 So, we have now by my count reached 65 participants in attendance, which I think constitutes a full house, whether we're online or North Great Georgia Street, so I think we can proceed. Welcome, welcome to this brave new world of zoom diplomacy and webinars. I'm very happy today to welcome a distinguished panel of speakers, three ambassadors of Ireland to three very different parts of the world to discuss how COVID-19 is playing out in their respective regions, the implications of COVID-19 and the responses both in their host states and the wider regions that they represent. I'd like to introduce our three speakers. First of all, we have Fanula Quinlan, ambassador of Ireland to Kenya, joining us from Nairobi today. Secondly, we have Julian Clare, ambassador of Ireland to the Republic of Korea, joining us from Seoul. And finally, Barbara Jones, ambassador of Ireland to Mexico, joining us at 7am local time from Mexico City. Welcome all and looking forward to our end discussions today. We're going to kick it off with some introductory remarks from our three panelists, giving us a little bit of an overview of the situation regarding COVID-19 in their host states and also the wider regions. I'd like to go to Fanula, first of all, for the view from Nairobi, Fanula. Good idea to unmute first. Thanks so much, Mary, and let me start by saying thank you so much to the IIEA for hosting us today and giving us an opportunity to reflect on the impacts of COVID in our various regions. I thought I might start by drawing out some common themes, although you'd appreciate with a content of 54 very different countries. You may have to indulge me somewhat, but I'll make just a few points I suppose to frame the discussion. The first thing I would say is that Africa is behind the curve when it comes to the number of cases that we're seeing. While Africa has 17% of the world's population, we currently have 2% of the cases. Also, COVID arrived here substantially later. The first case was on February 14th in Egypt, and Lesotho became the last African state last week to declare its first COVID case. Health systems as a rule are much weaker here, even South Africa, which we would think has the strongest, and does indeed have the strongest public health system in Africa, has only 1,000 ICU beds for a population of 56 million people, while Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, has none. Governments here also, everywhere in the world, governments are making extraordinarily difficult decisions between public health and the economies. Here, that's even more difficult because we live on this continent, 8 out of 10 workers approximately work in the informal sector. They're really very reliant on their daily wage or their weekly wage to sustain their families. There's really no room, no room for shocks, very little room for resilience there. Of course, with job losses, shrinking resources, and so forth, those vulnerable people are even more vulnerable now as a result of COVID. But first, let me talk a little bit about those low transmission rates that I mentioned at the outset. The WHO released some research last week that showed the virus is spreading much more slowly in Africa. They predict about a quarter of a billion people will contract the disease over the coming year, but that far fewer of them will die. They note that Africans travel less, that they're younger, the average age in the continent is barely 20, and also that they're less likely to be obese and suffer from lifestyle-related diseases that plague some of the wealthier countries. But in terms of those low case rates, I guess if you look at Kenya, initially modeling would have predicted that we'd be at about 30,000 cases by now, whereas in fact we haven't yet reached a thousand, and that's out of about 40,000 people tested. So low testing certainly seems to be playing a role, rather. In Africa as a whole, it's estimated there's been about a million people tested. Compare that to Wuhan, where authorities plan on testing 11 million citizens in two weeks. But the WHO does think also that there's more to it than low testing rates, and they feel that there are cultural, developmental, and other structural elements that are playing a role in the lower transmission rates. And it's very likely actually that the very swift action by many African governments, the very swift way in which they introduce containment measures, have really helped to hold the spread. In Rwanda, for example, we saw that within days of having their first case, they'd shut down airports closed and so forth. Ethiopia, Uganda were very quick with contact tracing and isolation. South Africa sent 30,000 health workers out to communities to survey 15% of their population in a really short space of time. It's also worth bearing in mind, I suppose, that a lot of African countries have experience of infectious diseases, and particularly if we think of Ebola, very contagious diseases also. So in Liberia, a country that's desperately poor, and we might have expected to see really devastated by this, they very quickly rolled out their existing protocols and guidelines for Ebola to respond to COVID. And the same in countries bordering the DRC. Compare that to France and the US, which now only four months on, they're starting to introduce contact tracing. And while it's true that many, many African governments acted very