 Good afternoon and welcome. I am Asif Sheikh, Senior Advisor here at CSIS, and our future-oriented topic today is Global Priorities for the Sustainable Development Agenda. I think we're in for a real treat because we have a truly stellar group of speakers, a panel covering a very broad spectrum of developing countries and developing country issues. Now, the unfortunate part is we have very little time. You've all read their bios, you can Google them, and in most cases you can Wikipedia them. So I will just provide the briefest of introductions so we can have maximum time listening to the people that we came here to listen to. After we elicit some opening comments from each of our panelists, I will try to ask one or two provocative questions just to prime the pump and then we'll turn it over to Q&A. During the Q&A, I ask that each of you who has a question, please make it a question and not a commentary. Kindly make it 60 seconds or less. I would really hate to have to cut off anyone in such a distinguished audience, but would only do so out of respect for our panel and for those in the audience who have come here to listen to them. So I think we'll have a wonderful session. So without further delay, let me introduce our panelists and let me warn in advance that I'm not good at following scripts. So I'll introduce panelists in a certain order, but then I'll ask them to speak in a different order because life is more entertaining that way. On our far right we have Dr. Shahad Javed Burki, former vice president of the World Bank and former interim finance minister of Pakistan. Next to him we have Dr. Jean Palame Maturin, former economic advisor to the prime minister of Haiti. And then we have Dr. Juan Jose Daboub, former managing director of the World Bank Group and former minister of finance of El Salvador. And finally, next to me we have Ms. Amina J. Muhammad, who is UN Secretary General's special advisor on post-2015 planning. So very much focused on the topic that brings us here today and former senior special assistant to three former Nigerian presidents. So join me in welcoming this extraordinary group of people. And without any further delay, I would like to ask Dr. Daboub to open it up with five or so minutes of remarks, get the ball rolling, and then we'll move along to each of our panelists and then go to questions. Thank you, Steve. Good afternoon and thank you for attending this session. Global priorities for the sustainable development agenda, it's something that we hear a lot about, and I think it is important to define properly, to apply in a very executive manner and have the right matrix to actually measure what matters. Many developing countries today have abundant resources and yet in significant potential, yet because of what we call governance issues, they tend to not perform at some of their peers. And so I'd like to start with an example of the northern triangle of Central America, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. I am from El Salvador and so that's very close to home. In the last few months, there has been an orchestrated effort to put together what is called Alianza por el Progreso or por la Prosperidad, Alliance for Prosperity, which has several pillars including some very important ones on traditional economic goals, objectives and needs on the social front, but interestingly enough, even if modestly, but on building and strengthening institutional capacity, which I think it's something to recognize. So could an effort like this, if it succeeds, be used as an example or as an input for the international development agenda? And I hope that in the next four minutes, plus the Q&A and the conversation from the rest of the members of the panel and the conversation, we can reach some interesting conclusions. I will do it building on three ideas and a constructive criticism here and there. A, demand versus supply-driven development agenda. B, a rather obsolete spider web of development agencies who are more focused on processes than necessarily on results, which I think should be the actual focus. And third, a short one and a half minute story about my own country, El Salvador, that I think shows how when you have economic and political freedom, you can actually help lift people out of poverty. I come from the private sector and for 12 years, I was in government in my country, three different administrations without belonging to any political party then or now, and then as if suggested, I was at the World Bank as managing director and responsible for 110 countries, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and the Pacific and Latin America. And one of the conclusions we shouldn't be earth breaking, we heard something about this in the previous panel, is that private sector job creation, at least in my view, is one of the best, if not the best tool to actually provide the dignity and success that people deserve one and need. So the number one priority in my view for any development agenda should be that one. And so I'm oversimplifying things, but I think that when we fall into these 25, 30, 50 goals and objectives, I think we tend to miss the boat precisely for some of the points I will make. So while it is important to build a demand driven agenda, one thing not ignore the reality of the taxpayers of the countries who are actually contributing from a developed country perspective to provide support to developing countries. And so by the same token, there is often a mismatch between what a country puts as priorities and what some of the donors have as a priority. So often this mismatch represents, in my view, an opportunity. Just like in markets, whenever there is a mismatch between supply and demand, someone can benefit from the opportunity that that represents. So how are priorities set today? Well, President X of developing country Y is concerned about rose, water, health and education, while donor A of country B is concerned about gender, climate change and inclusiveness. They are all very, very important areas. We all need to work in all of those. They are all about improving people's lives and livelihood. So where is the