 Hello, and welcome to a special event by the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Our topic today, COVID-19 and democracy. Can parliaments come to the rescue? I'm Ravi Agrawal and it's my privilege to be your host for the next 90 minutes. As many of you know, the IPU, the Global Organization of National Parliaments, was founded more than 130 years ago. It's the world's first multilateral political organization. Today it has 179 member parliaments. Today's a special day for the organization. It's the International Day of Democracy, which the IPU initiated and established through a UNGA resolution in 2007. The IPU is hosting this event today in partnership with the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. The Global Futures Lab works to ensure that we all contribute to ensuring a habitable planet, an issue that has never been more urgent. And you only need to switch on the news to know why. Now, before we get started and before I introduce an excellent panel, some quick housekeeping notes. There is live translation for this event. So you can click on the interpretation button on the control panel. And that should enable you to toggle between English and French. Second, we've been marked 30 minutes, so about a third of our total time to take questions from the audience, from our global audience on Zoom. It's very simple. If you use Zoom before, click on the Q&A button, type in your name, where you're writing from, and your question. Direct it to one of our guests, and I will try and ask your question. So what are we discussing today? During the pandemic, democratic processes have been under assault in several countries. Elections have been postponed, courts have delayed cases, individual freedoms have been curtailed. And autocrats have used the pandemic to make power grabs that have sometimes sidelined parliament. But is democracy as a concept threatened, or is it the practice of democracy that is in question? Even before the pandemic, democracy was losing popularity. Across the globe, more and more citizens have been dissatisfied with their democracies from 48% of populations in the mid-1990s to more than 57% last year. The question then is whether parliaments can learn from the past six months to better serve their people. Can parliaments restore people's faith in democracy? So as I said, I have a terrific panel to address these very questions. Let's see them all. Gabriella Cuevas-Barron was elected in 2017 as the 29th president of the IPU. She is the youngest person and only the second woman to hold that post. Welcome. Xie Bastida is a climate activist, born and raised in Mexico as part of the Otomi Toltec Indigenous Peoples. She is the co-founder of the ReEarth Initiative dedicated to educating youth about the interconnectedness of the climate crisis. Craig Calhoun is a university professor of social sciences at Arizona State University. He's published several books on social movements and political economy. From Sweden, we have speaker Andreas Norland. He was elected speaker of the Reichstag in 2018, before which he was a member of parliament representing the moderate party. And we have Gessane Salamé, professor of international relations emeritus at Sciences of Paris. He has served as a minister of culture in the Lebanese government and is also a member of the board of the Kofi Annan Foundation. Lastly, while she couldn't be here in person, I'm pleased to say we have a video contribution from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, also the former president of Chile. OK, that's quite a lineup. Let's get started. I'm going to conduct a few minutes of Q&A with each panelist individually for about seven minutes. Once we're done, we'll open up the discussion to questions from the audience. Remember, if you're listening in live, you can send those questions in on Zoom by clicking on the Q&A button. So I'm going to start with the IPU president, Baron. And as she gets ready, I'm going to ask our other guests to please switch off your cameras, mute your microphones, as we do in this era of Zoom conferences, until I call on you to join in. OK, President Baron, it's a pleasure to have you with us. Hello, thank you. Thank you very much, and congratulations to all for this international day for democracy. Indeed. Well, let me start with this question then. From the standpoint of the IPU, what have we learned from the COVID-19 pandemic? How have parliaments played their role of scrutiny on government action so far? Well, I think that we are learning, first of all, that we need to be prepared for everything. At the beginning of the pandemic, there are some studies that are saying that 2 billion people were living in countries where parliaments were reduced or suspended or completely closed. And this means that when a parliament is not functioning at 100%, well, democracy is not working as it should be. In terms of, for example, designing new legislation for an emergency or allocating new budgets for, in this case, for health or for gender-based policies. Or what happens also with oversight? Is the government going to do whatever the government wants because the parliament cannot meet due to the different health restrictions? So that was the first part of the pandemic. 2 billion people living in countries with restricted or suspended parliaments. What we have learned at the IPU is that we were collecting the best practices from different parliaments in terms of how parliaments could be working during a pandemic. Some of them were very creative in terms of how to work. Some of them started with virtual meetings. Some others having a reduced number of parliamentarians. In other cases, they were having very important health measures. But I think that the most important part is not only on how to work formally in a parliament. It's about how we can be prepared for any kind of emergencies. Come on, as politicians, we should be prepared. And the second part is, how are we going to deal with this pandemic? Because we are only trying to imagine when it is going to end instead of, how are we going to help to find the solution? We have now a health problem, but clearly, an economic problem and economic crisis is also starting in many, many regions. What's going to happen also with the different problems that we are going to inherit from the pandemic and increasing violence against women and increasing inequality in many different fields, for example, in education. Children that doesn't have an access to a computer or Wi-Fi, they are being left behind in terms of access to education. What happens with health? What's going to happen with people working in informal economy where there's a strong majority of women and adolescents? So there are a lot of things that we have to do, and we have to be prepared because the pandemic, I really hope, that can be over very soon. But the consequences are going to be there. For example, just yesterday, I was hearing a person from UNDP, and they were saying that this is the first time ever that the Human Development Index is going backwards. So what are we going to do as parliamentarians to, again, not only to fix the public health conditions, but also the different consequences that this pandemic is going to inherit to us? I would like to bring to the attention of this group, and especially for today, because today is democracy day. One of the most complicated and I think a handful of threads is what's going to happen with democracy after the pandemic. Some governments are using people's fears to have more restrictive measures. They are limiting freedom, human rights. They are limiting democracy. Some of these governments are using a terrible moment for humanity to have more and more power instead of giving and respecting people's freedom. So we are also going to inherit a very important threat against democracy, against constitutional democracy. And parliaments have to be there fighting for freedom, fighting for human rights, and defending democracy. President Barron, thank you for laying that out and for your opening framing remarks. I think that's very useful for all of our viewers listening in from around the world. You mentioned some best practices that parliaments can learn from. I'm curious if you can list three or four of the main ones out for us, just so we can understand what those are and whether they are things that are easy or doable for governments around the world to actually put into practice. Well, there are parliaments that decided that stopping working was not an option. And instead they were creating and approved very ambitious economic recovery programs. So there are governments, there are parliaments that are working together and are trying to prepare for the worst moments. There are also parliaments that, again, I am not going into the formal decisions on how to meet or how to have leneries. I believe that today the substance is the most important. Some other parliaments created special committees for oversight for having a continuous monitoring of the governmental actions and evaluations on how it's being done properly and what still needs to be fixed. In my case in Mexico, there's, for example, a special group created by the former speaker with a lot of colleagues on follow-up on