quickly, there's a few notable exceptions. So Madagascar's president, for example, has been peddling herbal tea as a cure. Tanzania's president was very interested in that cure, and he's also recently claimed that papaya samples have tested positive for coronavirus. Just this weekend, he went to church and told the population that, you know, COVID was now, COVID numbers were coming down significantly, they're going to allow tourists back into the country. And in fact, the country hasn't released any data in three weeks, but there's anecdotal evidence of a huge increase in deaths. And last weekend, Kenya closed their border with Tanzania out of concern for just this danger. Talking about containment, of course, on the flips on the good side, it has helped contain the virus. On the negative side, it has led to a lot of human rights abuses. So police and security officers in enforcing these lockdowns in Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and elsewhere are accused of really of killing and beating people to enforce these restrictions. And of course, in Africa, as we've seen elsewhere, gender-based violence and domestic violence are increasing. I mentioned at the outset that health systems and of course the environment here also have a role to play. So what was very interesting, I was talking to the head of the WHO here last week and he told me that 75% of people testing positive are asymptomatic. They don't know at all that they're sick. Now, there's no data to suggest why this is the case, but scientists are kind of positing that it may be because, again, African people tend to have higher experience and exposure to infectious diseases, and therefore they're better able to withstand the disease. At the same time, Africa suffers from a much higher burden of TB, malaria and other diseases and there's a danger now that people won't go to hospitals for treatment, they won't go for routine immunizations and so forth because they're afraid of COVID. And of course, you know, public health officials are worried about a return of polio and various other things because people aren't going to get treatment. And living conditions here also are very different and pose significant challenges. Hundreds of millions of families live in slums or informal settlements. Nairobi, where I am talking to you from today is a city of 5 million people, almost 60% of whom live in these slums. And there you might find anything, you know, between 5 to 10 people sharing a room and no running water. Families will spend a huge amount of their income on water and shared latrines and so forth. So very poor sanitation, you know, really living cheek by jowl, almost impossible to social distance. A few, just two final points I'll make. One is on food security. Even before COVID broke out, more than a quarter of a billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa were food insecure. And that's as a result of economic shocks, climate, conflict and so forth. Obviously, COVID is now really exacerbating that, not least as a result of border closures and lockdowns which are halting the supplies of seeds and fertilizers to farmers. Bear in mind, 60% of Africa depends on farming for their income and also food imports. At the same time, you know, we're seeing currency depreciation, falling prices for cash crops, falling revenues from stalled industries like oil and tourism. And so in response, many governments are introducing social safety protection programs, so cash transfers to vulnerable populations to allow them to buy food, at least the basics. And last week, the governor of the Kenyan Central Bank said this is the biggest challenge facing certainly the Kenya, the country I'm in, in more than a century. Across the continent, trade is down by about a third. And so facilitating, trying to facilitate safe trade is obviously really, really important. But the picture is grim, but there's also some positives that we may see in terms of the ability for manufacturers to adapt as they're doing in Kenya. We've seen a big increase in, you know, the production of masks and PPE and sanitizers and so forth. And then also the government governments are being encouraged now to go digital in terms of trade, which longer term could boost competitiveness. My last word is kind of a worrying one as well. It's in terms of security and anti-terrorism. Violent tax in this region have gone up by a third in the month to mid-April. So ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Shabaab have all said that they see this crisis as an opportunity to increase their terror, you know, to really roll out their terror agenda. Of course, at the same time, African governments like elsewhere in the world are, you know, refocusing their military to pandemic response. And therefore, there may be these risks that, you know, terror organizations will take advantage of that. And of course, we also know peacekeepers and others are being rotated out because of COVID. So there is a real risk that the games we've made could be rolled back across all of those different indicators. But maybe I'll stop there and happy to take questions later. Thank you very much, Fanula. So the picture you paint is, you know, at the beginning when COVID-19 hit Europe in particular, there was a lot of concern about what may happen when we started seeing cases in Africa as a continent. So you've painted a picture that has positives, but also negatives, particularly in the long-term economic impact and the security impact. Julian, if we could turn to you. You know, you're in Seoul. South Korea was held up as an example of how to handle COVID-19 fairly well, given all the unpredictability of this. That has had a bit of a reality check just recently because we see the emergence of the new clusters, et cetera. What is your view on how South Korea has handled this and how this may play out in the future? Well, thank you. I would say very well, it's not just embassy bias. There was the outbreak recently in the nightclubs, but they jumped in it very, very fast. I mean, Korea has won a lot of praise. 