 Well, good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to welcome all of you and our distinguished guests as a Zade Rod L. Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to the inaugural Morde and Shepi Abramowitz lecture. The purpose of this lecture series, which is made possible by the generous support of the Abramowitz family, is to try to highlight what all of you know very well, and that's the continuing significance of humanitarian and human rights issues on a very crowded and complicated international landscape. I can't think of a moment when it's more important to focus on those issues. As all of you know very well, this is a moment when the space for civil society, for humanitarian and human rights activism, is increasingly being closed in many places around the world where intolerance is threatening pluralism and respect for diversity, where oftentimes authoritarian systems seem to be on the rise and gaining momentum and democracy seem embattled and dysfunctional and challenged by governance. It's a moment when increasing attacks on independent media and fake news are crowding out debate and honest, fact-based discussion of issues. I also can't think of two people whose professional lives have better embodied the importance of those issues than Mort and Shepi. I promise not to embarrass them with a long recitation of their accomplishments, but I would say simply that you've made an enormous positive impact on many of us in this room and on many, many people beyond this room. Mort in 40 years as an extraordinary diplomat was a role model for my generation. He's been a role model as a former president of the Carnegie Endowment and as the initiator of a number of wonderful initiatives like the International Crisis Group. And Shepi has made her own indelible mark as a human rights worker, as a humanitarian activist and as a wonderful mentor to generations of public servants in the Refugee Affairs Bureau at the State Department. So it's really an honor to have both of you with us today and to launch this series in your name. So thank you. And finally, I can't think of a person whose better position to serve as the inaugural speaker for this lecture series than our distinguished guest today, Zade Rod El Hussein. Many of you know his exemplary career. He's now been the UN High Commissioner, a nice easy job for about three years. But before that, sort of two different stints as Jordan's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York was did a terrific job as Jordan's ambassador in Washington to the United States. And in a variety of senior roles in multilateral diplomacy, played extraordinarily important roles in everything from peacekeeping and the Balkans to the creation of the International Criminal Court. But beyond all of because he's a friend and diplomatic colleague of many years, I would add that beyond all of that professional skill and accomplishment, what has always said Zade apart has been his decency and his integrity and his humanity. So thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. And it's especially kind of you to do this at the beginning of General Assembly Week, which I often remember as diplomatic speed dating, but which I know is a huge drain on your time and agenda. So thank you very much again. What I'll do is get the conversation started over the next few minutes, but I promise I'll leave plenty of time for your questions and a more open discussion. But Zade, let me just start by showing that I've retained the American diplomats capacity to restate the blindingly obvious. And that is that it's not easy to be the public face of human rights at the United Nations. And I imagine it's particularly difficult when you come from a part of the world, most of whose leaderships at least are not noted for their attachment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So how do you navigate that? And you've put it very politely Bill because others will say who on earth do you think you are to be lecturing to the European Union membership or to be lecturing to the United States or Canada or Australia? I mean, you know, where do you think you come from? As you said, but they do so less politely. I think the obvious response is that you have to judge someone on their conduct and over the basis or over the time period where it's quite clear where their passions are, where their convictions lay, but to make determinations on who is acceptable for whatever position on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, sexual preference is something that we try and eschew of course in the human rights community. And so it behooves us to be fair and firm on everyone, not least because those countries that have long stood sentinel over human rights that played a part in the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights need themselves to hold and maintain a very high standard of conduct. And when they don't, then others of course run riots when it comes to their own obligations vis-a-vis their own people. And so yes, I do hear the flak and yes, the Arab world sadly and I think all of the Arab diplomats in this audience would agree probably more in private than in public that there are many deficits that we need to adjust for in the Arab world. I mean, not