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The Global Affairs Media Network connecting global publics to leaders.

Diplomatic Courier is a global affairs media network that connects global publics to leaders in international affairs, diplomacy, business, technology, and social good through our daily commentary and analysis, special print and e-book editions, and global forums and summits.

10/12/2026

As the Annual Meetings return to Thailand for the first time since 1991, finance ministers arrive with an energy shock still feeding inflation, an AI boom propping up growth, and a multilateral system less willing to cooperate than at any point in a generation.

🔗 Read the agenda preview in link in stories.

10/10/2026

As the World Health Summit convenes under the theme “From Crisis to Resilience: Innovating for Health,” the global health community arrives with less money, fewer certainties, and a growing appetite for sovereignty. This year’s program will center on reshaping health financing and governance, operationalizing pandemic preparedness, and protecting health in conflict and climate crises.

🔗 Check the link in our stories for the full agenda preview.

09/29/2026

🇺🇳 The UN General Debate is over, and the work that follows belongs to everyone who was in the room. Our UNGA 81 recap covers what we heard at Signals House across education, philanthropy and health, and where those signals go next.

[link in stories]

🙏 A note of gratitude: Signals House and the Diplomatic Soirée were made possible by the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), Cambridge University Press & Assessment, Learning Economy Foundation, PVBLIC Foundation, World in 2050, The Embassy, by Diplomatic Courier, and Global Philanthropy Forum. We are grateful to every speaker, partner, and guest who joined and supported us.

📸 by Marcellus McIntosh and Patricia Guillamon for Diplomatic Courier.

09/21/2026

Tonight’s the night! 🥂🎉

A Diplomatic Soirée at , marking 20 years of Diplomatic Courier finding common ground. We’re honoring HE George Papandreou, former Prime Minister of Greece and founder of the Symi Symposium, with the The Embassy, by Diplomatic Courier Envoy Award, a recognition for the kind of cross-sector diplomacy that doesn’t wait for a crisis to bring people together.

Twenty years to the day, since the launch of our inaugural edition, the room feels less like a retrospective and more like a working session on what comes next. We are grateful to Learning Economy Foundation, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, World in 2050, National Center on Education and the Economy, and PVBLIC Foundation for standing behind Signals House and making tonight possible.

09/18/2026

📚🚨new book alert!

In 2006, Diplomatic Courier set out to cover global affairs differently, to treat diplomacy as something that happens in public, across sectors, and among people who rarely share a table.

Twenty years later, we’re marking the anniversary with “Everyone’s Business: Two Decades of Diplomacy Beyond the Corridors,” authored by our founder Ana C. Rold. The book traces the network we’ve built through the World in 2050 and Global Dialogues that carried it from Davos to UNGA, and closes on what comes next: The Global Embassy, a decentralized civic home for diplomacy.

It’s structured in three acts — the world we inherited, the world that changed us, the world we are building — because an anniversary is only worth marking if it points forward.

09/17/2026

As people turn to AI for advice on grief, purpose, relationships, and life decisions, it is worth investigating what and whose values are embedded in those answers. AI is not value neutral, and even attempts at neutrality by developers take the form of a moral position. The moral compasses being quietly installed into these systems deserve a much broader human conversation.

Check out our story for a link to the full article by Gerrit W. Gong.

09/15/2026

Philanthropy has entered a period of profound transition, and the open question is whether those in the sector can change together as donor demographics shift, new models proliferate, and trust is getting harder and harder to hold.

At UNGA 81, we’re convening the Philanthropy Futures Forum as part of our Signals House programming, to examine this central concern and seek pathways away from fragmentation and into collective action. This is the culmination of a year-long series of convenings on the toughest questions facing philanthropy, launched a year ago in New York at UNGA 80, then in Zurich and Davos, Washington DC, and now back where it all began.

Co-hosted by Ana C. Rold and Sarah Howard of the Global Philanthropy Forum, what is debated and decided will become a Future of Philanthropy Framework, which we’ll carry to Davos in January.

How do we build trust and cooperation between donors, beneficiaries, and the civil society connective tissue between? Let us know so we can bring your thoughts to the table.

09/14/2026

Last September, we convened the first Education Futures Forum where we asked how education could be transformed to deliver on SDG4. One year on, we have answers that have led to a more pointed examination of what knowledge is fundamental.

Traditional literacies are an end point, but today’s world changes too quickly for knowledge to be truly settled. The capabilities that decide whether young people can take active part in civic and economic life are about critical thinking, resilience, and process: learn, unlearn, relearn.

The Education Futures Forum opens our UNGA 81 Dialogues at Signals House, where we will begin defining the New Foundational Literacies for the acceleration era together with our partners and co-hosts at Learning Economy Foundation, Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and National Center on Education & the Economy.

What new foundational literacies do you think should be explored? Let us know so we can bring them to the table in New York and beyond.

09/09/2026

🚦The future is always sending us signals, buried beneath more noise than ever before. Signals House, by Diplomatic Courier, was built to listen closely, and surface what matters most.

This September, we’re bringing it to life at our UNGA81 Dialogues in New York with Signal Salons across Education, Philanthropy, Health, Innovation, and Diplomacy. Because these aren’t separate conversations — how we learn, stay well, govern, and give are deeply entangled, and a breakthrough in one is hollow without the others.

This year, we also mark twenty years of Diplomatic Courier with our Diplomatic Soirée, a milestone that means all the more given how much the world has changed since we launched at UNGA two decades ago.

To our extraordinary partners, thank you for standing with us.

Learn more, link in our stories 🔗

09/08/2026

What does it mean to be literate in 2026?

For most of history, it meant reading, writing, and arithmetic. This , Dr. Shane Szarkowski and Ana C. Rold think it’s time to add to that list.

The world moves so fast now. Knowing how to read the words on a page isn’t the same as knowing how to read the world around you.

So we’ve been thinking about what we’re calling the New Foundational Literacies: digital, media, data, financial, and civic. Not just things you learn once and check off, but things you keep growing into.

If you could add one literacy to this list, what would it be?

Tell us in the comments. 👇

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