 Good morning everyone and welcome to the first press conference on the third day of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos 2016. Thank you for joining us here in the room and also on the live stream. You're joining the press conference that is asking the question, can relief build the foundations for a more resilient future? And we have an expert panel here today, both from the humanitarian and the development sector, that will try to answer that question. Let me quickly introduce the panel to you. I'll start at the very end. We are joined today and very pleased by that, by Danny Sriskandaraja, the Secretary General of Civicus, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, based in South Africa. He's also a member of our young global leader community. Next to him is sitting Badr Jafar. He's the Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Enterprises, based in the United Arab Emirates, also a young global leader, and also a member of the High Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing, which is very important to us, especially here today. Right in the center of our panel, we are joined by Helen Clark. She is the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program, or UNDP. And right next to me, we have the pleasure of having Stephen O'Brien, the Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, as you may know it. Thank you for joining us all here on the panel. And without further ado, Stephen, I jump right to you. The discussion about relief to development has been, has been going on for a year, for years, and yet it still appears to be a challenge. What is, what is the problem? What are you, what is the challenge we're facing, and how optimistic are you that we can solve that, solve that problem and address that challenge? Thank you. Well, thank you very much. And I think this is a really important question. If you like, the question has been around for decades, and it's perhaps not surprising. When there are people in very severe emergency circumstances, and this is much easier to imagine as a result of a natural disaster, then the response of the rest of us is to get what they need to do to them extremely fast, and to give them the chance to save, to have their lives saved, to have themselves protected from continuing threat, and to set them on a path for some security and to thrive. And at some point in that process, you move from that immediate need to mobilize resources, relevant life-saving and other support commodities and skills into what is going to underpin their future that is going to give them both hope and a lack of vulnerability. And that is why this has taken such a long time to debate, because the way things were set up, not for any bad reason, and for good organizational reasons in the past, was to see these as separate episodes. And as I say, in natural disasters, this is easier to understand. The emergency relief people can go in, and when their work comes to an end, they can think of an exit as they hand on, hand the ball on to continuing to work with local people, local government capacity where that is in place, but above all also the global reach and citizenry represented primarily through UNDP, but also many implementing partners and civil society. And that's where it's called development, but this is called early recovery. It's called how do you get people back on a path. The challenge that now confronts us is because the scale of need for emergency relief in our world today is both 80% occasioned by complete man-made conflict contexts. And as a result of the political failure to bring those conflicts to an end, and the flea response, which is natural when you're fearing bombs or you have no hope of being able to return home, is that you need to have a perspective which is much longer. And by definition, how long can emergency be? And this is why the challenge of definition has sometimes overtaken the reality on the ground. And so I'm very clear that, for instance, a very immediate step with the upcoming London Syria conference where this is being framed not just as it has to be, a pledging conference to ensure that the world wills the means for what it wishes to see as the relief, the emergency relief of the very dire circumstances continuing for the Syrian people both in Syria and in the neighbouring countries, but also strategically because it is possible to start putting in place a much more investment approach behind the people in Syria or enabling them to be able to return to their own homes and to have the ability not only to have the staples of life and local infrastructure and to help increase the ability of local municipal authorities to support them, but above all to enable education, jobs and the context which give people a hope and a future. And the idea that that should be one episode to another rather than a graduation, a blend where development actors can get in at an early stage even whilst the conflict is raging perhaps elsewhere in the country and to do that which is not dependent upon a relationship with the host government because so often in these conflict situations that is part of the problem. And so the World Humanitarian Summit in May in Istanbul on the 23rd and 24th, one of the central planks and this will appear in the Secretary General's report shortly to be published by the end of January to support that World Humanitarian Summit and with many of the member states and the stakeholders arriving in Istanbul with concrete ideas as to how do we break down the humanitarian development to provide because inevitably when you have organizational definitions