least we have these horrific conflicts that must be brought to an end quickly. Thanks, Sid. I mean, one of the, a different question I guess is one of the few remaining bipartisan habits in Washington these days is criticism of the Human Rights Council. Some of whose members are pretty egregious violators of human rights, oftentimes look like arsonists posing as firemen in the Human Rights Council. Can you talk a little bit about the distinction between the work of the council, your work as a commissioner? And I know you've spoken about this publicly, but any ideas that you have to help improve, not just the image, but the effectiveness of the Human Rights Council. Yeah, no, it has long been battered by many who rightly point out that some of the most terrible violators of human rights are elected onto the body and it makes mockery of any attempt to abide by the General Assembly resolution that set it up, which requires the members, the 47 members of the Human Rights Council to uphold the highest standards of human rights. And the obvious sort of response that one will hear when one says only those with relatively pristine records should be represented is that you will, people will say, well then you'll just have a, it'll be a council of Scandinavian countries basically. And that there is something to be gained when you have other countries with problematic human rights records on board and they agree to a particular resolution in respect of another situation, which then at least you hope would put pressure on them to clean up and sort out their own obligations inside their own state. It doesn't always work because Bill, there are two things that we have to bear in mind. One is that the entire international system is held together by a fading memory now. I say by memory, but it's fading and that's why we see the attacks on the system, whether it be the security system, the international financial architecture or the rights-based system. And in that, we have to be extremely careful that we don't lose sight of the antecedents that led to the creation of these three main bodies. And the other point I was just about to raise and it just skipped my mind. So I'm gonna have to come back to it and show you that we human rights people are entirely fallible and make, I'll get back to it in a second. Join the crowd. Yeah. Yeah. No, you'll have to ask me another question. I'll cut to it. All right. Now, the other question actually follows from that a little bit and that is that, you've highlighted many times in public and you just alluded to this, the kind of internal, external challenge, the behavior, the internal behavior of certain leaderships and governments doesn't match up to their external preaching. And we're meeting today at a moment when in the US White House and the administration, you have a leadership that at least so far has contained its enthusiasm for humanitarian and human rights advocacy, at least on a number of issues. What kind of international impact do you think that has? How important is the power of example in the United States? But I spoke of this two weeks ago in a press conference when I was asked a question which begged the response similar to this. I was very concerned about the president's comments in Arizona, soon after the events in Charlottesville, where he was singling out the media once again for criticisms. And one understands fully well that the United States country where the protection of the press, the protection of free speech is guaranteed under the Constitution. The danger that we always perceive is that once you start to berate a press single-out individual journalist, sort of a climate of intimidation begins to take hold, you then see self-censorship. And even though they're constitutional guarantees, you begin to see sort of almost a reduced climate of tolerance for the media to express itself and then whether to be a tax on individual journalists, it goes even beyond that. And when making these comments, I pointed out that soon after the president's remarks, he was cited by the Cambodian leadership when they themselves revoked the licenses of various radio stations and media outlets and non-PEN. And it's this radiation which worries us intensely. I mean, yes, we are concerned about what may happen in the US, but the multiplier effect elsewhere is very noticeable. And one also, you know, watching Aung San Suu Kyi make her initial remarks about the military operations in Northern Rakhine and she dismissed the reports from my office and others as fake news. And this clearly cannot be something that helps the human rights agenda writ large. And so there is an importance that we attach to what it is that the president says or fails to say. And what left us concerned also after the results of the 8th of November is that traditionally, I think ever since 1948, you've had a bipartisan approach toward the maintenance of values with some administrations more passionate about it than others. But never have you seen a sort of jettisoning of the entire human rights agenda. And what we've seen now is that there is a sort of a movement back at least on certain files, which I think is healthy and on the Rohingya crisis. We see the US being now more vocal about the need to prevent this crisis from