root of the mismatch? On one hand, President X is actually thinking more about the next election than the next generation of his or her citizens. And on the other hand, donor A, many times under pressure from some stakeholders is subject to budgetary cycles and political interest. And at the same time, the real people, the ones we actually are trying to help, are not necessarily seated at the table. They usually not represented. And so to make this even a little bit more complex, I talk about the spiderweb of organizations, the way they are structured, and I'm talking about some of the organizations I have worked for and that are sitting around the table and in the room, the way they are set to my, it might be, debilitates significantly the accountability and the responsibility that many of those organizations have. There are big words like consensus, which of course is important, but that means going at the speed of the slowest. There needs to be a little bit more pragmatism and convergence of ideas or of needs so that things can move a little bit faster. So how do we address such much match of priorities? And are the development goals practical and achievable in order to improve people's lives and livelihood? Because I don't think we can argue against them. So here is a short story about my country of Salvador, which hopefully will start to provide some answers to the question before us. El Salvador went from hardship to investment grave in a relatively short period of time. For those of you who remember, between 1979 and 1992, 5% of our population was killed. About 22% of our population migrated primarily to the United States. Inflation was on average 30%. Unemployment above 12%. The infrastructure of the country, the public infrastructure, 90% of it was totally destroyed. Credibility, zero. Nobody for different reasons will support what the country needed at that time. So after a systematic process of reforms, and you are not going to hear anything different than what actually works in some other countries, where we put a very basic and simple philosophic premise, which was the government should not be an orchestra director, but a referee that attempts to resolve the conflicts among the different actors in our society. We were able to reduce poverty from 49% to 19% access to electricity, water, and telecommunications went from less than 50% to, in some cases, like telecom, over 150%. And in six years, that's between 1992 that we signed the peace agreements to 1998, El Salvador became investment grave, second only to Chile in Latin America. And guess what? By the year 2000 and 2001, respectively, in those two consecutive years, El Salvador even beat Chile in all of the indicators that are relevant. And I have the Wall Street Journal article here. So how do we do it? As I said before, you are not going to hear something that is not too different from what has worked in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore, Korea, or Japan, or Chile for that matter. And that is that we open markets, we became very disciplined in terms of how to use the resources that people were paying. When I became Minister of Finance, there were 113 different taxes, which of course, to start with, nobody was paying completely, but it was very hard to even control that. So that was reduced to three. And if I would have had more time, I would have ended up with just one, because I am a believer of a flat tax. So fiscal discipline was very important. Security was very important, respect for property, private property, and the rule of law extremely important. Today, these five or six elements continue to be the policies that need to be prioritized on. Not that the other ones are not relevant. It's that like mass law hierarchy, you have to start with those that actually enable the environment for the right investments coming from the private sector primarily to take place. So in my humble opinion, this is where you start earning your position in the global arena by leaving by example. Then, and only then, you can actually take control of your destiny, but you do not actually end up needing too much the international community when you end up taking destiny to your own hand. For example, in the years that I was in government, we did not went to development agencies except after the earthquake in 2001 for funding, and we stopped any kind of donors and donations coming to the country. We earned the investment grade, and we went to the markets to raise them up. So nobody had an agenda to impose on us, and we actually were able to have the freedom and the creativeness to do the reforms that took El Salvador from hardship to investment grade. Having said all of this, the example of El Salvador, however, is turning out into a sad story today. After two consecutive populist governments, we are almost back to square one. We have orchestra directors rather than referees. The institutions have been captured to execute a political agenda following an ideology that has proven to fail in North Korea and Cuba or in Venezuela. So would that be the demand-driven development agenda to be supported? Is that the governance model that works? Poverty is back at about 50%. Growth is less than 2%, and regrettably, instead of competing against countries like Chile or some of the more advanced countries, we are fighting the first place for criminal rates in our country today. So this chapter, because it is a chapter that we will overcome, I'm sure of, because Salvadorians are very resilient, gives us two lessons. One, it is better to have an imperfect market than a perfect bureaucrat telling us what to do. And the second lesson is that once you start in the process of alleviating poverty, which takes about one generation, you have to lock in the benefits of such path of progress by having the right institutions in place that increase governance, that minimize or eliminate corruption, and that actually empowers people so that they can take destiny into their own hands. So the development goals should not be those persevering instruments that take us to removing the obstacles that allow people to actually succeed. So