66 countries and 23 international organizations have sought Korea's advice. The future could be a very good meeting. President Moon, the telephone meeting on the 4th of May. And Korea's approach basically, it merges transparency in dealing with the public, constant information, text messaging. Some people argue almost too much information and come back to that issue. It's a bit of a privacy and so on, but an innovation of technology. And so it rests on the three pillars, mass testing, contact tracing, and quarantine treatment. Korea has conducted more than 750,000 tests since January and it does about 5,000 a day. When things were very bad in February, it was doing 10 to 15,000 a day. And what it also does is it puts up makeshift centers when you open outbreaks. So rather than bringing people into hospitals, what you see around the town, and it's been fascinating to see this, somebody living here, independently of the new embassy, just to be living here, these kind of improvised test centers, drive-in test centers, literally, like my dollars. But where you get tested in 10 minutes, the results are available within hours. The tester is separated physically from the person who's been tested. And it's extraordinary. It also keeps, it prevents hospitals from having to be disinfected. It protects basically health workers and the people being tested. That's the big testing thing here. But the other side of it, of course, is this contact contact tracing, which of course is an issue that we're all interested in. Basically in Korea, text messengers are sent to the public with anonymous information on cases. And so actually, just before, I hope it won't happen when we're speaking now, your phone goes off quite often and it will tell you of a case in your locality. And you can then check the path the person who has tested positive has taken. In other words, they're kind of, if you like, they're odyssey through shops, bars, restaurants, convenience stores, nightclubs, and so on. And if you were there at that time, then of course you come forward and you get tested. And if you are tested positive, and then of course your movements are traced and so on. Now, there are, some people have raised concerns in terms of privacy, but in fairness, there are snapback provisions. And there's a very strong public sense that in Korea that these are, these are temporary measures, you know, dealing with the public health emergency. The third pillar is treatment, where confirmed cases are sent, if it's a serious case, of course, to hospital, but if it's not such a serious case in temporary facilities. Now, of course, it's a, by and large, as you mentioned the reality check, Mary, but it has overall been a very successful story. But it didn't seem so three months ago. And at that stage, cases were rocketing. And after the, the kind of the was now famous or infamous patient number 31, there were 2300 cases in 10 days. New cases were appearing at a rate of 800 or 900 new cases per day. But through mass testing, contact tracing, quarantine, treatment and social distancing, Korea, it brought it down, it brought down in really very short amount of time, the number of new cases by 90%, number of new cases each day by 90%. Basically, Korea went from having the second highest incidence at that time of COVID-19 in the world to the 43rd, where it is now. So basically took about two weeks in early March, combining those things, the mass testing, the contact tracing, the quarantine, treatment, social distancing. Took about two weeks in early March to go from 800 new cases a day to fewer than 100. Nearly four weeks later, on the 15th of April, Korea held parliamentary elections, which were, you know, they had protocols like social distancing, taking temperatures, hand sanitizers, clothes for gloves. But in those elections, people thought maybe they'd have to be postponed, but in those elections 29 million people voted the highest turnout since 1992. So basically, yes, what Korea did was it provided a kind of a template for flattening the curve. Bill Gates referred to an interview last night as bending the curve, as he announced funding for two Korean organizations for big data tracking of COVID-19 and for work on a medical treatment. And in fact, one of the companies, one of the beneficiary companies, SK Bioscience, is a kind of a cousin company of SK Biotech, who's a major foreign direct investment source in Korea in Ireland. Just to say briefly, just on the Korean example, because I know as you say, Mary, it is one that has provoked great interest. One of the reasons for success has been the lessons learned from the bruising experience of MERS in 2015. At the time, the, in fact, the