getting worse, which is encouraging. But on other issues, of course, we're still waiting to hear or very concerned about as an absence of a voice from the US. Having a hard time getting in my mind the image of Hun Sen as a Twitter follower, but I did want to ask so on since she raised the situation in Rakhine and the plight of the Rohingya. What can be done at this point? I mean, I've seen the reports that you've put out which are very direct and very candid in their criticism and their analysis of the situation, but what can be done at this stage? Well, it's important I think today to see what it is. I haven't seen any reports about her statement. Actually, it's tomorrow, it's on Tuesday. I understand her statement maybe in English, which itself may tell us something, maybe not directed at her own people as such. The other thing is that I would hope to see that she isn't simply the spokesperson of the military, that she is speaking in terms which are deep in that compassion, which we hope in respect of the Rohingya she is capable of expressing and creating some distance between her and the military. And as a Burmese friend told me yesterday, the important thing is also to see whether or not the military will accept returns that will restore the balance in Northern Rakhine, a sort of nine to one balance, Rohingya versus the Rakhine minority. If the military refuse to accept the large numbers from returning, then this just confirms to us that this was a very deliberate maneuver to remove a large percentage of the Rohingya out of Northern Rakhine and move them to Bangladesh. And that of course is deeply problematic because the country, you worry about a broader confessional confrontation existing beyond Rakhine and then also as we have long warned that unless they dealt with the fundamental issues it would be a magnet for extremism. The other worrisome thing, the other day we saw is that the extremist Buddhist monk, Viratou was unmuscled, he'd been muscled for about a year and he was, he basically, I mean he said things you couldn't even say in public, just so extreme. But also we saw on some of the extremists from the other side is sort of the jihadist networks, very hard rhetoric and it has all the makings of a colossal crisis that can extend elsewhere in Southeast Asia unless we end the military operations now. And we have to contrive a number of different mechanisms by which we could do this with the help of, and I know the Secretary General has been making calls to various regional leaders because if we don't stop the killing then we are in a very bad space. And so this could just be the opening chapters of something far worse of course. I wanna open it up to a wider conversation in just a second, but one last question to try to be a little bit more uplifting. I mean we've talked a lot already about some of the negative trend lines and some of the particularly ugly cases of repression and denial of human rights around the world. But do you see instances where you see possibilities of reversing some of those negative trend lines whether it's because of changes in leadership or external influencers or anything else? Yeah, I mean the first point I think Bill is that we do get depressed. I think almost by nature human rights people are sort of almost sort of sullen. They have a very sensitive sort of antenna when it comes to injustice and so you feel it. But what's also extraordinary is the courage of human rights defenders around the world. I mean it's mind blowing and I say this all the time because it needs to be said because we like to think ourselves as people who could be courageous. But if you're told to point blank that you stand to lose everything. I mean everything, your family or your livelihood if you were to publish an article or you were to take a position where you were criticizing a government's performance. I mean many of us would think twice. You would have to think about it. And the fact that there are people who will nevertheless stand up, speak, knowing that next year, next day they will be in prison. It's mind blowing because there's so many who actually do it. There's so many of the most amazing, courageous people who actually do it. And what we like to see is that if there is a change in government we always want to try and test and see where we see a potential for change. And so Uzbekistan stands to mind. I'll be seeing President Mirza Yoyev tomorrow. I went to visit him in Tashkent a few months ago. Over a year ago Uzbekistan would have ranked as one of the most repressive countries and a country with which we had enormous difficulty. And the former president passed away. We have a new president who clearly we believe now is opening up the country in the right direction. It's by no means perfect. And there are many violations which we would still cite. But we feel that this is a transitional moment we want to try and help them with. And so that is encouraging. And it's conditions like that that keep us optimistic. Thanks. Well, as I said, I don't want to monopolize the conversation. So let me open it up now to your questions. There'll be microphones that'll come to you. If you just raise your hand. Once you get the microphone, please identify yourself. Please try to be concise and end with a question mark. We have about a half an hour I think. So yes, sir. X right behind you. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. High Commissioner. My name is Engadu. I represent the Ethiopian satellite, television and radio based in Washington DC, London and Amsterdam. It's formed by exiled journalists for the obvious reasons we can't work from there. Mr. High Commissioner, you visited Ethiopia in May after a deadly protest in which by the government's own admission, 669 people were killed. And among other things, you demanded an independent investigation into the killings and also for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. And your staff has been denied access from your statement in June. And none of your demands have been met by the government. And in fact, in Ethiopia, the human rights situation has worsened since you visited that country. Recent reports show that there has been any ethnic clashes going on in the eastern part in which the government is allegedly armed both sides, the Somalis and the Oromos. And there is obviously a human rights crisis in Ethiopia while the international community is looking the other way. What is your office gonna do amid all this crisis and we feel for that country? Thank you very much, sir. Very good. Do you want me to respond right here? Please. Okay, right. When I visited Ethiopia, I made it clear that I wanted to sit down and speak to one of the leaders of the movement which created a sense of crisis in Ethiopia. But the crisis goes back and has the antecedents that you are very well aware of. And I was driven to a remand center where I spent 40 minutes with one of the principal leaders of the opposition. And the opposite, I mean, let's say the opposition which falls outside of the coalition. And we had a long talk and in my subsequent discussions with the leadership of the country, yes, absolutely, you're right. I asked for access for my people to Oromo and Amhara. And we were not given that access. I intend to go back in January where I hope they will give me personally plus my team access to those areas. And we need to, there are signs that there could be openings in the country. I think there is enough of awareness that over the last two years, the country could not maintain itself along the current sort of trajectory. And that unless there was an opening up of the system and the ability for people to exercise their civil and political rights more openly, the country was imperiled. I was quite encouraged by a discussion between the opposition outside the coalition and a member of the ruling party where it was so raw, it was so heated. I mean, I had never seen anything like it. I mean, it was genuinely passionate arguments against being used against one another. So my hope is that this is a country that we can nudge in that direction, notwithstanding the problems that it really faces and I'm very aware of it. But I will form a more conclusive opinion and picture after my trip in January and then we'll see. Thank you. Thanks. Yes, in the back, please. Thank you very much. Abdullah Yasun, the Global Post. I'm from Turkey. The Global Post is a DC-based new media outlet. I would like to ask you about Turkey, the ongoing crankdown. You know all the details, 50,000 people jailed and there's a massive crankdown on media. But there's also another far disturbing element in this story, which is largely gone unnoticed. Only the New York Times Magazine report about it. 17,000 women and nearly 700 babies also jailed. For instance, 200 women just after they delivered a baby in a hospital, the police waited outside and took them into jail. This is, you know, just gone crazy. I would like to know your opinion about this. Thank you. Yes, and last week I, going back to Bill's point about the internal, external consistency, I made a point that the Turkish leadership has wanted to play on the global stage in a very active way and so has called for a ministerial meeting in New York on the plight of the Rohingya, which I welcomed. But I also noted that as you said Turkey itself has enormous human rights challenges. Half the world's journalists in prison are in Turkey. The attack on various Kurdish and leftist communities has been very pronounced. And not all of it can be excused. There's so many governments try to explain to us on a charge of or a suspicion of counter-terrorism. And this is perhaps the most sort of challenging of all the obstacles we face. In that if counter-terrorism legislation is used as a means of score settling with opposition parties with civil society that expresses dissent, it actually does a service in the long run to those who are really part of the violent extremist movement because you're turning so much of the public against you eventually. And Turkey is a large country, an important strategic country. Quite frankly, I don't have a dialogue with the leadership. I wish I did. I've been asking for access to the Southeast as well, to Chisre, to Yarbakir, to Nusayban for two years. They have invited me to Ankara. I have resisted going because I need to have access to the Southeast as well. And so it's a very complicated relationship and we're very worried about Turkey. Thanks, yes, ma'am. Good morning. My name is Zahra Sadikpur with the