 Hello, and welcome to our virtual celebration for Human Rights Day 2020, and what a year it has been, one that many of us in every corner of the globe are I am sure keen to leave behind us, with hopes for a much, much better, kinder 2021. At the UN Human Rights Office, we fervently share this hope, and we would like to use this Human Rights Day to reflect on just how we can recover better together from all that 2020 has thrown at us. I'm Raveena Shambasani, a spokesperson for the office, and I've had the honour of being part of the UN's inspiring human rights work for more than a decade now. And today I look forward to sharing with you in this programme many of the important lessons that human rights defenders from across the globe have put to us, lessons that will surely help us to breathe life into the Human Rights Day theme this year. Recover better, stand up for human rights. Now what does better look like? What kind of action can take us there? How do we learn from the mistakes of the past so that we are not doomed to repeat them? Today you will be able to see and hear stories of inspiration and action, and perhaps there will be a lesson from one particular story that can then be transposed to your own community. You will hear from experts like the World Health Organization's director-general Dr. Tedros Gebriessos on what better looks like in terms of the right to health. Artist, activist and UN ambassador Forrest Whitaker will tell us how promoting sustainable development can help us all to recover better and to leave no one behind. Award-winning musical composer Max Richter, an award-winning filmmaker Yulia Mair, will bring you a stirring performance based on the ideals of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was born on this day 72 years ago. And we will bring you an interview with one extraordinary woman who has lived, served and led through many crises, our High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet. She will be answering questions, including some sent by you at the end of this show. So please stay tuned and happy Human Rights Day. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, World Health Organization's director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Gebriessos has been calling for unity and solidarity to fight the virus. The pandemic has laid bare just how weak public health systems are in many nations, low-income, middle-income and high-income countries. To recover better, Dr. Tedros says this must change. The right to health is a fundamental human rights and governments worldwide have an obligation to guarantee access to adequate healthcare for those within their territories. Here's Dr. Tedros' message to us, this Human Rights Day, on recovering better. In 1948, at the World Sword to rebuild from the horrors of the Second World War, two documents came into force that have shaped the health of the world's people for more than 70 years. One was the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the other was the Constitution of the World Health Organization. Bose affirmed that health is a fundamental human right, not a privilege for those who can afford it. This year's theme for International Human Rights Day is recover better, stand up for human rights. It's a reminder that human rights, including the right to health, must be at the heart of our response to COVID-19, the global recovery and our efforts to accelerate progress towards the sustainable development goals. We need to think not only about the most effective ways to recover from the devastating impacts of this pandemic, but to do so with strategies designed to build more equal, inclusive and equitable societies. COVID-19 is a global crisis, and the tools to defeat it must be shared equitably with all nations as global public goods, not private commodities, that become another reason some people are left behind. WHO stands with the UN Secretary General's call to action on human rights. This is a time for strength multilateralism and global solidarity with the dignity of all people as our guiding principle. If you're just joining us, welcome to the Human Rights Day virtual program. Up ahead we will be looking at four themes in particular that are important to address in a bid to recover better together. Discrimination, sustainable development, inequalities and participation and solidarity. Now structural discrimination and racism has meant that the pandemic has disproportionately affected minorities. People in discriminated groups were overexposed and under protected due to limited healthcare access, and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has highlighted an increase in stigmatization, labeling and scapegoating. But amid this rising tide of discrimination individuals and communities are finding ways to provide better support to those most affected. We bring you two such stories. The first from Panama on the impact of lockdown measures on transgender people. Women trans or non-binary people were discriminated against, detained, and mocked. Even they were denied access to basic services. It was very difficult for us, including myself, because I felt bad. Sometimes I didn't know what to do, if I had to leave or not. If I left on the day of the men, they still questioned me, they discriminated against me. It would be worse if I left on the day of the women. It already hurt me so much. They didn't let me enter the supermarket to be able to buy dry food. They allowed me, they humiliated me. I went with my sister and they told me, you are not a woman, you are a man. You have to go. And at that moment of concern we were talking to the members of the equal foundation of trans men. And we reached the conclusion that there had to be cis-general people or non-trans people who were willing to help. And that's how the idea of the Solidarity Network was born, as a form to connect the person who wanted to help with the trans person who couldn't get out of their house. When all this starts with the pandemic, which starts all this confinement, I wonder as a psychologist what I can