the gender-based policies. Again, I think that this pandemic is not gender-blind. And we need to be working for women and girls. When the pandemic started, we all believed that the virus was more dangerous for men. But while the pandemic is having more and more time with the humanity, well, we are seeing that, yes, it can be more deadly for men, but certainly it's threatening women's life. 70% of the health workers worldwide are women. If we see, again, health, economy, human rights, violence, everything is going against women and girls. So I think these are the most important aspects, budget, creation of oversight groups. And I think that we need to be very clear that one of the most important responsibilities is starting precisely this season. This is the season where parliaments are going to start studying and discussing 2021's budgets. And these budgets need to give a very important priority to the health relief. We need to understand that universal health coverage is a must. We cannot continue postponing health for all. This pandemic has been showing inequalities. And the most difficult inequality is that rich people are getting better recoveries than poor people. So discriminations are there. We can have a lot of data. There's science for this. Where are the solutions? So the budget for 2021 has to be one of the most important priorities for parliaments all over the world. And again, I have not seen a strong reaction from those parliaments where the government is taking more and more power, despite people's freedoms and human rights. And I think that has to be also a mandate for all parliaments. We cannot allow to have one single step backwards in terms of democratic practices. We cannot allow to give the next generation less freedoms or less human rights are the ones that we are enjoying. Our duty is to give them more, to give them more rights, to give them the capacity to enjoy many of the human rights that we are not enjoying right now. For example, equality. There are very important ideas. There's a roadmap in SDGs. Well, this is the time for parliaments needs to make a difference. We are 46,000 parliamentarians all over the world. What are we going to do about this? We cannot continue regretting that there is not a global solution to the pandemic. The global solution has to do with national solutions, with national proposals. And I mean national, not nationalistic. The real problem with this pandemic is that the countries decided, the governments, that the right answer was going to play alone, to close borders. And people decided that the real solution was going to the supermarket and buy toilet paper. So we need to understand that cooperation, that international solidarity, that a global plan is really needed. And that's why we are here, because that plan has to be democratic, sustainable, inclusive, and feminist. President Barron, thank you for those remarks. I think those are very important and will be taken very seriously by the many parliamentarians who are joining us from around the world. President Barron, thank you. Stay with us. There's so many more questions I would love to ask you, but we will come back to you later in the hour. So for now, if you can please switch off your camera and mute your microphone. And meanwhile, I'm going to ask Professor Craig Calhoun to join us now, and if he can switch on his camera. Professor Calhoun, welcome to the hot seat. Thank you. Okay, great. Here's what I'm wondering, given your research and work, does democracy still deliver for the people? I mean, is it working? The way it was envisioned? Churchill, as we all know, once said, although I think he was citing someone else, that democracy is the worst system of governance except for all the others. Is he still right? I think that's still correct. Democracy is very important. There's a false story that the pandemic is somehow a referendum on democracy versus authoritarianism, and authoritarian top-down systems do a better job in dealing with this. I don't think this is the right way to think about it, but that doesn't mean democracies don't face a lot of challenges right now. Obviously, there are pre-existing conditions at a social level that democracies have to deliver about and haven't always been doing well. Gabriela referred to many of them, to inequality, lack of universal healthcare, economic protections. The need is for democracy to be effective. And in many ways, I think, we have allowed our democratic institutions to be weakened or sidetracked during the last 50 years. And so we confront the pandemic not with strong, robust democracy, which is what we need, but with somewhat damaged or degenerated forms of democratic practices. We've let institutions erode, and that means that democracy doesn't look as good to the people in democratic societies or to other people who are looking to the democratic societies for a better model of government. So let me ask you this, is democracy self-correcting? I mean, there's a sense that after 1989 with the fall of communism, the world invested so much hope in democracy and in capitalism. Frank Fukuyama's great book, The End of History and the Last Man, took this on and argued that we had found our best system. But it turns out that these systems, democracy, capitalism, globalization, they don't fix everything and they aren't necessarily self-correcting. So how do you think parliaments can address these issues and how do you bring communities back into the fold? Well, you've answered the question already and I agree with your answer. Systems are not entirely self-correcting. It still is important for people to take action in relationship to these systems. So that doesn't mean that there's not a large interdependent system there is. And the action that we take has to recognize this. It has to recognize that the recession that we're in, partially caused by response to the pandemic, is interconnected with issues of climate change or migration or the transformation of work and employment. So there is a reality of system, but that doesn't mean that we can just sit back and wait for the self-correction. Democracy gives us the opportunity to mobilize to produce this, to do the work of restoring institutions, restoring citizens' sense of efficacy. Part of the problem we face is that ordinary people think they can't matter. They can't get things done. Democracy is not working for them. And this is a matter not just of political efficacy of being able to deal with things like their children's health and schooling. And if democracies aren't delivering on that, then people will say, well, I don't care what it's doing at the level of national politics or political theory or even international relations. I need to be able to feel I can get on with my own life. And democracies need to be inclusive. We've allowed democracies to marginalize minorities. We need to recognize minority rights. We need a rule of law that guarantees that. But we're seeing this eroded in favor of ostensible narrow majorities against minorities. And above all, we need a sense of common purpose. This goes to your point. We need to act, but we need to act collectively. The word we is crucial. And we are having a very hard time because of hyper partisanship. And this is where the democratic institutions, parliament and political parties and the larger process come in. If we continue with this kind of hyper partisan divide, eliminating the middle, then we don't have common purpose to act in relationship to the pandemic. Professor Calhoun, there are many more questions I could ask you, but I'm gonna have to move on to our other guests. I'll bring you back. So for now, if you can switch off your camera, move your microphone as you have. I'm gonna now ask Sweden's speaker, Andres Norlin to join us now. Mr. Speaker, sir, can you see me? Yes. Well, I think the host has disabled my camera. So I cannot put it on myself. That's right. I think as long as your camera is switched on, we should be able to see you momentarily. Now, but I think we can hear you. So we'll keep going for now. Speaker Norlin, as the speaker of parliament of one of the world's oldest democracies and one of the oldest members of the IPU, can you give us a sense of the experience of the Swedish parliament these past few months with the pandemic? Well, thank you. And of course, the work of the Swedish parliament, Riksdag, has been very much affected by the pandemic. But my instinct was immediately not to close parliament or anything of the sort, but to find ways to operate in this very special circumstance, under these very special circumstances. So we quickly had a discussion with the eight party group leaders and reached a consensus to reduce the number of members present when parliament votes from the regular 349 to 55 proportionally distributed according to the election result, of course, and also to change and adapt the operations of the various parliamentary committees. For instance, to make it possible to take part in committee meetings through digital conference equipment. But I would like to stress this agreement between the party group leaders from another perspective also, that they actually were able to agree on reducing the number of members present when parliament votes. I think