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The Horn of Africa and Red Sea region is being remade by simultaneous, mutually reinforcing crises. Sudan's war continues with no resolution in sight, causing a genocide, displacing millions and drawing in a widening cast of regional patrons. Ethiopia's internal fragility, contested access to the sea, and tensions with Somalia and Somaliland continue to unsettle the Horn's balance of power, while al-Shabaab retains the capacity to destabilize Somalia's fragile state. Layered atop these is the Houthi’s entry in the Gaza conflict in 2023, and the subsequent war between the United States, Israel, and Iran that erupted in February 2026, whose ceasefire, brokered through the Islamabad Memorandum and repeatedly extended since, remains fragile. Its effects have rippled far beyond the Red Sea and Gulf: the Houthis' participation into the conflict further disrupt global Red Sea shipping and drew Yemen further into a wider regional confrontation, energy and food markets absorbed successive expensive shocks, and Gulf states have had to recalibrate their postures in the region between restraint, military intervention and engagement all the while having to manage the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

These developments raise a more critical question: what kind of order is being defended, by whom and at whose expense? The multiplication of foreign military bases, security partnerships, arms flows, port concessions and infrastructure corridors suggests that instability is not simply eroding an existing order—it is producing a new, highly militarised and commercially driven one. Ports, coastlines, maritime routes and logistics infrastructure have become sites of competition among states and private interests, while communities living around them often bear the costs of displacement, environmental degradation, rising prices and diminishing political space.

Organised by the Folke Bernadotte Academy (FBA), the Rift Valley Institute (RVI), and the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI), this session examines how these overlapping conflicts are reconfiguring the region's geopolitics, its alliances, its external patrons, and the prospects, however narrow, for de-escalation across the political, economic, and security realms.

The discussion will be moderated by Ahmed Morsy, Senior Researcher in the MENA program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

Speakers:

• Bader Al-Saif, Historian of Modern & Contemporary Middle East and Islamic Thought - Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House
• Mohamed Nagi Alassam, Sudanese Activist and Policy Practitioner - Sudanese Center for Policy Studies
• Yasmeen Al-Eryani, Executive Director for Knowledge Production - Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies
• Awet Weldemichael, Professor International History and Politics - Geneva Graduate Institute