do to support. Contact with Pao González and we start to think what are those spaces that we can generate for the well-being. Definitely, this crisis of confinement affects us all as human beings. And it is through the Solidarity Network that we come together and realize how important it is to get out of this situation together. With the binary quarantine measure, it was the only country in the world that maintained this measure, which by the way, there is no scientific evidence that the measure had made that the cases had decreased. Currently there is no single law that contends with LGBT people. So we left already from an existing inequality where with the pandemic a lot more was revealed. The network constitutes a platform of unique solidarity to rebuild better the rights and lives of the people. And not only do we talk about fundamental rights, such as health, but above all, it constitutes an example of solidarity towards the people who have traditionally been excluded and also discriminated against. We will now hear the story of Shima from Tunisia, a sign language interpreter who did something beautiful and simple. She saw an important need and she volunteered to use her skills to fill it. And in so doing, she made a huge difference in the lives of people who are deaf and hearing-impaired in Tunisia. Shima said that the most important thing is to have the right to access the information. And this is one of the things that make it possible for the people of Tunisia. And also to have the right to have the right to access the information of the people of Tunisia. And also to have the right to access the information of the people of Tunisia. The main problem is how we are going to wear the mask. With the mask, it was not clear that we would not be able to read about the communication, we would not be able to touch it, we would not be able to get close to the people of Tunisia. At least, we would have the memory, we would have the face, we would be able to read with the mask on, which is a difficult issue. In the service that was accepted, how? As we said, we were accepted, with the mask on, obligatory for all people. The confinement period at home, with everyone who was hearing, they were talking on the phone, they were talking to the psychologist, they were talking to each other on the phone, they were talking to each other on the phone, especially in our own health. There was a problem with the family, with everything, we were not able to understand what we were going through in our own health. The motivation came from me, because I know the community in Bahia, we know the people of Tunisia. It is a job that we are going to do more than what we have to do in Tunisia, because you know what you have the information, and what you have not given, and what you are waiting for, so that people can give you your rights, because it is the service that we have to do everything. You are going to go home, your health will be in danger, and you are going to go home, God willing, you will be in trouble. Welcome back. Staying with the topic of discrimination, let's go now to Brazil. I spoke earlier to Leonardo Sakamoto, a journalist and an activist, who has campaigned on the anti-slavery and slave labor cause for decades. In 2001, he created Reporter Brazil to expose the inhuman and slave-like conditions of workers in his country. He was also on the board of directors of the UN Volunteer Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery. Leonardo's work and pursuit for justice and recognition of the rights of those facing discrimination and slavery has been relentless. When I spoke to him, I started off by asking him how the impact of the pandemic was felt in the communities that he works with. Billions of work have been affected worldwide, but the pandemic has been especially violent with the most vulnerable sections of the nation. COVID has hit hard on those in the informal economy who therefore do not have the protections provided for labor legislation. For example, domestic workers, migrants are particularly hard hit. And of course, discrimination by gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, social origin, which already made it difficult for people to access this work had the effects increased when met with the pandemic. Coronavirus did not create our prejudice, in fact, but enraged them. I remember one story. João Pedro was a 14-year-old black boy living in Rio de Janeiro. On May 18th of this year, he was played in his cousins. When the house was invaded by police in this he was killed by a rifle shot that pierced his body from stomach to the shoulder. Community leaders counted 72 bullet holes in the house of João Pedro. And of course, the João Pedro is one of the many Brazilian George Floyds and people that are shot by the police, by the state violence. But it's also important to remember that many people experience the pandemic light like slaughter on daily basis, even without the virus, in genocides that are going on around the planet. Probably the pandemic helped us to feel empathy with the other and it's possible to, after that, look for a better word for everyone. The problem is that COVID did not invent racism, did not invent discrimination, did not invent slave labor, did not invent extreme poverty, but show it that these problems are too big to be hiding. How in the aftermath of this pandemic do you see us recovering better together when it comes to fighting slavery and discrimination? Governments now have to deepen policies in order to improve conditions for minorities and take advantage of learning in this moment. This includes not only professional education and access to the labor market, but also ensures health, safety in order to address the shameful differences in the opportunities related to the skin of color, for example. Many government officials think that injustice is not the discrimination, but the affirmative action. And they defend meritocracy as if it was possible to talk about it in a society in which people have totally different conditions at the start of their personal