that illustrates a very good Swedish tradition that parties can put their differences aside when the nation's future is at stake at a time of crisis, but also, and especially when it comes to matters relating to the rules of politics. We have an old tradition saying that we shouldn't change or amend the constitution unless we have a broad agreement on the changes. And I think that tradition is very healthy in a democracy that you shouldn't change the political system unless you have a broad consensus. And on the other hand, if you do have a broad consensus, you get a very good legitimacy on the measures that you actually do take. For instance, this agreement, this informal, but very important agreement to reduce the number of MPs who go to vote. And so, but I think we have through these measures, through digital meetings with the parliamentary committee, so digital attendance in parliamentary committees have shown demonstrated to the people of Sweden that we can function also at a time of crisis and we were able to handle all previously planned matters during the spring session and also roughly 25 emergency measures due to the pandemic among them, nine extra budgetary bills. Speaking of Ireland, I'm curious about the Swedish experiment of trying to sort of generate herd immunity and so on. So to use the phrase that is quite popular and Sweden's experiment has gained widespread attention, I'm wondering if you could give us a sense of how that issue was debated in parliament at the time, whether it still is, if you can give us an insight into the debates around that, because after all, some data suggests that Sweden has had an uptake in debts and perhaps it hasn't gained as much economically from that choice. So I'm curious as to your take on that debate. Well, that is obviously a very important issue, both from a health point of view and from an economic point of view. And I think nobody really knows the answer if the choices were wise or not. At this particular moment in time, we have a very low spread of disease in Sweden, whereas we can see in several other European countries, unfortunately, an increase in the number of cases. And I won't claim that that is a result of our previous policy during the spring or that it isn't, but that's just an observation that it's too early to actually decide who chose best policy. But if you, to answer your real question, how did Parliament react to these policies? I would say that Parliament played a very active role during the spring when it comes to scrutinizing the government, there were interpolation debates, there were written questions for written answers. There were parliamentary debates, for instance, on the situation in the elderly care, the care of the elderly. And I think that is tremendously important at the time when you face a protracted crisis like the Parliament is very active in scrutinizing the measures of the government. And I think we managed to do that. There was relatively broad consensus around the government policy, but nevertheless, it was important to have those debates and those discussions. And may I just give another example relating more to democracy also? Because we, as the president of the IPU mentioned, we have seen, unfortunately, around the world, governments under the pretext of the pandemic trying to increase their powers. The Swedish government wanted to amend a particular bill or a particular law, actually, rather, giving the government, which would give the government more powers, more emergency powers, for instance, to close down shopping malls or harbours or airports, obviously very far-reaching measures. And there was a huge debate whether or not the government actually should be granted these emergency powers. So in the end, there was a compromise struck between the parties in Parliament, saying that, yes, we can amend this law and give the government these powers, but they may only be used by the government if Parliament cannot act swiftly enough. And if the government were to use those emergency powers, then the government has to immediately submit the decision to Parliament for scrutiny and Parliament can then, within a certain timeframe, revoke the measures. So I think by those measures, we were able to strike a balance between the need for emergency action and the need for keeping the balance of powers between the various organs of state intact. So I think that is a very good illustration of how you can, even in a pandemic, in a severe crisis, that you can maintain the strength in democratic government. Mr. Speaker, thank you. And I thank you as well for your candor in sort of giving us these insights into deliberations in your Parliament. Thank you. Stay with us. But for now, I'm gonna ask you to switch off your camera and your microphone. And meanwhile, I'm going to invite Professor Cassan Salame to join us now. Professor Salame, welcome back. Thank you. Thank you very much. Wonderful. Professor, I'm curious, are there any parallels and lessons to be drawn from the experience of Parliament in times of crisis and war and reconstruction? Take us back through history a little bit. Thank you very much. I think that as my colleague, Professor Calhoun, was saying, the COVID did not come in a vacuum. In fact, we were already facing a cycle of regression in terms of democratization across the world. Sometimes in the 1990s, for the first time in history, there were more countries and more people living under the democratic regime than under authoritarian regime. But since then, in the past 20 years, we have witnessed a regression. Regression in figures of countries, of people living in democratic systems, but also regression in the quality of democratic practice in many countries, including among some very developed countries. This is one problem. Now, since we are talking also about parliaments, there was another crisis, which is a crisis of representation. Parliaments are based on the concept of representation and representation means that the people sort of ask a limited number of people to represent them during the legislature for three major tasks. The first task is to vote a budget. This has not been substantially challenged in the past few years, but the second has been challenged, which is the oversight of the government. The oversight of the government has been challenged by a number of factors. First, the rise in populist movements all across the world, including in the developed world, where people challenge the executive power without going through representative bodies. But also through social media that affects and impacts the public opinion directly and also through other means. We have seen that the concept of representation has been seriously challenged. Now, I come from a profession, both in academic and also a diplomat at the service of the United Nations. I just spent almost three years in Libya, and I can tell you that sometimes when the COVID happens, as it happened while I was still there, representing the Secretary General of the United Nations in Libya, I wish the government had more power. Because in many countries of the world, where I have worked in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Libya, and in many other countries in the global south, the problem is not that only the parliaments are marginalized by this process or by serious sort of challenges. It is also the executive branch. And you would have liked that the governments had more power to sort of take care of their own population. Very often, in fact, in some 40 to 50 states now across the world, the problem we are having is that the governments are too weak, too weak to stand up to the challenge of a problem like COVID. To recognize it, to deal with it, to find the hospitals needed for it, they have a big, big, big problem handling this kind of issues. Now, can parliament still operate? Certainly yes, they can operate. They can be at the forefront of those who tell those with authoritarian tendencies that they are being watched and that they will not allow the constitution to be rewritten to give them extra terms which is happening in more than one African country right now. That they are in tune with the population that is extremely sensitive to the question of corruption which is a new phenomenon now across the world. People know that you have passed the corruption term. We are now living for many dozens of countries in a true kleptocracy where systems are corrupt at the root and the public money and public funds is being stolen and that makes the challenge of COVID even more difficult to deal with. Parliament can have on its agenda a much more active role now in challenging these kleptocracy that have been building up in the past. Very often we feel that neoliberal ideology in the developed world is reflected in the global south in the emergence of systems of endemic and organic corruption we can call kleptocracies. And one of the problems now is that so much money has been stolen by the ruling elites in the past 20 to 30 years thanks to privatization in these countries thanks to the opening to the capitalist practices that at the end there is no money left to deal with public health. And the governments are basically at the same time penniless and powerless in fighting big