Women Freedom Forum Organization. We are a research organization that have members throughout universities or professors or deans, et cetera, throughout the country and we concentrate on the women and children in the Middle East. My question, I guess, or comments, I'm not sure which you will take it as, we have families and friends and members inside Iran as well. And more and more in the last year or so, there has been a huge campaign inside Iran that thankfully has come into light and the world is finding out more about it is the 1988 massacre of 30,000 political prisoners in less than two months. After World War II, the world said it will not happen again and unfortunately, as you, better than any of us know, it has repeated itself throughout the last few decades. What we are, I guess my question is that what the United Nations can do your office, any kind of investigational entity independent of that is not connected to the Iranian regime. As you know, Ms. Asma Jahangir, the Iran's Reperturion Human Rights has submitted a report to the United Nations and Secretary General as well, made a note to the members about the 1988 massacre just recently. The families want to know where their loved ones are buried, for example, a mother, their pregnant and her husband were jailed during the 1980s and she gave birth, the mother and father both executed. The baby at 15 days old was taken away and there's nowhere to be found. Now the aunt who's asking, hey, you killed my family, you killed my brother, where is my niece or nephew? They don't even know and she's in jail now just simply because of asking those things. The moms and parents are dying, they're in old age, that happened 29 years ago and all they want to see what's happening, the cemeteries are being bulldozed, they have becoming land-filled now and the pretext of parks and concretes to cover these mass graves of 1988 that we don't even know how many exactly or what are their names are. What can be done from the United Nations, thank you. I'm going to tie the response into a lecture I gave at the Law Society in London a few months ago. You know, we human beings are fundamentally untrustworthy and unreliable. For that reason, we have laws. If we were entirely trustworthy and we believed in the human capacity to reason and learn from mistakes, then custom alone would suffice. We would have customary law as such and we wouldn't need to codify laws nationally or internationally. We're not there yet and we are not capable in many respects in dealing with issues of memory as we've now seen in the US for some time, not just events in Charlottesville most recently, but in many parts of the world, the inability to deal with historical injustices is a lament. It's a failure of humankind to accept what has happened. And yes, it's subject to interpretation, but the broad contours of it could be elucidated. I think I could be told that I'm wrong because there may be presidential historians here, but I think it was Lincoln's sort of desire in April 1865 before he was assassinated to not cast a glance backward at the enormous bloodletting of the Civil War and to sort of move the country with a partial amnesia at least forward that then set in train a century and a half of a focus on other aspects of human development and leaving these sorts of events behind. I must confess, I didn't know about it until I had read about it and I need to do my own investigations. We opine on the situation, human rights situation in Iran quite regularly from the use of the death penalty, of course, in respect to juveniles, those who clearly should not be subject to it under human rights law because they are part of a drug offense and it's not a most serious crime as the human rights mechanisms have explained, but also treatment of various minorities. The Paha'i minority stands very clear there and we have issues regarding arbitrary detention as well. This is an issue which I thank you for raising it because I do need to sit there and study it and what we do realize is if you're a victim of any serious human rights violation, the temporal space, in countries there may be a statute of limitations in respect of what legal action can be taken, but in the emotional space, the suffering is as immediate as when it first happened and I've seen this time and again. I most, about a year and a half ago I was in Sri Lanka where a lady who had been raped multiple times, 30 years ago, was in tears for 40 minutes and her pain was as immediate as it was the minutes after she had been raped. So people's suffering is not erased just simply by the passage of time unless we tend to it. So I thank you for raising this issue. Thank you. Yes, sir. Great, right behind you. Good morning, my name is Tom Getman. Thank you, Mr. High Commissioner for visiting with us and thank Shepion Morte for your service now and always. I was on the OCHA board as the ICVA chairman in Geneva and therefore the representative, one of the NGO representatives to the High Commission. And I'm taking a delegation to Palestine and to Jordan of 30 people in October and I'm wondering what we can do, if anything, what you can do or we can do together to help with the restrictions against humanitarian activities and advocacy activities in regard to