 Well, good morning everyone. It really is a pleasure to welcome all of you to today's launch of Carnegie's Arab Horizons Report, and it's a special pleasure to welcome back to Carnegie our distinguished guest, Zaid Rada Al-Zaim. Three years ago, we launched the Arab World Horizons Project. The object was straightforward, if ambitious, to look beyond the tumult all around us to the long-term trajectory of the region, its people, and its place in the world. What we wanted to offer was an updated picture of the human and political landscapes of the region, building less on pronouncements and prescriptions from Washington, and more on perspectives from Carnegie's network across the Arab world. More than a decade after the Arab Human Development Reports described the deficits that ultimately led to the Arab Spring, to its moments of optimism, as well as its dashed hopes and human tragedies, it seemed to us that there was a need for an updated assessment from the region, for the region, and for all those with a stake in the region's future. The project's first report, Arab Fractures, tried to do just that. It offered a comprehensive diagnosis of the overlapping security, socioeconomic, and political crises of the Middle East, at a time when policy makers struggled to look beyond the web of extremist groups that embodied all of the region's troubles. The report was launched here in this room the weekend after the Trump administration's executive order, suspending refugee resettlement and restricting travel from a number of Muslim-majority countries. That was a powerful example of policy action divorced from knowledge and informed by ignorance, and it was a stark reminder of the importance of this effort. Today's launch of the follow-on report, Arab Horizons, offers a set of principles and recommendations to address the stark diagnosis in the Arab Fractures report. It is in essence five separate reports written by eight Carnegie authors and dozens of experts from the region, and unfortunately today's launch is taking place against another painful backdrop, the despicable abduction and murder of one of the project's partners, Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The social contract in today's Arab world has little tolerance for stubborn independent journalists unafraid to speak truth to power. It's a region where authoritarians feel the wind in their sails, and it is a time when democracies around the world, including my own, are adrift and losing their way. It is a moment when the practiced repressive habits of autocrats seem ascendant and the institutions which guard freedom and dignity are being hollowed out in too many ways in too many societies. And it is a time when the politics of fear is drowning out the politics of hope. When leaders in the region, and even here in the United States, seem far too willing to indulge those looking to stamp out rumblings of criticism and free expression. All that reminds us of the urgent task of rewriting the social contracts in the Arab world. This is not a time to gloss over the underlying pathologies of the region. It is not a time to be mesmerized by neat top-down modernization efforts full of consultant jargon and robot cities in the desert. And it is not a time to keep doing the same thing we have been doing for decades and expect a different result. We hope our report lays out useful frameworks for a new path and a more hopeful future for the region. That is, after all, all that Jamal Khashoggi wanted. Jamal's last column for the Washington Post was entitled What the Arab World Deeds Most is Free Expression. That is a fitting epitaph to a remarkable life. It is a message which Ayman and Salsa and Asfari have done so much to advance in the Arab world for so many years. And we're enormously grateful for the generous support of the Asfari Foundation for this project. And it is a message that the two gentlemen on this stage have dedicated their lives to advancing. Moan Mwasher, as all of you know, is our Vice President for Studies, a former Jordanian Foreign Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Ambassador to Washington, and an outspoken scholar and advocate for pluralism and human rights in the region. Moan is an old friend and a wonderful leader of our Middle East program. Zaid Radel Hussein is also an old friend. I've deeply admired his intellect and courage during his service as a diplomat and at the United Nations, whether in peacekeeping missions in the Balkans, in establishing the International Criminal Court, or, of course, in his extraordinary tenure as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. His has been a voice of light and honesty in dark times. And I'm very grateful and all of us are very grateful that he's joined us today. Now as a private citizen for the first time after many years in public service. So let me conclude by thanking Perry Kamick and all my colleagues here in Washington, in Beirut, and across the Middle East, for their hard work and dedication, and for what I believe is a powerful and timely report. And let me ask all of you to join me in welcoming Zaid back to Carnegie. Thank you, Bill. Prince Zaid, it's always a pleasure and honor to have you at Carnegie. We are also old friends and colleagues in earlier lives. You just have done after a four-year tenure as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. And during that tenure, you developed a reputation as a man determined to speak truth to power. This has won you many admirers, but it has also, in your own words, managed to irritate all governments. What do you, what can you tell us about this experience? What have you learned from it? Well, the first thing is I'm going to exercise independence of mind and not answer the question. I want to first of all say how delighted I am to be here and thank you, Bill, for that very warm introduction. And thank you, Maron, for the question. And I also wanted to pay tribute to the authors of the report that's just been or today will be launched. I read it over the weekend. And while I was reading it, it recalled to me two memories and both of which involve Maron. The first was soon after the launch of the UNDP Arab Human Development Report in 2002. There was an Arab ministerial meeting. Maron was a foreign minister of Jordan at the time. And the meeting took place just before the General Assembly session in New York. And he was sitting in the front row and I was sitting in the back with the other ambassadors. And Maron introduced the report to the Arab ministers and urging them to take this report seriously. Because it essentially dealt with issues which were familiar to every single Arab. And if we were honest with ourselves and there was some form of intellectual honesty, we should be able to then discuss the details of it. And watching Maron and I was sitting behind in a growing state of disbelief and exasperation as each minister, basically almost dismissed it, ignored it, spoke derisively of it, was an indication of the depth to which the Arab world at an official level lived in a state of denial. An unwillingness to recognize the extent of the challenges that it faced. And of course, in 2011, all of this came to the surface and people were surprised. Why were they surprised? They shouldn't have been surprised, it was all there, the deficits were there. And we, by not discussing them, it produced these convulsions. The second sort of recollection I had been reading this excellent report is a dinner Maron and I had. He had left government service. I was still the ambassador in New York and he was passing through. So we were having a Mexican together and over the various cevichis and the tacos that we were eating. He said to me, Zaid, I want to ask you a question. When I was minister and you were still ambassador, how many of my instructions did you actually implement? So I said, so I said for you, you know, special, special price, I said, I implemented about 70%. He said, what, 70%? I said, Maron, this is much better than the other ministers. But the basic thought that I had is that I had to exercise independent judgment as well. I had to be the very individual that all of us Arabs need to see in each other. That I was not a postal service, just taking instructions and that he entrusted me with this position. I was entrusted to it by his Majesty the King. But I was a thinking individual and so I would take some of his instructions. Most of them were excellent, some of them, and I'm sure they didn't come from you, they came from someone else in the ministry. But then he got me thinking about the lack of individualism, of accepting individualism in our cultures, which the report essentially goes to, that we don't celebrate it. We were tribal societies by and large. We started to de-tribalize ourselves as we moved into the modern state era. We got to about three quarters of the way and then we stopped. Now we're sort of going slightly backward. And we're not a modern state or you can't find an Arab state that is the paragon of a modern state. But we're neither fully tribal and we're somewhere stuck in between. And we don't know how to play off tribal affiliations against the role of the individual, the rights of the individual, the place of the individual is how we celebrate the individual, protect and advance the individual. And I think this is what the report fits to the heart of. So finding an answer to your question, it was a tough job. All right, we're going to leave it at that. So today we're launching the Arab Horizons report, which consists of five areas we think should be worked at in the Arab world. Education, governance, political economy, migration and conflict. And these are, these reports cover themes that you have spoken so eloquently about. The need for accountability, justice, tolerance, free speech. But for those of us who passionately believe in the importance of these values recent years, have been dark ones in the Middle East and probably around the world, but especially in our region. Can you reflect on some of these dark areas and how you dealt with them? Two countries come to mind, Syria and Yemen. How did the international community and the United Nations deal with these issues? And where do you think they have failed or succeeded? The office that I used to represent, a small office when compared to all the UN funds and agencies. But it's a vital office because it does use its voice. The humanitarian space is occupied by people who are doing amazing work in the most difficult conditions. And they speak to the suffering of people, but they don't point a finger to the perpetrator or the alleged perpetrator. And as a result they are in receipt of vast amounts of funds, at least from our perspective. Because we would point a finger at who is causing the suffering, it was a difficult sort of act to balance. But in our mind, speaking on behalf of victims always won out. We would be willing to take the hit financially if it came to that, rather than sort of somehow mute our voice. In terms of the situation in Yemen, let me work backwards. The group of eminent experts presented their report to the Human Rights Council in August, formally in September. Three experts who studied all the major incidents in Yemen. And I was speaking to one of them, and I'm prepared to say this publicly because they said it publicly themselves. And he said to me, look, when we traveled to the capitals of the coalition, he said the three investigators were impressed by the complexity of the SOPs, the mechanisms in place to assure a minimal number of civilian casualties with a crew as a result of the coalition airstrikes. And then he said when they went to the actual sites themselves, there seemed to be no connection between what the coalition was doing from the point of view of mechanisms on the one side with the effect on the other. They couldn't understand the disconnect. It was so stark. And the Human Rights Council then has now extended the work of the group of eminent experts. And I think there is where we have the problem. When the operations began, the belief was that the coalition was putting down an insurgency, a Houthi-led insurgency with Saleh joining. And that this in some way legitimized the actions of the coalition, even if there was civilian casualties. And we, while pointing out these violations on the part of Houthi and Saleh, we also said yes, but that doesn't legitimize the extent to which civilian casualties are occurring as a result of coalition airstrikes. And for a long time, we were assured that this, that every measure with every precaution was being taken, and yet on the ground nothing seemingly happened. I had about 18 investigations in Yemen, two at one stage in Taiz, while some of the worst attacks were taking place. And for us, we were pleased that after two, I mean, we wanted an international investigation right away, and it took time, but we were eventually, we managed to get it, and we were pleased about that. Syria, of course, is simply an inexhaustible supply of horrors. I reached a point where I felt it's so difficult to meet with the victims of the cruelties in Syria, the families, because I had nothing to say beyond just disgust at what was happening on the part of the international community and what was happening inside of Syria, that we couldn't stop this suffering. What I fear is that there will be a negotiation at some stage and no accountability, and that's something that I find quite horrific. And that is, when you look around the world, you see truth commissions, you see accountability mechanisms. If you separate, if you take out the Hariri in the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which is almost a special case, and then what's happened in Tunisia, which itself is almost in a separate class. You take it out of the context of the Arab world. There are no accountability mechanisms. There are no truth-telling mechanisms