challenges vital challenges like the one they are fighting right now. Sure, Professor Salami I have other questions for you but I'm going to have to come back to you at the very end. So I thank you for now if you can switch off your camera and your microphone and I'd like to call on our next guest on this segment Shia Bastida. Before I put a question to Ms. Bastida I just want to remind our global audience that our topic today is COVID-19 and democracy. Can parliament come to the rescue? If you're listening in on Zoom it's very easy to get involved. You can click on the chat button and at the bottom of our screen or the Q&A button and you can type in your questions tell us your name, where you're writing in from what your question is and who you would like it directed to and I'll make sure we put that to our panelists. Okay, Shia Bastida, welcome. Thank you. So Shia the world's reaction to the pandemic has often been referred to as a dress rehearsal for the looming climate emergency and in a sense that poses an even more existential threat to humanity. So I guess my question to you is what can parliaments do better to serve the people and the planet? Yeah, so first of all thank you so much to everybody for watching and for having all of us today. I'm a climate activist so I'm definitely gonna approach this from a climate perspective and as many have mentioned before COVID-19 has exacerbated a lot of crises around the world from job insecurity to health instability to inaccessibility to education to widening the gap between wealth and poverty. So it's definitely a crisis that has kind of exacerbated a lot of the faults in our system but COVID-19 has also taught us a lot about how to react to a crisis effectively. It has taught us about the value of productivity. It's better to be proactive in a crisis than reactive and this is gonna be essential for dealing with the climate crisis because we cannot wait for the effects of the climate crisis like flooding and the melting ice and fires to be like all around us to the point in which we cannot be proactive about saving people's lives. And right now we still have 10 years according to the IPCC report to lower our carbon emissions. Another thing that COVID-19 taught us is about the importance of individual action to amount to structural change. There's this huge debate in the climate movement as to why it's more important me recycling or me lobbying my politicians and both are super important because it's important to stay at home so that other people don't get infected and that causes the structural effect of less cases being transmitted. And that can be the same in a mindset level when it comes to the climate crisis. My individual actions will amount to structural change of like a mindset shift to being more sustainable. And another thing that it has taught us is the importance of self-care. I think that we don't talk about that enough but being inside in our homes, not being able to go outside all that much has taught us that we need to take care of our mental and physical health. And the same is true for dealing with the climate crisis especially because of all the climate anxiety that it brings especially to young people. And the last and most important thing that COVID-19 has taught us is solidarity. My actions impact our livelihood and that type of thinking needs to be embedded in climate thinking because of the division of developed and underdeveloped countries and how the actions of developed countries and the pursuit of growth is actually affecting like the low income nations across the world. So yeah, that's basically like my takeaways from COVID and how we can use the learnings to deal with the climate crisis and just a reminder that the most, right now a lot of governments are using COVID to distract the public from a lot of environmental regulations for all backs. So I think that it's imperative that parliaments listen to the people to safeguard people's health when it comes to environmental pollution. During COVID-19, $113 million were allocated to the fossil fuel industry in the United States and the administration also set a rule that said that all of these rolebacks cannot be reversed after the pandemic. So there's little doubt in my mind and it's very inspiring to see as well but there's little doubt in my mind that your generation cares a lot more about climate change than do older generations. And perhaps that's because of several reasons but it's become an issue that your generation just feels very viscerally and is sort of coalescing around in a way to sort of protect their generation's futures. So I guess my question then to you is how can parliaments involve young people more in their decision-making processes? What would you like to see on that front given the audience that you have right now? Yeah, so that is a very important question because a lot of times you think that the only time we can get involved in politics is when we can vote and that is true. Voting is a very important thing that we have and 15 million youth turned 18 over the past four years in the United States but it's very important that we realize that we can be empowered to be involved in politics even before we can vote. And that's something that my generation, a lot of people in my generation didn't know about but when we found out I ended up testifying at City Hall I ended up, these opportunities are available but it's important that the space is made that we are invited that we're not being tokenized that we're actually given a seat at the table which is why I appreciate being here as a young person and having the opportunity to talk to so many influential people around the world because civic engagement is the core of democracy and societies that are civically engaged are just gonna be more fair and representative of the population and youth know that and we wanna get involved in that. Well, Ms. Basita, we're the ones who are lucky to have your perspective and to have you at the table. So thank you. I'm gonna bring you back in later this hour for more Q and A. Lots more to discuss before we get to our question and answer portion and a reminder if you wanna send in your questions, it's very easy. You can do that with the Q and A button on Zoom just write in your question, tell us your name, what your question is, who you're directing it to but before we get to all of that, I have one last speaker that I'm thrilled to share with you, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. She is also the former president of Chile. Unfortunately, she couldn't join us in person today but she was gracious enough to record this video message for us to watch. Please take a look. Distinguished president, honorable members of parliament, for a month now the COVID-19 has tested our leadership and humanity. It has deepened the inequalities and forms of discrimination that harm billions of people. It has also been teaching us key lessons about how to construct more resilient societies, including the need for universal health coverage, and other social protection and environmental measures. And COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated once again how bio it is to strengthen the foundations of democracy. Since long before the pandemic, attacks on human rights defenders with impunity, harassment of the press, crackdowns on peaceful assemblies, deliberate weakening of institutional checks and balances and decline in civil liberties and growing polarization across society have been worrying signs of democratic decline. When the pandemic hit, these trends intensified and in some state that adopted extraordinary measures, we also witnessed movement towards unchecked executive power, restrictions on speech, and disproportionate penalties and enforcement. There is no single model of democracy, but strong democracy shares some essential characteristics. They include solid oversight institutions which keep governments accountable for their actions. Parliament, as the most prominent power to exercise oversight over the executive, are cornerstones of national human rights protection systems and have a critical role in times of crisis. Overcoming the pandemic requires concerted action by all society in line with the compelling recommendations of human right bodies. We need to ensure no one is left behind. During the COVID-19 pandemic, parliaments have been key in discussing human rights-based responses, assessing the economic and human rights impact of government COVID-19 measures and addressing the needs and concerns of those most affected and vulnerable. Given their direct link with grassroots organizations, individuals and national human rights institutions, parliaments are well positioned to prevent violation of human rights and to ensure better protection, especially of vulnerable groups. This role of parliaments can be further enhanced through their proactive engagement with international human rights mechanisms, deploying their legislative, budgetary and oversight power to make sure that international human rights recommendations deliver real impact in their countries. In particular, parliaments could participate in the Human Rights Council UPR, Universal Periodic Review, taking into account that most of the recommendations