current president, President Moon, the leader of the opposition was, as many others were, deeply critical of the approach of the time in terms of lack of transparency, lack of kids and so on. And response was really in Korea, an accelerated program to develop kids, new CCTV footage, geolocation data and so on. So when COVID-19 struck, Korea was ready to go with a network of 96 public and private laboratories to test for COVID-19. In fairness to Korea, because I think it has won many admirers, but there is an important cultural point, which I'm sure many people today in the audience would have seen, is that sometimes there has been a tendency to say, well, this has been down to the Confucian culture and it's a very obedient society and so on. But a lot of commentators have said, this actually sells Korea short. It's a very reductive analysis, because the reality is that in fact Korea is almost, I don't say like a hyper-democracy, in that it's got a very strong culture of protest, whether it's political demonstrations or whether it's one person with a megaphone outside his former office of employment, whatever. Because frankly people in this country fought hard for their freedom in the 1980s and in fact two days ago marked the 14th anniversary of a terrible massacre of demonstrators in Guangzhou in 1980 seeking freedom, which the country secured in 1987 through its own bravery. So the way this argument about the people in Korea follow the advice because it's an obedient society is actually really, really most unfair and the reality is, is that the more persuasive reason for the success of the containment measures in this country is that basically the government acted convincingly on the public respecting the device. The last thing I just say just in terms of Korea is, again, just to put its social distancing achievements into perspective. Same measures, you know, standing apart, temperature checks, working from home and so on, but in many ways it's more striking in this country because, because of population density. Korea has a population density of 503 people per square kilometer. The EU 27 collectively have a population density of 117 people per square kilometer and then you add the fact that 70% of Korea is mountainous and then beyond that you add the fact that this is a very social culture, very social country where people, you know, it's very unusual to eat alone, people, you know, people, workers dying together, lunchtime and so on. So in many ways social distancing has required, has required an even greater effort here. So the last thing I'll say is that of course, for Nulu to talk about economic impacts, here of course, you know, not so much but still almost half a million jobs lost, biggest loss of 20 years, exports so far may have compared to last year but there are encouraging signs in the sense of Korea has provided a very effective template in terms of early action to deal with COVID-19 both in terms of harnessing technology but also winning public trust. Not every lesson is replicable everywhere. I think they accept that but I think Korea is keen in a multinational framework to share its lessons which is deeply encouraging and I think there's a lot we can all take from this. It has been a great privilege, great fortune to be living here in this time and then just to say, look, it's difficult to stop the whole region, you know, I know obviously it's very, very perfect throughout the region but perhaps we can certainly come to that more in the Q&A. Thank you very much. Excellent, thank you for that overview Julian and to turn now to Barbara in Mexico City and Barbara, you are a master to Mexico of course. Your brief also means that you represent Ireland in other countries across the region including Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Cuba and very different countries, very different contexts and perspectives etc and so the floor is yours to give us a flavor of what it, how this is played out not just in Mexico but more regionally. Yeah, super, Mary and thank you very much for echoing the colleagues comments about the benefit of this sort of pooling of ideas. I think listening to to Finula and Julian, you have a real sense of that we're here now the epicenter of where Julian was talking about earlier earlier times in in February and in March. So the Americas, the Americas, Mexico's in North America, the Americas are now the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the world, in this wave, if the world trans organization is right, this wave may just wash across the Pacific and roll again through, please God not. So what we're looking at here at the Americas is obviously the US as the lead 1.5 million cases, 90,000 people have died so tragically in the United States. Then in Latin, in the Latin part of America we have the Brazil in the lead with the 250,000 plus cases and that's 50% of the cases in Latin America are in Brazil and 17,000 deaths approximately based on official figures. Then we're looking at in terms of the death count which is of my goodness who would have ever thought about thinking about this part of the world in that way. But Canada follows Brazil in the Americas with 6,000 deaths followed by Mexico and Peru with a fairly relatively speaking a modest amount. So what you have here in the Americas is all of the interconnections that flow from migration, remittances, the