journey, which often helps define that will happen through their entire existence. What has happened now shows the path that we need to do. This pandemic has had devastating impacts on the economic and social rights of people across the globe, which have exacerbated and fed the pervasive inequalities both within and among countries. The gap between the richest and the poorest continues to grow wider. Now the World Bank estimates that the pandemic will push another 176 million people into poverty. And on the other hand of the spectrum, a study by the World Inequality Lab of the Paris School of Economics noted that the world's wealthiest people increased their wealth by 25% during the pandemic. Such gross and growing inequalities have to be tackled at the national and international level as a matter of urgency. But there's always something that each of us can do in small ways and big to help lift those of us who are the most vulnerable and to advocate for the protection of their rights. This next story from Senegal shows just how we can work together to recover better and stand up for human rights. The pandemic has brought us to the city centers to strengthen our lives. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were not in charge. Despite the measures taken, the state of emergency, the curfew and everything, we still saw a lot of children in the streets. During this period, we gave them more to the world because people were not in the transmission zone. These children were confronted with double vulnerability. They were even left in the streets, but they didn't even have anything to eat. So at this point, we have removed the alert so that the government can take care of these children at the time of the pandemic. These children also benefit from all the educational and social activities, such as alcoholization, insertion activities such as the curfew, sports activities such as the circus. This has allowed a better care for the children who take the city centers to enter their families. What this pandemic has taught us is that we cannot live in a closed area. We have neglected the rights of the children at the time of the pandemic. This could also be a decline to allow the state to take this question in charge. This reminds us once again that inclusion is very important for access to rights and for sustainable development. Welcome back to Recovering BETA, Stand Up for Human Rights, where we look at how to build back BETA with stories that inspire and innovate. I'm your host, Raveena Shandasani. Now, music is an expression of the diversity of human beings. Music can bring us all together from every culture and tradition and speak to all of us and remind us in these difficult circumstances of our common humanity. It is in this spirit that award-winning musician and composer Max Richter created Voices, a musical project based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Along with BAFTA award-winning filmmaker Yulia Maher, the team have created music and film to convey the uplifting vision of a better, fairer world set out by the Universal Declaration. Here, Max and Yulia introduced the video All Human Beings that's based on the first article of the Declaration, which states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and in rights. Enjoy. Now, I guess the project, in a sense, starts from a feeling of dissatisfaction about the world we have made, a sense of, you know, things which somehow we got lost along the way. The world that we see around us is a world which really doesn't reflect the values set out in the Declaration. So, yeah, the project is about trying to, in a way, remind us of the human potential, human possibilities, human creativity, imagination, all of those good things. And I think we were both together looking for something to give us all hope. There's been so many huge changes, not just in the last year, but in the last 10 years particularly. And we were looking for hope and we were looking to give our children hope and to give the next generation hope as well. And I think the text does that. It's a very hopeful document and that's fundamental to it, I think. It's a wonderful occasion to, first of all, celebrate human rights, to remind ourselves of them, to talk of them, and to, yeah, spread the message widely. Voices is all about the text of the Declaration. You know, that's the sort of alpha and omega of that whole piece. It's only there because of that text. Well, I hope that people watch it and that they come away with a greater sense of compassion. The video is all about compassion and it's to do with a shared experience of life and that we all do share, no matter who we are and no matter which country we live in. I'm going to read you the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the preamble. Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. Now, therefore, the General Assembly proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance. Article one, all human beings are born free and equal in right. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of community. Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this declaration without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the country to which a person belongs. Welcome back to the program. I'm your host, Raveena Shamdasani. In the days leading up to Human Rights Day, we've been challenging you out there to show your support for recovering better and standing up for human rights. Our social media challenge was launched on 1 December by the High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, where she challenged others to show their support for human rights. The challenge is an easy way to show your support. Why don't you have a go right now? All you need to do is take a photo of yourself holding up a sign that says, recover better, stand up for human rights. Post it on your social media account with the hashtags stand up for human rights and recover better. And that's it. You could even be featured on our wall of champions where we like to acknowledge those who help stand