 Welcome everybody, my name is Massimo Tomozoli, I'm the Permanent Observer for International Idea to the United Nations and we have today the opportunity to spend an hour together with some lead researchers on the quality of democracy at this event co-hosted by International Idea and the permanent mission of Sweden to the United Nations. Before I introduce the panelists I would like to give the floor for some opening remarks to Ambassador Charlotta Schleiter, Economic and Social Affairs from the permanent mission of Sweden to the United Nations. You have the floor. Thank you so much Massimo, I'm glad to be here. I will not speak for long so that we can move to hearing about these reports but I just want to reflect on how incredibly timely this is and as you've also noticed in noted in your invitations this takes case against the backdrop of what we're now witnessing in Ukraine with the Russian aggression against the country. We also are still in a pandemic, I mean depending on where you are we say that we're leaving the pandemic or we're leaving it behind us a post pandemic but we have to remember that a lot of countries around the world are still in the pandemic very much and we hear this also from various parts of the UN who note how much their work is still affected by trying to support countries and also their operations. So it's very important to hear from Idea and from Idem. We're of course really proud that both these are based in Sweden. A few years back Sweden moved into a stronger drive on democracy issues. The drive for democracy precisely because it was obvious that I mean there was a backsliding that we were witnessing and also what it seemed to have the potential to cause. So really happy to be here. I also want to mention how glad I am to see Ulrika here because this is I mean obviously Sweden is a big supporter of UNDP and UNDP really does bring the assistance that countries often request on institutions, on governance and so we see that as really for us instrumental support to assistance to countries worldwide. And then also to just reflect on the UN and the conversations in the UN I mean obviously very much is around Ukraine and what's happening there but also around a lot of other crises that it's important for us not to forget or in any way put aside and I'm not gonna name any in particular but for me I could also say that for Sweden, Yemen, we're focusing a lot on Yemen, we're focusing a lot on Afghanistan, we're focusing a lot on other issues as well. And democracy and good governance always come to the forefront on you know what's what's possible and what's required. We'll see this in the food crisis which has been caused as a result of the as a result of the the invasion. I also wanted to mention briefly going in a sustainable and greener direction. I don't think that the climate crisis has in any way moved to a backseat it's as important as ever and we're gonna have a meeting in Stockholm in early June, Stockholm plus 50 and we'll be talking about those issues but we'll also be talking about inclusion and at least civil society inclusion of young people and we're really happy to see that a lot of civil society organizations have registered to be part of the discussions in Stockholm so that's also something that we're looking forward to that's coming very soon and we have plenty of opportunity to talk about democracy related issues. Thank you very much. Thank you very much Ambassador for having set the tone for today's meeting and you have already started to introduce some of the speakers and thank you also for referring to the multiple crisis which are actually polarizing debates at the UN and elsewhere and within which our conversation today takes place. So the panelist will be Stefan Lindberg, director of the Videm Institute, Department of Political Science at the University of Yotubori and Sima Shah who is my colleague head of democracy assessment at International Idea and the discussant will be Ulrika Moder, Assistant Secretary General and director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy at UNDP and I wish to really thank all of you for your availability in addressing today's topic. The panel will present the results of two research efforts. One is the well-known annual report produced by Videm on democracy which this year is entitled Authorization Changing Nature with a question mark and the second report is the global state of democracy infocus report taking stock after two years of COVID-19. So I'll give the floor now to Professor Lindberg, Stefan. Thank you so much Massimo and thank you to IDEA and the Swedish mission for organizing this event and inviting me to be part of it. I'll spend a few minutes here talking about this democracy report, this year's democracy report. It has three parts. I'm just going to highlight a couple of things from each part. The first part about the state of democracy worldwide in 2021. By our calculations we are now back to 1989 levels of democracy worldwide and 70% of the world population now live in autocracies and that's a radical shift from only 10 years ago, as you can see. Here's the evidence for that. This is our liberal democracy index. In the middle you have the world average in black and then the different regions and you can see the steep downward trend for all regions in the world and for the world as a whole. In fact, but this is our liberal democracy index weighted by population size because democracy is ruled by the people so we think it matters how many people are affected by a certain level of democracy. You see the red line here in the middle if we draw back today's level it goes all the way back to around 1989. So on a global level that entire explosion almost of civil liberties of political rights and freedoms that the world enjoyed after the end of the Cold War has been eradicated. So I think that puts things in perspective what this period is meaning. So we also see dictatorships on the rise. Let me show you the evidence for that. So here is the same underlying data and going back to 1971 and