intra and interdependencies of the region being highlighted and brought to really to the surface here. For example, one of the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 in Central America and in Mexico is the disproportionate impact of this of the COVID-19 in the United States on the Hispanic and the African American community remittances on the floor, wiping out the essential lifeline for poor, as Vinula says, a great dependency on the informal economy in all of these countries and a dependency as in Ireland for decades and decades for generations on the money coming from America. So what we're looking at here, I mean at the top line, obviously a great variation and I was talking to Paul Gleason, Alison Milton is now our Ambassador to Colombia and we've been there, Jackie and Barry Tumulty and Sean Hoy just in prepping for this. We're a small group, five countries, six offices. And what's a common theme on this is the public health crisis on masking a social crisis that was there already of inequality and poverty. For example, in Mexico, I would just highlight one figure, a brilliant group Coneval bringing out her study last Monday saying that as a result of COVID-19, 10 million, one zero million more people will join the lines of extreme poverty in Mexico. So the devastating on the social side, let's broadly say on the political side, you're looking at several right throughout the region, a swathe of elections have been postponed. We have three important elections coming up. We have the plebiscite coming up in Chile. We have an important, how would you say it, an important test coming up in Dominican Republic and in Bolivia too. So here you see this trend of emergency powers all over the world. I mean Aiman Gilmour, our special rep used special rep briefed some of the colleagues recently and he described it as the largest setback for human rights in the world because of emergency measures and all of our governments are having to do this, as Julian says, for the necessity for the public health crisis. What I would highlight here is the question of the capacity of the state itself, the states themselves, to deal with a pandemic of this scale and of this virilence. So we're in the very first phase of it now and it really is, it really is too early to say Mary where the region will end up. We have strong constitutional democracies in the region, which you see here, what Franula said, we see we have for example in a great friend of Ireland government of Nicaragua, the people of Nicaragua, but a certain denial in the public narrative about the case 25 reported cases. We also saw very, very tardy responses in some of the more populist countries in the Americas, a certain denial of the science and I mean maybe there's something about the way the populist governments have responded to this that we can touch on. But here it is a bit like, you know, the final lives of Juneau and the Peacock, you know, the whole world may be in a terrible state of chasis. Nothing like a bit of Juneau to finish off. Thank you, Barbara. You know, what's clear from the three overviews is the sense of uncertainty here and the unpredictability of the situation we all find ourselves in now minus a vaccine fears of a second or possibly third wave. We're really, you know, approaching this on a day-to-day basis in so many respects. But just a couple of questions before we go to Q&A with the audience later and I would encourage our attendees to send questions through the Q&A function over the next 10 minutes or so before we go into Q&A proper and during the Q&A session. But before we go to Q&A, I'd like to ask our three panelists question in terms of how the European Union has been perceived throughout this crisis. Has it been perceived as an effective actor in terms of its engagement with your respective regions throughout this period? Also how the EU has dealt with this situation itself and also how multilateral organizations are perceived in your respective regions as well. The World Health Organization, we've seen there have been criticisms, praise, different views of how it has handled this particular episode. Fanula, we'll start with you. Thanks Mary. Well maybe I'll start with the EU response. I mean overall the EU put together a package of 20 billion to help the most vulnerable countries to respond and many of those countries were in Africa. Certainly in Kenya they would, they're perceived to have done a really excellent job. So they've pulled together a package of 300 million here composed of grants and loans to SMEs to keep them buoyant working very closely with the European Investment Bank but also providing some direct support to government investing in those cash transfers I spoke about earlier so that vulnerable families can have a minimum income to buy the basic necessities. They're investing in community health as well and safe trade. So I spoke earlier about you know the dangers, you know the many impacts that blocked trade has. So the EU is funding an organization called Trade Mark East Africa that works very closely with governments in this region to try to make trade safer so we can keep the trade corridors open but ensure that officials have PPE, that they're moving digital and so on and so forth. So they've really I think been regarded as responding well. In fact I know President Kenyatta of Kenya actually rang the EU, had a