up. There is still time to post, so please join the challenge, make a sign, nominate your friends to do it too. For us all to recover better, we need to promote sustainable development for all, leaving no one behind. The sustainable development goals are 17 goals crafted by all UN member states to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. While the pandemic has had an impact there too, access to education, gender equality, good health and well-being, reports have shown that all 17 of the SDGs have been negatively impacted by the crisis. Environmental degradation is on the rise. We have already seen how healthcare systems have been stretched in many countries and school closures have left thousands of children without access to education. But in the face of such grand goals and seemingly insurmountable obstacles placed by this monster pandemic, these teachers from Jamaica took it upon themselves to make sure that no child is left behind in their communities, using the powerful tools of a blackboard and some chalk. One day I was just around the back of my yard doing some chores and I heard a lot of noise and I went to my gate to look to see what it was and I saw children running up and down wild, a lot of kids, some riding bicycles, others playing different games and I was like wow and this was school time. I know that if it wasn't the COVID they would have been in class so as a teacher I took responsibility, I felt responsible because I was like because we're not able to be with them, they're doing that and I felt sad when I knew that I had to do something about it. Then the thought came to me, paying blackboards in this community, put up the work at a designated spot and let parents know so everybody can just come and access their phone, take picture and take it back inside their home for their children and that's what I did. Early every morning Mrs. McCoy-Phipps and her assistants go to different communities where they religiously write the day's lesson on the community blackboard. The devout teacher says the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased her resolve to reach as many students as possible. It's called for teachers to be critical thinkers and proactive and I can't let my children down, it doesn't matter if they're not members of my class, I just know definitely that I am responsible for the nation's children so I have to do something about it. Behind every zinc fence and board lies a lot of children with great potential and ability. A project like this is important because it represents a community response to a community-based problem that has nationwide implications and she's impacting hundreds of children with this simple idea. Education is a human right, we all have a right to a quality education. These blackboards are ways to help ensure at least some access to the content for the children so that at least every day they have something structured happening. She's working with the parents and the community to make sure that the teaching and learning doesn't stop and we applaud her for that. Equal access to education, you don't know where these great children are, you just have to make sure that nobody's left behind all the hands and bring them. Every child can learn, every child must learn. What a creative, beautiful way to keep the lessons going for children with little or no access to the internet but also an important reminder that the digital divide needs to be bridged. All children should have access to education. We'd like to thank our colleagues at UNICEF for bringing us this story. For our next story we go to Thailand where a vast team of government-sponsored health volunteers were mobilized during the pandemic. These volunteers are well respected in the villages where they work and they're mainly female. Women health volunteers are helping to break the stereotype that the role of women in society is limited at home, families and domestic slaves. But it is quite obvious that the health volunteer sector is dominated by women. I think women can take meaningful roles in pandemic prevention for the whole community and for the country. My next guest is as recognizable for his work on issues of peace, development and youth activism as he is for his work on screen. Forrest Whittaker is an artist known for such iconic roles as Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. He's also UNESCO's special envoy for peace and reconciliation. As the founder of the Whittaker Peace and Development Initiative, he creates programs to foster peace and reconciliation in fragile communities. He's also a UN Sustainable Development Goals champion. One of the main issues stemming from the pandemic is the complexity of its impacts in so many aspects of human mind. A direct footprint of the virus is significant. Tens of millions of people have been infected and nearly one and a half million people have already died of the virus. But many others beyond those figures also suffer from COVID-19 because it stressed the capacity of our hospitals and medical staff. In this sense, we are the victims of not just the virus, but also of the failures in our healthcare systems. This is a stark reminder that the SDGs and especially SDGs for its focus on health are called to think in the long run and to look at problems from different angles. We are facing the same shortcomings when it comes to other impacts of the virus, such as the economic crisis and the subsequent rise in poverty and inequality. The impact on education will also be felt for years, and we fail to level the inequalities of access to education that the virus has revealed and amplified. In this regard, I also think that we must pay particular attention to the fates of youth. While the victims of the disease have suffered the most, the young women and men of the world are probably the group with the next greatest impact as they have lost major elements of their education, their job opportunities, and have faced major challenges in their personal and emotional development as well. They are a largely invisible victim of COVID-19. We