foreseen. Syria, we have one because we pushed for it, not that it didn't come from within. And it raises the question, what are we? Arabs are our lives so cheap that we can destroy each other. No one pays a price for it. We have these wars. We have these atrocities. And why don't we have what other parts of the world have? Are we so valueless in terms of our human worth that it's okay you can murder hundreds of thousands of people and we'll fix your country for you. And we have to accept it as it is, and we can reestablish diplomatic relations with the Syrian government. And it's all right. And I think this is ultimately a reflection on the forced state that we're in. And perhaps it goes to the heart of the report and the educational system that produces Ottomans and not thinking human beings. I wanted to ask you about that. You've often talked about the empowerment of the individual. Indeed, in the report, it talks about the need for a new educational system. In terms of new values and new skills and empowering the individual as you stated so that they become citizens and not subjects in their own country. How important do you think is education for the future of the Arab world? Here's another memory. Marwan, you're a very strange animal. In the nicest way I'm saying this. Because your background is in engineering, in mathematics. And I was told years ago you were very gifted as a mathematician and as an engineer. But your experience doing your doctorate in the United States also left you thinking in terms of the wider context of fundamental freedoms, participatory politics. And you saw what was happening around you. When I was ambassador here after you from 2007 to 2010, I asked the Fulbright Foundation for a list of all the Fulbright scholars who came from Jordan. Because I felt when traveling around the US, if I went to the University of Indiana at Bloomington and there was a Jordanian Fulbright scholar, I wanted to meet them. And so the lists were sent to me and I was completely astonished because without exception all those scholars, all of them were in the numeric disciplines. There were statisticians, mathematicians, engineers. There wasn't one lawyer, one philosopher, one historian, one sociologist. Not one. In the three years that I was ambassador here studying on a scholarship from Fulbright. So it made me think, well, so these are the best that we have in the country. They come and they get a first-class education here. And they go back as highly educated individuals from graduating from Western institutions with advanced degrees. But I wanted to the extent to which they really understood America, what the First Amendment means, what fundamental freedoms mean. And indeed when you looked at the ranks of some of the people in Al Qaeda, they're often doctors and engineers with Western education. But you wanted the extent to which they fully understand the history of this country, the background of this country. So I asked the question, why is it? And they said, well, because they're technically gifted when they put in their applications when it comes to the sort of mathematics side of things. But English was always the impediment. And so you couldn't get large numbers coming to study on that side, on the other side. I think this goes to some of what is discussed in the report, that there's a sort of technical part, but the broader import of what education means is sort of lost. And the deeper sort of resonance, the enlightenment you seek from education is sort of lost in this. And even if it were gained, then the conditions in many Arab countries that restrictions on civil society space on freedom of expression are prohibited. And so you think along very narrow bands of thought that's allowed you. In recent years, populism and nationalism have been on the rise in the Middle East, in Europe, as well as here in the United States. How do you think we can empower the individuals, moderate voices who preach alternative messages of integration, tolerance and interdependence? Is this a lost cause? Well, here I got myself into a little bit of trouble because there's this initiative called The Good Country. And there are two researchers, an American and a British gentleman who, and this is online, it's called TheGoodCountry.org. Basically what these researchers have come up with is that there are 13% of the global population is thought to be fundamentally cosmopolitan, at ease with people from other countries, other cultures, other languages. A population that could find itself cohabiting with people from different parts of the world. Similar values, similar attitudes. Don't wear their identity so heavily, whether it be religious or national identity, that it excludes others from the orbit of experience. And so they've started this initiative. They want to raise 200,000 citizens online and then 700 million from that. And the idea is that there are people all over the world who are concerned about what they see. About this nativism, tribalism, this identity politics seeping in again. And we saw the destructiveness of this in the first part of the 20th century. Why we're allowing it back in again is a testament to our stupidity, collective stupidity. I mean, how many times do we have to go through this to understand the effects it has? The short-sightedness, the narrow-mindedness. So when I became a citizen of TheGoodCountry, some of my friends in our country said, is Jordan not good enough? And I said, no, it's not like that. But it's an expression that we should be thinking differently, that we shouldn't be thinking in terms of exceptionalism in a way that excludes. Now, I think we can make the argument that all of us want to preserve certain traditions and culture. I mean, we all do, but not when it's at the expense of someone else. Those sorts of traditions we can get rid of. Other traditions we can keep. Those that cause pain to others, we can do without. And I think that's the balance that needs to be struck. Thank you. I don't want to monopolize the conversation. So why don't we open it up for questions? People can just identify themselves and keep it short, and maybe we can take three or four questions at a time that would be great. And any secrets you'd want to know about marijuana, I'm happy to. For a fee, of course. On this issue, you have no problem being drawn out. Anybody wants to stop? Sorry, so can you wait for the microphone? Just for the last bit when you said some cultural things we can keep and some we can get rid of. How do you judge which is connected directly to your sense of nationalism, which is whether it's negative or positive these days? And how do you decide this is good, cultural, and this is not? Look, I mean, there are a number of things we can discuss in the Arab world. Maybe the next report from Carnegie could include a sort of an annex with a chapter on human rights. We have very deep racism in our country. Very deep. And all of us know it. And we speak as if it doesn't exist when we know it exists. And our view of people who have a darker skin is horrific. And the way we speak, the language we use, is horrific. We can do without this. This is not something that should be tolerated in our societies. Under our various constitutions, there's no room for that in any case. But it exists. And it may be given as sort of a cultural veneer. The other thing is, you know, I got into a lot of trouble with so many of the Arab governments because the office that I represented, we supported the rights of the LGBTI community. So I was speaking to a very learned friend who graduated from al-Azhar and who is almost a self-confessed homophobe. And he said, I can agree with you on all these, but on this I can't agree with you. I can't agree with you. This is something, for us, we can't go with that. So I said to him, when you discuss Sharia and the interpretation of the law in a certain context, where it is the applicable law, you can make a case. But let me ask you a question. When you have Islamophobia raging through Europe and you have large Muslim communities and who are staring at the possibility of modifications to the law where they will be severely discriminated against in the future, what law protects them? It's not Sharia because it's not applicable in those countries. So what law protects them? What law protects them is international human rights law. And that law requires that there has to be a certain standard that is respected or an obligation met. You can't have your cake and eat it. You have to accept that we either live in a globalized society with a global standard and laws binding on all, or we can go our separate ways and we'll have world wars every now and then and we're finished as a human society. And that's ultimately what's at stake. And so these discussions need to be added. And it's as if sometimes we believe there isn't an LGBTI community in the Arab world that doesn't exist. It exists and reminds me of one such, I shouldn't say who, but we were discussing in Jordan the introduction of a law on human trafficking. And the Minister of Interior was being asked by the press about this law. And he was asked the question, what is human trafficking? What does it actually mean? What's the definition? And the minister said, I really don't know what it means, but I can tell you we have none of it in the country. Michelle? Michelle Dunn from the Carnegie Endowment. If I may, I have two questions. One of them is you mentioned sort of the lack of mechanisms for accountability and truth telling in the Middle East region. In the report, we also talk about the lack of sort of norms norms of warfare conflict and mechanisms for dispute resolution, peaceful dispute resolution in the region compared to other regions of the world. So I wanted to see if you have any further comments on that issue. And the second question is about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and what kind of mechanisms through the United Nations systems, a system you think could be brought to bear to reaching some form of justice in the system. And how would they be invoked? Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure I'm well placed to answer the first question. I mean, clearly, you know, in the dispute between the four countries on Qatar, you know, there was no clear mechanism in place that could have averted that dispute on a regional basis. There was always the possibility, I couldn't understand why it never happened, that if the four countries were charging Al Jazeera with playing a role in implementing terrorism and so forth, then why didn't those four countries then approach the UN Security Council first before the imposition of the blockade? Why didn't they call for a private meeting with the Security Council? Present the evidence that they had and place the burden on the international community to do something about it before taking unilateral action. So maybe the mechanisms are there, but they're not at the forefront of one's thinking and at least at a regional level, the Arab League didn't seem to have any sort of consideration maybe it should have and perhaps it's a reflection of its own stature at the moment. In terms of the second issue, the killing of Jamal, which has filled everyone with revulsion, everyone. I think here we have to be careful because I, when I was High Commissioner, I was always asked, you know, for an example, as an example when I was in Colombo in Sri Lanka, I was asked by one of the journalists, High Commissioner, are you here in Sri Lanka to drag our generals to the Hague and have them hang at the Hague? And I said, no, it's much more modest than that. The position that we always took is that the evidence has to lead. The evidence leads us to a person who leads us to a second person and a third person. And there's a tendency, of course, to quickly and to rush to a judgment on who's culpable. Frankly speaking, we've heard a lot seep through from the Turks. We haven't seen all of it. We need to see all of it and we need to see if there's exculpatory evidence there as well. I think, in all honesty, those who call for an international investigation, I think that position is probably the right position. As High Commissioner, I started investigations on my own accord. It was always better to have the international community ask you to do it because then you get the buy-in of the actors themselves. My hope is that Turkey and Saudi Arabia would ask this of the UN. And then the UN can put together an investigative team of forensic specialists, criminal investigators, human rights investigators, and then the truth comes out. Another point needs to be made. The relationship my office had with Turkey and I assume still has with Turkey is a difficult one. We had asked for access to the southeast over a number of years because we heard of these frightful reports of civilian casualties in the Kurdish cities of Chisra and Nusaybin and the Al-Bakir. And we were never given this access. So when the Turkish president says that the consular officials never gave access to the Turkish authorities, the Saudi consular officials, there's an irony here. And that's why in the end, I think what really has to happen, there has to be an international investigation and then the truth will emerge and then we'll see where the culpability really lies. And I think it doesn't serve anyone to rush to judgment, particularly because there seems to be a chess game being played at the moment and we don't know what the two players are thinking in depth. The supposition is that there is a deal that's in the offering and so forth. But I think that's ultimately the only course that makes sense and satisfies most people. Over there at the back. The lady in the back. Deneb Abdo, I just have a question for Mr. Hussein. I'm just curious as to your thoughts on why the case of Jamal has reached such astronomical proportions, whereas half a million people in Syria who have died and billions died in the Iraq war did not receive such attention. And I'm just asking you as a human rights specialist why you think that this case has galvanized the world community, whereas many more people who have died in other Middle East wars have not. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's a question that's been dealt with in editorial comments in many of the world's major newspapers. I mean, clearly Jamal was a charismatic figure. I never had the privilege of meeting him, but he of course had many friends here in Washington and he worked for the Washington Post. His criticisms seemed to be mild when you compare them to the criticisms one sees in the U.S. vis-à-vis the U.S. government. And so the savage or the grisly nature of his death is just astonishing. I mean, it's so gruesome. And the fact that it was done in a consulate premise or premises does raise the question, the broader question, what's going to happen to us? I mean, if embassies and consulate premises and the three of us were serving ambassadors are turned into sort of slaughterhouses of dissidents, for dissidents, you can imagine where, again, where we end up the very fabric of the international law and the international systems holding the world together are being torn apart. And so this becomes an emblematic case and we have a number of emblematic cases around the world and you hope if you resolve this case, then you resolve a whole class in a category of cases. Adil Jaber said the other day that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would ensure this never happens again. And so then let's see if other critics continue to speak of the need for greater freedom of expression in the Arab world and in the Kingdom, what will happen to them? You know, why, and the questions perhaps also that deserve further attention is why abduct someone like that in the first place? And then if the killing was at the behest of the state, which it seemingly is, but we need to sort of look at the details more carefully, does it not tell you something about the fragility of the state in question? And that's become even more sort of, it creates a further doubt. Hammerschold in the 1950s spoke about the maturity of mind of states, that there had to be sort of an evolving maturity of mind and acceptance in the human rights framework of an outside auditor, outside, you know, a sort of critic who can reveal what you'd rather not reveal. And I think in this case it's both his personality, what he was doing as a journalist and then the severity of his punishment. Because obviously they wanted to silence him and then send the message to those stories who would hear through the grapevine what happened to him. But who and where the culpability lies I think we have to be careful and to re-understand all the facts that hopefully will emerge sometimes soon. Aiman. Aiman Asfari. The Asfari Foundation. Marwan asked a question and you very eloquently did not answer. It's easy for me as somebody who lives in the UK to call for these universal values and talk about the accountability, the atrocities and so on and so forth. But as a citizen you're going to go back and you're an Arab citizen who believes in these values, who believes in human rights. What can you do? Seriously, I mean it's a question because you talk to people, we've seen what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, he was in Washington, he went to Istanbul for a certificate and he was slaughtered like this. What can an average Arab citizen who believes in these universal values and I genuinely believe there is a huge wave in the Arab world which is fueled by the social media that is yearning for this and we've seen what happened in the Arab Spring and there is a degree of defeatism now after what happened in Egypt and Syria and so forth but what can an average Arab citizen do short of carrying arms and short of becoming radical, short of jumping on a ship on a vessel and trying to escape from Lampedusa to Italy? I mean that to me is a question and I'd be very keen to know what would you do? Well, the moment I set foot in Amman I'll go see my friend Marwan. When I was last in Amman, look I've said so publicly, the Jordanian state as such, many of my former colleagues no longer speak to me and I think in large part because of what it was that we were saying as the UN, as a UN Human Rights Office in respect of Yemen. In particular but not limited to that, there were other things as well. But I think you're right in the sense and I think Marwan in the sense it's the same that wherever I went in Amman people, when I went to government department to have an ID replaced or to have my driver's license renewed people were very very friendly with me and they thanked me for what it was that I was doing and I think you experienced the same throughout the country. So I think you're right in saying that there is. I mean what we're plagued with in the Arab world but also beyond that is this idea that a security state is the only way to stave off terrorism. So you have to know your entire population, you have to have massive surveillance, you have to look at all that data, you need to know everything about everyone, you have your files on your ministers, your mayors and you run the state like that. You don't build institutions. It's the shortcut method to rule. But there isn't a religious or historic, let's say historical tradition and certainly Islam does not allow for it. That you rule by oppression. That oppression is good and the security state often becomes oppression. And that is not within our culture. We want just rule and if you're going to define what just rule is then the people of the entity must decide what they believe is just rule. And I think that's where the argument has to exist. And there are three conditions for the management of a country from a human rights perspective. One, no discrimination on any ground against any citizen. Two, no deprivation of social or legal protections on the basis of that discrimination. And three, no fear. I don't want to live in a country where overnight I'm arrested because a neighbor doesn't like me because someone at work has an issue with me on a personal basis and they have access to the chief of police. I'm arrested, thrown in a dungeon, no charges for 10 years. I don't see my family. And who wants to live in that condition? You know, there's a paradoxical thing. If you look back to when many of us, most of us were in college and you were released from the rule of your family and you're living with these other students, you don't have any money, you're completely impoverished, five people in a small apartment, you're eating bits and pieces, but you're happy because you're free. Because you're free. If you're free, you can withstand the pressures of material deprivation. It's not easy to turn it the other way around. You can have all the materials in the world, but if at any moment you can be arrested and arbitrarily in a country where the rule of law isn't functioning, properly the judiciary is questionable, then that's no position for you two. That's not a dignified life. I think the thing is one has to somehow try and make it personal for individuals in the same way that no Arab and none of us, you know, wants to be harassed traveling through Europe at airports and all of us have been. I was detained as High Commissioner for Human Rights at a European capital. And what was amazing to me is I thought if they do this to a senior official from the UN, and I kept thinking to myself they really don't want to do this because in the next five minutes I'm going to do a press conference. I thought to just an ordinary Arab citizen traveling through Europe to go through that where you're completely powerless, if they could understand that this is how many of their citizens, their own citizens feel in their own countries, powerless. I think somehow maybe we can change this discussion around. And you often hear this. I mean, you know, I lived in Geneva and you see occasionally bump into some of the Arab brethren who would be arguing that they discriminated against when they traveled to Europe. Well, what exists outside, it has to be internal, external consistency. If you don't want to be discriminated when you travel, you have to try and end discrimination in your own country. The larger question, and this is the more difficult one, and I was asked this by a 14-year-old who said to me, why do we discriminate? Why do we human beings discriminate? And you have to give a short response. It's not easy to explain why. And we all know we have prejudice. We're born with prejudice. And we have to sort of exercise it out of ourselves. But that's the sort of foundational base at which we need to re-examine ourselves. I think then we can... And I think this is why the report is so important. And what worries me is that this report will be read more by non-Arabs who are concerned about the Arab world than by the very Arabs who should be reading it, which is many of the officials who really need to understand the depth of it and the extent of the challenges they face. Let me just make one comment about this. And that's maybe the activist in me. It's not surprising that there is not a single Arab ambassador in this room. In my view, the room should be full of them. But it's also not surprising that the report, the last report Arab fractured, was the number one downloaded document from Carnegie, from any publication in Carnegie last year. So there is interest. It's a lot of interest. Unfortunately, not from Arab government so far. Please, Jonathan. Jonathan Kutab, that leads directly to my question, which is in your dealing with the governments, the elites, the ones who have power, the ones who may feel threatened by these changes, how do you approach them? How do you deal with them? How do you convince them to accept all these changes which we all agree are necessary? And the second part of the question is, of course, to what degree is our failure to apply universal standards? As a Palestinian, I say this. When the West fails to apply these standards equally and universally, you lose the moral power behind such an appeal. Yeah, I mean, on the second, is that there should be no double standards. I mean, as the UN and the Human Rights Office, we were pretty tough on everyone. The Europeans, the US, Russia, China, Brazil, I mean, all the countries. I mean, I don't think I excluded anyone. So we approached all countries in the same way. The way the countries approach each other, this is, as you said, selectivity, double standards. You excuse your own conduct when attacking another country. And it becomes a brawl, and it discredits the human rights movement because the movement itself is predicated that every country has its obligations and those obligations must be met. And so it doesn't exclude anyone from it. And so I used to have the discussion about the rights of Palestinians under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian government or the authority separate from the occupation. Then the rights of those who are occupied under the foreign occupation and then those rights of Israeli citizens of all stripes under Israeli jurisdiction. We had to separate those three and observe that there were violations, that some rights were honored, others were, of course, clearly violated. The first one is the more difficult one, Jonathan. I don't know. I mean, you sit there with senior officials of these countries, and they say the right thing, right? So it goes back to the investigator who was investigating Yemen. They say the right thing. Yes, they're committed. But then so often nothing materializes. And I was told by someone I'm close to, the Arab world believes in public relations. You just invest in a PR firm. You just deal with the surface issues. You do a few interviews, and then the problem goes away. And I think what Carnegie is showing is the problems don't go away. They get worse and they accumulate. And I think this is what we need. There has to be a depth of seriousness when you look at this. You know, Harvard at the Kennedy School, they coined this or they imported from biology this term a few years ago, isomorphic mimicry. And it explains a lot of states around the world where what you see is not really a state. It looks like a state, but it's not a state. And you go to a school which looks like a school, but there's no education within it. You go to a clinic which sort of makes you think there's a public health service that it should be providing, there's no public health service. And so then it's sort of often states in name only. And when you get to the heart of it, the central nervous system of the state is the sort of accountability, judiciary, the legal part of it that has to operate free of any political consideration. We noticed, for instance, in Venezuela that things just really started to go wrong 2011, 2012, 2013 when most countries were completely quiet about it. It was only the US, maybe Spain, but no one else. When the judiciary, when they started to politicize the judiciary, we began to realize that this country was in trouble. And that's often the bellwether in many countries. So I'm not sure I have the answer. You know, we try and convince each head of state, each head of government. But it's often, it's frustrating. And then sometimes you see some good progress as well. So it does exist, but not as much as we like. What we have tried, Aiman, in the report, as much as possible is to point out some success stories. So let's say on education, you know, there's a lot to be desired. But there are pockets of excellence. There are islands where people are doing good work. And so we brought these people and made them share their experiences in the report. But, I mean, this is a long, long-term process. And there are no easy answers. I mean, I agree with you. My own view is that the Arab world