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Dubai expo 2020 cancelled1/15/2024 ![]() The UAE’s partial recalibration of its approach to regional affairs following the attacks on maritime and energy targets in 2019 illustrated its leadership’s sensitivity to the blowback from geopolitical uncertainty. Britain’s then-Prime Minister, David Cameron, who had lobbied heavily for Dubai’s selection, proclaimed that “This is Dubai’s moment,” while the UAE’s Foreign Minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, hailed the award as “a new addition to our great achievements which will place the UAE under the world focus for the next decade.” Dubai officials have set themselves a target of 25 million visits to the expo over the six months, of which 14 million were to be accounted for by international visitors, boosting a tourism and hospitality sector that was starting to show signs of reaching saturation point. In Dubai’s case, the award of the expo in November 2013 was seen, at the time, as a sign of its successful rebound from the financial crash of 2008 which had shaken international and investor confidence in the city-emirate. The Shanghai Expo attracted a record 73 million visitors and was as much a success as the following Expo 2015 in Milan was perceived to be a failure, dogged as it was by anti-austerity protests, cost overruns, and allegations of corruption. In addition, with neighboring Saudi Arabia holding the G-20 presidency throughout the year and hosting the annual G-20 Summit in Riyadh in November, there is a strong geopolitical angle to showcasing the UAE and Saudi Arabia – and their close political and security partnership – to the world.Īlthough World Expos are often seen as a relic of the past whose legacy lives on in iconic structures such as the Eiffel Tower, constructed for the 1889 World’s Fair in Paris, or the Space Needle, built for the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle, more recent iterations have become powerful branding tools thus, Shanghai spent more on hosting Expo 2010 than Beijing had on the Summer Olympics two years previously. Envisaged as one of the centerpieces of the UAE’s celebration of its fifty years as an independent state, Expo 2020 is also intended to symbolize the global rise and international soft power of the UAE despite concerns over its regional activities in Yemen and Libya. One ‘mega-event’ that has so far flown under the radar is the World Expo scheduled to open in Dubai on Octoand run for six months until April 2021. UAE Tour’s sudden abandonment in midrace on February 27 after two of the participants contracted the coronavirus, highlighted how quickly public health considerations could impact sporting and other events. ![]() The role of Saudi Arabia and Iran as religious crossroads makes the region especially vulnerable to transmission risks from large-scale gatherings and flows of people, and it is unsurprising that nervous public authorities have responded by imposing temporary travel bans and other restrictions such as the closure of schools. While most attention has focused initially on Asia, with the outbreak in China followed by significant clusters in Japan and South Korea, concern has now spread to the Middle East, with large numbers of new cases in Iran and their spread to Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia’s suspension of entry for Umrah pilgrims as a precautionary measure. Petersburgh, rather than a single host nation. Euro 2020, the European soccer championships in June are an additional cause for concern given that they are set to occur across cities in twelve countries from Dublin to Baku and Rome to St. A senior member of the International Olympic Committee has warned that the Summer Olympics in Tokyo may be at risk if measures to bring the virus under control prove unsuccessful. Major sporting events, such as the Chinese Grand Prix, and trade fairs, such as the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona as well as Facebook’s annual software developer conference in San Jose, have been postponed or cancelled. The prospect of a global pandemic has generated economic dislocation and travel disruption as governments scramble to contain and combat it. ![]() The rapid spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19 has caused alarm worldwide.
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