the red line of closed autocracies were declining for a long, long while down to 20 at a point. Now it's been going up especially in the last couple of years up to 30 and electoral autocracies those that hold multi-party elections but don't have freedoms enough to classify as a democracy is the most common regime type in the world. Together they host 70% of the world population. Let me go to the second part. So let's look at what's changing right now and not just the state of things. We record a record for the past 50 years. A record of 33 countries autocratizing that the opposite to democratizing. Let's look at the evidence for that. Here is again from 1971 the blue line there country the number of countries each year looking 10 years back that were democratizing at the height of the third wave of democratization in the mid late 1990s 72 countries at the same time moving forward on democracy and that number has then slumped down to 15 as our last count but then they host only 3.4% of the world population. Meanwhile the number of countries autocratizing since the end of the 1990s have been going up starting with Russia and then Venezuela and the Chavez and then increasing and especially now towards the end of the time series here up to 33 countries by our count at the end of 2021. This is really serious for democracy because we've looked at this scientific publication and looked at all episodes of autocratization starting in democracies since 1900 across the world and almost 80% of them die lead to a breakdown. So just a statistical probability here is that these countries will survive is very low and to give you an idea of how now all aspects of different varieties of democracy are affected here a graph showing comparing the number of countries advancing on democracy and declining on democracy on the number of components clean elections freedom of expression deliberation and so on. In 2011 all of these were above this diagonal line that means they improved in many more countries than they declined. Compare this just look at this visual compared to 2021. Boom all are below the line that gives you an idea and worst of all freedom of expression where you also have freedom of the media. Who are the major autocratizers then? Here they are the top 10. Brazil, Mauritius, Poland, Hungary, India, Benin, Serbia, El Salvador, Mali and Turkey. All of these countries 10 years ago we classified as democracies one of either liberal or at least electoral democracies. By 2021 7 out of the 10 are now autocracy so also in this period it seems to have the same relationship if you start to autocratize as a democracy the probability you end up as an autocracy is very high. Now EU is also facing its own wave of autocratizations. We have 6 out of 27, 20 percent are autocratizing and here they are. We know about Hungary and Poland that's been going on for a long time and we no longer classify Hungary as a democracy but recently Slovenia with quite substantial autocratization to a much lesser degree but still for our purposes is statistically significant in Croatia, Czech Republic and Greece and then we have the neighbors on the eastern flank so this is really worrying to us. So that's sort of the main point from the second part of the report. Now we think autocratization is changing nature not only what I just showed but also some other indications. There was a year of coups the UN Secretary General called this an epidemic of coups, six, five military coups and then the self-coup in Tunisia. There's a radical change from the last 20 years and we think this is signifying that autocrats and wannabe autocrats are becoming emboldened, taking more decisive actions and caring less about what the international community thinks. We also see the wave of polarization spreading across the world and reaching toxic levels where my group is feeling threatened by other groups and the other groups don't have legitimacy. You start to question whether they are a threat to the nation or to our way of life and that sort of thing and we know what that leads to in the extreme cases. Look at this picture just to give a sort of a visual of this. If you're above the line here these are countries where polarization has increased substantially and statistically significant in the last 10 years and in the upper third that it's all toxic levels and very few countries below that line and this is closely related to autocratization. So here you have five of the top autocratizing countries and three indicators of polarization they all go up and in conjunction or shortly after the liberal democracy index goes down and we see this pattern across the world. So it's not just these five countries that are cherry picked these are just illustrations of what is a very general trend. We also have misinformation and this is no news to nobody here probably but we think it's also signal or emboldened autocrats that try to sort of use misinformation and desinformation for their purposes both at home and abroad. Here is just one indicator of many that we have on this showing the world average again in the different regions and increasing across all of them and quite substantially over this time period. Misinformation is being used strategically as we know to further interests of of autocrats. I've said now several times and I'll say it again democracy dies with the lies. Democracy and accountability cannot live in a world where political leaders can say I didn't say that when they did it I didn't do that or what I did was this instead of that and lie then that whole chain of accountability from citizens to leaders completely break down. So this is a fundamental threat to democracy and freedom in the world. So that's the highlights from the from the third part of the of the report democracy the democracy report 2022. And I just want to take two minutes with your permission Masini to also say point to the work we've done under the case for democracy with support from the European Union. There are now several areas where we've gathered the evidence that's out there