Israel-Palestine. Yeah, it's a very good question, Roy. I mean, I myself have been wanting to go to the region but as I've noticed, I noticed very quickly when I first was elected to this position every government was extending invitations for me to visit and then as I began to speak each invitation is sort of, they can't make it at this time. I had two of the schedule is too busy and so we have a very active office in Ramallah and we have a presence in the Middle East and clearly we see restrictions on the civil society space and much of it is sort of, if you look and trace back or let's say a good deal of it stems from the sort of, it's modeled on the Russian foreign agents law and the undesirable associations law and so the restrictions over the long term do tremendous damage to these sort of nascent democracies or at least democracies that present themselves as being valiant champions of the right to free speech and freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly and so forth. It is a discussion that requires, I think, fortitude and just persistence and eventually we might get a fortuitous moment where we can reverse some of this but the ethno-nationalism that is now running rife throughout the world poses enormous dangers because there's this remarkable exchange that I've cited quite a number of times between a psychologist Gustav Gilbert, an American psychologist who sat with Hermann Göring in Nuremberg and was taking his testimony and Göring said, you know, it's very easy to mobilize people. You just tell them they're under attack internally and from within and from without and anyone who says anything that runs contrary to this is labeled a traitor and treacherous and before you know it, you have a very malleable public and it was so brazen in the way he said it and he was being challenged by Gilbert but Göring stuck to it and ultimately you worry that throughout the world as civil society is crushed and independent media is driven into the far resources of society where it can't express itself as Bill was saying, we're in another space and we've been in that space before. We've been in the pre sort of June 28th, 1914 space before and I just, can I do a little run on a thought here? So we had this discussion a few weeks ago about the power of some of the major internet companies and I asked whether or not and because it has been written about the possibility of a splinter net whether or not it's entirely possible that the internet can just suddenly disappear one day and the argument being that prior to June 28th, 1914 if you had asked any ship owner, any trader, any banker in Europe and indeed actually this was written about in this wonderful book 1913 where in the middle of 1913 there was an article which reflected the contents of a book written in 1910 saying that it's simply impossible that there can be a European, a general European war because there's so many stakeholders that have a stake in peace they simply would not allow it to happen. So the argument that all our lives are so dependent on the internet we won't allow it to fail is a flawed argument because we have as humanity broken this world already twice and we can break it again and the reed holding all of this together is very tenuous and the rights part of it is the most delicate the most sensitive sort of antenna that we have and if you don't pay attention to it you know the collapse can come pretty quickly and that's why we are so doggedly pushing for it. You have to smuggle me through. You need a long rover code maybe I'll hide inside the song. Please. Hi. Microphones on its way. Thank you. Hi, Elisa Massimino with Human Rights First. Thank you so much, High Commissioner for your leadership not just for being here with us today but it's been truly a bright spot for all of us who work on human rights and continues to be. As you know, I work for an organization whose mission is to foster, encourage and leverage American global leadership on human rights. Which we're now expanding what it means of what American leadership means to include beyond the US government and all Americans. But I'm curious if you could speak a little bit more about any relationships that you have the character and content of the relationships that you have now with Ambassador Haley and her staff and anybody here in Washington. And then if you have any advice for us as civil society organizations based here in the United States who have this as our mission. Thanks. Elisa's not going to disclose that we had a breakfast not long ago where you weren't gonna say that. I had two discussions with Ambassador Haley. Both very polite, cordial. We discussed a number of different files externally the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi for example. And we discussed the Human Rights Council. I didn't feel that there was any tension notwithstanding comments that I'd made about the president and prior to the elections as well. And so it was all fairly polite. I haven't had any other contacts at a high level at a cabinet level but with members of the State Department I have had. And I did notice and I mentioned it of course Ambassador Burns because I couldn't help but mention races. But last week at the Human Rights Council the U.S. statement was really quite