 What great pleasure to welcome the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Gutierrez, here among us in Davos, just some days after you have been taken officially possession of your mandate and your office. I think never a UN Secretary-General has been so well prepared for his so important job managing global affairs. By formation and in your earlier life you were a professor for history so you have all the historical conception and understanding of the world. You served your country as a prime minister so you have all the managerial experience and leadership experience. You were a neighbor of ours in some way in Geneva when you were the, for many years the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and taking our motto of this annual meeting, Responsive and Responsible, you know what responsive means and what fast response means. So without further ado, Mr. Secretary-General, we are delighted to have you, I shouldn't say here, to have you back here because you have been many times here in your earlier incarnations. So please welcome the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Gutierrez. Well thank you very much Professor Schwab, it's good to be back in Davos. Even if I would start by saying that we live in a dangerous world. We see a proliferation of new conflicts, old conflicts seem never to die, conflicts are becoming more and more interlinked, more linked with the new threat of global terrorism. In many situations they are internal conflicts, asymmetric with terrible violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. They are the result of fragilities of states, of institutions, of societies. And in a world where power relations became unclear, not only unpredictability and impunity tend to proliferate, but it's very difficult for the international community to prevent crises and to timely solve them. At the same time, if one looks at the interconnection of the global megatrends, population growth and movements of people, climate change, food insecurity, water scarcity, we see there are more and more intercombined enhancing each other and creating situations in which more people is displaced or tension conflict can emerge. And even if one looks at the amazing results of globalization, technological progress, huge increase in world richness, the fact that trade has multiplied enormously in the last decades, if one sees how living conditions have improved and even how absolute poverty has dramatically decreased, the truth is that inequalities have also terribly increased. And that has created, especially because of the globalization of communication, that everybody now is aware of what's happening everywhere, that has created a huge frustration in many sectors of population, frustration that leads to the divorce between public opinions, societies and not only political establishments, but also international organizations even like the UN. Now, in this context, it is clear that we need a surge in diplomacy for peace and I think it is one of the key functions of a secretary general is to get personally involved in trying to create the conditions for some of these conflicts at least find a way to be resolved. And I think there is only one way to do it. It is to convince the parties to the conflict and the countries that have an influence on the parties to the conflict that today's wars are wars that nobody wins, everybody is losing, and that wars are becoming, that are becoming not only a terrible source of suffering for the populations of the countries involved, but a threat to regional stability. And today, if you look at Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan, they also are responsible for this dramatic increase in global terrorism. And so I think that with the threat that is so clear, countries involved should understand that they need to come together and put an end to this conflict and the pressure over them is, I think, one of the functions that the secretary general of the United Nations need to be able to gather with many other actors and also respecting the leadership of member states, the secretary should be able to push more strongly in order to be able to at least minimize some of the terrible consequences we are now facing. But it is clear for me that the priority for an organization like the UN and I would say the priority for the international community must be prevention, prevention of conflicts, but not only a conflict, prevention of natural disasters, and a certain number of other forms and other threats that undermine the well-being of the population of our planet. And prevention cannot be, especially when we speak about prevention of conflict, cannot be reduced to some form of diplomatic action. Now, prevention needs to be a comprehensive approach. And for an organization like the UN, prevention needs to bring together its three pillars of action, peace and security, sustainable development and human rights. And needs to recognize that the best prevention for conflict and the best prevention for other negative impacts on societies is, of course, sustainable and inclusive development. And in that regard, we need to take profit of the ambitious agreements of last year, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the agreement on the agenda to 2030 for sustainable development goals. And we need to mobilize not only governments, not only civil societies, the academia, but the business sector in order to take profit of these agreements and to be together in a new form of partnership able at transforming those agreements into areas of action that help to prevent the conflicts and other dramas that we face in today's world. And that means that we need to invest in the resilience of societies. We need to invest in the strengths of states, institutions and civil societies. We need to invest in the protection of human rights. We need to invest in the empowerment of women, but also in addressing this scourge of the use and employment that is probably the worst problem we are facing in today's world with consequences not only for the well-being of the people involved and the societies, but also for global security. As young and employed people in several parts of the world are the largest area of recruitment for terrorist groups. But also to invest in addressing the basic needs of a population from education, from health, water, sanitation and to bring humanitarian and development actors together namely in the fragile situations that we face in many parts of the world. And at the same time, recognizing that all societies are now multi-ethnic, multi-religious, multi-cultural to invest in the social cohesion of those societies for diversity to be a richness, not a threat for people to be able, first of all, to see their identities valued but also for people to feel that they belong to the larger community for societies being