collectively need to make an extra effort to reach out to young people and to listen to what they have to say about the whole situation. The bottom line of the SDGs is that no one should be left behind, and this includes youth. Working with young people is central to my mission both as UNESCO's special envoy for peace and reconciliation, and as CEO of the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative. Youth are partners on the ground. The COVID-19 first impacted the countries where my foundation has a presence. The youth we work with quickly came to us, asking for support to help their communities and face the pandemic. In South Sudan and Uganda, 1,300 youth peacemakers went into villages and remote areas to disseminate reliable information about the COVID-19 virus and shared hygienic supplies like soap and hand washing stations with more than 250,000 people. They produced close to 55,000 face masks to support the remote villages. In South Africa, our youth have been requested by local leaders to organize awareness events in response to the rise of domestic violence and follow the lockdowns. All in all, these youth have reminded us that whatever challenges we are faced with, there can be no sustainable future for humanity. We don't work together in the spirit of solidarity. To build back better means that you need to develop and showcase resilience. This is what I have learned from my work in conflict-affected and vulnerable areas. When an earthquake strikes down a house that stood on fragile, worn-out foundations, you don't want the same house rebuilt. You want a house that can better withstand the tremors. You want it to be resilient. In my view, the transformative element of the 2030 agenda points to this notion of resilience. When you aim for resilience, you cannot be satisfied with doing the same thing time and again. First, you want to pay attention to the local context rather than applying one-size-fits-all models that will not prove resilient in the long run. This means that you must listen to the voices of local people and make them a part of the solution. It boils down to respecting and promoting human rights. If we intend to build back better after COVID-19, we must be in tune with people's rights, needs, and aspirations. We need international efforts and national commitments, but we need this inclusion to have local resilience. Notable solutions to challenges like poverty, hunger, universal education, gender equality, youth empowerment, and lasting peace to be solved sustainably. The beneficiaries must want to adhere to them. Inclusion and resilience are how our shared humanity will be able to build back better. Today, we celebrate the human rights of all human beings. Happy Human Rights Day. You're watching Recover Better, Stand Up for Human Rights, a Human Rights Day event. I'm your host, Raveena Shandasani, Deputy Spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office. Don't forget, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet answers some of your questions a bit later in the program. Now, this pandemic has made it crystal clear. We are all in this together, from individuals to governments, from civil society to grassroots communities. Everybody has a role in building a post-COVID world that is better for us all. Recovering better means encouraging participation and solidarity. We need to ensure that the voices of those most affected inform recovery efforts. People should be empowered and given platforms to speak up without fear of being silenced and to participate in the decisions that affect their own lives. Our next story from Ukraine is about using digital technology to ensure that people living on the margins of society are able to have a voice and a livelihood. They are shouting at you, yelling at these children, and you're going to make them agree. Social isolation and discrimination give a huge risk to the Romani national community. This is due to the pandemic that is developing rapidly in Ukraine. Unfortunately, due to the fact that some of the ROMs don't have documents to communicate with, they can't conclude agreements with family doctors. And this gives them their results, they can't get medical help, and access to medical services is being extended. In our plans, there is the implementation of such initiatives as work with enterprises, among the ROMs. I believe that this should be a small enterprise that has suffered losses during this period. And our task will be to give them the skills to adapt to the current realities. In such conditions, it is possible to implement their activities online, possibly reformat those services that they give more to make them more secure. We would like the society in Ukraine to accept different values, not as a problem. During the pandemic, we have all witnessed and perhaps carried out acts of solidarity, small and big. Globally, we've heard many political leaders pledge solidarity, but one human rights defender takes exception to the abuse of the word solidarity. Abdulaziz Mohammed spent nearly six years at an offshore detention facility at Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. He drew attention to the plight of the migrants and refugees at the facility through podcasts and books. He is a Martin Enells Award winner and he is now based in Geneva, Switzerland. I had the privilege of speaking to him earlier when I asked him what solidarity means to him. We need to be sure that this solidarity will include every human being on this earth. So this is the real solidarity. And also we need to practice the measure that will help us to implement the solidarity, which means that I need to knock the door of my neighbors. I need to make sure that the sick people who are the vulnerable people really facing this risk that need help. But what we are seeing today, it's a completely opposite solidarity that mixed up with the nationalism, which means that solidarity has created a nationalism. And nationalism has created what? Has forced the world leaders to close their borders and to keep their own people, which means