accepted by the executive require legislative action in order to be implemented. My office has already issued a series of detailed and actionable guidance papers on key human rights issues to be addressed in working to resolve and recover from the pandemic. They include guidance on emergency measures, keeping a broad, open civic space, detention and decarceration, including of children, minorities, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, migrants, LGBTI people, older people and issues involving racial discrimination. In addition, our country-specific infographics highlight key recommendations relevant to your country's work to address COVID-19. I am convinced this work is achievable and essential. So today, as we mark International Day of Democracy, under the theme COVID-19, a spotlight on democracy, let's remember that democratic systems have time and again demonstrated their resilience and effectiveness in dealing with exceptional challenges. Solid public participation, official accountability through oversight institutions and a free press are tremendous advantages in devising policies that navigate crisis most effectively. We will build back better with democratic institutions based on a renewed commitment to human rights. Thank you. And that's Michel Bachelet there, the UNI Commissioner for Human Rights. You were just listening to some very thought-provoking comments from her, and well, let's discuss it all. I'd like to now re-welcome all of our guests back. We have IPU President Gabriela Cuevas-Paron. We have Professor Craig Calhoun from ASU. We have Speaker Andreas Norlin from Sweden. Professor Cassan Salame. And of course, Shieh Bastida. You've just heard them all speak. Now we're going to dive into our question and answer session. Welcome back all of you. Thank you for your time. A reminder, we are here to discuss COVID-19 and democracy. Can Parliament's come to the rescue? And my name, of course, is Ravi Agrawal. I'm the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. We have several questions coming in from around the world. I'd like to start, however, with Peter Schlosser. He is the vice president and vice provost of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University. He is also one of the world's leading earth scientists and the co-chair of the Earth League. Vice provost Peter Schlosser, can you switch on your mic and camera please? Great to see you. The floor is yours. Thank you, Ravi. And thanks to all the excellent contributions by all the speakers, it really sets the stage for a lively discussion. What we have heard is that we are faced with a shock to society and the democratic institutions, including parliaments, of size and immediacy that we have not seen for probably a century or so. We also have heard that this is not the only crisis that we are facing, but it's overprinted over many other crises with democracy itself, as Greg laid out and climate as Jay told us. So, and we see it recently, you know, the West of the United States is burning. We have five cyclones cycling in the, or moving in the Atlantic. So my question is the following, looking at these underlying but steadily building crises which is actually a planetary crisis that could move to a catastrophe, but also looking at one of the few positive elements of COVID-19, which is freeing up unprecedented amounts of resources for the reemergence out of this crisis. What can parliaments do to ensure that at least a good fraction of these resources are devoted to ending up on a trajectory out of the reemergence, out of the depression of COVID-19, at a place that is better than the starting point? So in other words, rather than putting all our efforts in applying these resources to get back from where we started, which many people feel is the comfort zone, making sure that these resources are used to end up in a place that is better, that might actually accelerate our attention and our action towards dealing not just with COVID-19, but with all the underlying crisis, including democracy itself. And we see all the social unrest that came out as part of COVID-19. Thank you. Vice Provost Pieterschloss said, thank you for that question. I'm going to pose that question to the IPU president, Gabriela Cuevas Barron, President Barron, your thoughts. Thank you, thank you very much. I was seeing also some of the questions in the group chat and I think that democracy and trust, we need to rebuild the social threat. We need to understand that there's no democracy. There is no true representation, which is the foundation of parliament if there is no trust. Some people were asking, well, how to rebuild it? I think that it has to do with leading by example. It has to do to bringing principles and values back to politics. It has to do also with efficiency. How are we going to give people the solutions that they're very much needed? And of course, as parliamentarians, we need to understand that it is not only about very local politics. It is about international cooperation. It's about solidarity, just that she was mentioning. It is about translating international commitments to local realities, to solutions to the people that we represent. So I wanted to point this from the questions that we have in the group chat and also to ask the participants to use this platform to exchange those practices. I know some of the participants, they are very good for example, in terms of grassroots. That's the way not only to make a campaign. That's the way to revive, to recommit with democracy, to accountability with efficiency, with the bringing results to the communities that trusted the North. The first step of trust already came when we asked people to vote for us. So now is the time to explain to the people why they took a good decision, why it's important to continue believing in parliament as the true representatives of the people, why it's important to continue believing and working for democracy because democracy needs Democrats and that has to do with education, that has to do with accountability, that has to do with values. And one of the most important threats against democracy I must say is corruption, our nationalistic practices, are those hate speeches and we are in a very polarized world when it comes to politics, to ideology. And we need to understand that the only valid ideology here has to be putting people at the center of all decisions. When people see, when people knows that we are working and thinking about them and that we are bringing the very needed solutions, I think that we can regain trust. Sounds good, thank you, Professor Baron. And I think trust is a very important issue. Of course, trust breeds trust and mistrust breeds mistrust as parliamentarians all over the world would know. I want to call on Andreas Norlin, the speaker from Sweden. And that's because I'm hoping, Mr. Speaker, you could try and answer Vice Provost Schlosser's question about how parliament, and since you deal so closely with this, how they can use some of the resources and the funding globally that has been mobilized because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Your thoughts? Well, thank you. Well, I would say that through democratic measures, because it is only through an open discussion and open debate about priorities, about pros and cons with different solutions, different priorities with close scrutiny on how funds are used to prevent corruption or to reveal corruption if corruption were to occur, I think those are the only measures available. And on the other hand, saying only measures, I would say that they are very good measures. So it's not a very revolutionary answer, I'm afraid, or very creative either, unfortunately. But I would say that that is the only answer. It is through an open discussion in our parliaments about how these priorities, because they're democracy, so toolbox. It's a set of values and tools that we use to build good policies. But there is no pre-written answer. The answer lies in the discussion and the deliberations. Well, that might be a simplistic answer, Mr. Speaker, but it's a very valuable one because sometimes the simplest answers are the strongest. Thank you. So I'd now like to call on Martin Chung-gong. He is the secretary general of the IPU, the organizers of today's event. He is also with us on video on this Zoom call. Secretary General Chung-gong, I have a question for you actually since you're here with us on video. And I want to ask you about the IPU's best practices that it has been sharing with parliaments around the world. Tell us more, and can you tell us how effective that has been this year? Yeah, no, thank you very much for that question. And I think that the question that this distinguished panel is discussing about whether parliaments come to the rescue of democracy, I think the answer is yes. Parliaments have the potential to make democracy work for the people. And we have seen this in the response by parliaments during this crisis up until now. And if there's any lesson we learn is that parliaments like democracy itself are resilient. They have been open for business, I think in the early days of the crisis, we did a survey and realized that at least 85% of parliaments were open for business. They had adopted