rigorous studies from the scientific community showing the dividends for democracy and then by implication with this wave of autocratization will mean just one I'm just going to show a couple of the examples economic growth democracies are better at economic growth and there are better at avoiding economic disasters. These are very rigorous studies with their longest time series and all the statistical bells and whistles you can you can think of and there are many more studies here there's no doubt that autocratization will mean slower economic growth and that and more economic crisis is and that's terrible for human development. Human democracies are also better at human development life expectancy infant mortality go down the line going from a worse on average the worst autocracy to the sort of a good democracy reduces infant mortality by 94 percent that's substantial so autocratization will lead to more higher infant mortality among other things also with climate change democracies are better at making commitments to call for the Paris court corresponding to a change in in in for 1.6 degrees globally in climate change that's substantial they're also better at implementing these policies and finally I just want to show this given what's going on in the world this democracies don't fight wars with each other evidence is 100% clear this is like the closest we come to a law in social science building on a man who counts democratic peace theory India's risk the risk of India engaging with an armed conflict with Pakistan has increased by 300% of the last decade as a result of autocratization in India here is where Russia has moved under Putin on the scale there on the horizontal scale for sort of democracy and then the slope is the predicted risk of engaging in an armed conflict and you can see it's moved from a very low level to a very high level and from this perspective the invasion of Ukraine a democracy by the way it's not a surprise autocratization will lead to more on conflicts in the world we know that all of this is also in our policy briefs that you can access on the website we have policy briefs on all these areas and you're welcome to visit the website and with that I say thank you Massimo and thank you the Swedish mission and I look forward to the conversation thank you very much Stefan needless to say Videm is a partner of international idea and we value very much this collaboration and now the next presentation will actually complement some of these analysis by using a different set of data and my colleague Dr. Sima Shah will present the results of an initiative that we have been carrying out over the last two years in connection with the pandemic that was mentioned by the ambassador in her opening remarks so how has the pandemic impacted on democracy in human rights Sima you're the floor Sima can you hear me yes please go ahead thank you good morning everyone thank you for the chance to share the findings from our latest report which provides an overview of what our data from the global monitor of COVID-19's impact on democracy and human rights tells us from two years of government responses to the pandemic when we started writing this report we were quite optimistic that the worst of the virus was behind us and that much though not all of the world was better prepared and more equipped to deal with future surges and variants as vaccines have developed and spread around the world it is definitely true that we are at a much better point than we were two years ago on the other hand as we now seem to be in yet another wave with yet another variant and as countries take very different paths forward it is clear that there are still lessons to be learned and important reflections to engage in we hope that the findings here will spark some thinking and discussion about what the future of life with COVID-19 might look like and what we need to do to make sure that we uphold rigorous standards of democracy and human rights even in the midst of crises an international idea we understand democracy as a broad concept and one that can have very many different manifestations depending on a particular society's history culture and set of priorities although there are core tenets of democracy the way these are operationalized can look very different there's no such thing as a perfect democracy overall we measure the extent to which to which a country has realized various aspects of democratic ideals along five attributes which we consider to be integral to democratic growth these are representative government fundamental rights checks on government impartial administration and participatory engagement as you can see each of these attributes has a number of sub attributes and then a number of individual indicators going along with those ultimately measuring 116 separate questions our global monitor trapped developments under each of these attributes a global monitor was a qualitative monitor of the democracy and human rights implications of measures adopted by governments around the world in the context of COVID-19 specifically in the 165 countries that are included in international ideas global state of democracy indices the monitor was updated every two weeks at the country level from June 2020 through February 2022 and now for the findings first what legal measures did governments put in place to be able to make the quick decisions necessary during a pandemic what we found was that in broad terms 59 of the countries we covered invoked a state of legal exception of some kind this includes constitutional states of emergency but also includes other types of emergencies like state event of pandemic or public health emergency while we might have expected democracies especially high performing ones to institute some kind of legal state of exception to deal with the pandemic our data show that it was actually mid-range and weak democracies along with hybrid regimes that most often invoked an SOE high performing democracies appear to have had the capacity to legislate their way through the crisis