Founder and Executive Director of WeAreMENA, Tom Vizel, was recently featured in Fox News Partners in an in-depth interview titled “Beyond the Handshake,” together with Abdou Ladino, a leading partner from the Mimouna Association in Morocco and a member organization of the WRM network. In the conversation, they highlight the transformative role of young leaders and civil society networks in building meaningful, sustainable cooperation across the Middle East and North Africa — moving beyond surface-level diplomacy toward people-to-people engagement grounded in trust, partnership, and shared action.
For the first time in history, youth leaders from across the Middle East and North Africa gathered this week in Paris for three days of dialogue. Against the backdrop of improving relations between Israel and Syria, they discussed building a regional alliance against terrorism and the possibility of pushing their governments toward political agreement. “It’s always easiest to talk about war — and almost always hardest to talk about peace.”