good governance, institutions that work and keep the momentum going. One final comment, and we'll be within the six minutes that you gave us, is that how is it that a beautiful in a great country like the United States, in spite of the current, let me be politically correct here, weak leadership continues to lead the world. Two reasons. A, a justice system that works, and B, enough freedom for people to innovate and create. So these are the two elements where I will focus my energies when talking about all of the different whether MDGs or SDGs, because this is what can at the end take us to the, what I said earlier to me is the key element for development which is, and should be our number one priority, private sector job creation. Thank you very much. Thank you, sir. I'm going to jump as far geographically across the world as I can, and that would mean it would be Jeb Berkey, although geographically you have both been in Washington at the World Bank, but you bring a lens from Pakistan with your vast experience also in places like China and Latin America. I wonder if you would share your thoughts with us. Thank you, Asif. I have a slightly different take on the topic that we are discussing today. I'd make probably a provocative statement. I would say that since the subject of this particular forum is sustainable development, my view is that we are in a situation where that particular objective cannot be met. So I am not going to talk about specific countries. I'm just going to talk about, for a very brief period, the way I see the global economy is emerging and how the global institutions are not developing in a way that they can handle the challenges of the global economy. If I have an interest, it would be in economic history. And when you look back to 1944, you see that globally, that economically and financially, the world was in turmoil. But few people meeting at Bretton Woods were able to put together a system which worked and worked very well because of three factors. One, there was one country in the United States which was prepared to provide leadership for the new system, the resources to be able to do so. Second, the genius of the people assembled at Bretton Woods was that they were able to create at least two of the three institutions they had planned all along as they were preparing for this session in a way that these institutions worked very well for decades. And here I'm talking about the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which was initially called the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The third institution, World Trade Center, took another 40, 50 years to create because trade, as we know from politics in the United States, is always a very difficult subject to get your arms around. That system worked until about 1991. The only challenge to the system was an ideological challenge. And this involved developing countries with the West on one side and the socialist countries on the other. And there was an ideological confrontation which of the two systems should be favored by the developing world which was then in a state of flux. Suddenly European communism collapsed and the Soviet Union became Russia. There were a bunch of independent states and my friend Francis Fukuyama went to the extent of saying that that was the end of history. That there was going to be only one ideology, one system and one set of institutions supporting it. And that kind of thinking led to the development of ideas on the management of the global economy. Among them something that came to be called the Washington Consensus. My friend over here talked a lot about the private sector, Washington Consensus had three issues. Tremendous role to the private sector. State will step back and not interfere with the working of the private sector. Just a little bit of light regulation. The second was that there will be a lot of back and forth a flow of ideas, goods, commodities between different countries. This was the globalization phase. And the third idea was that democracy was the only system that should be put in place. Democracy is the only system that can give sustainable growth. So in Washington Consensus democracy, private sector and relationships between different countries became the guiding attribute. But now today things are very different. My view is that today we are faced with a situation which is almost as difficult as much in the state of flux as was the situation at the end of the Second World War. What has happened? What has happened is four or five things. Let me list them very quickly. There is... IMF decided two or three months ago not decided, worked out that China had become the largest world economy estimating their GDP on the basis of purchasing power parity. So the United States has lost its role as the premier economy of the world. The second is the enormous amount of accumulation of savings in a few countries, China, Germany, Korea to a certain extent Japan and no institutions which are able to intermediate between those who save and those who need these savings for investment. Third, there is a changing nature of demand in the developing countries. In 1944 when World Bank and other institutions were created the problem was simple. These countries didn't have the savings of capital to develop them or to have them emerge out of difficulties that they had experienced during the war, capital was needed. But now the situation is different. The most important, the most difficult thing that these countries have to do is to find the ways to create infrastructure which would make sustainable development possible. And that is not going to happen by these countries themselves, it's going to happen by the transfer of resources from the big savers to what would be big spenders and you need a new set of institutions. The third is, some people say although I don't fully buy this that the United States has lost the political will to provide leadership and that's happened because this enormous confrontation between two political parties in the states with two very different ideologies. And because of that nothing much is happening in terms of