delegation to you know thank the EU for their support. Of course the AU is the big multilateral organization in this part of the world and they also mobilized quickly. They've established a COVID task force, they've developed a continental strategy for responding to COVID. The chair who's the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has actually appointed four envoys to go out and really advocate for debt relief and for the international community to stand by Africa at this moment. And that advocacy has had some impact. I mean we've seen the G20 suspend debt repayments for some time. The IMF also offered debt relief and most of the beneficiaries of those were countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The Africa CDC has done very well. They're trying to pool the resources of African countries so that they're better able to benefit in terms of procurement practices and training and so forth of health workers so they've also played a very important part. So I think overall the multilateral response here would be regarded as you know as having worked. I mean obviously there's an awful lot to do, there's an awful lot of there's a huge amount of need and certainly I think that you know people will continue to look to the international community for further measures to support Africa when indeed the peak does hit. Thank you for that Finula. Over to you Julian. Mary thanks. Yeah I think it has boosted the image of the EU here including the activity behind the 20 billion euro package Finula mentioned. Just the EU in some ways here I'll say underappreciated but it's the EU for instance just in the case of Korea is it's force you know fourth largest export you know treating as a country destination and it's the largest single source of foreign direct investment in Korea. But like in a lot of countries sometimes there isn't really a sense of maybe the partnership perhaps so often isn't as rich maybe as the economic interaction would merit. I think that's not an issue unique to this country by any means. But I think there's a lot of good work going on to raise the profile of the EU here and I think the corona diplomacy that Korea has engaged on has brought it into closer contact with the EU both with the institutions of the EU and at the United Nations. And lastly I'd say just to link back to the the aid dimensions that Finula mentioned and even looking as recently as the comments made by President Moon at the World Health Assembly yesterday and so on. Korea is looking much more to aid and I think that will bring it again more closely into the EU's orbit. It has the unique experience of going of course from being an aid recipient to an aid donor in its you know extraordinary historical trajectory of development in this country and I think that's something that that's something that will will bind it more closely to the EU and I think will will I think the the contacts that have been made in discussions that have been occasioned by coronavirus the COVID-19 I think will will I think will bring will bring the EU and Korea together in a whole raft of dimensions. Thank you Julian and Barbara over to you finally. And on the European Union visibility here I think it has been a moment a really defining moment for our new leadership in in Brussels. I think that the leadership of Ursula herself has been so so impressive. The crystallizing moment here in Latin America where there is a very significant and correct debate led brilliantly by Mexico and the United Nations for public access to the vaccine and an easing of intellectual IP games in the shall we say around access to medicines has created a visibility for the European Union with the pledging conference Mary phenomenal to see that and and I think in a in a really complementary way working with the United Nations and that solidarity Ireland quadrupling our support for the World Health Organization so a certain position of visibility for the Union but I speak from a conviction here that we're stronger when we're aligning our European Unionists and values with the mandated authority of the United Nations agencies and I think that was a brilliant moment here in the field all of my colleagues Sean Paul Alison Jackie Barry report alacrity in the response reprogramming of money and there is not it's not you know Latin America is not a recipient of the EU as the world's leaders leading donor in the way many people might imagine but a great alacrity of response great leadership from the center maybe just give a shout out given that it's the IEA to fabulous support for Ireland with the repatriation of our citizens from here and from the European Union the emergency mechanism my colleagues in Brussels an old team working with Andrew and colleagues in Dublin fabulous visibility in our own country for what European Union solidarity is and my final point Mary really is a very important one and it's something that I would like to highlight. Finula mentioned earlier on the question of thematic you know when you look at the world is the world you know is this a level or Mary Robinson said last week COVID is not a level or actually it highlights all the discrimination and the inequalities and one of the greatest source of inequalities in the world is the issue of women's rights and here in this crisis we are seeing women's rights once again being the highlight you know the highlighted