The first Youth Summit of the Islamic Development Bank Group Annual Meeting brought together youth leaders, influential thinkers, policy makers, entrepreneurs and international development policy experts to discuss critical matters of relevance to youth in IDBG member countries. The delegates at the two-day Youth Summit, begins today, drew attention to the key role of youth in overcoming development issues in areas ranging from education, employment, entrepreneurship, networking to financial inclusion.

They have a shared history, and now officials want to unite India and the Arab world as two major trading blocs. The Indus and Ganges rivers on the one hand and Tigris and Euphrates and Nile rivers on the other were home to some of the world’s first civilisations. And that, officials believe, matters for the future.

As Sweden's government intensifies the campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council 2017-2018 the rights-based foreign policy the government claims it wants to carry out will be put to the test. The diplomatic entanglements with Saudi Arabia and the Arab League show clear differences between the nations of the world when it comes to their view of human rights, not least the rights of girls and women. Sweden must continue to make its voice heard.

Arab leaders openly feuded over the region's most intractable problems at their annual summit on Tuesday, particularly the inability to resolve Syria's civil war and anger at Qatar for its support of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby urged Arab countries to take a “firm stand” against Israel’s demand for Palestinians to recognize it as a Jewish state. Speaking Sunday at the Arab Foreign Ministers meeting in Cairo, Elaraby called the concession a deviation from the previously agreed-upon framework for peace talks.

The Arab League, officially called the League of Arab States, is a notoriously fractious regional organization of 22 Arab states based in Cairo. It was founded on March 22, 1945, with the aim of strengthening the relationships between member states through political, cultural and economic cooperation.

Monocle's annual survey on soft power - assessing the influence of nations in spheres including politics, diplomacy, business, culture and education - names Australia as the fifth-most influential nation in the world and singles out Mr Rudd's performance on the global stage in explaining its decision.