that each and every one of the world leaders today is calling for a solidarity among his own people, among the territory of its own people. You've talked about how the pandemic has really brought to the surface and deepened a lot of the vulnerabilities and issues that already existed. So how can we use this to really recover better together? Our role is to stand up and make sure that, I mean, whether you are refugees and migrants or citizens of the world, you share one thing in a common, which is humanity and which is an open arms and sharing the responsibility among ourselves and also make sure that each and every one of us will have any space to isolate himself and also to practice the measure that's been put out by the world government, such as the organization, such as the distance. And your entitlement to the full gamut of human rights. It sounds like such a simple message to just recognize that we are all human beings. But your experience, Aziz, has shown that this is not the case. I mean, for a very long time on Manus Island, you were known as QNK002, a number which symbolically means so much about recognition of the basic condition of being human. How do you see us bringing back this humanity? How do you see, you know, again, being able to recover better together? We all do have the powers. And if we don't practice our roles and if we don't use our power, when I say power, let people not, I mean, mistakenly understand this, that as going, destroying things. No, your voice is your power. Your voice is your power. And to empower you more is the human rights. You can use the human right mechanism plus your voice. I mean, people could hear you no matter where you are. I was on Manus. I was on Manus in a place where in the middle of, I mean, in the end of the wall. I mean, close down in the middle of the ocean. No one's even know where I am. But people are still able to listen to my voice. People are able to listen to my stories. Going through the podcast, I mean, reading the books that we wrote. And all of this, this is the power. And as we got all of us, we have it. We all have the power. Indeed, powerful words from Abdulaziz. Each of us, we have the power to make a difference. In our next and final story, we go to Cambodia, where they asked a variety of people what recovering better looked like to them. The answer was a music video. Welcome back. Let's take a bit of a closer look at the importance of participation, particularly that of young people. Arisa Nukum is a peace and education advocate from the Philippines. She's a member of the Extremely Together Initiative, which is part of the Kofi Annan Foundation. Her multi-faith background as the daughter of a Catholic father and a Muslim mother inspired her to use education as a tool to promote peace and tolerance. She's the founder of the Chris Library, which is an NGO that has built libraries and provided scholarships to school children living in areas affected by conflict. She has also started a program to train young peace builders in the Philippines. When I spoke to her earlier, she told me she believes young people have an important role to play in recovering better, particularly when it comes to participation. I think participation is extremely important, because right now, when we look at the leadership of most countries, it's mostly male. They mostly come from middle or upper income families. They mostly are educated, and they're mostly from the majority of the population, whatever that majority is. Usually, when it comes to participation, minorities aren't often listened to. We don't have a lot of young people in the fore. I think in 2020 and in the coming years, what we need to do is increase that participation and not only to listen to a wider range of people, but actually to empower them by giving them tools, more resources, and more support. Can you think of perhaps an example of how a young person has taken these lessons and made a difference in their community and helped the community to recover better together? A few days ago, the Philippines was struck by the strongest typhoon that we had this year, and the typhoon came, and some people died, and a lot of people lost their homes, lost their livelihoods, and the damage is probably in the billions. So entire populations, their homes wiped out and their possessions lost, and one unique effort that I saw was that there was a group of students who were pooling resources to store up mobile credits, and it's a very overlooked resource because apparently here in the Philippines, a lot of students who attend online classes these days, they don't have enough money to have like a post-paid account, they use prepaid credits. So they created a campaign to pool together people's extra credits from their mobiles. It was amazing because I am not a student anymore, so I'm not taking online classes, so I wouldn't have known that this was a necessity, but these 13-year-olds, 14-15-year-olds recognized that this was a need of those people their age. So they mobilized to give that to them. Any messages that you want to give out there to young people or to people of more advanced age on taking young people seriously and why their participation is important in building back a better world for us? Whenever I talk to people in position, people who create policies, I always tell them that when we have these problems that we've never seen before because of climate change, because of the pandemic, because of all these new challenges to democracy or to stable societies that we've seen in the recent years, when we have problems that are out of this world, we can't just use the solutions that we've been using these past years. So we need to tap into our reserves of creativity and innovation. And for me, that's really these young people whose imaginations are always on the run and... Unbridled, yeah. Yeah, and who can really tap into their inner reserves of playfulness and creativity. And when you're able to leverage that, then I believe we'll come up with very creative solutions to all these problems we're facing. So