vulnerable group let me just give you an example the issue of gender-based violence and the peak in violence against women in countries with this machismo and this inbuilt cultural and it's worldwide I mean I'm not I'm not singling any country out for it it's a trend but I would like to highlight the great work being done by the United Nations Women's Organization we have a brilliant leader here Belen Sands let a whole team of people in New York working with Geraldine Byrne and there's something about the necessity for Ireland in my opinion to align our great feminism and our great support for equality around that issue now because it is a crisis that women if there is a risk that in some countries more women will die of violence from the restrictive measures of being pulled up at home in small inadequate accommodation and themselves be victim of murder and genocide which is a terrible plague in the world and as I say I highlight it because it's a Latin problem but as Vanoula said it's not just a problem of Latin America or of Ireland or of Europe the HCH or as well I would give a shout out for for great leadership and Madame Bachelet highlighting the injustice in this context of the continued blockade of Cuba I mean here's a country having a fantastic well-managed response to the crisis sending out their brigades medicas around the world and they themselves cannot access on the open market the medicines that they need and here's the European Union again organizing PPE Swiss government sending in ventilators European Union medicines so really great visibility great solidarity but with the United Nations Mary I think that's the piece you know it's not a competition for visibility it's a competition for effectiveness to save lives thank you Barbara and before we move to Q&A with our attendees I would ask all three of you to just give us a brief overview of Ireland's engagement with your respective regions what are we're talking about the development trade diplomacy human rights and of course as all three of you have touched on I mean what we're dealing right now in terms of this crisis is is unprecedented and you know the way paradigms will change whether it's related to development whether it's related to trade whether it's related to bilateral relations between countries so much is again going back to that word uncertainty so much is uncertain unpredictable right now but if you could before we move to the the attendees give us an overview of Ireland's engagement with your respective regions thank you would you like me to start Mary we were staying in the same order and so I'm accredited to Nairobi covering Sudan Somalia and Eritrea and the embassy here actually was closed in the 80s as a result of cutbacks fiscal situation in Ireland but in 2014 I guess there was a you know the government is in the process of increasing of course our global footprint and Kenya was seen as an obvious place where we should be represented given you know it's a big economic it's a big geopolitical player of course it's the economic powerhouse of east Africa and we have very deep and long routes here I mean we just need to think of and it's a great pleasure of mine to meet so many of the missionaries that have been here for many years and really have done fantastic work in terms of building Ireland's reputation in terms in health care and in them education particularly we've also had many NGOs concerned and many others trokera have been operational here so we reopened in 2014 with the dual mandate really and certainly to build trade Kenya is becoming a middle income a lower middle income country you know there's a lot of and there's a lot of potential in terms of services agribusiness and technology and so forth we had our first trade mission our first ever trade mission last November led by minister Heather Humphreys 40 plus businesses coming here and a lot of deals done at the same time of course I mentioned some of the countries I'm covering Sudan and Somalia Eritrea they're among some of the most fragile countries in the world Somalia particularly obviously deeply afflicted afflicted by conflict over many years so we're also engaged in the development sphere with a relatively modest budget and so here in Kenya we're working in agriculture supporting and supporting agriculture you know it's it's about it accounts for about two-thirds of GDP and more than much more than two-thirds of employment so making a difference there can really be transformational and we're working on dairy and in and potatoes and so forth leveraging the experience of Chagas really and to help help support that sector education we have young scientists Kenya and which is a wonderful initiative really reaching many many thousands of students here and helping to build the industries and the skills of the future and then we're also supporting the development of the private sector so that's supporting the equivalence of the IDA in Ireland so that Kenya Kenya can develop their FDI but and then there's a lot of humanitarian funding of course going to Sudan and Somalia as I mentioned already and more than three million this year and consider it's another big issue and actually that came to the fore and during this crisis we have a population here an Irish population something in the region of about between a thousand and fifteen hundred and some many of them stayed many of