developing an institution structure that can come to the rescue of the global economy which is now faced with some very serious problems. Which is why China has taken some initiatives Asian infrastructure, investment bank, AIB which the United States resisted but was not able to prevent from other countries to join. This is one manifestation of the changing structure, institution structure that we are going to see in the next few years. So I'll conclude by making the following observation. I would say that unless there is political will exercised by all major countries of the type that was exercised in 1944 Bretton Woods we are not going to be able to produce sustainable development in the global economy. We will have frictions, we will have tensions, we will have conflicts and they will be costly and they will set us back from achieving what I consider to be the potential of these countries. Some economists have coined a phrase Larry Summers talks about secular decline. His notion that the period when there was secular increase in GDP all over the world has ended and now we are faced with a situation where GDP rates of growth are not going to reach anywhere near the levels of the past is something that we have to live with. And one final point, economists have really not factored in demographic considerations into their models and into their thinking. We are seeing a fundamental change, a fundamental demographic change which is going to affect all parts of the world. Europe is declining, population is declining, China has now begun to see a decline in its population. The Arab countries, the Muslim countries continue to grow. They have the youngest populations anywhere in the world and United States is the only country in the developed part of the world which still has a positive rate of growth of GDP. So this also needs to be factored in when we think about the future. Thank you very much. I think we have an extremely vigorous discussion going here and it will be fascinating during the Q&A. Since I lived in Nigeria and I started my career at the United Nations, I would like to save you for the last and move to Dr. Matohan from Haiti and Haiti has some unique challenges and you've looked at them through the eyes of both the public sector and the people of Haiti and I wonder if you could share some of your thoughts on what you've heard and what you've experienced. Thank you, Asif. Thank you to Dan and to CSIS for inviting me to participate at this very important session where the topic is a very critical one for the world that we are living in and more importantly for the country like Haiti which suffers a lot not only from the history but also from the modern nature over the last couple of years and we continue to survive and we hope that we can make better than survive. We can imagine ways of coming out of this difficult path and building the future more aggressively but more positively also. Haiti in that topic is a very particular case. We are the only less developing country in the Western Hemisphere. We have the youngest population more than 65% of the Haitians under 45 years old 44% of them has less than 18 years. They call that in Haiti a kind of tsunami because at any moment if nothing's changed with such a population social chaos can happen. It happened that this country that has made history for being the first black republic in the world first group of slaves that has fought the whole international system at that time to become independent and to show to the world that there is other ways of cooperating and to show to the world that there is a possibility of stopping human slavery so this country has paid that very, very hard. Now this country has also still has a lot of opportunities. In the past this country used to be the first or the richest country to serve the French kingdom and now it is the poorest one. Despite that Haiti, where it is located is a critical, very critical point in the whole Caribbean because it is located in the middle of the two Americas and just 60 miles away on the northern Haiti you have the most important road for the world trade. Haiti has some critical resources many more resources in Haiti every kind of every kind of agricultural goods can be produced. Haiti has also a big and growing population we are more than 12 million on the part of the island but we have also close to 5 million Haitians living in the diaspora. Haiti has a critical set of challenges because of political instability because of poverty because of vulnerability of the environment that justify a big interest for Haiti when the international world is thinking about sustainable development, inclusion income reduction of income illegality etc. So my understanding after many years working as a consultant for the international agencies but also as a former economist advisor to many prime ministers but also as an entrepreneur realized that at that point of history Haiti will need to look at maybe four basic conditions to restructure its society and its economy in order to to let itself to the world that is moving. It's very basic Haiti need to have legitimate authorities that are designated by its population and more freely so that these people can carry the goals of the nation. Second issue is that the fact that the people can give legitimacy through democratic election for the bracket around democratic election this legitimate leaders should take into account the set of what's the so-called stakeholders that this country has that they can build trust among the poorest and the richest because in this country the divide is very big between very few people which hold significant portion of wealth and very large portion of population that has nothing so we need to bring them closer or to get them closer they need to work together. The third condition is the relationship between Haiti and the international world and the international partners. Dr. Daboud was talking some minutes ago about the differential between the goals between the national interest and what the international partners considers as a priority so this is something that needs to be looked at and the fourth