TRAVEL was a constant refrain this year, with a stream of international events compensating for the lack of travel in 2020 and 2021.
One exception in those pandemic years was Expo 2020 Dubai, where, as with the recently-concluded FIFA World Cup in Qatar, the level of scrutiny on small Muslim countries was itself questioned, with issues of infrastructure development, human rights and environmental commitments uncovering certain facts, and triggering differing opinions of how to improve countries’ track records in these areas and all of that, too, contrasted against the inherent value of specific events.