inclusive and cohesive not to become a source of confrontation, not to become a source of instability as unfortunately in many parts of the world, including in the developed world. Now, in a context like these and to be able to address these challenges I think it's very important for the UN to recognize the need to reform and I would select three main areas of reform. First of all, reform of our peace strategy and architecture. Today, essentially the UN is known because of the peacekeeping missions and peacekeeping consumes about 70-something percent of our budget and most of our operations take place in countries where there is no peace to keep. Peacekeepers become inevitably part of the conflict and in a number of situations that creates an extremely difficult environment and facilitates the kind of abuses that also tarnish the image of the UN and we need to make sure that prevention and sustaining peace in countries that finally emerge from conflict must be the priority of the priorities and hopefully limit our peacekeeping effort in the future much more thanks to our capacity to prevent crises and to allow for stability to be preserved in societies. The reform of the peace and security areas of the UN. The reform of the UN development system based on coordination and accountability to be able to fully support countries in the implementation of sustainable development goals and in the implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change and finally our management reform. The staff rules, the financial rules, the budgetary rules of the UN if they were the result of a conspiracy not to allow the UN to work would probably be the same that we have. Obviously there was no conspiracy. What has happened is that in the logic of a bureaucracy central control has tended to not to allow the normal development of adequate procedures, decentralizing, simplifying things and the difficult relationship between the so-called Western countries and the G77 in the General Assembly in the so-called Fifth Committee with the mistrust that exists as creating a tendency for micromanagement that for instance doesn't allow me to create a post at a low professional level in any part of the world without going to the General Assembly. Now we need to engage with all member states to make them understand that there is a win-win strategy if it is based on simplification, decentralization, more flexibility and in the culture of transparency and accountability. Only reform the UN can be the engine of one international community able to transform prevention into a true priority and we know that that would not be easy because cameras are not there when a conflict is prevented, cameras are only there when a conflict finally takes place. And the second aspect that I believe is absolutely crucial is the enhancement of a new generation of partnerships. Partnerships not only with governments, not only with civil societies, with the academia, but particularly partnerships with the business community in the context of this perspective of implementation of the sustainable development goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change creating the conditions for an inclusive and sustainable development the best way to prevent crises and conflicts in today's world. I think it's important to notice if one looks at the debate that they've took place here in the World Economic Forum that today there is a perfect conscience that the business of businesses is not only business and we have seen our social corporate responsibility as developed, we have seen our philanthropy as expanded tremendously in the last few years but what I am particularly interested in the alignment of the core business of the private sector with the strategic goals of the international community. I think that we have gone already very far when one looks at the green economy and when one looks at the efforts to attain climate change. It is clear now that it is good business to invest in the green economy and that the green economy has created a large number of opportunities for profitable investment for the private sector and I would say when one looks at the threats that exist today in relation to climate change and the possibility of less supportive action by some governments, I would say that the best allies of all those that want to make sure that the Paris Agreements are implemented, the best allies today in the world are probably in the business sector and it's very important to fully mobilize them. But even in the implementation of the 2030 agenda of the sustainable development goals, a calculation that was recently made shows that the returns on investment that can be generated by the full implementation of those goals would mean something of the order of magnitude of $30 billion per year which means that we have here an opportunity both to generate investments that are attractive for the private sector but simultaneously to allow for the private sector to play an absolutely central role in making sure that those goals are effectively achieved because without the private sector we will not have the necessary innovation. We will not have the necessary capacity to discover new markets, new products, new services and to be able to develop new areas in the economy. Without the private sector, we will not create enough jobs and we will not bring enough dynamism and stability to the societies that need to be enhanced with the implementation of the sustainable development goals. And that is why I believe that there is now an opportunity for a new platform of partnership at a higher level and a platform of partnership that can only serve not only in relation to implementing the goals defined in the past but addressing the challenges that we'll be facing in relation to the future. And namely the impacts that have been discussed so many times in this World Economic Forum of the so-called force industrial revolution and the challenges that the international community face with areas like genetic engineering or artificial intelligence, the problems of the cyberspace in which it is my deep belief that only with a very strong dialogue and partnership between governments, international organizations and the private sector, it will be possible to transform them in instruments that will allow for fantastic increase in the wellbeing of people and avoid the risks that they will be a nightmare for mankind as unfortunately a totally unregulated form of research in some of these areas could eventually generate. Thank you very much. Thank you. Secretary General, thank you for this very encouraging readiness to engage the business community. I can tell you based on our experience in the preparation of course of the SDGs of the Paris Climate Agreement but I should add also the Addis Ababa agenda, business was very keen. Now, one question which I have, you talked about