condition is related to history with the Haitian traditions with the Haitian culture the Haitian identity which is a bit different inside the whole Caribbean. So based on that we think that from that kind of legitimate leadership that can connect the international and the local interest in the perspective of serving for the betterment of the Haitians there is now a need to increase the wealth that can be produced inside of this country because this country for long the philosophy was that it was not too good to be rich and I think we cannot move out of poverty without increasing the wealth that can be produced in this country. So to get that done I think there is four major reforms that need to take place so the first one is a set of reforms that can modernize the whole way of doing things in this country the whole way of doing business in this country to get the state fixed but also to build trust into the society and the second we will come with a set of decentralization process because today this country is very concentrated around Potter Prince so we will need to bring the whole decentralization process so that instead of people to come to the state now the state and the services will have to move to the people in the other part of the country we have lost so many lives during the earthquake because the critical services were all concentrated in Potter Prince so people were coming everywhere to come to Potter Prince so now we need to make the other way so to get that done the critical support will be the infrastructures and for getting such infrastructure infrastructures in place the state doesn't have to control everything but the state has to make infrastructures a priority and the type of infrastructure that can boost the growth and push Haiti to that century and the last dimension is the security and the justice system today without a digital system that works that can make people feel confident and safe with respect of property rights with less impunity etc it may be very difficult to get this country on its way and so today in this reflection on how to build a more sustainable world in Haiti we think that it cannot be done without inclusion and how to include people in such a country I think there is a set of public policy and a set of incentives that should be put together public policies should target to education and professional training very young populations need to be in condition to move forward based on their skills and I can tell you without education I won't be able to be sitting here with you given the fact that from a very, very poor family without that unique opportunity I won't be able to make it be very helpful for the country if they have that same opportunity second is a very significant boost in job creation and an equal chance for women because there is much more women in Haiti than men so it needs to be the same thing too the third dimension is the possibility for Haiti to be able to talk on its own it happened that many people tried to talk on behalf of Haiti but they don't know what really Haiti needs and how Haitians could organize themselves to meet what they need so in this process of engaging the way that people are interacting in the world and they need to have it made in a sustainable way I think a country like Haiti should be used again as a model if they give a chance to this country to take on itself its destiny thank you very much Mohammad you are focused directly on the sustainable development agenda and you have perspectives from Africa's largest economy and many would say the most important country in Africa would you close out this session for us with your comments on anything you've heard and anything you would like to discuss thank you very much and hello everyone this is an exciting point in time in history and our colleague just talked about going back in history and I think we've come to a watershed moment where the United Nations at 70 created itself around the whole peace agenda never to go back to war in 1945 but what it has that's so much more important this year is that it wants to change the narrative for development that we want to talk about the lessons learned and how we deal with sustainable development in a real way that has the resources to accomplish that but that also really looks at climate change being a part of it and not as a separate conversation so it is I think an agenda that we've set we've spent the last two and a half years three years discussing how we're going to shape this and it is exciting it is a political agenda so for those that are looking for the science in it that will happen when we come to implementation but it's aspirational because it's a response to extremely complex challenges that we have today where we're dealing with migration we're dealing with youth cohort that we've never had before and a lack of jobs, exclusion, inequality that is increasing conflicts that we really don't even begin to understand as they emerge every day but we've also got this incredible opportunity for transformation and that's really what the sustainable development agenda speaks to now whether that will happen or not is if we try, will depend on if we try to change that narrative a narrative that says that this agenda is universal it's about every one of us in this room, outside of the room it's about leaving no one behind it's about investing not in a piece of us but in a reduction of poverty but of the whole not in just a social agenda but actually an economy that grows and makes a difference and has results in people's lives and tries to protect our planet and so it is very much a universal agenda we will hear different things that we've never heard before we have in the last two and a half years where we say universal and what Latin America has to say about development is different from what Africa has to say about it different perspective from Europe, from the islands, from Southeast Asia everyone has a different take on what their priorities are but ultimately it is about our human well-being it is about peace and it is about development and I think that that makes it even more exciting when we think