 Welcome to the Inequality Virus Press Conference at the Davos Agenda. I'm joined today for our first and only press conference of the day by Gabriela Boucher, Executive Director at Oxfam International, Rebecca Marmaux, Chief Sustainability Officer at Unilever, Derek Hamilton, Professor of Economics and Urban Policy at the New School, and last but not least by Pilato, musician, artist and activist. Before we get started on our press conference, I'd like to do a little bit of housekeeping. Please, if you have any questions, please use the chat feature. We'll be collecting their questions and then giving them to our panelists after their little engagement and then we'll need for those questions your name, your organization and where you're dialing from. So, let's get started. Gabriela, today Oxfam International released a very dramatic report on the status of inequality and the impact that the pandemic has had. Can you share with us some of the conclusions and findings of that report? Thanks, Alem. And so we're here united by one common goal, to fight inequality. 2021 must be the year we see governments wake up to address the inequality crisis and people want change. Just before COVID, we saw powerful protests in countries across the globe against inequality and now this week again. And this course is changing. Global bodies from the IMF to the UN are prioritizing the issue of inequality. Professor Schwab of the Weff wants the world to move on from neoliberalism. We've seen New York Times commentators to activists in Davos even talk about abolishing billionaires and it's not just them wanting change. So it's kids who've seen their parents die when healthcare is a privilege for the rich. It's nurses who demand safety and decent pay more than applause. The pandemic has made clear we should value nurses more than we do billionaires. So what's our data saying? First, we risk facing the greatest rising inequality since records began. Secondly, it could take more than a decade for billions of the poorest people to recover from the economic hit of the pandemic. While at the very top, as if they're living on a different planet, just 10 billionaires, all men have seen their wealth skyrocket by half a trillion dollars since March. Our report also details the profound impact of systemic racism and patriarchy. Nearly 22,000 black and Hispanic people in the US would still be alive if their COVID-19 mortality rates were the same as white people. Think of the families who can't hold their loved ones because leaders refuse to address inequality. Our simple ask is for governments to explicitly commit to equality and to get working on it to make it their goal to end extreme inequality and abolish gender and racial inequality altogether. More specifically, I'm at Davos in this virtual way to push for a people's vaccine so we can all get a jab against the virus, not just the richest countries and people, which is what's happening. We need universal healthcare, as middle-income countries like Costa Rica have achieved. We need to tax the richest as Argentina is doing. Invest in the fight against gender-based violence as Canada is. We want every company to be taking the kinds of steps unileveries across its supply chain. And more, pursuing equality is the moral thing to do, but the pandemic teaches us that it's also common sense 21st century economics. So I ask if not now, when. Thank you, Gabriella. Rebecca, Gabriella mentioned the work that Unilever is doing and the major announcement that you made last week. Can you share a little bit of what Unilever does to tackle this inequality issue, but also what the role of the private sector is in addressing this issue? Evening, everybody. Congratulations, Gabriella and Oxfam, on a great report. I think in addition to the pandemic, we've all seen over this past year the two other main issues, the top of everyone's agenda are climate change and social inequity. And I think what the Oxfam report has done today is highlight the importance of tackling it across all sectors. They've dealt very well in the report around this first issue with the takeout being that there are key structural and systemic inequalities in the world, but have sadly been further accentuated by COVID. So in response to your second part of the question, what's the role of the private sector? I think it's really clear we need to reshape society and economy so that there is a new model that brings longer term prosperity for everybody. So I guess a new normal. And I think from a Unilever perspective, what we look at is how companies can take that responsibility and adopt it right the way across their full value chain. So really try and address social inequality in a much more collaborative way. So just a couple of examples you asked me about some commitments that we made last week. What we've tried to do is to set out a very holistic approach to helping to bring about a more equitable world in four key stages. So the first part is about getting our own house in order. The second part is about what we can do across our entire value chain. So from the farmers and the sourcing of our crops and commodities all the way through our value chain and our manufacturing through to our retailers and out then to our consumers and our customers around the world. The third part through our brands. So how can we use the power of big brands like Ben and Jerry's to have an encourage better social positive impact. And then lastly about working to drive systems level change. So working with others on advocacy, partnership, industry collaborations. So we identify three key areas where we can believe we believe will make a big difference. The first is around raising living standards. So enabling millions of people in our value chain to achieve a decent standard of living. The second is around creating opportunities through inclusivity. So thinking about how do we eliminate barriers, help to create new opportunities for excluded and un-served populations to engage with our business. And the third around preparing people for the future of work. And then underneath that we've got eight very specific commitments. So including things like a living wage or living income to everybody who is directly providing goods and services to you believer by 30. So really thinking about how do we focus on the most vulnerable workers in agriculture. Equitable work culture. So thinking about how do we achieve a much more equitable culture through progressive policies and practices really eliminating bias and discrimination. For example, this morning we announced that we're joining the West partnering for racial justice in business coalition that's working across workplaces of 48 others. Things