World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international organization established in 1971 as a not-for-profit foundation for public private cooperation and is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. The Forum provides a platform for leaders from all stakeholder groups from around the world – business, government and civil society – to come together.
Meetings
The Forum holds four major annual meetings:
- The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, held in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, shapes global, regional and industry agendas at the beginning of the calendar year.
- The Annual Meeting of the New Champions, the Forum’s annual meeting on innovation, science and technology, is held in the People’s Republic of China.
- The Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils, held in the United Arab Emirates, brings together the world’s leading knowledge community to share insights on the major challenges facing the world today.
- The Industry Strategy Meeting brings together Industry Strategy Officers to shape industry agendas and explore how industries can shift from managing change to pioneering change.
Chairman of WEF
The Forum is chaired by Founder and Executive Chairman Professor Klaus Schwab. It’s guided by a Board of Trustees comprises outstanding leaders from business, politics, academia and civil society. To reflect the Board’s multistakeholder status, its membership is divided equally between representatives of the business community and leaders from international organizations and civil society.
Headquarters of World Economic Forum
The headquarters of WEF is situated at Geneva, Switzerland.
Reports Published by WEF
The World Economic Forum publishes a comprehensive series of reports which examine in detail the broad range of global issues. Some of the important reports published are:
- Global Gender Gap Report: Global Gender Gap Index is published by the World Economic Forum since 2006. In the Global Gender Gap Report 2018, the index benchmarks gender gaps based on health, economic, education and political criteria within 200 countries. The world has closed 68 per cent of its gender gap and at the current rate of change, it will take 108 years to close the overall gender gap and 202 years to bring about parity in the workplace. The global list was topped by Iceland followed by Norway, Sweden and Finland. Some important take ways from Global Gender Gap Report 2018 for India are:
- India has been ranked 108th in gender gap index 2018 which is same as 2017.
- India recorded improvement in wage equality for similar work and fully closing its tertiary education gender gap for the first time.
- India has many challenges as it ranks 142nd out of 149 countries in the economic opportunity and participation sub index.
- India continues to rank third-lowest in the world on health and survival, remaining the world’s least-improved country on this subindex over the past decade.
- India has slightly improved in WEF’s wage equality for similar work indicator, where it stood at 72nd place
- India has the second-largest artificial intelligence (AI) workforce but one of the largest AI gender gaps, with only 22 per cent of roles filled by women
- Global Competitiveness Index
- Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report
- The Inclusive Growth and Development Report
- The Global Risks Report
- Arab World Competitiveness Report
- The Global Risks Report
- The Global Human Capital Report
WEF Annual Meeting 2019
The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 will be held in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland from 22—25 January 2019. The theme of the meeting will be “Globalization 4.0: Shaping a Global Architecture in the Age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
The development of the forthcoming Annual Meeting will be based on five working principles:
- Dialogue is critical and must be multistakeholder-based
- Globalization must be responsible and responsive to regional and national concerns
- International coordination must be improved in the absence of multilateral cooperation
- Addressing the biggest global challenges requires the collaborative efforts of business, government and civil society
- Global growth must be inclusive and sustainable
Download this article as PDF
We hope you liked this article. Here are some useful articles for you to read next:
Click to go to RBI Grade B Preparation Page