about how do we do this in an integrated way how do we really make sure that we're not siloing the issues because they reflect what our individual interests are without really considering the collective for which we all know today this global village, this global family what one does will affect the other and I think that's the biggest wake-up call we've got to try to respond to that the maker break of this will be of course about how we implement it and I think that's a really important question that we're now grappling with because in the United Nations the die is cast with the number of goals that we have and they are basically the substance of what we think should be invested in going forward over 15 years 17 of them that cover the social agenda our economic and environmental agendas and when we think about how we're going to implement this we have to think from the lessons we've learned of the Millennium Development Goals that did succeed they succeeded so much so that we're talking about the next set of goals but they are unfinished business and this new agenda actually tries to help carry them through so we know we have a transition not that we wake up in January 2016 and start a new agenda but there is a transition for this one and that means I think we have to think very thoroughly about how we're going to be fit for purpose fit for purpose in the United Nations to help facilitate this discussion this implementation at the country level because ultimately it is countries that have to be in the driver's seat it's countries that have to determine that destination we've learned that the MDGs one of the failures was that it was too much of a prescription so this time 193 member states determining what happens to them at the country level is a difficult one so how does the United Nations themselves become more fit for purpose for this but how do governments do that how does civil society do that how does business do that the new people that we have coming into this how do parliamentarians address this how do you in this room academics everyone that has a role to play actually begin to respond to what we're asking for and at the scale at which we need to do it and that therefore brings me to the whole discussion around the importance of institutions and it is one different thing that has happened in the sustainable development agenda beyond everything else we've talked about lots of economic issues social issues and environmental issues separately never brought them together but what is the glue that will make this hang together will be that environment that needs to deliver it it will be about strong institutions the capacities that we need investing in the human capacity the assets that we have to do that and that really is starting from different bases in different places and many countries that have shown to succeed over time it has been because they've invested in institutions and it's a difficult thing to do so for us to find that we have a goal that focuses on institutions the rule of law and peace is an incredibly important part of how does this fit how do we translate this and what do we do to make it work it's not an attractive spend anyone that has been in government and anywhere near a minister of finance knows that the last thing you want to invest in is an institution because you've got four years to deliver the dividends of democracy and that's not an attractive I can touch and feel this and show it to my people so I get re-elected it's a long-term investment and I think this is where we will struggle to see how we can do that the fact it's on a global agenda means a lot to what happens at the local level that the importance of it for us to have for instance services that work we all know that from the last terrible tragedies of the Ebola crisis in West Africa that what we didn't do was to invest in systems in institutions in people so when that crisis came we were not able to respond and I think this was a very big lesson for us when we looked three years ago to see what we needed to do to accelerate on the MDGs we woke up to the shock that the majority of children coming out of school didn't have a quality education they could not read or write what have we done to that generation because you can't ask them coming out of a school they're not educated and they need to go back so in many cases the systems did not deliver on really what we thought would empower to allow us to move forward on the human development agenda and that I think is a big cause for us to think how do we deal with that and where are we going to get the resources to do this knowing that it is not the most attractive of investments one of the discussions we've had is that we are many developing countries put in a situation where a minister of finance will have a budget that they have to balance a budget that is really basically choiceless choices because you're asked to spend on health or education or water and sanitation or the big ticket items of infrastructure that are supposed to develop your country increase your domestic resource mobilization so that you can actually do the both but it's either or so now we do have to find the means of implementation to say both need to be done and when we look to the global partnership it is that yes we know that overseas development assistance for the sustainable development agenda is a critical political commitment but it's insufficient to do what we need to do if we have to deliver on this agenda and unlocking the resources that are available that do exist to come into this agenda is what we need how do we get resources to pay for big ticket items so we can grow our economies to take care of the services and the institutions that need to deliver on them and I think that this is going to be a litmus test for you know how can we do that how do we invest in our young people it's certainly not an option that I believe that we have I've got six children and so I know every day they are looking to how they can engage with helping grow our country Nigeria there's just new dawn we have a change in government we have to sit back, step back reflect about