has lost a major financial tool that has allowed it to sustain this patronage system, which is oil. Or, you know, maybe not lost it completely, but with oil prices on the decline, the financial tools that were used to sustain these inefficient systems are no longer there. That's one thing. Transitioning from that point to a more productive system is going to be a very long-term process. But I think we are in the middle of sort of the beginning of the end of the rentier era in the Arab world. And that's good. But it doesn't mean that bad things will not happen in the interim before we hopefully transition to more pluralistic systems. Maybe we have time for one more in the back, please. My name is Nat Finkelstein. I'm a simple stranger in the midst of a very sophisticated audience. But I must ask you a very basic question, and I hope I was a little late. I hope it wasn't covered. Given what I would refer to as despicable and deplorable rhetoric and positions of the current administration in the United States, what impact is this having in the Arab world? And you also were on the receiving end when you were high commissioner of cutting funds from your office, too. Yeah, this is going to be the subject of a separate sort of interview. Look, from the very beginning, early on when then candidate Trump began his campaign, we were alarmed. We were alarmed because, again, the U.S. in the construction of a post-war architecture, security architecture, economic architecture, rights-based architecture, served as the sentinel for the maintenance of these systems which would prevent the recurrence of world war. It wasn't just mutually assured destruction with the possession of nuclear weapons. It went beyond that. It was aspirational, as we all know. And if you're not in a position to advocate for it, even if you didn't believe it, then those who will draw a conclusion from it will do so. And you begin to see things happening and they happen very quickly. When I was serving in Geneva, my building was the original League of Nations building. And so I constantly looked back at the League's experience. When Mussolini invaded Abyssinian in 1935, a panel of three countries was set up to adjudicate the issue and to look at the grounds for the Italian action and whether this was merited or justified three Italian naval officers were killed. Mussolini had no intention of honoring or abiding by or respecting anything that the League had put up. And was determined to take Ethiopia at the time. And of course, in Berlin, conclusions were drawn. And the Nazi leadership were drawing conclusions. When the Rohingya crisis was at its height, 400,000 in two weeks, two to three weeks, butchered or pushed out of their country. And there was hardly a response by the international community. Hardly anything beyond the civil society, think tanks. But publicly, hardly anything said. I thought to myself, this is one, of course, it's horrific given the suffering of the Rohingya. But two, what are we sending? What signals are we sending now? That it's perfectly acceptable to be doing this sort of thing without fear of any reaction. And when the U.S. isn't leading, I mean, don't forget President Trump, when he spoke to the General Assembly a few weeks after these events in Northern Rakhine, didn't even mention the Rohingya. They weren't even on his radar. I think the lesson to be drawn is that we're moving into wayward space. And Robert Kagan wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in an editorial and said, you know, welcome to the jungle. Having worked within the system, at least the UN system, you can certainly feel that all these institutions are under enormous pressure. And they collapse. The law collapses with it. And then we're staring at some frightening future. All of us. I like to often, I like to quote from Cecil Lewis here in 1936, wrote this marvelous lyrical account. I mean, not marvelous. In the style of writing was marvelous, but the content was frightening about the experiences of the First World War. And in it he refers to the stupidity, the invincibility of man's stupidity. And sometimes you really have to think, that's where we are. Despite all of what we hear from Silicon Valley, that some app is going to save us. And I honestly think they're in a different space altogether. They are. The real world is something far more frightening. And it requires a resolve and it requires, it requires a standard of leadership, which we don't have. Globally, we don't have. We have a lot of mediocrity. We don't have. I put something into the Economist a few weeks ago and I said what really impressed me as high commissioner was the quality, the bravery, the selflessness of the human rights activists. Leaders who are not seeking publicity and prepared to forfeit everything in defense of other people. And they are the people I'd like to see my children resemble. Not many of the politicians, so-called leaders, who are self-serving, craven, corrupt, really not something that we would say are the epitome of human experience. And my hope is somehow we can elevate these grassroots leaders into positions of national leadership. Because otherwise I don't see how it is we can overcome many of these issues. And we are down a very dangerous path. On that note, I think you will agree with me why Franszade is such an outstanding representative, not only of his country, but of truly the whole world, a true global citizen. Thank you very much for a very... I want to remind you to please stay in your seats because we're going to go straight to the second panel where we will discuss the details of the report. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Are you okay? I'll sit here once you sit. It's fast, fast, good. Can you do it this way? One hour, one hour. Or when you're here? This is not me. Well, how are you? Hey, how are you? How are you? Just sit right here. Good to sit right next to you. Not helping me out, buddy. I'll do it just... Okay, if we could take our seats we're going to start the second panel. Thanks everyone for joining us. I know that Franszade gave a very thoughtful and insightful conversation with Marwan and I think that's a great jumping off point to talk about the Arab Horizons report that came out of Carnegie recently and some of the issues surrounding exactly where we find ourselves in the Middle East today. I think we'd all... I know we spoke about Jamal a little bit earlier but I think we would all be remiss if we didn't kind of heed the lessons, I think, that Jamal was writing about early on. There's a lot of talk right now about, you know, that he's a martyr for the Arab cause. The truth is that, you know, for several years, Jamal was kind of making a... ringing a warning bell about some of the issues we're going to be discussing today and that are, you know, so importantly detailed in this Arab Horizons report. And I know that there's a lot of fascination with the investigation and what happened to him and who's going to be held accountable but I think we'd really be remiss if we didn't heed the lessons that Jamal was writing about and I think that is what will be his greatest legacy and I think that's what those of us who knew him will... how we prefer to remember the important work and the amazing person that he was. So with that, I'm going to kick off the panel. Marwan, you already know, is the vice president for studies at Carnegie where he oversees research in Washington and Beirut and I met him as the Jordanian ambassador here in Washington and then later as the foreign minister and also someone who's been writing about, you know, issues of reform well before it was fashionable. Hala Al-Dusari is a scholar in residence at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice researching women's detriments of health in the Arab states and in the Gulf. All right, we're okay with that. She holds a PhD in health services and from Old Dominion University and it is really on the cutting edge of research of women's health issues, particularly in the Gulf. Rabah Al-Zeki is the chief economist for Middle East and North Africa region at the World Bank. Previously, the chief of the Commodities Unit in the research department at the IMF and has studied also some of these, you know, trends in the economy of the Middle East and how it's been changing. And of course, Perry Kamick is a fellow at the Middle East program at Carnegie here and before that worked on Middle East issues for Secretary of State John Kerry and then before that, which is actually where we met when he was working for then Senator Kerry at the Senate Forum Relations Committee and also worked for then Senator Biden. So a lot of experience on this panel and if you don't have the Arab Horizons report, I invite you to look at it online because it's really picking up, I think, really maybe on where the Arab Development Report of 10 years ago, you know, started to talk about some of these trends that we saw in the Arab Spring and now where we find ourselves today with so many of these changes. So, Perry, why don't you kick us off and talk about some of the main findings of the project? Sure. Well, I think Marwan kind of gave a little bit of overview last panel and certainly Prince Zade gave a really impassioned kind of view of really the themes that I think we're driving us as well. Really, it's a compilation of five reports, I think has been mentioned, on political economy, governance, education, migration, regional conflict. And basically the main idea here is that the Arab region, the regional order, is collapsing politically, economically, socially even. And we obviously don't pretend to have any of the answers to any of these questions, but I think what we do think is that in this moment when as Prince Zade is talking about a kind of authoritarian trap, let's go back to first principles and try to provide a roadmap for leaders, for policymakers, both in the region here as well as activists and citizens for what are the elements of a new social contract. And I'll say briefly that we don't see these five subjects as at all unrelated. In fact, they're inextricably bound together to really take on the magnitude of the problem, really requires holistic solutions. And it's really based on this notion of the need to renew social contracts that really ultimately, as Prince Zade said, very eloquently put citizens first. So I think that's really the starting point for the report. I don't know, maybe Marwan wants to... Well, I want to, Marwan, pick up on that in terms of, you know, we talk about this rise of authoritarianism and conflict in the region. And, you know, a lot of this is that as, you know, the basic premise that I took from it is that these, particularly in the Gulf, these countries have been living high on the hog and it was these services from cradle to grave. And, you know, sometimes people weren't necessarily all that questioning of democratic principles because, you know, I'm getting fed and I'm getting money from my family. And as, you know, the economies are faltering and as these, you know, these economic, you know, benefits, I guess if you will, or subsidies are failing, authoritarianism is the way to kind of keep the people in check. And so how do you... Your message of renewing these social contracts that Perry discussed and investing in citizens kind of seems to cut against the grain. And so how likely is it that the governments are going to even take this into consideration? Before I start, Elise, I just want to remind people that what you have with you is not the full report. It's just an executive summary. The full report will be available. It's already available online, but it will be available in hard copy maybe in a week or so and it will be available in a month's time in Arabic as well. I frankly don't see... I see a very short-term rise in authoritarianism. I argue that we are starting to see the beginning of the end of authoritarianism in the Middle East. The Middle East has been struck by two perfect storms. One in 2011 we prematurely called it the Arab Spring, but what it did was protest against authoritarianism, against bad governance, if you will. It of course did not yet transform into an institution-building process and it cannot do that in seven short years. But the second perfect storm took place in 2014 and I alluded to it in the earlier session, which is the decline in oil prices. Oil has allowed Arab governments, both oil-producing governments and oil-importing ones, to sustain an inefficient economic and political system in the Arab world and to allow authoritarianism to take root without any challenges. Today, that era is drawing to a close and with the decline in oil prices, oil-producing governments are finding out, like the Saudis, for example, that they can no longer sustain either domestically or regionally their systems and all importing countries, like my own country, Jordan, are also finding out that they can no longer defend on the largesse of Gulf states or remittances of Jordanians working in the Gulf to the same extent that they used to before. The question is, how do you transition today from a status quo which is unsustainable to a more productive one in the presence of Arab governments who are refusing to internalize the main lessons that we have learned from 2011 and 2014, which is basically if Arab governments want to keep their power, they have to share it. That's the principle lesson that is still not being internalized, and frankly, I don't see that it will be internalized any time soon to answer Aiman's question. We're going, whether we like it or not, we're going through some dark times in the Arab world that have not ended until we understand that we need to transition to more productive systems, systems that are based on merit and not on patronage. But that process is going to take quite some time and reformers like me or Aiman or Prince Zaid or many others are, of