various measures to stay open for business. We also see this response as evidence of the centrality of parliaments in a democratic dispensation. And there are lots of practices out there that we have gathered in the context of our campaign parliaments in time of pandemic. We see parliaments like in Egypt and the Democratic Republic of the Congo working with the government to fast track legislation, emergency legislation to respond to the crisis. We see a parliaments such as Djibouti putting in place mechanisms for oversight, special committees, other committees. We see parliaments such as Sierra Leone going out to the constituencies to educate the population on the dangers of the COVID response. So whether we're talking of legislation oversight, accountability of budget and location, parliament has been present to respond to the crisis. And I'm heartened by this. So I see this as a challenge, but also as an opportunity for parliaments to remain relevant by delivering on the expectations of the people. And democracy is that instrument that they can use to deliver on the people, on the expectations of the people. So our role is not only to preach democracy, but also to strengthen the institutions of democracy parliament. And we are using this campaign on parliaments in time of the pandemic as a method of gathering those good practices that are out there and disseminating these practices. It's not a question of reinventing the wheel, but learning from one another. And I go back to what Zia said about solidarity. What is good for the neighbor, it can be good for me. Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary General. Very good to see you again and to hear your thoughts. Our next question this time is coming from Greece. We have Olga Kefalo-Giani. If you can switch on your microphone and camera please. She is a Greek member of parliament representing the new democracy party. She's previously served as minister of tourism from 2012 to 2015. Representative Kefalo-Giani, the floor is yours for your question. Hello, first let me say that it's very important that we are paying tribute to democracy, which is the form of government, which is founded on the principles of participation, equity and shared responsibility. And it's important just to remember that it began here in Athens, Greece. It then evolved in Rome and has been spreading ever since. We have all acknowledged that democracy was already in crisis before the pandemic, but I think it's important that we are stressing the effects of the pandemic on society and on the economy. And my question, it's addressed basically to Professor Craig Calhoun, is how can we protect the fundamental human rights in our societies while states have to make unpleasant and the unpopular policy choices restricting such rights in the name of public health and safety. Thank you. So thank you for that question, which is I think a great question and also for your preamble because I think you point us to what is important about specifically democratic answers to this. It's not just good government. It's not just effective government. It's government for all the people in inclusive, engaging the people as a public participating in discussion and empowering citizens. So there is a big challenge here, which is that we can see sometimes paths of scientific expertise and administrative efficiency that do not work by engaging all the people and empowering citizens. And we need to choose paths that do. I think they're available. The number one thing to say in response is parliaments are not just oversight bodies and they're not just managing budgets or applying expertise. They are mediating public discourse. So a key role for parliaments is to make sure that there is an effective public discourse in which citizens are able to grow in their understanding of the administrative measures, the scientific issues and so forth. The second thing is to keep in mind this notion that the solutions are not chosen just for an average but for all the people, which means there need to be attentions to the differences among the people and make sure everybody is in fact served by the policies that are chosen in this regard. The final thing I would just say is like many to point back to CA's comment on solidarity, but that parliaments need to be enabling and empowering of civic action that is not only harnessed through politics but is engaged in self-government at local and other levels in the movement activities because I think that decisions like mandating public health responses need to be tested by those other communities that will be subject to new measures of surveillance to mandates to wear masks for all of this. This can't just be top down, it has to be bottom up. Thank you, Professor Calhoun and thank you, Representative Kefala Gianni as well for your question. A reminder, you are listening to and watching an event by IPU and this is COVID-19 and democracy can parliaments come to the rescue. I'm your host Ravi Agrawal. If you want to ask questions, hit the Q and A button on Zoom, type in your question, your name, where you're writing in from and we will pose your question to one of our eminent panelists. I have a question now from Salma Attalla John. She is a Canadian senator who sits with the Conservative caucus. She's an advocate for the Pakistani community in Canada and I'm going to put her question to Professor Salame. Her question is, what can parliaments do to ensure that immigrants and refugees don't fall through the cracks during coronavirus pandemic? This is a question from Salma Attalla John, a Canadian senator, Professor Salame. It's an important issue. Why is it important? Because basically the concept of representation in parliaments is based on the idea that members of parliaments represent the nation, represent the voters, represent the constituency. While migrants, expatriates, political refugees happen to be non-voting individuals and groups in general. So who represents them? And to what extent the parliamentarians are in a position to represent them? I do believe that this is a very permanent issue now, especially with the tens of millions of displaced people across the world. Parliaments need to represent all those residents in one national territory. And that includes certainly the citizens and the voters, but also those who do not have the privilege of participating in any election. And I should say that in many countries where I have served, I haven't seen this interest or this concern by parliaments to those who do not vote for them. And this is important. And this will give parliaments an additional role as advocates for human rights, for all people who happen to be in one territory, be them citizens or non-citizens. Thank you, Professor Salame. I have a more general question for you as well while I have you. And I wanted to ask you what advice you would have for parliamentarians anywhere in the world for being able to govern, but also sort of challenge their leaders and do their jobs effectively to represent their people in what has really been one of the toughest years in living memory for the global community. So what advice would you have for the many parliamentarians who are missing in right now? I think the issue already asked by one of our colleagues about how is the money spent now since there is this amount of resources being put at the disposal of the government, how the money is spent is very, very crucial. And here there is no size that fits all situations. In some countries, you need to produce a few ICUs. There are countries now in the world where there are five or six ICUs in the whole country. So sometimes you need to invest in health infrastructure. In some other places, you need to cater for the question of unemployment, very serious unemployment. In some other places, you need to give privilege or precedence to avoiding bankruptcy, especially in those sectors that employ a lot of people. So I won't say there is an American model, European model, a third world model. I think there is no size that fits all and parliaments because they are representing the population in each of these countries should help the government define what is a priority now with COVID? Is it fighting unemployment? Is it fighting the negative growth? Is it fighting, is it building health infrastructure? This is very important. Otherwise, of course, the other thing I would say is that parliaments need to be much more proactive and parliamentarians need to be much more proactive. And I would say here that they need also to be careful. I have lived in countries, I have served in countries where parliamentarians were killed. I was in Libya and the famous lady parliamentarian, C.M. Sergueva criticized some people and was kidnapped and probably killed. I hope not, but she disappeared a year ago. And this happened also in my country where parliamentarians were killed in 2005 and 2006, many of them. So I know that there is a price for courage in many countries of the world and we should remember that. And I think parliamentarians in democratic societies should be much more in solidarity with their colleagues where sometimes they are facing challenges of a completely different level. They are really playing with their own life by being