where we want to go take really the destiny of Nigeria in our hands and as my colleague from Haiti says you know this is not about being driven in a direction that other people think are right for you because they have determined a set of measures that put you in a certain place it is about a country reflecting on who they are and what they want to be and where they want to go and the wild things are urgent that they're not going to be in a hurry to fail so step by step they will make concrete moves towards that goal it is a time for us to reconcile there are many many issues in this world today that have put us in a position of conflict and I think that the reconciliation of those issues within countries across borders is something we need to discuss because so much so institutions are being built around symptoms rather than to deal with the root causes of what we have to build back and we will have to look at how we rebuild nations that don't have the necessary skill sets and so you know how does migration not become forced actually become one that is planned actually have one where the forced have a reason to remain behind and not to have to go across borders I think this is some of the challenges that we will have as we go ahead it is really for me about the implementation the will to put institutions back to work again it's not as though they were not working in many countries it is a neglect of it because there are other priorities in the way in which we adopted a development agenda September comes and we will gavel a new agenda and I'm very confident that the United Nations will be able to do that with the partners in the 193 countries that we have I think the concern still remains in the next few months whether we will have the appetite and the political leadership to get that ambition to match the complex challenges that we have today and a lot of that will have to do with the means of implementation with how we deal with coming together to say yes this is worth it there is the implications for not having it done don't bear thinking about nor can we visit that on the next generation and that we get behind it to do so thank you very very much to all of our panelists I sense that there are probably some pent up questions in the room we started late so we'll take say three questions the first hand I saw go up is the in the back and then over here I guess that was the hand that went up first yes sir and then the person there so the three of you in that order and then we'll put the questions to them I am Sharon Ten I work for the international partnership for microbicides we develop HIV prevention products for women there was a little bit of mention about women and I wanted to hear from all of you about the role of women in the sustainable development goals and in particular issues of gender equality in both the developed countries and the developing countries thank you the next question I believe was I believe your hand was up first I apologize sir I'm Bob Hershey I'm a consultant to what extent are you able to use the internet to get some transparency in this and try and get an economic consensus of what people want to do thank you and the third question was the woman in the black and white I'm Mayra Adi and I'm a professor of the progress in integral development in Catholic University and my question is for the lady in the UN about what is the UN doing in terms of sustaining peace just going beyond nice objectives of environment access to water and electricity when the globe is turning into when you see certain governments that are very violent and they're growing in Central America and some of them came through democratic elections like in Venezuela what is the United Nations going to do about sustaining peace when violence is increasing and there's not much time to think about education and other things Thank you I'll ask the members of the panel to respond as they would Ms. Mohamed do you want to start with the one addressed directly to you or let others comment? I can start I mean I think all three are really important questions and thank you for that I think the peace agenda as I said you know as the UN looks at itself at 70 and reflects on that it was set up to keep peace and to be about nations that lived with peace development and prosperity those are the three pillars that hold us up but we're challenged by that peace agenda we're challenged by the human rights agenda and as we have started to shape the sustainable development agenda one of those questions that we've been asking is that this is actually a response to it so it's not about what are we going to do keep the peace beyond the nice things we do actually if we had done more about investing in the nice things we would have so much more peace and that's what we haven't done we've done insufficient development to prevent the conflicts to prevent the exclusion to prevent the inequalities such that we now have many stages of conflict even in the time that we've shaped this agenda we've had more conflict and then when we've been lucky enough to have governments and people come together to make peace in some countries then we have not invested in the dividends of peace the day after has been insufficient development in rebuilding institutions in rebuilding communities in giving them what they need and this is about not about the United Nations not putting that forward it's about the political leadership of governments to make those investments that are needed in countries that are too weak and too fragile the partnerships of the global community where we have committed to do this we have failed to and I think that there's a serious reflection that needs to happen as a sustainable development agenda comes not to see it as something that is so aspirational and perhaps too big but without it we will not maintain peace and we will not address the issue of human rights I think with women they are absolutely central to this agenda not only are they a goal but they are cross cutting, inequality access to justice access to our own health to education much more especially that we really speak about women in decision