course, very impatient and want to see results happen soon. I don't think they will. I think this is a very long-term process. I want to get to the Jordan example on your talk about reform in a minute. But Hala talked to us about, particularly in the report, but also you've wrote about the need for new social contracts and in particular, empowering women politically, economic, socially. What are the main factors holding this back? Because on one hand, people would say, oh, women in the Middle East are more empowered than ever, but when you kind of look at the indicators that would suggest that, maybe it's more of like a symbolic type of advance. Yeah, I totally agree. I think if you look at the indicators from the global gender gap report, you will see that the Middle East in general is ranked the lowest in terms of the political participation of women, economic participation and several other domains as well. And it just reflects the disparity that exists based on gender, but again, the disparity that exists is the distribution of resources, access to information. I do believe exactly like Marwan diagnostically said it, is that we have a crisis in terms of the control of power, the control of power and the space allowed for the civil society to push through. You can't have meaningful transition, transformation in any of those kinds of indicators, whether it's access to opportunities or meaningful engagement in policy, political participation at large without having the voices of people. And I think this is something that is being sacrificed in the regional conflict because there's so much attention on maintaining the stability. This is usually the premise is that if you need security, if you need stability, you're going to have to wait. You don't have to basically engage people. You don't have to start a political transition or to democracy or any kinds of reforms of political participation or have some kind of cosmetic gestures like allowing women to drive or having those kinds of councils where people are appointed and selected based on certain conditions. So it doesn't really change the power structure. It doesn't really bring forth the grievances of people or prioritize their claims in the political agenda. And this is why you see so much of struggle in the region to have the voices heard and including the exodus of people, people coming out like Jamal and myself and others as well, who have chose to stay outside in order to pursue some kind of academic freedom in order to have some kind of a space to push those ideas to the community. Do you think that you said something about these councils and these women driving? Do you think maybe some of these more symbolic type of things could spark... I mean, in Saudi Arabia, for instance, with the whole women driving, you know that even though the government said, okay, women can drive, it's really a cultural kind of shift. So which comes first, the cultural shift or the government making some kind of gesture that will get people's minds thinking in that direction? So this is actually the root cause of everything, that everything can be, you know, the burden of explaining everything has to be that society is resistant and the government is willing to, right? But that really is a self-defeating argument because the society, including myself, I have been one of the women who have really lobbied for lifting the driving ban, for abolishing the male guardianship system. You know, all the women who have lobbied along myself and others are now imprisoned and we've cultivated this kind of presence. We've actually extended our goals to so many community figures and leaders. We've leveraged the capacity that we have in terms of the media, in terms of connections, networking. We've created over, I would say, ten years this kind of strong presence to influence the culture, to influence the decision making. About the cultural sub-subrogation of women as opposed to giving them, you know... I think this is what the societies have been trying to push for. I mean, you get to see all those people who are leading the societies, including Jamal, including others from the, you know, from those communities. And this is usually overlooked. You know, it's usually, you know, the only person who are, or the only people who are entrusted to lead a political transformation are the leaders. And this is not true, actually. The code for what was called kind of transformation had came from people. And unfortunately, they usually get, you know, to position zero. Every time they try to be... Every time they reach this kind of influence to change the cultural norms. Rabbi, when we talk about this idea of the, you know, model of redistribution mechanisms in which Arab economies were built, the report says it's unraveled. It seems as if part of the problem that's, you know, brought up here is that there hasn't been enough investment in the kind of human capital in the region. And it's more about, you know, giving subsidies and not being these kind of engines of dynamic job creation. How do you see it? And also, I do agree that there are issues with the quality of human capital that we raised earlier. But my biggest worry is indeed that we've got talented young individuals in the region and the statistics show we've got an enormous amount of brain drain of young people traveling to the U.S., to Europe and making the wonders of the Silicon Valley. But my sense is, even with the best fixes we can think of to the education system, if the motivation, if the demand for these skills is not rising, we won't fix it with just simply putting more resources into the education system. So I think it brings us back to the private sector, to the genuine nature of the private sector. Because these countries don't really have a very, I mean, maybe the UAE in Dubai, even though there's a lot of state-run enterprise, I feel like the private sectors in these countries are sluggish at best. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the report that's pointing to that is, I think deep down the issue at heart are the issue of the blurriness of the ownership structure in the region, which leads to the issues that I think were flagged in the report on the perceived colonialism and the blurry nature, the blurry distinction between public and private. So I think that is the sense of what could set the region on the new path and recognizing that empowering youth and women by giving them a chance to free our enterprise would be the way to go. And my sense is there are opportunities in the new tech, in the digital space. And when we look at the informal sector, 60, 70 percent of the population are employed in that informal sector. If only we could allow them, allow the youth to transact online to be freer in using digital payment and the like, we could see a new economy and a new sector emerge out of that informality which is on a collision course with the formal sector. And so I think there are hopes, there is talent, but there needs to be that tool coming from a more genuine private sector. Perry, talk to us about how these governments are going to regain this trust. There seems to be at the very heart because of these issues we're discussing a breakdown in the kind of social compact and the trust between. And I would say maybe trust wasn't so important back then. It's so important back in the day. And now, as a result of the Arab Spring and also of the kind of economy shifts that Marwan and Rabar are talking about, that there's this new emphasis on trust and it's not there. Right. How do they regain that? Well, I think fundamental to this, the report is this notion that leaders actually do have, leaders in societies have a choice here. That we do seem to be kind of stuck in this authoritarian trap where increasingly repressive measures are required just to kind of keep a lid on things. And I think what we've seen, whether it was Tunisia or Egypt, Syria, Yemen, eventually the top blows off. And I think we're seeing some worrying signs now that even Saudi Arabia, like that we could over time be headed towards greater instability. So I think the fundamental message we're trying to convey, and it's not us in Washington, it's really our network of dozens and dozens of scholars, Hala is one of our contributors. And what they are trying to convey is that leaders have a choice. You know, there's a saying, when's the best time to plan a tree? Well, it's 20 years ago or today. And so at some point, you know, this too shall pass. The question is, are leaders going to make decisions that start to turn things around now or do we have to wait another generation for yet another new crop of leaders who can finally see that you can't repress your way out of this, but eventually they'll have no choice because of exactly what the other panelists have been talking about. Rising demands of growing populations, the only way ultimately to keep pace with that is to start to make some of the changes that we in our report that the Arab human development reports and others have stated are so important. And Hala, I mean obviously citizen engagement here is going to be a big part. Yeah, one of the, well the idea, this is very worrying for me actually because the idea that, the new leaders in the region are actually using the criticism or even the constructive one as ways to rally support inside. So basically, instead of addressing the issue that at hand, exactly like Prince Zaid was mentioning, and instead of recognizing and addressing that there are some serious problems out there and we need to work on it, they're looking at it to expand their popularity at home and the diswise of nationalism, political institution that is based on identity rather than on ideals is very much gaining much of ground and it really defeats any kind of attempts to bush forth constructive criticism of civil society. I want to say something that maybe some people might take issue with but a lot of the people that you're hearing from today, I mean we've been talking about what is so horrible about what happened to Jamal but it could have happened to Hala, okay? And if you didn't have a leader like Jordan's King Abdullah or King Hussein or the kings that came before that if you had a different type of leadership in Jordan it could have easily been Marwan or Prince Zaid because some of the criticisms that they were offering early on were very similar but as Marwan said Jamal's criticism was moderate and in fact was almost trying to speak to the Saudis better angels I think in terms of, I called him a frenemy of the Saudis because he was trying to guide them with love and patriotism towards a better way and I feel that knowing Marwan as long as I have your criticism very early on you took some flak for it but you're still around and you're able to and you're seen as someone in the country that sometimes someone might roll their eyes and say oh that's Marwan but I think the kind of criticism that you've offered was taken with yes with a grain of salt but also with a dose of respect and so talk to us about Jordan you know most people think of Jordan as breaking the Arab mold it has peace with Israel it's got this pro-young American leader who rides a motorcycle and to what extent of the problems that you're discussing in this report corruption, authoritarianism, broken social contracts present in Jordan well we talk extensively in the report about the need for governance good governance unfortunately as you point out in the West the new leadership of the Arab world has traditionally been associated with just the new generation of old Arab leaders so it's Jaman Mubarak in Egypt so it's Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia so it's Seif al Islam in Libya and the list goes on these guys truly did not perform just because they speak good English just because they allow women to drive doesn't mean that they are putting in place a process of institution building in their own countries so my point is it is futile to depend on this kind of generation of leadership the leadership that we are witnessing today in the Arab world is coming from civil society it's not coming from the old generation or class of political elite the problem with civil society in the Arab world is that it's still not mature and Arab governments have not allowed civil society and political parties to emerge so that they produce you know seasoned leadership so we are in between and that is why we have such a trust gap that the report also talks about Arab public don't trust their government period you talk about the Palestinians there is no credibility for either the Mahmoud Abbas PNA or Hamas if you talk about Jordan there is no credibility about the institution including that of parliament can you believe that 95% of Jordanians could not name one achievement by their parliament one I mean you talk about approval ratings in the US this is by far by far worse than that so we do have a problem of leadership it is very difficult in the Arab world to talk about you know sharing power there are very few instances in the world where leaders share power willingly and so I understand the difficulty that the Arab world is facing what we are saying in the report is this the Arab world has two choices and two choices only either the headache of change or the cancer of the status quo there aren't third options and most Arab governments maybe all Arab governments with the exception of Tunisia are choosing the cancer of the status quo it's unbelievable something else we talk about in the report that has direct relevance to this all Arab governments are the principal employer of the workforce in their countries all of them okay that is one way by which they built sort of acquiescence among their publics in Jordan 42% of the workforce is employed by government talk about an inefficient system 42% so now we are at a stage where governments became too bloated too big and oil