Clarification on the Venue for the AIIB Annual Meeting 2026

August 19, 2026

Pres. Zou Jiayi

President and Chair of the Board of Directors

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles

Vice President and Corporate Secretary

Subject: Urgent request for final venue confirmation, time-bound visa arrangements and reconsideration of Doha as the 2026 AIIB Annual Meeting venue

Dear Pres. Zou Jiayi and AIIB Management,

Good day.

Thank you for your responses to our letter regarding civil society participation at the 2026 AIIB Annual Meeting, and in particular for the clarification provided on Host Member accreditation, the Conference and Event visa process, the visa focal point, and AIIB’s contingency planning. We appreciate these responses. However, developments since our original correspondence now require a much clearer and more urgent discussion of whether Doha remains an appropriate venue for an international Annual Meeting that AIIB expects civil society organisations, affected communities, and other stakeholders from across Asia and beyond to attend in person.

AIIB’s current official Annual Meeting information continues to list Doha, Qatar, as the venue for 28–29 September 2026. At the same time, the security environment across the Gulf and wider Middle East has deteriorated significantly.

This is no longer a hypothetical concern. Reuters reported on 17–18 August that renewed tensions between the United States and Iran were affecting the Gulf, including disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz and an increasingly confrontational military posture. Reuters also reported that European aviation authorities extended warnings covering airspace including Qatar due to heightened military activity and the risk to civil aviation. Earlier this year, the conflict caused severe disruption to Doha and other Gulf aviation hubs, including temporary airspace closures and major flight interruptions.

These concerns are also reflected in current government travel advice. Australia currently advises travellers to reconsider travel to Qatar because of the unpredictable security situation in Qatar and the wider region, while the United States advises reconsidering travel because of the risk of armed conflict and specifically notes risks to civil aviation arising from regional political and military tensions.

For civil society, this risk is compounded by questions about visa accessibility. We appreciate Ms. Flavia Milano, AIIB’s Head of Stakeholders and CSO clarification that, following Host Member accreditation, registered participants are expected to receive a Conference and Event visa as part of the process. However, it remains unclear whether this constitutes a firm guarantee of entry for every accredited CSO participant, regardless of nationality; how long the process will take; and what remedy exists if approval is delayed or refused. Qatar’s broader entry system already differentiates access by nationality, with visa-free entry available to some nationalities while others face prior application requirements or additional conditions. This makes a clear Annual Meeting-specific guarantee particularly important.

We therefore request the following from AIIB Management and the 2026 Annual Meeting Organizing Committee:

1. Written confirmation on whether Doha is now the final physical venue for the Annual Meeting, or whether AIIB and the Host Member are still considering relocation or contingency arrangements. If contingency planning remains active, clarity on the key security, aviation and accessibility considerations that would inform any change in venue or format would be helpful.

2. A clear, written overview of the visa process and timelines for CSO participants who complete Host Member accreditation, including visa eligibility, usual and maximum processing times, submission deadlines, nationality-specific requirements, and procedures for pending, delayed or refused visas. A clear escalation point and indicative response time for urgent cases would also be helpful.

3. Further information on how AIIB plans to support accredited participants from countries facing more complex entry procedures, limited consular access or other administrative barriers. Given visa uncertainties, we hope CSO participants will not be expected to purchase non-refundable international tickets before their visas are secured.

4. Given the evolving regional security environment, we encourage AIIB to complete a management-level assessment of Doha by 31 August 2026, considering whether participants can reach and participate safely, predictably, affordably and equitably. If these conditions cannot be sufficiently assured, we encourage consideration of relocation to a venue with safer and less constrained international access.

For NGO Forum on ADB, this is fundamentally an issue of meaningful participation and institutional responsibility.

Civil society engagement cannot be described as inclusive if the practical risks of attending fall most heavily on participants from developing countries, project-affected communities and organisations with the least financial capacity to absorb visa delays, cancelled flights, emergency rerouting or prolonged stays caused by regional instability. AIIB should not transfer these geopolitical and logistical risks onto those participants while maintaining that formal accreditation alone provides equal access.

We also wish to stress that hybrid readiness is an important contingency measure, but it should not become a substitute for equal physical access. If Governors, Management, private-sector actors and well-resourced institutions can participate physically while community representatives and civil society organisations are pushed online because of visa or security barriers, that would create a two-tier Annual Meeting rather than meaningful stakeholder participation.

AIIB is entering its second decade and presenting the 2026 Annual Meeting as a forum on the future of infrastructure, impact and innovation. The credibility of that meeting also depends on how the Bank responds when the circumstances surrounding its own institutional event change. Responsible infrastructure institutions are expected to identify risk early, adapt to changing conditions and place human safety ahead of sunk logistical arrangements. The same principle should apply to AIIB’s Annual Meeting. 

We therefore strongly urge President Zou and AIIB Management to reconsider Doha as the physical venue for the 2026 Annual Meeting and to examine, without delay, relocation to a more accessible and materially safer host country. A venue change may carry administrative costs. But those costs must be weighed against the far greater institutional and human consequences of asking hundreds of international participants to travel into a region currently experiencing active military tensions, aviation warnings and rapidly changing security conditions.

The threshold should not be whether the meeting remains technically possible. The threshold should be whether safe, equitable and meaningful participation can genuinely be guaranteed. We would appreciate a substantive written response to the above questions within the timelines proposed and remain available for an urgent discussion with the Annual Meeting team, President’s Office and Host Member authorities.

We hope AIIB will treat this request with the seriousness that the present circumstances require.

Sincerely,

Mr. Rayyan Hassan

Executive Director

NGO Forum on ADB

Endorsed by the following organizations -

350 Pilipinas, Philippines

Aksi! for Gender, Social, and Ecological Justice, Indonesia

Alyansa Tigil Mina, Philippines

Bangladesh Working Group on Ecology and Development (BWGED), Bangladesh

CLEAN (Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network), Bangladesh

Forum on Ecology and Development, Bangladesh

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), Asia Pacific

Growthwatch, India

GT Infraestrutura e Justiça Socioambiental, Brasil

Jubilee Australia Research Centre, Australia

Latinoamérica Sustentable, Ecuador

Latinoamérica Sustentable (LAS), Regional, Latin America

Nash Vek PF, Kyrgyzstan

OT Watch Mongolia, Mongolia

Recourse, Global

Rivers without Boundaries Mongolia, Mongolia

South Asia Just Transition Alliance (SAJTA), Regional

Sustentarse, Chile

Cc:

Kaisu Christie,  Vice President and Chief Administration Officer and Acting Director General, Human Resources Department

Ludger Schuknecht, Vice President, Policy and Strategy

Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Vice President, Investment Solutions

Kim-See Lim,  Chief Investment Officer, Public Sector (Region 1) & Financial Institutions and Funds (Global) Clients

Konstantin Limitovskiy, Chief Investment Officer, Public Sector (Region 2) & Project and Corporate Finance (Global) Clients

Flavia Milano, Head of Stakeholders CSOs Engagement for Asia, Africa & Latin America

Denis Kongere, Stakeholders Engagement and External Affairs

Xioabo Wu, Communictions Officer - Stakeholder Relations

AIIB Annual Meeting 2026 – Venue, Visa and CSO Participation Concerns.pdf

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