while in authoritarian regimes declarations of emergency were not needed for the government to take extreme steps second there was regional variation in the use of SOEs in purple you can see the breakdown of how many democracies hybrids and authoritarian regimes issued emergency legal responses per region you can see here that the america's region used them at a very high rate compared to other regions one example worth noting is that of Botswana for only the second time since it gained independence Botswana invoked a constitutional state of emergency at the end of march 2020 taking note of the national historical significance of the moment and the objections of the opposition parties the deliberations in parliament were televised to the whole nation the state of emergency was renewed by the parliament at six month intervals until being allowed to expire in september of 2021 while it may seem like the long duration of the SOE is concerning the conformity with constitutional requirements and care which with the process was treated are both very good examples a few months after the state of emergency ended Botswana's auditor general found the measures to be taken justified and recommended legislative changes that could lead to better legal arrangements in future crises third our data shows some important temporal variation here you can see the number of covid cases in the black line compared to the number of countries with an SOE and the colored banners while the number of cases was quite low in the first wave of the pandemic the number of emergencies declared during this time was the highest as of march 2022 20 percent of countries have kept the first state of emergency in force and another 44 percent have renewed or reintroduced a state of emergency going forward we'll be looking out for a few things in countries with high levels of vaccination we will watch for unnecessary extensions to any state of legal exception we would be watching for extraordinary powers that have been granted to the executive brands to be rescinded while the pandemic remains an ongoing concern in many countries of the south where vaccination rates are relatively low there could be justification to continue states of legal exception at the same time we know more about the virus now than we did two years ago as countries have demonstrated the possibility of holding elections court hearings and legislative assemblies despite the virus and he further delays in such necessary parts of democratic government must be carefully scrutinized looking back it seems unsurprising that certain civil liberties were restricted during the pandemic here you can see the regional breakdown of the use of lockdowns in dark blue restrictions on the freedom of assembly in light blue the use of the military in enforcement of the rules in pink and the use of excessive police force in purple our data show that freedom of movement and freedom of association and assembly are the rights that have been the most impacted by government responses 98 percent of countries in the world implemented freedom of association restrictions at some point at least 89 percent of countries introduced a lockdown and 52 percent reinstated lockdowns during later waves we documented measures of concern in 22 countries six of which also had concerning developments regarding freedom of movement this graph illustrates the regional breakdown of particular restrictions on the freedom of movement all countries in the world placed some form of restriction on the freedom of movement during the pandemic the global monitor indicates that at least 86 percent of countries introduced border border closures despite the fact that their that evidence for whether or not such closures reduce transmission is disputed one negative effect of these kinds of restrictions especially lockdowns is that they did a poor job of considering structural challenges faced by developing countries for example in latin america 80 percent of individuals in the bottom quintile of the population work in the informal sector similarly 81 percent of jobs in africa are in the informal sector an illustrative case is that of mexico where the informal economy accounts for about 55 percent of the labor force when a national lockdown was introduced in march 2020 mexico city's informal commerce was banned and established businesses were closed this created widespread discontent who in desperation took to the streets after lockdown measures were prolonged later that year hundreds of formal and informal establishments across mexico city reopened in a show of defiance in january 2021 this was a response to the government's band and a petition for asking for the government to reconsider restaurants to be included on the list of essential activities in mid january 2021 the local government of mexico city reconsidered the inclusion of restaurants in the list of essential activities as demanded going forward we'll be watching for a couple of things while the justifiability of restrictions on the rights to freedom of assembly and association will of course vary depending on the country our current understanding of the virus makes restrictions much harder to justify now than they were in 2020 we know the virus is unlikely to spread in outdoor settings and this makes any outright ban on outdoor gatherings exceedingly difficult to just justify while the overall vaccination rate is an important factor in determining the risk level of these events our understanding of how the virus spreads outdoors suggests that masked and spaced protesters or crowds present very low risk for virus transmission we would therefore treat restrictions on freedom of assembly and association outdoors as highly suspect when the pandemic arrived in the early days of 2020 media integrity and freedom of expression were already in crisis in most of the world the crisis was rooted in two separate but interconnected phenomena one a business model that did not allow traditional media to compete with the rise of digital access and two unregulated social media which