it is completely wrong that Helen Clark here and myself should think of ourselves as working in separate silos. The fact that we're sitting beside each other shows that pictorially this is how we should be working horizontally with each other, not apart from each other. And I think it's that kind of mental map that we need to re-score to help us all come to a much better understanding of what is necessary and indeed is happening in many places on the ground. But we need to make sure this is much better understood and to make sure this is done through live examples of programming, of multi-year financing, of ensuring that we have a therefore multi-year programming and that we have a good immediate relief of the cohort of need as we find it. And that is our measure with the impartiality that international humanitarian law demands in terms of our safe unimpeded access, but at the same time making sure that we're putting in place those building blocks of a future because hope is ultimately what we are about. Once a life is saved, once a life is protected, it is no point in leaving that life in vulnerability. It's at that point you want it to have dignity and to thrive. And you can't do that either as just humanitarians or just as development actors. It's because we combine to bring the best of both our disciplines, our skills and our attitudes of commitment that will help deliver that for the people who are the most vulnerable in the world. And because we must not leave any behind to reach the most vulnerable first. Thank you, Stephen. Helen, over to you. From your perspective at UNDP, if you think of the ambitious agenda of the SDGs, what are the concrete actions that can be taken to bring the humanitarian and development work closer together? Firstly, on the SDGs, we start with SDG 1, eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. This cannot be done unless conflict ends. And the tragedies we see unfolding with South Sudan, Central Africa Republic, the Syria crisis, Afghanistan, how do you eradicate extreme poverty when the crisis burning all around is keeping people dug into that. So I think when we're thinking about the ways forward, we absolutely have to underline the critical importance of trying to achieve peace, political, diplomatic settlements because otherwise we're all struggling to meet the demands the crises generate. And then I want to follow on from Stephen's point that there is, of course, a point in the natural disaster cycle. And my own country is very disaster prone. So I know a little about this, as well as observing so many others around the world. There's a point where everything is thrown at relief, you know, earthquake, things have fallen down, people people attract desperately need support. Humanitarians right in there, it's a relief, it's a rescue. Very soon, you need to bring the development people in because getting people involved in their own recovery is so vital. So that comes quite soon. But what I think has provoked a lot of the debate now around relief and development and it not being a spectrum, but actually needing to go absolutely hand in hand, are these protracted crises where it's not really first, then development, because the crisis ain't over the Syrian ones about to clock up the fifth anniversary. And so as Stephen said, the focus of the discussion has moved very much to how do we do both? Because you take the situation in Syria where we see the most terrible scenes of people in dire need. There's also a lot of areas in Syria where life is going on, the war isn't actually raging in a lot of communities. And there, yes, there is a need for support for food security and a lot of the things that humanitarian agencies do. But there's also a need to keep the micro businesses going, get the startups, train the youth, empower the women who are often the woman headed households much more common these days, people with disabilities, they've got ongoing needs as well. People want their children in school, they want they want the health service, they want the power, the water, the sanitation systems working. So they're very practical things that the development people can come in and do alongside the relief people. And I think that getting getting this mix right is going to be absolutely critical to trying to stabilize people where that's possible in Syria in their communities and also very important in the neighborhood as well where people want to live in dignity in the host communities and the refugee communities as well. So this is something we're extremely interested in. And I think if we think about the humanitarian financing panel report which was released in UAE at the weekend, one of the areas of key interest to the development actors is the chapter that says shrink the needs. So we feel that by really bringing development in alongside humanitarian, we can shrink the needs if we can get more people into livelihoods, more services operating, we can take the burden off relief. So it's just a question of how we get that right. I mean, we do need a much more risk informed development, which means factoring risk into all development planning in a country. We need much more disaster risk reduction, easier said than done, easy, easier to reduce disaster risk, where countries are stable, not fragile, and there are strong institutions. There's often reasons why countries suffer greatly from a natural disaster. Yes, it could have been mitigated. If everything else had been going right to the country. But let's very much emphasize the importance of that. The last point I think I want to make is that when we think of the