true what Arisa said. Facing new challenges and problems, we can't just turn to the same tired, old, so-called solutions that have been used all these years. We need to tap into the creativity and playfulness of our young people. We need the participation of young people in helping us recover better. Now it is my great honor to turn to a woman I deeply admire, Michelle Bachelet, our High Commissioner for Human Rights. Michelle Bachelet has served in many capacities through numerous crises, as a doctor, as a Minister of Defense, as a Minister of Health, as President of Chile two times, and as head of UN Women, and also as a mother, grandmother, and so much more. High Commissioner, welcome. High Commissioner, this year has, of course, been dominated by a public health emergency, the pandemic. Your message throughout this time has been consistent, that this is a human rights crisis. And the issues that it has thrown up are not new, but in fact it has just deepened and accelerated the crisis. And you've asked for human rights to be at the center of the response. Why do human rights have to be at the center of a response to a public health emergency? Even though the pandemic of COVID-19, it is a public health crisis. On one hand, it's had laid there all the inequalities that exist in our world, between countries and inside countries. The inequalities in terms of access to care, access to health, access to education as well, access to the right to live adequately. The difficulties on the right to a good housing or clean water or sanitary conditions. So it has laid there the number of human rights that are not being respected in the world. When we're talking about human rights has to be at the center. It is that we need to ensure those rights for the people. We need to ensure the participation of the people in terms of how they can really make their voices heard and in the moment that decisions are being made. So we need to ensure that people's rights are in the center of the response to the crisis and in particular on to the recovery as well. How has discrimination kind of deepened during the crisis and why is it necessary to tackle it in response to this crisis? Well, I think that discrimination exists always before the crisis. And while I was in the hospital many times I heard people telling me how far aware the health facilities were when they were, when they were, how they were sometimes because they were indigenous, how they were treated. So this, and I guess so in many European countries the same thing could say people from minorities, they feel that they don't always have access to healthcare. Also people from the LGTBI community for example have little access to the healthcare system. They were because of the stereotype, the prejudices and so on. There are older people, people living with disabilities, women and girls, LGTBI, refugees, migrants, IDPs, well people in prisons because of the conditions. So indigenous people of course. So all these people because if you look at the rates of infection they might be, you know, widespread. But when you see at the rate of the death toll you see that it's focused on minorities. And why is that? First because they have less access to healthcare. Second because they live in the poor condition as we were talking, smaller houses, not always with sanitary and water conditions. Third because they usually work in the more precarious job. Many of them in their so-called essential services like the cleaning, like the bus drivers where they are more exposed. Well even healthcare workers and teachers. Of course healthcare workers and teachers. And many of them are also migrants and so on. So I would say we do have an issue of discrimination, racial discrimination, but also ethnic and religious discrimination that is affecting many places. And that means that they are disproportionately affected by the COVID-19. And there's disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on minorities. It's across the globe, isn't it? It's not just in lower income or middle income countries. We're talking about rich countries. We're talking across the spectrum. Yeah, and you see the gap. For example, in the U.S., the majority of people who have died in terms of the relation with the rate in the population are Afro-Americans and Latinos. In the U.K. are Afro-Americans, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis. And in both, and in every place, poorest people and the poorest people. And when we talk about inequalities, the sustainable development goals, which were set by UN member states with very ambitious goals to be achieved by 2030, we've seen a real setback in the accomplishment of these SDGs, haven't we? How do we get back on track? Well, first of all, I would say when we came to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were already late. Because if we would have been able to be, I would say, more advanced in the agenda 2030, maybe we would be very prepared because we have been fighting with many of these issues that we're talking. I mean, people would have had the right to food, ensure the right to water and to a clean environment, et cetera, et cetera. So it's crucial that we go back to the agenda 2030. What are some of these tools that the government can use? Because they always talk about limited resources. And there's a chronic underinvestment in education and healthcare, for example. I mean, there's always limited resources. The resources are always limited, but the interesting thing of the economy is that you should use it to improve the welfare and the conditions of the people to live better. So the first thing I would have to say is even with limited resources, the main thing is political will. I mean, if you are clear that you need to do A, B or C and you put your money there when it's needed, you will have a better and more effective response. Second, you have to fight corruption. Corruption because in many places there are money, but they go to the pockets of some people. The third thing is you need to do progressive tax reforms because there's