allowed for the rapid spread of propaganda and miss and disinformation in several countries responses to the pandemic exacerbated and deep in the crisis with corresponding declines in freedom of expression and media integrity before the pandemic only 34 countries were classified as high performing in these two categories the virus presented a perfect window of opportunity to accelerate the erosion of these rights since the beginning of the pandemic a total of 93 countries have have registered concerning developments developments related to both freedom of expression or media integrity in this graph you can see how high performing democracies did with regard to freedom of expression you can see that the declines are much more common than the advances over the course of the pandemic freedom of freedom of expression declined as a result of three interrelated phenomena one the wave of repression on journalism two a flood of pandemic related disinformation continues to be a problem today and three an increase in legislative changes that entrenched restrictions on freedom of expression especially online what we will watch going forward include things like new regulations that widen the repression toolkit of authoritarian and hybrid regimes especially online second many of these laws require private service providers to actually become the implementing arms of a repressive apparatus third overarching measures might further compromise a free unified and open internet and finally the pandemic has left profound scars on the media infrastructure both in the shape of new legislation but also in increased repression and economic hardship next here you can see the state of gender equality by region you will notice that even the highest scoring region is on the lower end of what we would call high performing the most well-known impacts of the pandemic on women include an increase in violence higher rates of unemployment and a long-term loss of education opportunities while data on the pandemic's impact on gender-based political violence is still limited the increased vulnerability of women human rights defenders for example imply heightened gender risks and violence in the political sphere it is also clear that in many countries in context women and other marginalized groups have lower vaccination rates and that these groups are underrepresented underrepresented in a systematic way in the decision-making bodies that determine the response to and the recovery from the pandemic the pandemic also exposed racial and ethnic minorities to increase xenophobia and racism in countries as diverse as the us italy and brazil leaders made racist statements blaming and degrading china and chinese people for the virus in the us europe and africa there have been violent attacks against asian people one novel development that we will we will watch going forward is the push to include the right to care in the un's list of recognized international human rights the global alliance for care co-convened by un women and mexico's national institute of women argues that the pandemic has provided a chance to strengthen care policies and systems the alliance details six core commitments to reshape the care agenda and aims to incorporate a human rights perspective to all aspects of care it is also worth noting that canada's feminist economic recovery plan for the pandemic includes a big focus on the care infrastructure in the country during the early days of the pandemic countries had few tools to contain the spread of the virus with no treatment available infection prevention was critical and strategies relied heavily on effective contact tracing data show that 51 percent of countries covered by the global monitor deployed a cta over the course of the pandemic with the highest proportion in the middle east and the lowest proportion in africa by january of 2021 in fact there were 49 cta's in 48 different countries south korea offers a good example of how a country can mitigate the risks of collecting and centrally storing sensitive personal data south korea recorded intimate data on coven 19 cases including detailed information on residents movements this data was stored on the country's coven 19 smart management system which allowed health authorities to quickly respond to breakouts this approach enjoyed widespread public support primarily because of the cyber security measures put in place to protect the system and to data protection regulations which circumscribe data access to a limited number of epidemiological investigators and which require the deletion for sealant data after 14 days so what lessons does the coven 19 experience have for us reviewing the development and penetration of cta's around the world it's hard to escape the importance of trust cta trustworthiness is shaped by a number of factors but important steps we need to build on are ensuring that apps effectively preserve privacy and putting in place robust data protection laws the low level of trust that many citizens have in their governments and the widespread concerns about cta mission creep meaning there must be mean that there must be policies in law that clearly define who controls the data who can access the data and how long that data can be stored at the start of the pandemic few could have predicted that as of march 2022 more than 5 billion people or 66 of the world's population would have received at least one dose of the vaccine while 59 percent would be fully vaccinated with two doses vaccines were developed in record time but the fact that they were developed at quote unquote warp speed in some countries doesn't mean that access and availability followed the same trajectory two key challenges can be identified first vaccine resistance and hesitancy which have long been a problem and two the stunning number of people who received at least one dose hides the unequal distribution of those vaccines limited production complex supply chains scarce resources for healthcare spending in low income countries limited state capacity intellectual property measures