prices came way down so that governments can no longer employ more people they just don't have the financial means to do so what do they do, who picks up the slap it's the private sector but even if the private sector is empowered to employ more people they are not going to employ people who have no skills to be employed in the private sector so we go back to the education system you know you either teach people not just the technical skills to be employed but also the skills that we talked about in the first session people who can think for themselves people who are critical thinkers who are researchers who are communicators unless you do that and that comes at a price of course because these people are not going to accept anything their governments tell them but unless you do that you are not going to build we cannot talk about all these areas being interrelated we cannot talk about one area in isolation of the rest of the areas but unfortunately once again this message is not being internalized at the Arab world's own parent Reba it sounds to me that this is not a sustainable economic model yeah clearly not and you talk also you were the author of a recent World Bank report which spoke of the need to develop digital economies to jump start job creation for the youth so tell us talk to us a little bit about that and how do you move away from this kind of anemic economic model that Marwan is talking about so in the report we do speak about the so-called middle-income trap the idea and I think the report by the Carnegie and Domen does speak to this comparison between South Asia and the Middle East and clearly what has happened in the region is that the region got stuck got stuck at these middle income lower middle income status and the reason in my mind is that they haven't they have put so many obstacles in the ways of technology adoption so think about the manufacturing era in the region it didn't take off in Tunisia it didn't take off in most of the countries in the region because it got captured and by getting captured you create rents you don't create an impetus for innovation and the machine gets stalled and you're left behind so my sense is that there are government-induced lack of technology adoption which doesn't allow the region to create the kind of impetus for growth and inclusion of a talented workforce and if you contemplate what's ahead of the region is the potential for the forced industrial revolution and the leapfrogging that we see in some part of sub-Saharan Africa which much lower income per capita so the idea would be to release some of the obstacles that we see in the telecom sector in tech, in the digital payment so as to allow for these educated youth to try and take the horn of that potential leapfrogging and drive the region ahead so I think the region cannot be hoping for millions of jobs coming from some illusory billions of dollars investment in manufacturing suddenly from trickling down from Asia Asia is likely to cluster the manufacturing industry because of automation because it has a supply chain that's organized around it and the only path forward and yes, there are many people employed in the public sector but the vast majority in many countries are employed in the informal sector and this informal sector could gain in productivity could gain in market access if we were to unify by allowing much more affordable much better internet by allowing payment system to go digital like we've seen in Kenya and at the moment we have fragmented economies we have cities not trading with one another so even so those are relatively small markets if you look at each country specifically each city within the country is not trading with one another and we haven't even used this communication technology to unify this market and make them attractive to their own citizens who are living and again making the wonders of Silicon Valley and elsewhere and let alone attracting foreign investors because they don't look at this market as unified if you have 20 million population but it's a fragmented market nobody's going to be interested in coming in if you're Egypt you're 100 million and you suddenly unifying the market by allowing digital payment by allowing internet to connect everyone that's starting to become an interesting market and that speaks to the issue of contestability which the region badly needs I want to talk a little bit about Jamal but more in the frame of what it says about the region and the trajectory of the region in Saudi Arabia Hala why don't you kick us off on this I mean look we've talked about authoritarianism kind of you know I don't want to say on the rise making a resurgence I think because maybe we thought that there was you know some kind of democratic I call it the last stand authoritarianism the last what does it say what is this horrible murder of Jamal tell us about the trajectory of the region then of Saudi Arabia very much what we've learned so far that there is no space for critical voices even those critical voices were very moderate but we shouldn't look at Jamal's case as an isolation there has been like a trend going on we've seen that trend since Hamad bin Salman became crown prince and we should look at that as part of the regional new order the basically alliances with Egypt with UAE you know I think those kinds of alliances give some kind of impunity to the regime for us we always believed that the only free internet medium for social entrepreneurs for people to spread ideas and share them is the internet and there is more and more balls that actually control that for Jamal and others having a platform outside where there is some kind of a protection some kind of a political basically space for him to speak and to embrace and support and show solidarity for his ideas it just tells you that how fragile and vulnerable we are was even for people who were in a protected place in a place that should be more acknowledged and more I would say recognized these people are not protected so really speaks volume for the atrocities and the idea that the international community looks the other way around they're not actually there's a lot of checks for balances on the power Perry how do you think the US government should respond here on the case of Jamal there's a recommendation western governments limit arms sales to regional governments to constrain Middle East conflicts that's been renewed in the case of Jamal that this arms deal should not go through is that really likely to happen given the Trump administration's affinity I think there's several things that should happen the president has said that you don't break a strategic relationship and one that's central frankly to the world economy does he have a point and I was going to say he does have a point but on the other hand I think the first panel talked about the need for accountability so at least if the US is not going to support such an effort at least not to be an impediment to it is key you know I earlier to earlier question I talked about this idea of authoritarian stability being a mirage so I think for the United States and this is not I'm not singling out the Trump administration here but I think it should be a wake up call that yes there may be areas of convergence of interest between Saudi Arabia and the US and they should be explored but we need to kind of go into that wide and understand this is happening and it's not just about Jamal it's about in the context of a horrific war in Yemen it's in the context of the embargo of Qatar it's in the context of the kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister etc etc etc so you know I think it is time to have we talk about this in the conflict report it is time to have and written before this murder it's time to have a kind of new discussion if not by the administration and in Congress about you know the Middle East is the most militarized region in the world and the United States is the biggest arms sale or sales person of arms to that region you know is that really supporting US interests let alone regional interests so cutting the assist you know it's time to have a conversation how much support should the United States be given militarily to the conflict in Yemen on a political sense Marwan it seems as if the Trump administration is setting up a thing where like let's just do whatever we can to protect MBS you know there's some highly I think now the praise I'm hearing is highly likely that he knew about it whatever should the administration be protecting him at all costs for the sake of stability in Saudi Arabia or is this like a house of cards that is not really stable and they're going to pay the price later on I mean while at one level one would agree that given all the other things he's done of course but why would one would agree that nations pursue interests rather than values outside the territory at least don't ask people in the Middle East why do they, why do you hate us when something like this happens when President Trump comes out and says this is terrible but hey we have arms sales and we're going to stick to that very real policy but I'm saying if that is the route that nations want to take then don't ask why do the people hate the US in the Middle East don't expect people to believe you when you say you are about values and then you violate these values because of even few billion dollars of arms sales I mean I'm just talking real politics here look Prince Zaid was here in the you were not here at least and I think does he come across as a revolutionary does he come across as a threat to systems he's the nicest man in the world okay but he is very value driven but he is value driven these people are persona non grata and the Arab world Prince Zaid today is a persona non grata in all of the Arab world why why that's true you're kind of skirting the line I'm kidding now he's worse than me in other Arab states I'm getting there but but you have to ask yourself why is the Arab world not the Arab world is our Arab government so oblivious to the need for free speech to build not just pluralistic societies but stable societies you talk about stability I don't think the cause of stability is going to be served in the Jamal Khajog by being silent about it that's not stability that's short term stability we've seen what 2011 did short term stability stability that was implored by force Tunisia was the most police state in the region maybe in the world Egypt was a very deep state it did not prevent people from going to the street and trying to change their systems so this notion of artificial stability that comes through a authoritarian force is a notion that I think needs to be at a visit Rava talk about I want to open it up for questions talk about the correlation between short term economic and political stability versus the long term economic feasibility here like everyone's talking about oh we have to prop up and this is particularly the Saudi case but obviously it has regional implications we have to keep up NBS can't let anything happen to the regime because if the regime falls there'll be chaos in Saudi Arabia oil prices will fall and it'll be madness but talk about this in economic terms absolutely this is a great point there is such a thing as a tradeoff between risk and development so if you wish if you compare the Middle East Asia, East Asia in particular what you've seen is Latin America and East Asia faced enormous financial a set of financial crises economic crises of the kind because they experimented they did experiment with liberalization with opening market it's not perfect but they did tag along and develop the Middle East did come down on that tradeoff on basically taking no risk as a result they had very few financial crises full blown yes it is an unsustainable pass but they still have aid they still have ransom oil which is allowing them to keep going so on the risk part they did come down on zero tolerance to risk they didn't have any crisis but look at the development outcomes they've been very mediocre and productivity growth is very low so this I think reflect that very philosophy of regulation in the region which is no taking risks at any cost so when we see the regulation apparatus that has been rolled out in the region it's constantly about avoiding a banking crisis installing all sorts of initiative and that has a cost in terms of productivity of growth of not being a pool for talent and it has blocked the adoption of technology and it has relegated the region at I think at the bottom of the middle income status and they are at risk of falling further behind so regulation has to be completely rethought I think the report does speak to the issue and it has to allow for yes some prudential aspects and we know how important guaranteeing the financial stability of the banking sector is but that can't be at the cost of allowing for fintech allowing for the kind of e-commerce that we'd like to see in the region and the kind of innovation and the quality of services that I think the people in the region deserve and if I may I just want to add one point about the democracy aspect there are many benefits to democracy but one that is very important in the context of that talk about reform is that there are elements of self correction in democracy which are that if you get a crisis then the media the think tanks get to talk about what needs to be done to repair and the region has scored very low on disclosure of raw data which allow think tanks to be prepared to investigate and then of course journalists when they are allowed to operate they don't have access to the kind of expert report and let alone the raw data to support that kind of body of knowledge that would then translate into a public debate on reform this is true at the local level as well when there are crises with utilities in the region there is no informational feedback loop to complain about the quality of the services