a lot of... I mean, in every country, yes, the country can be poor, but you always find rich people and you always find businesses, international or national businesses. And they have to pay their taxes. So you have to ensure that the richer pay more taxes than the poorest and second, fight tax aviation. There's a real misunderstanding of these social security nets in society as well, isn't there? Yes, indeed, because this is about... I mean, this is about the possibility of having everyone living in certain minimal, if I may say, decent standards of life. Social protection schemes helps everyone because social protection scheme is not charity. It's about giving the person all the conditions so the person can stand up and continue walking by themselves, doing whatever they need to do with better tools, with better education, with better conditions to be... to contribute to the society, to be a more active part of the society. We're talking a lot about recovering better from this pandemic and really solutions that we can offer to states and that we can offer to individuals. Now, you in your lifetime have seen a lot of crises with all your accumulated youth. You've seen a lot of crises in your personal life as a minister of defence, as minister of health, as head of state, as a mother, as a doctor. You've seen people in crisis situations, you've seen your country in crisis situations. Can you give us an example to give us a bit of hope on how in one of your past encounters with the crisis you've managed to work to recover better from a crisis? Well, I mean, every crisis produces a lot of pay, a lot of grievances and people get angry because usually they feel that everything is too little and too late. But I will mention one example, but there's many examples, because we had volcanoes, floodings, earthquakes, tsunamis and so on. And one was a massive fire that we had in six or seven regions of the country. And unfortunately, this fire came from different places and surrounded the village. So we had like 24 hours or less to evacuate all the villages. So it was completely destroyed, completely destroyed and it was terrible because it was a beautiful place with very simple people living there. So what we did first of all, evacuate them of course, put them depending on the situation, into shelters or into, some people had families in other cities close by and so on. We supported them with food, food closer because they lost everything. And then after the fire was controlled, we started cleaning the place, having meetings with the organization, with the neighbors, and working with them how we built back. And in this build back, we tried to improve the quality of houses, but also the health facility, the firefighters station, the police station and so on. And it took some time. And that's one thing that many times is difficult for people to accept, that it's not easy to build back in a minute. It takes some time. But if you do it with the people that participate, with those who are most affected. So this question comes from Suzanne, hi Suzanne, who sent it to us via Twitter. Now Suzanne's question to challenge you High Commissioner, she's beginning to wonder what actually cares about human rights anymore. Are they just a fantasy? We have been searching for hours for a long time now. If it is easier to dismiss complaints with excuses, why bother having them at all? Well I think in my daily life I live with the worst sometimes situations. And of course there are people who could not care I mean less of human rights of course. But I think there are people who violate human rights. And they feel it's a right because they are fighting terrorism or they are fighting whatever they feel is something that puts them in risk. But also I've met so many human right defenders, women's right defenders, land rights defenders, environmental defenders and other people's rights. So I think that in that case what I would tell Suzanne is to follow the motto of Archie Desmond Tutu. He says, I am a prisoner of hope. I think we need hope. Another one from Twitter. This one's from Michael Joe. Hi Michael. Got a job? Sounds like he wants to work with us after everything that we've been saying about how amazing our jobs are. Well there are jobs and you can look at it if you fit the profiles in the UN career page. But also you could join an NGO in your neighborhood and your country that also works for human rights. Now this is another question much more general what exactly is human rights day and why are we sitting here celebrating it? Well in 1948, the 10th of December in Paris there was the signature of the human universal declaration of human rights. I think the world after two worlds particularly second world war decided that this could not happen again. I mean that no one deserved to live something like this. And decided to think on which would be the essential rights that all of us should have because of being human rights, human beings. Only because of being human beings. And we need to ensure that all the people in the world can have access to all this rights. So I think it's still very valid and that's what we celebrated. Not to say everyone has human rights insured. No, it's to say these are the minimal standards for all human beings and we need to when we celebrate what we are saying we affirm our commitment to continue working at different governments as people in the community as business as everyone all the peoples of the world to ensure that we can say yes, now universal declaration is a reality. And this brings us to the end of our show. We would like to thank the experts Dr. Tedros from W.H.O. Leonardo Sakamoto Arisa Nokom Abdulaziz Muhammad for taking the time to give their views on how we can recover better. We would also like to pay a tribute to those whose stories we saw today. Your work has been an inspiration. If each of us can draw one lesson from your creativity, resourcefulness passion and desire to stand up for the rights of your fellow human beings I think we will be well on the road to recovering better together.