and vaccine hoarding by high income countries have contributed to this therefore while enough vaccine vaccinations were produced in 2021 to cover 70 percent of the global population most were reserved for wealthy countries as of 20 as of march 2022 66 of the world's population has received at least one dose this in absolute terms is very close to the who's target of vaccinating 70 of the population of every country by 2022 however access and distribution have been very unequal as we reflect on how we have fared in responding to the pandemic and plan to be more prepared for future such scenarios much will depend on how innovative and responsive recovery strategies are this is a moment to think about how to do better at putting the disadvantaged groups in our societies at the front and center of recovery efforts and integrating their needs more systematically into all our institutions it is also a moment to think seriously about the broken bonds of trust at all levels not only because this will be key to weathering future crises but because it is key to bolstering the strength of democratic institutions something the world needs now more than ever the good news is that the mechanisms for dialogue and accountability that are at the heart of democracies are perfectly suited for this work that goes into rebuilding trust building back better is possible but it means being responsive and accountable to everyone thank you thank you very much Sima we had a rather comprehensive view with the staff and presentation on the state of democracy and you're zooming into the impact of the pandemic on democracy and human rights before giving the floor to our discussant who is Ulrika Moder assistant secretary general and director of the bureau of external relations and advocacy at UNDP I want to tell two participants that they may post in the chat function on the Webex platform questions or that they would like to post to the panelists or the discussant so there were many references to the importance of trust in institutions we know how important trust is in our common agenda set by the secretary general of the united nations and how important is the work of UNDP in building trust in democratic institutions and processes so perhaps Ulrika you may get back to us with some comments on these volume of data that that we're being presented today over to you thank you so much Massimo and thank you international adi and Videm and of course the very gloomy picture that's being portrayed here the facts and also the trends that are presented are very important I think to the UN as we try to also take information to the ground with regards to the global overview but also of course build information from the ground and UNDP you would know is present with programs with good governance and rule of law and human rights at a heart in 130 member states and it is of course interesting to see these trends across the world in all of the world's regions and this tells us of course that this should definitely be part of the common agenda as you say that the secretary general has laid out and UNDP has just recently endorsed strategic plan where we also have a rights-based approach and the work that we could provide government societies in relation to governance systems put forward at the center of our strategic plan we have of course also as we had the assignment by the secretary general to accompany countries throughout covid seen many of these trends we have also throughout the past years issued a number of reports that show what we have also been told today with regards to disinformation as one aspect how legislation imposed has also made hindrances with regards to basic and fundamental rights and we have also seen the relationship in the broader system of accountability because the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic have been so severe in many countries so we believe that the discussions that we need to have on the basis of the material that you put forward here today also needs to relate also as was alluded to to the socio-economic situation that countries and and this in the very beginning are also in and will continue to be in because what we see now is not a perfect storm but perhaps a hurricane because also the socio-economic consequences of the pandemic are accompanied also by a looming debt crisis and now also we see the consequences in relation and ripple effects in relation to the war against Ukraine so when we speak about systems of accountability and I was happy that we could also end on a bit of a happy note that there are also answers to all these questions and problems that have been laid out here today. UNDP traditionally of course works to strengthen systems of accountability with elections at the heart of it in average I mean throughout the past decades UNDP has been supporting elections every second week but it's not only election and such but really going deep into the electoral process and supporting the institutions that needs to be there to uphold this but beyond these systems of accountability and looking at what's happening with regards to information societies and how we need to make sure that citizens can be informed in a new and different way and where we also use UNDP's new ways of working with digital infrastructure in our governance work we also need to look at the broader systems of accountability bringing in other actors we believe and this is also what we put forward in our strategic plan that local governance is key a key solution that we need to look closer into and that we need to work with a broad range of actors in society as the SDGs also have invited to be part of the solution we believe that there are some key hindrances that perhaps have not been mentioned here today and that is also the concerning and sometimes those increasing levels of corruption that needs to be addressed in relation to strengthen the levels of trust in society so information and information that can reach citizens in a trustworthy way is key of course freedom of media is part of that but also