surprising because given the relationship that the White House has created or the relationships with some of the member states I was surprised to see that they were being cited for human rights violations. So explicitly Egypt Bahrain being too. So the system seems to be working. And again one sort of expects that there would be a sort of slow recalibration and perhaps the initial attempt to push back on the human rights agenda writ large will be thought through again. And I suspect also that Ambassador Haley's experience in the Security Council has changed the way that she views this. I mean she may have an inbuilt compass that sort of would direct her to human rights but you cannot not serve on the Security Council and then see how the deficits in human rights are so intimately involved in the creation of crises and then also they needed to be settled when you deal with the post crisis period. So I'm hoping that there is a change. I haven't opined as much about the United States as others have asked me to opine because the cacophony of noise, the activism, the discussions on all sides still gives you hope that the U.S. can always make adjustments. And it was always said that if there was one problem with Europe is that it couldn't adjust to certain realities in the same way the U.S. adjusts to them. So we're keeping an eye and where we feel we need to say something, we will say something. And we thank you for your leadership as well. Yes, sir. My name is Connie Zulama. I'm with the American Kurdish Information Network and Advocacy Office for the Kurds. Last February, your office issued a report about Turkish armed forces reducing 30 Kurdish towns and city centers into vast parking lots, generating close to half a million refugees. They are forgotten now. You're busy with the Rohingya refugees. Will we forget them in six months from now? What are good days like in your office? Yeah, no, we are producing periodic reports. So every few months we will produce a report on the southeast and we will make it public. The idea being is that we ask for access to a particular area. It could be northern Rakhine. It could be Jammu Kashmir on both sides of the line of control. It could be Nagorno-Karabakh in all these cases. It could be in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Venezuela, in all these situations. Where we do not receive the access that we seek, we started this policy about a year ago by doing a remote monitoring and then sharing the conclusions with the government or government's concern. And if they still oppose us from securing access, we will make those public. And we don't stop. This is not going to stop until we have some clear idea of what happened in detail in those regions. A good day comes from the family of someone that we managed to either have released or where the death penalty wasn't imposed and they write to us and you realize it was all worth it. We save a human life as someone wrongfully accused. All the insults and the bitterness of government against us and all human rights defenders is all worth it if we can do that. And we do receive, and all of us who are human rights defenders, we receive a lot of abuse. I think what the way we think, though, is rather different. We realize that if you scramble only for your own kind, you scramble it for everyone else. You have to scramble on behalf of humanity writ large. And then you can have a safe humanity. Otherwise, we've seen a time, and again, the historical record shows it. We're down in abyss. And again, going back to the ethno-nationalisms, it's extremely dangerous. And we have to claw ourselves away from it. We just have time for a couple of more questions. Let me look in the back. Yes, sir. Microphone's right behind you. Thank you. This is Mariano Di Alba from Venezuela. Thank you, head commissioner. I just wanted to ask you, two weeks ago, you put out a report announcing extensive human rights violation and a policy to repress political dissent. Now there are efforts in the Organization of American States to try to refer the situation in Venezuela to the International Criminal Court, a court which you played an essential part in establishing. Do you think the situation in Venezuela merits a referral to the International Criminal Court? Thank you. No, we presented our report, and then I have since asked for there to be an international investigation mounted. What our investigation did, and we didn't have access to Venezuela, but we spoke to a lot of Venezuelans outside the country. And as many have fled is that we needed to have, our investigation is a human rights investigation. We needed to have the beginnings of sort of criminal investigations to establish whether indeed there were grounds for believing crimes against humanity have been perpetrated as we suspect they may have been. And whether these investigations are conducted by the ICC or there's another body, we believe this is merited. And I don't know whether I should, this was an internal discussion, but we had a discussion within my office about making contact with the OAS. And our report is public, so they must have it, but to make sure that they didn't indeed have it. And we're very concerned about Venezuela for all these reasons. Thanks. Fred, the last