courageous and by being truly representative of the population. And I feel, I was waiting, I was waiting for parliamentarians from Europe, from the North America to come and express some solidarity with the family of C.M. Sergueva. They never showed up. So I believe that solidarity among parliamentarians, especially in very critical countries where there is still fighting, where there are assassinations is absolutely needed in order to re-establish confidence and trust in the role of parliamentarians. Thank you, Professor Salami. I'm going to put the next question to Professor Craig Calhoun. And this one comes from Augusto Lopez Claros from the Global Governments Forum. He's also an international economist who's worked for the World Bank and written several books. And he says that COVID-19 has found most countries, even high-income ones, with woefully unprepared public health facilities, not enough hospital beds, not enough respirators and other vital equipment. So his question is, and this is to Professor Calhoun, does the crisis strengthen the case for a rethinking of social policies? And if so, in what direction? Thanks for the question. And yes, the crisis absolutely strengthens the case for better social policies to prepare, not just for crises, but for better lives for citizens. Public health is a very good example of a kind of dual use. We need things like hospitals in order to have resiliency and crisis, but we need them all the time in order to provide more equally for all citizens. So there's a stronger case for this investment. The investments that are being made as relief can be made as investments in a better future, as Peter Schlosser said, so that we can be trying to secure the institutional and physical basis for that better future by making these investments well. But we are impeded in that by some of the neoliberalism, which Ghassan Salome referred to, which has led us to try to cut back and restrict public expenditures that are important in the advanced economies of the world as well as in the developing world. The pandemic reveals that rich countries have many of the same weaknesses and in fact for partly the same causes. In some place, the institutions have not been developed. In the rich countries, they've often been restricted and cut back so that even my country, the US, could not quickly deliver personal protective equipment or enough hospital beds. And these are issues that are going to be basic even when we have vaccines. So if we don't invest in these public health institutions, we will pay a severe price. Thank you, Professor Calhoun. I have a question from a member of parliament from Sinmatan in the Caribbean. Her name is Sarah Westcott and her question is to the IPU president, Gabriela Cuevas-Baron. President Barron, here's the question. She is asking, how can you mobilize women MPs across party lines or pandemic emergencies for healthcare, for violence, finances? What's your answer to that? Thank you, thank you very much. We need to understand that this pandemic has no political party. This pandemic is affecting rich and poor but especially it is affecting those that are in the greatest need, the most vulnerable people. And that's precisely why politicians need to be hands-on and much more proactive finding a solution. I believe that, yes, there is a very important need of a global plan, a global solution that has been the need since January and there are going to be also new questions and new challenges for humanity, for multilateralism and global solutions are going to be very important like jobs, like salaries, like inequality, gender-based inequalities, like education, like violence. This is not going to respect any political party. So I believe that what we need is to start building very inclusive proposals, very inclusive solutions. If someone tries to play with the pandemic for having any political benefits, that person or that government or that parliamentarian must be exposed to the people. It's the same as someone is using people's fear to gain some political powers. This is not the moment for playing politics. This is the moment to show responsibility. This is not the moment for populace. This is the moment for clear and responsible solutions. So I think that the first issue is what are we going to do in terms of health? How can we bring experts to the parliamentary table to find the most important solutions? Starting from the country at the parliament's level but of course having different perspectives, perspectives. We have mentioned here several of them, legislative, budgetary, oversight. But of course we are also people's representatives. We are responsible on the political narrative. We are responsible on being also accountable, not only to ask the government to be accountable. We also need to be accountable to the people. And the other part is to think in a very responsible way, which are the new challenges. Amanda Elis was mentioning a very important one, climate change. We already spoke about gender. What's going to happen to young people, to children that are now not able to go to schools? So we need to analyze, I think, in a very objective form. For example, with daytime, with experts, with scientists, on which are the most important needs. And then to, as politicians, do what we have to do. The world parliamentarians comes precisely for the need, the necessity of dialogue, of interaction. We need to understand that we are different from each other. We are people, we're persons. But politics is the most important instrument to find the common ground among the different people. And that's why parliaments are important. And I really trust that you and all the parliamentary community in the world are able to find that common ground, that solutions for the challenges that we are facing with COVID-19 and the new accents. And the, I think, bigger inequalities that the humanity is now facing. Thank you, President Barron. Thank you for that. I'm told we also have Martin Chungong still with us, the Secretary General of the IPU. Secretary General, I wanted you to pick up on the question of solidarity between parliamentarians. Just very quickly, if you can. I know you've recently met Libyan MPs. And if you can pick up on some of the points just made by President Barron, but also Professor Salame, how best to increase solidarity between global parliaments but also parliamentarians in a moment such as this? No, thank you very much. Yes, indeed, just before I came into this panel, I was receiving the Libyan Foreign Minister. And one of the issues that I raised with him was the fate of MP Tsegawa. And I told him that the Libyan authorities had the moral duty to ensure the integrity of that member of parliament. As you may know, we do have in the IPU a mechanism that defends the human rights of parliamentarians. And the key word is solidarity. If, as we agree, parliaments have to come to the rescue of democracy, then parliaments themselves have to be defended. The integrity of members of parliament, the physical integrity of members of parliament have to be defended. And that is why we are taking up this case very seriously of MP Tsegawa. I have been personally in touch with her family to find out as much information as possible to make this available to the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians. And if Professor Salame has any information that he may want to share with me that I can pass on to the committee, we can, I'll be glad to receive that information. So in essence, I have received the promise from the Foreign Minister that they are looking into the matter and we will continue the conversation to clarify the citation of this MP. And we are encouraging other parliamentarians around the world to take up this case in the name of solidarity, as has been mentioned by the Aibu President and Professor Gassan Salame. Thank you very much. Thank you for that, Secretary-General. I'll let you take the rest of that offline with Professor Salame so you can make progress on this very important issue. We have lots of more questions coming in and I'm gonna try and put them quickly to some of our panelists. Reminder, you can hit the Q&A button, that's the best way to get your questions in, type in your name, where you're writing in from and who you are directing the question to. We are, of course, discussing COVID-19 and democracy and whether parliaments can come to the rescue. I wanna bring in Ms. Shieh Bastida and we had a question from Bahrain, from a parliamentarian there who was asking, just quite directly, how to get younger people more involved in politics, in parliamentary democracy, in helping parliamentarians navigate a changing world? Ms. Bastida, your thoughts. Oh yeah, thank you for that question and I have two thoughts on this. First of all, for a lot of people, politics is something that they can choose to care about or not or they see it as that. A lot of us don't recognize that politics influences every single aspect of our lives and being an active citizen means that we have politics that work for us and that we have representation that actually aligns with the population's values. So I think empowering youth to understand that is very important and that happens through education. And it's really, I