looking at new information societies and the structure of information looking at corruption looking at local governance these are some of the issues that we have seen that are really important to recreate the trust because at the end of the day and I think it was mentioned also I mean social cohesion is something that many countries are really concerned about and perhaps also to end on somewhat a positive note while we see these really concerning trends throughout the past years UNDP has had an increasing level of demands with regards to support to governance and governance systems and this tells us that the also levels of social unrest the levels of the decrease of trust also is a concern in many different countries across the world and we really also appreciate the trust that many countries have in UNDP to see if there are solutions and if we step by step we can start to roll back also these concerning trends that have been presented here today thank you thank you so much Ulrika and the points you are making about corruption and local governance are extremely important I'm aware that Wiedem's framework takes into account corruption it is also a key element in the framework used by international idea so yes it is it is very very important also the element of acting at the local level as you said with the rights-based approach is very very important and we have seen through the analysis carried out and presented by SEMA on the impact of COVID-19 on democracy and human rights that dynamics at the local level have also been particularly important some of the burden of the implementation of the policies actually fell into the on the shoulders of our local governments and the learning curve that we have seen from the various graphs had also to do with the capacity of national governments to understand and better react by including also local structures local governance structures into these let me now turn to the to the chat and I have a question that comes from Shazia Rafi I'll read it as democracy faces new challenges in both established and transitional democracies the UN's voice in support of the principles of the UN Charter and the universal declaration of human rights has become even more important and this moral leadership role of the UN Secretary General is crucial as democracy has no international legal enforcement system while the human rights bodies penalty system is activated only after mass atrocities have taken place how can we operationalize that well that is a question clearly on on the role of the UN but perhaps also Stefan and SEMA may may address it who wants to start operationalization of obligations that are not actually accepted in a global normative framework as as it is the case in the human rights case the framework Stefan I think and it's very gratifying to get this question from from Shazia Rafi who was the Secretary General of PGA parliamentarians for global action when I worked for them in Ghana some decades ago and I think we we fail to recognize often that there is a very broad overlap between human rights and democratic rights and there we have the the human rights enshrined in the in the UN Charter and and many of those are the rights that are definitional also for democracy so it's sort of almost a given that democracies and and increasing democratic governance is also a good for human rights and when you monitor human rights you also monitor to a large extent democratic rights so I think I think that connection is something that we should should discuss and and recognize much more thank you very much Stefan I have another question from the audience this is addressed to to SEMA from Christian Candler Rodriguez he is asking I would like to ask on the basis of these expensive extensive report if you would like to share reflections on how to distinguish between good or necessary restrictions during the pandemic from excessive restrictions that led to weakening the general freedoms in a country well in fact SEMA you refer to cases of restrictions in 98 percent of the countries in the world so they they were rather generalized so how would you characterize the good or necessary from the excessive restrictions so the way that we did it in our research was that a development was considered quote concerning when it violated democratic benchmarks in the sense that it was disproportionate, unnecessary, illegal, or indefinite so if restrictions were implemented in the context of the law or time bound and were proportionate to the risk that they were addressing we considered them justified but of course the issue of how to measure proportionality is there's no consensus around that so I think that remains an open question so in other words the importance of the context is paramount but definitely there are some criteria to define what are the you know parameters for you know assessing the quality of restrictions and their constitutionality with respect to the democratic framework okay so we had these questions from the floor I have seen another one from Alessandro Motter from the international inter-parliamentary union perhaps what needs to be considered in looking at the deep causes of citizen distrust of government is the relationship between governments and markets and how the former have seized the power to the latter leaving people alone fending for themselves and feeling isolated from each other in the face of market forces made stronger by hyper globalization and financialization governments are powerless to deliver to the people and the people in turn do not look at government as the solution we need to break this underlying pattern as a condition to democratic reforms well this is not really a question it's a comment and I think it is very relevant also to what Ulrika envisioned in in the strategy of UNDP you know I think it has to do with the quality of state responses beside also the quality of democratic institutions it has to do also I think with the staff and picture in the second part of his presentation when he made the case for democracy and I think it is