question. Yes, ma'am. And there'll be one more, yeah, after you. Good morning and thank you, High Commissioner for your insights and thank you for talking about the crisis in Southeast Asia in Myanmar. I wanted to ask you about another crisis in the same region where more than 12,000 people have been killed, including children, in the name of, well, drug crime. So that's in the Philippines, where now civil society, which used to be one of the most vibrant in Asia, one of the oldest democracies in Asia, has now really cowered, where the commission on human rights will be in 2018, getting a budget of $20, $20 as passed by an overwhelming majority in Congress. Special Rapporteur Calamard has already been having a do-well, a verbal do-well with the president's team, but I do wonder, and this is my question for you, how will your office come in and sort of help move the debate and help address the situation, given that it's really eroding in the country right now? Yeah, the point I forgot to mention now, and you've prompted it, is much of what it is that we do depends on a sense of shame. So whether it's, you know, Alyssa's group here in the United States, we internationally, shedding light on a particular series of violations, hope that a sense of shame will create a changed behavior. And what do we do when there is no shame, when, you know, he calls for the bombing of certain schools, when he calls for the killing of people who have not been subjected to judicial remedy or judicial, that's a due process, sorry. This sense of shame begins to undo the whole system, and I was worried for that same reason, when then candidate and subsequently President Trump would speak of torture in the same way. There's a to be entertained in any circumstance, not even when the life of a nation is threatened, are you permitted to indulge in torture? And so what do we do with the world where the sense of shame disappears? And we've commented on many occasions about what's happening in the Philippines, and I'm staying in touch with Senator Lima and her defense team, because it is indeed the worry that you set the country, but not just that country, others, on a path to eventual turmoil because history is replete with where the repression ultimately takes you. It takes you through into a very sort of terrible space which will then take decades from which one will have to invest enormously before you can emerge from it. And so it's painful to see what's happening in the Philippines. One doesn't claim that one is soft on crime for standing up for the rights of all people to due process. Whether you perceive them to be guilty of a particular crime, then clearly then the law must, and the courts must take care of it. But where there is an overambitious and an exaggerated campaign and innocent people are suffering too, and those who are just pointing the fact that injustices may be occurring are then also labeled as treacherous almost. This is, of course, deeply unfortunate and must be reversed. Yeah, thank you. Thanks. What did you have a question? I just want to ask you. Microphones right there. Here you go. What do you consider your most successful effort? Staying alive, I think. I don't know whether you're bundled from one situation into the other every day. The office is, we have 66 field presences. We have an amazing staff. And for all the young people here who are looking for a career, you can't find a more meaningful life than to be involved in human rights and humanitarian work. And the inspiration from them is enormous. And all credit must be given to them because, again, you go to the most hard-pressed, conflict-ridden parts of the world and you see these amazing young people put themselves in harm's way. And I find it, frankly, really irritating when people attack the UN. Look, I'm not going to defend the endless long and boring meetings in New York that we have to endure. That's why I fled New York today to come down and be here. And be with you in honor of you and Shepi. But what irritates me is when those who have never been in the field who have not been in conflict areas sort of portray the UN as this flabby, this useless organization. Well, you tell that to the people working in the southeast of the Central African Republic in the most unbelievable conditions. How long would you be able to last there if you were at the tractor of the UN? Would you be able to last a few weeks with this sort of violence that takes place? And so I think a sense of proportion and a sense of decency about all of this is required. It's difficult for me to put my finger on a single thing that I can be proud of. But I think I'm proud of just being part of this movement and part of this office. So I sort of dodged the question a little bit. I hate to bring fascinating conversations to a close, but Zaid, I think you've actually given us lots of reminders of why we're proud to have you in the role that you're in. Reminders of the breadth and depth of the challenges that all of us face in human rights around the world today. A reminder of the thoughtfulness and commitment and eloquence that you bring to the task and again a reminder of why we're so lucky to have you in that role. So once again, Mort and Shepi, thanks so much for making this series possible. Thank you.