making and leadership not just leadership, not just the numbers but in decision making and so I think that is something that is embedded in the SDGs and we hope that we will get that into a good set of indicators that help us measure it and then last but not least at least the United Nations using the internet to connect with young people social media, the My World surveys which you want and received over I think it's 8 million now responses to that has been quite incredible way of reaching out but I have to say that it's also helped in my country the fact that we have the internet and social media actually put transparency on the elections themselves that we were able to see second by second what was happening and even ahead of the government call some of those results even though we know the independent electoral commission will say so I think you know this has provided an incredible opportunity for transparency it's actually reduced corruption in elections where instead of becoming elections they have now become much more about elections Thank you I see that Jarvis Berkey has a comment to add please I just wanted to pick up this issue about gender equality and what's happening in that area what the states can do and so forth this issue is extremely important in the world of Islam at this point but I think it's useful not to look at Muslim countries as being the same set of countries across the globe you can divide the world of Islam into three parts there is the Arab countries plus some countries in Africa which have a very conservative outlook on the role of women in all aspects of life then you have the countries in the central part of the Islamic world there's the Turkey Pakistan, Bangladesh Afghanistan and so on where women's role is more liberally accepted and then you have the countries in the east Indonesia, Malaysia and so forth I know the situation in my own country Pakistan very well and it's really not realized outside Pakistan because Pakistan gets very bad press for a variety of reasons as to the very important roles that women have begun to play in that country I do some work in Singapore every year and I once asked a research assistant of mine who happens to be from Bangladesh to tap into the data assembled at Harvard University about education and South Asia and I was very surprised to see that Pakistani girls and Pakistani young women were doing better than Indian young women Indian girls and Bangladeshi young women and Bangladeshi girls and that was happening for two reasons one was the enormously important role the private sector has now begun to play in Pakistan the private sector educational system is run by women managed by women and in those schools women are in majority in most professional schools even engineering schools in Pakistan women are now about 55% to 45% for men I was looking the other day at the entrance of newcomers into the workforce Pakistan receives about a million people every year into the workforce of which about slightly more than half are women and they are better trained than men consequently they are moving into some very important sectors of the economy banking, education health, entertainment IT sector and so on this is a kind of thing that has happened on its own state didn't encourage it even the multilateral institutions didn't pay as much attention to this as possible this was a movement that was led by women some because of commercial reasons some because education is the only thing they see which is available to them in order to advance in the society so I think it is important when you think about gender equality to look at different situations and different parts of the world because dynamics work in different ways thank you very much if any of the other panelists we have only about a minute and a half left so we won't be able to take any more questions but if any other panelists want to comment on the questions already asked I think the issue on gender is a critical one in the Haitian situation the Haitian context because we have 52% of the population which are women most of the investment done in the education of the Haitian population has been made by women it happened that the inequality is very high also so it's a serious challenge to include now and by many innovative ways the women so that they can take the proper leadership in running also the country it's a big fight and I think in that way the global partners have to support mainly in helping Haiti to fund the basic conditions to empower the women in education it's a critical one training in most of the professional fields it's another one in getting them credit to run their business because most of them has the responsibility of the family so they will need to be empowered in that way to be able to continue to make the change in the society the salary the inequality in terms of salary is also a major issue between women and men I think the society need to change so that we can match that requirement I think it should be put on top of the agenda that has to happen another thing that come to my mind is that very often we have we have to choose and when it come to choose the society call on the women and we remember all the good things that the women bring and when times come to share very often they forget the women so I think in the whole transformational change that need to take place in my country we need to not forget that time that take into account the women in the world thank you I know Amina Muhammad wanted a 30 second comment to close and that sounds like an excellent way to close so please I don't usually talk about religion but as a Muslim woman what I would say when it comes to gender equality that in the Muslim world it is actually our men in Islam that are the challenge and not Islam the religion itself when the prophet was asked who was the most important he said your mother your mother and then your father and I think we need to underscore that because it is not the religion that prevents us going to school even when we go to school we can still remain in the home if the man says so so it is the man in Islam that is the major challenge done