and then the provider to improve on the service so democracies have many benefits and the region has cut itself from that important feedback loop that I think the region needs to avoid drifting away further Halla one more question and then we are going to open it up so you have and we keep using the Saudi example but again applicable I think in the particular case of Muhammad bin Salman it's very pronounced so you have someone who is seen as a moderate and he is for women's rights and part of the whole drive behind allowing women to drive was an economic consideration because these women are going to go to jobs and they need to drive themselves and it was so but the idea I think the problem is now we see that a lot of these reforms or a lot of the vision of this 2030 vision or whatever is being done by force so how do you not sacrifice the advances that women could actually are women truly benefiting if it's done through these kind of force I mean he's basically saying you're going to reform or else yes definitely I am one of those people who supported vision 2030 for instance let me just add to that you've been very outspoken on the need to end the male guardianship system you would think it would take like a whole cultural thing but what if he says I'm signing a decree today I think that's exactly what's the effect of that would be exactly the same as the effect when the announcement of the driving ban happened where you go and see people are celebrating it inside Saudi Arabia contrary to the notion that the society is resistant but it was not resistant at least some part of the society were not resistant because it's not enforced it's actually removing restrictions on women's autonomy or mobility which is needed for the economy I would I'm very happy if the vision 2030 have materialized and you know we have any kinds of deliverables which really is forsaken because of the you know regional insecurity and the leadership crisis I don't think we are actually following vision 2030 we are looking for dynamics of a society where is the dynamic society and how can you create this dynamic society without paying attention to the you know the organic voices of people again how can people find places where they can prioritize their claims where they can voice their grievances I mean in such you know risk taking at least in forcing taxes basically withdrawing the subsidies and the social protection from a whole group of people including the women who are not 70% of the beneficiaries of the social welfare system are women so when you're trying to push for that yes women will definitely be able to more women will be able to go into the workforce but how those women will be able to handle any kinds of other restrictions or restrictions inherent in the work system that is not designed necessarily to sponsor or to support women's needs so I think this is one of the major elements that the voices of people and the channels who people to safely express their needs is not existent and of course vision 2030 is perfect on paper but you look now at the predictability of the political environment and how is that actually scaring all the investments and really putting the hope on everything that has been said okay we're going to open it up to questions if you could state your name and affiliation keep your question short and to a question we'll go to this gentleman right here my name is Kani Zulam I'm with the American Kurdish Information Network my question is about Khashoggi if it had happened the tragedy that visited him had happened let's say in December 2014 when Erdogan's relationship with King Abdullah was very tight when King Abdullah died he declared a national mourning day in Turkey but we have heard about this Mr. Khashoggi two I wonder what do you make of this football between Erdogan and MBS over the death of Khashoggi yeah I think that's really interesting Marwan this kind of Hala should address this question Hala go ahead it just speaks to the rivalry in the region there is a new social order or regional order that is being shaved and every country is trying to push the other basically to compete for it and the Khashoggi's case has been used actually as a bargaining issue between states and I think in Turkey and Saudi Arabia we're not going to be able that's why we call when everyone is calling for international independent investigation into the case and having some kind of measures that these things will never happen again which of course is relying on the leadership whether this would have happened in 2014 I think I'm not sure about the responses but we have seen things have happened you know before the Khashoggi's case the round up of people the Yemen war with thousands of casualties and we haven't seen any kinds of interferences I'm not sure is it because of the media sentiment or because Mohammed bin Salman has invested so much in the media and somehow invited this kind of attention to everything related to Saudi Arabia that the case of Khashoggi became more of an irony right so I'm not sure if in 2014 it would have set an alarm but of course in 2014 there were so many incidents around the Arab world this area I think it was you know heartbreaking thing and people did not take any stand or reflect on these things can I add to that yeah I mean everyone really seems to have the sword at I would pose the question differently had Erdogan said what you know what he said about Khashoggi during his first term people would have listened more Erdogan is the last person today to talk about democracy in the region and that doesn't of course you know he's playing a political game obviously more than standing up for democratic rights and Mr. Khashoggi's rights in particular and I think you know a lot of people felt that when he came up with the statement yesterday they felt that he wasn't really saying telling the whole truth he was just playing as Prince Erdogan said the chess game with Saudi Arabia right here this gentleman right here and then the woman in front Steve Winters independent consultant I'm concerned that the image of Khashoggi that's being portrayed here and I heard his editor at the post speak and I can understand the depth of her feeling and appreciation for him but I don't feel from what I hear that it's being accepted in the rest of the world and this is what I wanted to get the response of the panel from this mainly the idea that this is just a journalist speaking truth to power the argument from some other parts of the world is no this was somebody in the highest levels of power himself and involved with various princes in Saudi over years and involved in the struggle against MBS at the moment which is basically a struggle at the highest levels of Saudi society so for example to portray it as simply someone who's against authoritarianism I don't think people are going to buy this and in particular for example President Putin at the recent Valdai discussion group in Sochi person was in the elite he was at the pinnacle of power not to justify his killing but the point is it's not so to speak an innocent journalist per se it's someone involved in power struggles at the top of Saudi society I mean people forget that yes on one hand Jamal Khazoggi at one point was the head of the information bureau of the Saudi embassy in Washington so he was somebody right up there but that does not mean that because he was at one point in power that people are accepting today the way he was murdered and if you look at Arab newspapers I mean outside the Gulf Arab newspapers are almost unanimously condemning what has happened again yes you might question his motives at one point or another but nobody is questioning the gruesome way in which he was killed and killed on Saudi soil basically in the consulate and I mean here is someone right here who used to be in the upper echelons of power and thought decided that there were issues that he wanted to write about that doesn't mean that he doesn't still support the government those of us who knew Jamal I don't think he never called for the overthrow of the regime never not at all but I just want to add one thing to the question I think the thing that makes Jamal unique is his influence so I think that speaks to the intensity of the political leadership and trying to force their own agenda I think one of the articles of Jamal Khashoggi the one where he said that why the US should push for an inclusion of the Muslim Brotherhood Muslim Brotherhood has been like one of the main objectives to execute and to target and persecute they were actually named as terrorist organization in the Arab countries I think the minute they realized that he has enough influence to push the idea that Muslim Brotherhood are legitimately allowed to engage in politics in the Arab world and not to be persecuted I think that would set to the tone for more aggressive targeting of Jamal and I mean that didn't mean he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood he just said that you can't exclude the political conversation excuse me hi my name is Hiba Kehle thank you so much for speaking my question is you mentioned the phrase the cancer of the status quo versus the headache of change do you think countries like Jordan are kind of worried of pushing the status quo too much out of fear of what would happen of what the consequences would be and a fear of kind of becoming that instability of being like the countries around them and if so how would you overcome that obstacle of rocking the boat too much out of fear of what would happen if you didn't countries like Jordan I mean I've been a first hand witness to this what happens is that systems the political elite build layers around them of patronage so that this is one form of achieving loyalty and when you reach a stage where we are at today in Jordan where like I said the governments are too big the IMF is at our throat we have to do some economic reforms etc and the system starts to contemplate change it is confronted by the layer that the system itself created okay which is either unwilling or unable to make change because these are the product of the patronage system they are there not because of their necessarily their competence but because of the patronage system they have no interest in changing even if the king says I want to change and I've witnessed that very very closely in Jordan where the principal opponents of reform were the people around the king himself who just were not interested in any kind of reform now how sustainable is this it's not sustainable what is the way to get out of this trap you know I try within government I no longer feel that it is possible from within government but that's what's happening in most of the Arab world we have created our own resistance resistance to reform there's no economic incentive in the short term and you don't think and it's like almost these leaders think I can see the long term gains but the short term benefit I might lose power can I mention anecdote I know Ambassador Pickering wants to I'd like to mention this anecdote because it's very telling of how the system works in a country like Jordan many other countries around the Arab world when the king was contemplating reform in 2005 and I was at the top of head of a national committee to come up with a blueprint for political, economic and social reform I went to complain to the king that the resistance we were facing were mostly from people he appointed people in the senate that he appointed so he asked me to call in the most hard line of them to talk to them and I did so he starts to talk about the need for reform that this is not going to be one group at the expense of others that everybody will gain that the middle class will enlarge that the pie will get bigger for everyone but the etc so one of them says to him almost verbatim says your majesty we have always been with you and we hope your majesty that we will always stay with you but you are we are not with the people around you because they are trying to implement introduce a very concept dangerous concept to Jordanian political life listen to what the dangerous concept is prioritizing merit over loyalty and I said to him at the time the two are mutually exclusive but that is exactly the philosophy behind the state you give us privileges we are loyal we are with you you start talking about merit we hope we will stay with you maybe building on this to really make the point on how difficult it is to reform in the region when we think about fuel subsidy a very heated topic in the region we often come at it saying those fuel subsidies are wasteful and we should just do away with them but when you look at the political economy of fuel subsidy reform you realize that in fact the informal sector and the invisible as I like to call them the people who are actually catering to poor people so poor people transporting poor people have stepped in while the government failed on public transportation and we at times ask those very people who have responded to this failure of the state to actually be cut and in a sense we get this backlash on subsidy reform and we don't seem to understand them I think we should be holding government responsible for having failed to deliver on public transportation and not punish the people who have actually stepped in so the difficulty I think even here in Washington we have to understand the deeply rooted nature of that social contract and the fact that people have responded the informal sector has responded to this failure is I think an important piece of of debate to have also here in Washington and change our ways Ambassador Pickering Thank you very much Tom Pickering I work for Hills and Company I've listened with great attention and I mean no offense by this conclusion because I understand the conclusion represents a balance of the problems about 85% of the conversation has been on causal factors and they're not irrelevant and 