them have been here for many years but others did need to be repatriated and the flights closed down here pretty quickly so we assisted citizens to leave Kenya Sudan and Somalia and we have a very vibrant I'm just conscious I'm sorry Mary I'm conscious of the time ahead of us so if you could leave it there okay thank you Julian over to you um well very see Asia Pacific is going to be critical to our economic recovery the post-covid the department Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade launched an Asia strategy at the beginning of this year um because Asia is so important Asia Pacific is home to four billion people it's it's home to six of the large six of the largest 20 global economies China Japan India Korea Australia Indonesia and it's the primary driver of of the global economy it contributes 60 percent of economic global growth so it's going to have 3.5 billion middle-class people by 2030 so we are already deeply invested in Asia economically we're looking to to expand our our footprint to to last year we opened a very important consulate general in Mumbai we're planning to open in the Philippines and the other consulate consulate general in China so we have established often young business population throughout Asia as we also said we also have missionaries including here in Korea where we've had outstanding columbian missionaries have given decades of service um to this country so Asia Pacific is going to be absolutely with critical and will remain or will become even more critical to our to our our economic agenda just in fact very briefly mentioned um and I suppose I've been remiss talking about the region um really focusing on the Korea COVID-19 experience but it should be remiss not to mention just the outstanding work that colleagues have done in this region in responding to to COVID-19 you know with China in terms of sourcing PPE um in in repatriation flights Japan dealing with the diamond princess state of emergency our embassy in Singapore dealing with not just issues in Singapore but very very difficult cases in the Philippines Australia has got a huge Irish population Australia and New Zealand have done phenomenal work in helping Irish people getting home in Indonesia Indonesia and India of course um you know again repatriation flights of Irish people confront us with the um including with the lockdown situation and there so really you know it it um the the the work that has been done and I'm sure this is the same this is the same the whole world over with the work that's been done by our colleague embassies here in Asia Pacific in close coordination with our colleagues and consulate at home and and throughout the department has been extraordinary and and in talking about the region uh given the sort of the primary interest I suppose in the in the Korea coronavirus approach I just wanted to rebalance this debate and and to mention that it's we've we've had it lucky I suppose in a sense of you know the country that we've been in and really we've looked on and seen some incredible work done by our colleagues thank you thank you very much Julian and Barbara over to you okay so this the sound bite on Ireland's relations with 33 countries is I think it's it is true to say relations with this region between Ireland on the bilateral side are excellent historically there's a deep you know there's an invisible Irish footprint through you know Tim Fanning's fabulous book about the on the forgotten Irish of Latin America built the participation of the colonization changed sides built democracy here many of the constitutions bear the imprint of Irish enlightenment thinkers who were emigrates from our own country so a fabulous values piece in the culture um that translates in modern day times to this great great shared view between Ireland and all of these countries about the expectation that the world will be a fairer place and that the guarantors for that are the multilaterals and for example here the great candidacy of Ireland for the security council campaign people look to us to be that voice that independent Ireland and also that Ireland of solidarity but leveraging our membership and our commitment to the European Union to to bring the the the needs shall we say of the partnership to the table Maria would like to highlight if I could the fabulous work here you know this is not a development partner relationship for Ireland but there is fantastic work underway here through the funding we give to multilateral institutions all that money 85 million we've given to the UN system for the crisis working its way through here brilliant leadership for example by Alison Milton in the surf flexible money for emergencies this is a very earthquake and disaster prone region and then the great great work of Trocra and Guatemala Honduras and Nicaragua in the hardest of circumstances right now on the front line working in communities make you very proud of the practical expression of our values and the great support that the Irish aid program gives so excellent relations great belief in the multilateral order well done to by the way the international financial institutions the IMF for giving the free loans Paul Deson was saying to me the money is flowing through it's a very important test for the multilateral system if we fail this test bad outcome we're winning this test and that's the good outcome thank you Barbara