transition out of crisis and conflict, so many countries lapse back in. And sometimes I think in the height of a crisis country or community will get a lot of attention. And then after the peace or political settlement, people say, oh, well, that one's done. We go off to the next one. And yet if you're not continuing very, very active efforts on recovery in every sense, it is disturbing how often countries and communities will lapse back into crisis because there wasn't the long term perspective. But in short, look, we just have to be together. We have to be joined at the hip and the lip between relief and development. And that will get the best results for people, which in the end is what we're all about. Thank you, Helen. But you're behind the report that Helen just mentioned. So you represent the private sector here on the panel, but you're also deeply involved in the work there. What's your perspective on the issue as a CEO and also as somebody on that high panel? Sure. Just a few overarching points to start with. I think it's safe to say that the private sector or the business world and humanitarian world are yet really to find each other. The numbers speak for themselves. In 2014, less than 5%, I believe it was around 4.8% of total humanitarian aid was met by business. So on the one hand, that's a huge opportunity, but there are some underlying reasons why that happens. First off, really, the politics of the crisis, whereas the turn of the century crises were fairly evenly split between human conflict and natural disasters. Fast forward 15 years, as Stephen just mentioned, the vast majority, 80%, are human conflict. And that of course comes with its fair share of politics, which business tries to avoid. So something about really helping businesses and this is potentially the job of governments to help guide businesses on how to engage and how not to engage in these protracted crises. Second really is the issue of trust and trust deficit that does exist today between the business community and the humanitarian sector. That could represent billions if not tens of billions of lost opportunity. In order to bridge that trust, the panels come up with the concept of a grand bargain, which in effect is helping to work through better governance, through transparency and accountability to rebuild some of that trust. And in return, donors would provide not just potentially more funding, but also better quality funding and less earmarked funding. Third is really a lack of a clear platform for engagement with a sort of maze of humanitarian and development organizations doing fantastic work. It's very difficult for businesses who want to be engaged and active to find out exactly how they can do that, not just through writing checks, but also through using their products, services and networks and the capacity to scale. And so a form of a sort of one-stop shop or universal platform, if you will, in order to pool all that information together is something which the panel has suggested. And of course building local networks nationally, regionally and of course internationally for businesses to help share best practices and coordinate their efforts. And lastly, really this perception that humanitarian aid is a one-way street, it's a donation. And then in return, there's a footnote in a CSR report. So the importance of moving from charity, as it were, into investing in resilience to build resilient societies, which ultimately leads to resilient economies, which is good for business. And that's something which needs to happen, really being in the sort of enlightened self-interest of all business leaders to actively engage. I'll make a point about Islamic finance. The Islamic Development Bank estimates that between $200 billion and $1 trillion between Zakat and Sadaqah is donated every year. And there is huge potential to capture some of those funds. Considering 31 out of 33 of active conflicts today occur in Muslim-majority countries, there must be smarter ways to channel some of these funds into humanitarian system. Just on filling the humanitarian development canyon that exists, I think the private sector actors can span the two worlds, maybe in ways that the government donors and NGOs may not be able to, simply because of the way that rules of engagement are currently structured. Businesses don't currently have the same baggage or preconceptions. And if you consider humanitarian and development organizations needing to carry out joint planning to address these risks in a coherent way, then businesses can be partnering with both to make that happen. A final point just about SMEs, they do represent a significant untapped resource. They make up over 90% of private sector companies worldwide. They generate 50% of total employment worldwide. They generate over 60% of formal jobs in developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and up to 80% in low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa. They're small, nimble, trusted by local communities in a particularly important and fragile communities. Continuing or restarting business operations is critical after a crisis, and SMEs can deliver services, maintain employment, and facilitate cash-based assistance, and just get communities functioning again. However, there are few mechanisms, no real global mechanisms that exist to coordinate their involvement in humanitarian work or development projects. The interests of local SMEs and their employees really transcends the boundaries between development projects and humanitarian work. There are members of fragile communities, not just donors, and should really