Editor's Note

This 2026 year is an eventful year, during which the Middle East remains a focal point of global security and generates the hoped-for global peace.

Something has happened to universal human norms. A complete ethical and moral failure. What was considered bad has become good. What was good has become bad. The world has turned upside down.

The latest conflict in the Middle East has taken a serious and immediate economic toll on countries in the surrounding region.

This conflict comes as an additional shock to a region already suffering from low productivity growth, limited private sector dynamism, and persistent labor market challenges, underscoring the urgent need to strengthen governance and macroeconomic fundamentals and take action to boost long-term job creation and resilience.

The decline is concentrated in Gulf Cooperation Council economies and Iraq, which are heavily affected by the conflict. Growth in the GCC has been downgraded by 3.1 percentage points since January and is now projected to slow from 4.4% in 2025 to 1.3% in 2026.

Risks are tilted to the downside. In the event of a prolonged conflict, the current impacts on the region will be compounded through elevated energy and food prices, declining trade, tourism and remittances, increased fiscal pressures, and displacement.

We hope new connections will be built between groups, and both empathy for each other and the ability to listen, really listen, to one another in order to understand differences.