just started university and started studying international relations and it's really tedious to learn about everything that international relations has gone through from realism all the way to, I'm sure everybody here knows about all of that. And there's even some theories that are not even taught. For example, indigenous philosophy and Buen Vivir, which is similar to Pacha Mama, which basically means a system of international politics that is more collaborative rather than individualistic and striving for personal success. And I think youth need to be empowered to know about all of these things, need to be empowered to have this information and empowered to go in tables of dialogue so that we can share and participate more effectively in democracy. And that goes in this time of COVID-19 through making social media better, making telecommunication better, making systems of communication more effective. Sure, thank you for that, Ms. Basita. I have a question from Dr. Ravza Kavachi Khan. And let me pose that question to Sweden's speaker, Andreas Norland. So his question is, what can we do to make sure international organizations such as the World Health Organization are able to do their job? How can we ensure that developed nations give support to other less fortunate nations? Mr. Speaker. Well, thank you. Well, I would say that there is no easy answer to if the question is, how do we make some countries make policy choices which go in a certain direction? I would say that is a tricky one, but all the same, it is through debate and discussion and the democratic tools of how to shape policy. But I would say it is the issue of international organizations such as the World Health Organization is very important in today's world because we see that some powers in the world try to reshape and reuse these organizations for their own benefit and try to create a different world order than the ones we have seen and that we have built since World War II. And I think that is also a very important perspective which goes to the core of democracy and goes to the core of the international world order. And I think it is very important that democracies come together and actually defend the existing international world order and so that we continue to have a system of international organizations which is based on cooperation rather than national self-interest and competition between great powers because I think that is the beauty of our system where the WHO is one that we actually have the ideology of cooperation international cooperation, international solidarity instead of a system of competition between great powers where the smaller nations are left behind. So I think I would rather answer that issue and put the spotlight on that very important, I would say, conflict in today's international politics. Sure, thank you, Mr. Speaker. And that was a question from Dr. Ravza Kabachikhan. Thank you for answering her question. I have another one coming in from Alex Pryor and I'm gonna try and put this one to Professor Calhoun. Alex Pryor is based in the UK. And his question is that if parliaments are coming to the rescue, what is the most important thing to rescue citizens from? From COVID-19 and its impacts or from ignorance and misinformation or from governmental abuses of power? Professor Calhoun. I think that it's basic to democracy to see these as a package and not mutually exclusive. We need the engaged citizens to be informed citizens. So we need public information and public discussion. This is basic to being able to fully benefit from the scientific advances and the medical advice that is offered if the citizens don't understand it, there will not be full compliance and there will not be effective participation. And finally, as many panelists have said, this needs to be free from corruption. It needs to be delivered in an effective way that works for everyone. And the corruption we need to understand is not just does somebody take a bribe. It's due politicians act to suppress the democratic process. As in my country, the US sadly, some act to suppress the vote and prevent people from voting. We need the opposite of this to be effective in COVID because we need everybody to be joined in being effective about COVID. Sure, thank you, Professor Calhoun. We're almost out of time. I'm gonna put the last question to IPU president, Gabriela Cuevas-Barron. President Barron, we were talking earlier about trust and I think that's such an important issue in general. Many of the questions in our chat reflected that as well. And the crisis we're in right now, it is so many things. It's an economic crisis. It's a crisis of many different proportions. But first of all, it is a health crisis. And I think in the coming months, trust is going to be so important in healthcare systems in the efficacy of a vaccine, in the delivery of a vaccine and in countries being able to cooperate in sharing that vaccine and manufacturing it together and making sure that supply chains work for all of those things to happen. So Professor Barron, your thoughts on what the IPU can do and what parliaments can do in general to ensure that in the coming months, we are able to discuss and ensure that vaccines are safely produced, are trustworthy and are delivered to as many people as possible. Professor Barron. Thank you. Thank you very much, Rabi. And thank you very much to all for this question. We have to work in three pillars. The vaccine is one of the three pillars and the vaccine is not in our hands. It's in the scientific community hands. We need as politicians, as parliamentarians to guarantee all the conditions for them to have the proper research but also to guarantee that this is going to be a public good. We need also very important to be clear and objective on how the vaccine is going to be distributed. That's enough with privileges for only a very few ones. We need to understand that saying that this has to be a public good, it means that it has to be available for the seven billion population that this planet is having. Otherwise, it is going to be only for the rich and privileged ones. That's for the vaccine. And there are a lot of things but those are related to the scientific community in terms of asking them to follow the protocols. This is becoming a politician's competition instead of a responsible research. If we want to change the world in terms of a vaccine, let's start with cooperation. Let's start having a very clear database. Let's start sharing the findings which are the different kind of viruses which are the different and particular cases on its RNA. There are so much things related to the vaccine that what we need to do as politicians is to set the table for the scientific community to do it, to have the research, to have the strict protocols, and to end politics. Politics and science are not a good mix. If we get politicians hands into science, we are only going to have terrible results for the vaccine. The second issue is treatment. I don't understand sincerely why we are only seeing the vaccine because the three pillars are very important. Even if the world can have a vaccine, it is not clear how long the immunity is going to last. So the second part, treatment is very important. We need a medicine, we need treatment, we need a solution. And the third part is public health. If we are not responsible, if we are not working with the people to understand that social distancing, that face masks, that washing our hands, hygiene measures are very important, we are not going to end with this pandemic, or if we are able to end with this pandemic, we are going to have another one. Let's take a look to what's happened with the 21st century. It was Mary's SARS, a lot of different epidemics, a lot of cholera, and diseases are there. We need to work closer to the people, and that's the nature of a public representative to work with the people. So let's please work on these three pillars. And please, I really ask my colleague parliamentarians to work with international or universal health coverage. We need to guarantee that human rights are for all, starting from health. President Barron, thank you for that. I'm told we're running out of time now. In fact, we are out of time. The IPU will place a recording of this event online, and I'm sure you'll be able to find it on their social channels. I'd like to thank all of our eminent panelists for giving us their time and their valuable insights. We could go on and on because they have so much to offer. They are IPU president Gabriela Cuevas-Barron, professor Craig Calhoun from Arizona State University. Sweden's speaker Andreas Norlen, professor Hassan Salamei, and our activist, teen activist Shieh Bastida. Thank you to all of you for joining us. I learned a lot from listening to you. I'd also like to thank the IPU, the Julianne Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University, the Swedish Parliament, the Kofi Annan Foundation, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and all the MPs, UN partners, students, and the general public who have joined us today on the International Day of Democracy. I'm Ravi Agrawal, managing editor of Foreign Policy Magazine. Thanks for joining us today, and have a great rest of your week. Thank you.