be at the front line of this effort. Thank you very much, Bader. Danny, we've heard from the two key international organizations we've heard from the private sector. What's your perspective as a civil society representative? I think from the perspective of most civil society actors in the humanitarian development space, this is a rather artificial divide. If you're acting on the ground to provide relief or development services, you don't care what bucket of money your funds come from. In fact, operationally, these are challenges that are faced on a day-to-day basis that civil society is stepping up to resolve. But I think when I talk to most of our members who are involved in this work, there is an optimism that we have a moment here, especially in the lead up to this World Humanitarian Summit, and especially in the context of the willingness that is represented by Helen and Stevens to work together to reform the system, not just to get more investment into the humanitarian and development agenda, but to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of those systems. The other reason why I think what we're talking about today is really important is we have an international aid and development architecture that's built on some assumptions that feel rather outdated. It's incredibly important that governments, particularly in the rich world, do their bit to support development and humanitarian initiatives. But aid or overseas development assistance, as we call it, is only one part of the wider agenda. And we, I think, need a new system for how we think about public finance for global public goods. In our high level panel report, we talk about a generosity index, because if you think about a system that today largely only counts for official international flows into the humanitarian system, we're missing out on a huge amount of what actually is happening to support humanitarian efforts. So for example, the Turkish government has been spending billions of dollars hosting refugees in Turkey very admirably. But that money doesn't get counted at the moment in terms of the humanitarian heavy lift. Nor, for example, does the in-kind contribution of Turkish businesses in supporting those refugees. So I think we need to cast the net wider to come up with a better way, we call it a generosity index, we might need to find a different name, of capturing all of the efforts by many, many actors to provide these global public goods. And in the context of that spectrum, when you add things like peacekeeping on one end or climate finance at the other end, I think we need a system that really does think very differently about how we all need to play our part in investing in those global public goods. And I think that's what we hint at in this report. From a civil society perspective, there's another fundamental challenge that we're very interested in, which is around how to build local capacity, how to build the resilience of local actors, particularly civil society, to do the delivery of humanitarian assistance, to be the first responders when disaster, disease or displacement strike. And at the moment, the system seems far from perfect in terms of supporting local actors. So presently, only 1% of all aid goes directly to non-governmental organizations in the global south. And only 0.2% of the billions of dollars raised for humanitarian assistance went directly to southern NGOs. And we think that needs to change rather dramatically, not just because those first responders can be more efficient in dealing with crises, that they can respond more quickly, but because if we are to have any chance of building the resilience that Helen talks about, then we have to build the capacity of local actors so that they can come up with local solutions to those problems when and where they emerge, obviously with the support of the international community when it's appropriate and when it's needed. And finally, in that context, one of the concerns that we also talk briefly about in this report is that if civil society is to play its rightful role on the humanitarian or development agendas, then we need to do more to promote and support the enabling environment for civil society to thrive. At Davos, we talk a lot about the enabling environment for business. But what's becoming clear for us is that the enabling environment for civil society is actually getting worse, not better in far too many countries. So our research shows that in 2014, there were serious threats to one or more civic freedoms in 96 countries around the world. That the freedoms of assembly association and expression were under attack in those 96 countries, which means six out of seven people on the planet live in a country where citizens cannot organize and mobilize as freely as they should be. And we think this needs urgent attention and collaborative attention, including the business community, doing its part to protect civic space. And unless we do that, we won't have a chance of building the local resilience that will help us deliver on the humanitarian or development agendas. Thank you very much. I think we heard some very encouraging notes today from all three sectors represented here on the panel. Mindful of the time, I'm very sorry. We have the next press conference in waiting. So I strongly recommend to all of you follow the excellent work of our panelists towards the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul in May. And I'm sure the panelists might take questions online, but I'm sorry that we have to close at this point. Thank you for watching. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.