relevant also to Sima's overview of the recovery of how we have learned from the first responses and how can we do better in terms of the recovery in the long term any of the discussions or the panelists want to comment on these yes Sima there's been some really excellent scholarship on this question and I think that one article comes to mind that was in the Journal of Democracy recently about the rise of populism and how the liberal sort of left could do well to be more empathetic to the concerns that many people in post-communist countries had who did not enjoy the economic benefits of what was you know the reality did not match the promise and so when when analyzing the rise of populism this author argued that you should be more empathetic and when you're arguing for more liberal democracy you need to keep those valid concerns of people in mind and address them but even in the human rights scholarship there's there's a lot that has been said about the states how the state's authority has kind of been overtaken by the market and how this means that states have less power overall to protect their citizens and how this is vilified how how pushed back against this is vilified and so I I really support the comment that was made and I think that could be a topic of a whole other sessions yes yes Udrika no I was just also about to say that I mean something that we have not mentioned are also the parallel trends that we see to this and it would be interesting also to discuss with regards to increasing inequalities and it relates also to what Sima said we have in our human development report a couple of years ago actually ahead the pandemic pointed at access to information but also digital infrastructure and digital means as one possible key driver of increasing inequalities that can really also put all of what we're discussing here in danger so investments in in once again digital democratic governance systems that can lay the ground for interaction and accountability with different actors in society I think are key a key solution to this but of course much more to be discussed in relation to this question I just wanted also to comment on the first question I think what Stefan said with regards to democratic governance as a driver for economic growth and human development is of course a very good argument for a development actor to use as we try to also see how we can support countries on a road that opens up accountability structures that work better for the country both for democracy or for a road towards more inclusive ways of of working that could lead to democracy but also in relation to economic development and human development and the sustainable development goes overall so those arguments are of course very important to any development actor that wants to convince any government in any country across the world thank you very much Eureka also Stefan wanted to reply to the second question yes sir Stefan thank you and and thanks for the reflection I think hey we don't have the scientific answers yet but as Sima also indicated there is a growing body of research now on the role of inequality and marketization and the withdrawal of the state from key areas that is pointing in certain directions and this is also not too far from intuition right this started with Reaganomics and thatcherism in the late 70s early 80s and being ongoing since and then was rolled out with the Washington consensus to the rest of the world with structural adjustment programs maybe much of that was needed okay but it's gone very far and what's happened sort of in just a one minute here I'm looking at the clock button when I know you want to close that tent but basically what is done is putting a lot more responsibility on individuals for everything that has to do with how your life goes and your kids lives goes and so on with marketization privatization and and then enormous rise in inequality as we know relative inequality it's nothing else to extreme levels now and at the same time this with the same sort of theory behind it the state has withdrawn from a number of policy areas so the politicians are no longer responsible but either technocrats or the market and that makes people more exposed and therefore more potentially afraid and afraid people in groups is a very dangerous political force we know that from the 1930s okay so I think this is an area we have to look much more into and do much more research on to get the really hard answers yeah thank you staff and we know it not only from the 1930s but we know it also from the global financial crisis which is much more recent and that is something that I would like to use to close to wrap up these event we have data we have analysis good policy relevant analysis policymakers should take that analysis into account it is my impression that the policy community is slow in learning from experience and we cannot compare of course the magnitude of the global crisis brought about by the pandemic and the one that we experienced in 2007 2008 with the global financial crisis but it is possible to see that there are elements in common in terms of the type of reaction especially with these last conversations on the role of the state and the quality of policies in terms of impacting on huge inequalities and we have learned from the analysis presented by VDM and by international idea that polarization is one of the possible outcomes of crisis that exacerbate already existing processes of erosion of democratic institutions so I think that we have heard a message it is up to policymakers now to act on the basis of those indications I very much thank all the participants in this event let me thank first of all the ambassador from the permanent mission of Sweden charlotte schleider thank you very much for co-hosting this event with international idea professor staff and limber dotto sima scha and rica moder from UNDP thank you very much and thank you for also the support that we received from the new york office of international idea amanda surek thank you goodbye thank you staff and