like supply diversity, spending two billion annually, two billion euros annually with diverse businesses by 2025. Skills for young people helping a quick 10 million young people with essential skills to prepare them for jobs by 2030. So a whole host of different things. I've touched on a few of them there but I hope during the panel we get a chance to discuss some of the others. Thank you. Derek, you've, well you've had quite an inferential voice on in the US and with many politician backing your ideas. Can you give us a little bit of what role the public sector can play but also specifically to this new administration that just went into the office. What can they do to make sure that inequality is still at the top of the agenda. I mean we certainly have to deal with the urgency of this pandemic economic and health crisis but beyond that you know we need to move and transition towards economic rights. I think realized or not the civil and political aspects of human rights have been ingrained in our public psyche but at least as important are economic rights. The right to assembly and choice they're limited for individuals that lack basic needs like a job, income, shelter, food and healthcare. Of course the globe as your report more than adequately highlights throughout history in extreme inequality has persisted and in plain sight racism sexism and other isms are strategically used to consolidate economic and political power. Of course that's unjust it's immoral and it's all about power relationships and this pandemic reveals the collective public and economic vulnerability but it also reveals a system that actively produces inequality with race as a focal point. Obviously that's immoral we have black brown and poor families that began this with low wealth and adequate healthcare working in precarious but essential jobs with few workplace protections lower wages and lower benefits. We can say with certainty that if we don't act that this inequality will only manifest even more in the aftermath of this pandemic particularly with regards to race gender and ethnicity but that is unless government acts to change that reality and that's another key point that this is not inevitable that there are things that we can actually do to change this reality. At issue has been government complicity and generating facilitating that extreme economic and political inequality described in the report. Incrementalism and changes on the margins they're not going to cut it in order to reverse those decades of poverty, discrimination, and economic and political concentration. We're going to need a bold overhaul of our laws and our economy. We can continue down this path of deregulation, lower taxes on the wealthy, gutting of government services under the guise that this is going to generate a market dynicism that's supposed to trickle down to all of us or we can make a profound change towards a more sustainable and moral economy with government interventions to facilitate the assets, economic security, civic engagement, human dignity, and social mobility for all its people regardless of their race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or their gender status. We need a new industrial policy that centers workers, that centers people both domestically and abroad coupled with explicitly anti-racist and anti-sexist economic rights in order to promote a fair economy grounded in our shared prosperity. In other words, we should reject the empirically unsubstantiated rhetoric that centers inequality and deficit behaviors or ignorance and recognize that there are indeed resources that people need in order to have flourishing and authentic agency and choice in their lives. Commit to justice as a matter of faith. Don't let the timeliness of what we perceive can and cannot achieve constrain us. In other words, commit to our prosperity and recognize that it is ultimately our economy, our government, and our monetary systems in order to fund economies and government to do great things for people. Thank you. Palato, you've, well last year we saw the power and the impact of grassroots organization and your music and activism reached millions of people. How can we ensure that that dynamism that we saw really is used to enact real change and isn't dispersed as we move on to the next issue? First of all, we must understand that music has so much power, so much power that it has, it can influence, it can shape the direction of a society. So music has so much power that it can be understood even by the less literate, the less educated still do understand music and the most educated will still understand and appreciate music. So music has so much power that it can influence across social classes of people. So it is this music, it is this power that music has that we use to bring people together and influence them towards the specific cause and in this case, specific cause which is inequality. So we use this power to bring people together. What should be done is one, what should be understood is that even as we discuss inequality as a concept, it is the people, it's the grassroots people that understand that lead that experience in equality. Inequality is not a political issue, inequality is a humanity issue. This is an issue, this is a reality that so many of our people live with and involving them, putting them together, making them understand, allowing their voices to be heard, allowing their concerns to be heard is the most effective way of getting to the root, is getting to the solution of inequality. I am a member of the fighting equality alliance, which is a global movement, working to address and fighting inequality across the globe. And what we've learned through time, over time, is that there is nowhere we can find a solution to a problem we do not understand. As we address issues like inequality, the first step is how much do we understand this problem? And there's no better group of people that understand inequality than the people themselves that experience that live at the forefront of inequality. So the grassroots are the key in addressing a lot of these issues and especially inequality, and music brings them together, music with its power delivers a message and empowers those that are less empowered, it empowers the weak in our society. So grassroots are the solutions, grassroots has a solution to what we are grappling with, and that is inequality today. So music brings them together, music gives them that power and platform to express themselves and be allowed to be heard by people from across social classes. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful statements and so thank you so much for sharing. I'm going to open up the Q&A. So if anyone wants to ask questions to my panelists, please put it in the chat feature, add your name, your organization, and also where you're dialing in. We have quite a diversity of dialing in. We have two people from the UK. I'm myself in New York, so is Derek, and Pallant always dialing in from Zambia, so I look forward to see who's joined us today. But in the meantime, I also want to open up the opportunity for my panelists to ask questions to each other. You guys have shared, you know, Rebecca shared what Unilever is doing, Derek, what are the public policy that needs to be enacted? Pallant, you know, the power of the grassroots, the people who are living this inequality day in, day out. And Graberilla, if I will start with you, you said, you know, you shared some really some striking findings. What surprised you the most? I know for the first time, Oxfam is also looking at race as another dimension and the intersectionality of inequality and race. I'd be really fascinated to hear your thoughts. Thank you. Yes. I think, yes. I wanted to go back to what Pilato was saying also. So those people who experienced inequality in their daily lives are those who most know about it, and we need to ask them and they're part of the solution. And at the same time, there is somehow a perception that is too complex, that is a system that is beyond ourselves, and somehow a certain inevitability, sort of thinking that it's something that we're somehow destined to live in. And Derek was also referring to that. And we, I think, what we need to do is unpack and definitely say it is a choice. And there are historical reasons why certain groups are marginalized, have been marginalized, and that we need to address these historical reasons and compensate in such a way that we create a more level playing field. So not to accept that these things have been the way they are and they should continue, but they really need to change. And I think the pandemic has exposed this in a more extreme way, but as I think we've all said from different angles, the situation was already extremely unequal. And this is why the pandemic is, again, hitting in such unequal ways. So we need to somehow come out of this vicious cycle of inequality and find their policies that can be implemented. And there are plenty of examples from countries that are doing it, businesses that are doing it, like Unilever was just sharing, and also people movements that strongly believe, as Pilato was explaining. So there's from different perspectives, there's that conviction, we need to bring the pieces of the puzzle together to really achieve this transformational systemic change that Derek was talking about. So it's sometimes from depending on what the angle that you're looking at, it looks too complex, but we can also break it down into concrete elements. And I think one that we have been talking about this this weekend that is very clear in the report is that we measure, rather than we are all measuring in countries and businesses is measuring sort of on the side of figures. So GDP is an obsession, economic growth. So what does it mean really if a country is growing, one country may be growing at the same rate of another, but if there it is much more unequal, then all that growth is going in the hands of a very few people. If in another country it's very distributed, then we actually more people are benefiting and the difference is much greater. So if we focus more on what is happening with the people themselves and focus on well-being and also sustainability measures, then we are measuring the things that we really want to impact. So I think it starts with that how do we measure what matters and then introduce policies that make us achieve those goals. Derek, I can see you nodding a lot. Do you want to add? I mean, I love the intersection of my co-panelists and what's been said. And you know, the way Gabrielle just finished with talking about measurements, measurements of values. So how we define our economic well-being in terms of how we measure it also defines our values. So what do we want to center? I mean, do we want to center people in their capacities to thrive and flourish? I mean, that is our most treasured resource, people. So investments in people, in my view, should be central in how we identify economic well-being. And then the other point I just want to make quickly is, you know, some clear themes that I observed from what everybody says are, you know, catchword, intersection. Well, the intersections of everything that's been discussed and the inseparability I think is critical. So understanding that art is inseparable from economics, is inseparable from race, is inseparable from political economy, from politics, that they all link together towards propelling systems. And that may seem complicated in nuance, but at the root of it is basic rights. At the root of it is the ability to have housing, the ability to have a decent income. And these are things that we can facilitate. And through art, for example, we express narrative. We can define whether people are deserving or undeserving based on something of their gender or race. Through art, we can define what a moral economy looks like. So that's the point about them being inseparable. To think that we can, and I know I'm talking a lot, I'm going to stop in a second, to think that we can isolate economic well-being from political well-being is a misnomer. There's no such things as markets being natural, they're political constructions. And to think that we can think about politics and isolation from the power that corporations can bring to defining politics, that's a misnomer. And then likewise, we run the risk of being vulnerable to despotic authoritarian leadership if we don't recognize the ways in which race, gender, immigration status can be weaponized in our society to pit one group versus the other in order to offer horizontal positioning in exchange for vertical positioning in an immoral way. It's critical for us to understand these intersections. I agree. We definitely cannot separate any of these things. And I think we're realizing the fallacy of trying to attempt it. I have one more minute before I have to close out this press conference, which feels very short, because I feel like we're just starting to get to the root of it. But what I will do is invite the participants on this press conference who are attending to read Oxfam's International's Inequality Report. It's a fascinating read. I think it will surprise people. But I also want to thank everyone for joining us today. And I want to especially thank my panelists for making the time and really providing their voice to addressing and tackling inequality. So thank you, everyone.