15% has struggled in my view without much result with the solutions to the problem and I understand why and I understand how develing that is and among the causal factors that I think Marwan in particular has mentioned and the oil price decline about which I'm not terribly certain because it goes up and down and we'll see and maybe fracking will be a gift to the Middle East over time the second piece that I think there in causal factors is a studious disinterest in your conversations up until now to extra regional factors and maybe this is entirely correct the United States in some ways the old champion of democracy has now shredded it Very point Ambassador The other point that I think we entirely missed that's no secret the secret is that many of these states institutionally are Muchabarat states guess who funds and pays for the Muchabarat a large share of it is not oil income but from the outside and we certainly have an enormous amount of influence so I'm asking you whether that external influence there with the Muchabarat factor but also Jamal Khashoggi should not die just for nothing and in many ways the use of assassination is a weapon of state policy particularly external to its own territory is something that in a minimal way for everybody should be a center and focus of attention which has escaped us for the moment but maybe there is a remedy in that direction that we should not exclude so one of these is bad advice from intelligence agencies to other intelligence agencies particularly to fail to miss what I think is Marwan's most salient conclusion that a headache is a lot better than cancer so would you comment on those questions are there other ways to turn causal factors around either by their elimination or by their constructive use to get to the answer of the 15% problem which is 95% of why we're here Ambassador thank you so much Perry why don't you start Well in a sense Ambassador I think you've put your finger exactly on the challenge we've struggled with through the entire quality of this project which is how do you encourage reform of the system which fundamentally doesn't want to be reformed in which the beneficiaries or the losers in those reform are precisely the people we're talking about in power now we start with the premise I would say largely that ultimately it's going to be the region and the people of the region the leaders of the region that ultimately are going to find the way out of this but we are certainly not the fact that actions by the U.S. and other outside actors create this environment which basically perpetuates all of these kind of pathologies that we're talking about so you know I think from an American perspective I'll let others talk from a regional perspective it's the kind of Hippocratic approach of first do no harm and you know I'm not sure from this administration we're necessarily going to get that level of reflection at this moment but you know I think what's interesting to me in the response to Hashogshi's horrific assassination is now there are bipartisan voices on Congress saying hey wait a second let's go back to first principles whether it's arm sales I'm not sure human rights promotion is going to go to the top of the list in Congress but certainly arm sales the militarization of kind of U.S. foreign policy the atrophying of U.S. diplomacy institutions of diplomacy you know I think one of the others panelists here mentioned if there's a glimmer of light in his death it may be a reminder that this notion of authoritarian stability is mirage there. I think the problem with the Muhabarat is not only that they have excessive powers and they certainly over the years have acquired a lot of power to the point where the other arms of the executive are not the principle decision makers but the other real problem is you don't have an address to go to when you want to talk reform you know you go and talk to the government they agree with you you go and talk to the king he agrees with you but then nothing happens on the ground because the people who you need to talk to don't want to talk are completely invisible but then it's not authoritarianism then is it and it is a mirage well it's you know I keep the IMF the World Bank others keep asking me what they should do I don't know what you can do because you are talking to the wrong people you are talking to the wrong people if you want things to happen you need to find a way to talk to the Muhabbarat because these are the people who you need to convince not the government and not the royal court many times it's a real problem which is why which is why this report we struggled to find success stories because we did not want it to be an analytical report we wanted to point out to what needs to be done and to success stories and there are success stories in the report but they remain islands they remain islands and you know and I'm afraid things will stay this way for a while please can you introduce yourself I'm on Asfari Asfari Foundation I think the US and the west ambassador has a role to play so I just give you an example because I'm deeply involved in this issue there are voices right now MBS, MBZ in the Gulf who are saying we should rehabilitate Assad again and we should bring him back from the cold because stability is more important for us in the region than having chaos they fear the influence of Turkey the Islamist and the argument that they're making to this administration is in a way if you want to curb Iran's influence in the region you want to strengthen him because now he's beholden to the Iranians so if he is strengthened and he's brought back to the Arab fold he will he will have the power to over time be able to win himself from Iranian support so these are these are live conversations taking place right now where there is leadership in the Gulf that is going to change and that once that is completely oblivious to the social contract that has been broken completely in Syria after 50 years of atrocity from a family they want to reinstate that same social contract because they are worried about the change and some voices in this administration so we talk about the importance of the some voices in this administration are saying well maybe we should change the world so there is a very very pivotal role to the world community at large to understand that this change is not going to go away I mean this these voices what has caused the Arab Spring there were real forces that caused the Arab Spring people then capitalized on them you have radicals from both sides you have different forces that fueled the militarization many voices which is amazing right now that I'm hearing from the Arab voice they just want to mask this completely and completely erase it and say let's move on because the price for that is instability so this is where we absolutely need western leadership thank you sir any other questions we'll kind of finish finish it up in the back and then I'm going to ask the panelists to have a closing thought I don't have a question rather than I have comments that as Marwan has said now that we have certain kind of government in all Arab boards and you have the civil society and in between there's nothing so here I think where the west can jump in the way they did in Saudi Arabia to rule the rule from attending the conferences financial conferences there should be third party interference for security of the area and the only third party interference is the money all the Arab leaders they think they believe strongly that their legitimacy is from having good connection with US with France with the G5 forever but not from the people and if this countries they don't push for reform inside this Arab world we will reach where Marwan is saying that there's no way out extremes will come, revolution will come it's number one, number two the same people who are investing at the Arab boards they are trying to say with the Arab dictator they are trying to say we are reformist it doesn't work so I think there should be some norms from the business community to say if this happening at this Arab board we will not go for the oil field we will not be partnered with X or Y good point, thank you alright so yeah go ahead I just want to close the remarks so I think what we'll do is I mean those were those that's a very good point I think to close on so I think what we'll do is we'll ask each of our panelists for a closing thought maybe in a more as the ambassador suggested prescriptive way in terms of how we can take the discussion that we had and look forward towards one or two concrete suggestions again the report does have recommendations and I encourage you to read the report but let's just close with a forward looking at what we thought to bring us home one thing I keep coming back to is if we were having this discussion say 40 years ago talking about Southeast Asia we might be saying the situation is hopeless we've got kind of civil war spilling over boundaries we've got international interventions we have repression human rights atrocities something happened somewhere along the way and if you fast forward 40 years forward basically not to say that those countries don't have problems but you've seen some of the fastest human development in history has occurred so as we were struggling with this problem set there was a reminder that Europe 100 years ago was hopeless and now they've gone through a period the Balkans accepted where they had decades of the peace so at some point things will turn around the conflicts will burn out the question is are leaders going to kind of seize and their populations seize the opportunities they have now or are we going to be talking about this problem set 10 years from now 20 years from now 30 years from now so there is hope indeed and it reminds me of that interesting analogy between what happened with Nike and Starbucks and the controversy that we're associated with some of the discrimination that had happened in some of the Starbucks and the response of the CEO of this major brand was that they stood by the principle and they showcased that they were changing they were adopting a rule that adhere to their consumer base which were this youth the millennia and my sense is similar to what we've seen in the Arab Spring the youth in the region have values they intend to stand up for these values some may have louder voices deeper pockets but at the end of the day I think understanding that they will be driving the agenda and they are moved by principle is an important reminder that the person who we should be talking to are the youth notwithstanding what the others loud voices are so maybe more programs for youth empowerment in the region definitely agree with what the ambassador was mentioning I was actually discussing this with Terry just before our session that there is very much limited prospect on what to do as health professional I would say we're always looking at enabling framework what kind of enabling factors that could conduce basically positive leadership or good governance unfortunately because we're living in a world I think even if Jordan had the political will to change I think being situated in a place that forces we've seen that we've seen for instance in any crisis the coalition for instance you know all the other countries in the region would call on their allies to stand on their side and this is very difficult to have if countries are treated individually because Jordan would definitely stand with Saudi Arabia Kuwait would stand with Saudi Arabia Qatar being isolated would go to Iran so I would say that the U.S. government in treating the region should not take sites should not say we're going after you know coalition or alliances with the Saudi UAE group you know and basically forsake the Iranian interests in the region this is not conductive and I said to anything and I think we need to have more of a holistic approach enabling framework what does the media do the media has been really great job highlighting the abuses just because of the incident of Jamal Khashoggi but this has not been done quite well on Yemen or in Syria I mean I feel like we're picking up on the some aspects of it and not the root causes yeah I just opened you know the debate around that so I think we need more of an enabling environment and this enabling environment would engage the media would engage the business as we've seen now as a reflection would you create that enabling environment basically creating more awareness across so for instance the IMF the roles of other international communities that actually create those kinds of incentives for leaders to lead should have more role should not treat the systems as existing status quo and we should really work individually according to what the political leadership want they should have some more incentives in that regard very briefly this report has a long shelf life it is not a report that will become obsolete next month we try to look down the road try to point out like I said to some success stories but also point out to major areas that need work in the future so that's the main point I wanted to make I also want to thank in particular Aiman and Sousa and Asfari from the Asfari Foundation who have provided very generous support for us to do this work over the course of three years and in which we worked with dozens of experts from the region this is also in my view the importance of this report it is not a Washington sort of centric report it's a report that comes from the region it's the region telling us what needs to be done in these major five areas and finally I want to pay special tribute to Peri Kaman who has been the coordinator of this project over three years who has had to deal also with the dozens of people from Washington Beirut and the rest of the Arab world who has done I think an outstanding job in the quality that you will see and hopefully agree with very much Thank you very much everybody