Casa Árabe and the Embassy of Holland in Madrid are organizing this conference, which will include the participation of Eduardo López Busquets, General Director of Casa Árabe; Kees van Rij, the Ambassador of Holland in Madrid; Marcel Kurpershoek, Ambassador, and John McHugo, a writer and expert on the Middle East.

The situation of war being lived through in Syria is becoming more and more alarming, and a short-term solution to the conflict seems distant. The numbers of those killed, missing and displaced by the war continue to rise, while the threat of spreading to neighboring countries is not just latent, but rather a stark reality. In order to understand the status of affairs in Syria, one must bear in mind the major geo-strategic interests that the Middle East has generated since the last century. During this conference, the emphasis will be placed on some of these factors, and two notable personages, Marcel Kupershoek, a Dutch diplomat with a great deal of professional experience in the Middle East, and Britain’s John McHugo, a scholar of the Arab world who is very knowledgeable about the Middle East, will be giving their opinion on the topic.

A Dutch diplomat and, since the year of 2013, Ambassador of the Netherlands to the Special Mission for Syria, Kurpershoek studied Arab Language and Literature at the University of Leiden in Holland and at the University of Cairo. After completing his studies, he was stationed in Cairo, Damascus and Riyadh. He has worked as part of the Netherlands’ mission to the United Nations in New York, as well as the mission to NATO in Brussels. He was his country’s Middle East and North Africa Director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (1996-2002) and later became its ambassador to Pakistan, Afghanistan (2002-2005), Turkey (2005-2009) and Poland (2009-2013). He is particularly interested in Arab oral literature and in the literary heritage of Bedouin tribes in Saudi Arabia, a topic on which he has published several books and articles in specialized journals. Likewise, he has written several travel literature books on the places where he was stationed as a diplomat: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey.

He is the author of the book ''Syria: From the Great War to Civil War'', which was published this summer, and ''A Concise History of the Arabs'', which was updated and published in a paperback version this year. He studied Arabic Language and Islamic Studies at Oxford University and at the American University in Cairo before becoming a lawyer by training and working on legal affairs in several Arab states.

In 1994, he was chosen to be an advisor to the State of Bahrain at the International Court in The Hague and has worked in both Egypt and Oman. Most notable is his work with regard to Resolution 242 by the United Nations Security Council. Since his retirement in 2006, he has devoted his time to studying and writing to increase awareness and shed light upon the relations between the Arab world and the West. Now residing in London, he is the president of Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine and is a member of the Council for Arab British Understanding (CAABU) and the British Egyptian Friendship Society. He visited Syria for the first time in 1974 and has done so regularly since 2007, his most recent trips have taken place in April 2012 and November 2014.