Policymakers, researchers, educators and media professionals from around the world will gather in Cairo, 18–20 October, to explore how media and information literacy and artificial intelligence can serve peace and intercultural understanding.
CAIRO — From 18 to 20 October 2026, Cairo will host the third edition of the MIL & Global Understanding Conference, “Peace for All,” bringing together an international community of policymakers, scholars, educators, media professionals and youth representatives to examine one of the defining questions of our information age: how media and information literacy (MIL) — together with artificial intelligence — can be harnessed as instruments of peace, dialogue and democratic resilience.
The conference is organized by the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), in cooperation with the League of Arab States, the UNESCO MIL Alliance, the UNITWIN MILID Network and the MIL Institute. Crucially, the 2026 edition has been designated the official Arab States regional event of UNESCO’s Global MIL Week 2026, “It Takes a Village: Advancing Media and Information Literacy for the People” — placing Cairo’s gathering within a worldwide constellation of events organized by UNESCO offices and partner institutions across every region, and underscoring the global reach and institutional weight behind the Cairo meeting.
Building on the momentum of the Cairo 2024 Declaration for Global Understanding and Peace and the Barcelona 2025 MIL Action Agenda, the three-day programme is structured around three complementary pillars. The MIL Global Policy Forum, opening the conference, convenes high-level panels and multistakeholder roundtables on AI for Peace and Global Understanding, addressing themes from disinformation and algorithmic governance to peace education in AI-mediated societies. The Official Congress of the Global MIL Scientific Association follows with peer-reviewed academic research across six tracks, from education and youth to democratic engagement and media regulation. Alongside it, the new MILID Cooperation Hub will bring together the UNITWIN MILID Network and UNESCO Chairs on MIL, and will see the launch of MILID Screen, an international outreach platform for MIL-related audiovisual work, together with the presentation of the Mediterranean Academy, an emerging Euro-Mediterranean cooperation platform for the field. The conference closes with a visit to the Grand Egyptian Museum and a formal closing session synthesizing the Forum’s and Congress’s conclusions. Organizers anticipate broad international participation, drawing scholars, institutions and practitioners from across UNESCO’s regions — Africa, the Arab States, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and North America, and Latin America and the Caribbean — reflecting the truly global character the Global MIL Week framework is designed to showcase. Registration is free of charge and open to all interested participants; researchers wishing to present at the Scientific Congress may submit abstracts through 1 October 2026.
Categories:
Share it