion of the Syrian conflict with senior diplomats and ambassadors, academics, and foreign policy analysts. Some of the topics of discussion included the course and direction of the Syrian conflict, the regional and international responses it has elicited, the pros and cons of outside military intervention in the conflict, and the rise in the scale of the refugees and the humanitarian disaster to which the conflict has given rise.