the reform of the UN system, it will be very important like in a company that you have also the discussion partners who understand the language of business in the organization and sometimes there's a complaint of the UN being a big mammoth with very administrative minds. You just showed that at least that's the top, that's the contrary is the case. But how do you change this mindset? Well, we change it doing things. Cultural changes are never possible without movement. It's the movement that generates cultural changes. If you are waiting for a cultural change to then start the movement, we will never get there. My belief is that when one looks at what the international community asks the UN to do and when one looks at our capacity to deliver, independently of the fact that we should be very proud of what the UN has done, I think we would have much more conflicts without the UN in the last decades. It is clear that humanitarian action of the UN is something of real importance for the well-being of so many people, many lives were rescued. It is clear that even in the development side, the UN has played a very important role, but let's be honest, we have a lot of shortcomings and we have a lot of inefficiencies that need to be addressed. Now, the experience I have in UNHCR is that it is perfectly possible to move when we feel the pressure and we now feel the pressure because the needs that are presented by the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals and the dramatic needs coming from the conflict situations in the world will force us to deliver much better. For instance, in an organization like UNHCR, where I've been for 10 years, we were able to reduce our headquarters costs from 14% to 6% and our staff costs from 41% to 21%. I don't know if there are many private companies that have similar results. That means that we need to be able also to convince member states that this is the moment to adopt a win-win strategy in which instead of micromanaging the organization, they accept that a more flexible and nimble organization will be more able to serve them, especially in our action in the field. Secretary General, the UN was created 49 last century on the basis of shared values expressed in the Declaration of Human Rights. Then you had again Fukuyama writing his book and today we are in a different, it's the end of history saying we have only one shared value system now in the world, practically the Western value system. Now we are in a different world. We are moving towards a multi-polar system but also a multi-conceptual system. People have different, countries have different concepts how national and international matter should be managed. How do you keep the UN together if you do not have a shared value system anymore? I think that we have some shared values and some of the principles and chart have remained valuable today, but it's true that we had not the end of history. I think history came back with a revenge. To a certain extent, history was frozen with the Cold War and now the ice has melted and history is coming back everywhere and contradictions, some of them are contradictions of the past are re-emerging and creating many of the conflicts that we witness in today's world. But it's true that contrary to the 90s in which we had a unipolar world and a very clear set of values that were prevailing more or less, the idea that we would move irreversible into open societies, into market economies without restrictions, free trade everywhere. It is clear today that there are different concepts as you mentioned. And in a world that is moving from unipolar to multi-polar, I don't think we have already reached a multi-polar world but we are moving in that direction. I think it is absolutely essential for leaders, special leaders of those that have more influence in today's state of affairs, to be able to understand there is no way when can impose one's model to the others. I think it's essential to listen. It's essential to understand what are the values of the other, to see how we can combine them in a positive way and to see what kind of new synthesis is possible, but always being very careful to make sure that a number of fundamental principles are not put into question. And there, the biggest difficulty I would say is to make sure, for instance, that the agenda of human rights is not put into question by agendas of national sovereignty or of other sorts. I like very much the expression which was used during the luncheon we had of a cooperative world how would you define it, a cooperative world? Well, ideally, we would have, in this progressively multi-polar world, we would have a multi-lateral governance system. And I mentioned also at lunchtime, sometimes people have the idea that if the world is multi-polar, equilibrium and harmony will be automatically generated. Nothing is more false. In Europe, we had a multi-polar world in the beginning of 20th century without any form of multi-lateral management, multi-lateral governance, and the result was the First World War. So, multi-polarity without governance, without multi-lateral governance, can be a risk instead of being a positive development. Now, the problem is that we don't have enough strengths in our multi-lateral governance mechanisms. They are all relatively weak, including the United Nations. So, the only way to create the equilibrium that is necessary and to avoid the confrontations that would be fatal is through the capacity of those that lead the key actors in this multi-polar world to work with each other, to understand each other, and to create conditions in which they all win because they all benefit from them. I'll give you an example that is now very much in the limelight, the question of globalization and the free trade. I think that the problem is not to have less globalization, the problem is to have a better globalization. I think it's clear that free trade is something that is a positive asset for us all, but of course, free trade has consequences in the cohesion of societies, and we need to address those problems through social policies, through adequate forms of cooperation with the civil society or between governments and the private sector. We need to make sure that we keep the positive aspects of the world order that progressively has been built and at the same time address its shortcomings instead of regression to forms of collective life in the world that clearly would mean a drastic reduction in our capacity to bring prosperity to all. Secretary General, one issue, we see the humanitarian principles increasingly tested or even violated by countries, creating obstacles for migrants and particularly for refugees. How do you feel about it and what actions can you or must be undertaken to counter this trend? Well, first of all, I think refugee protection is something that is enshrined in international law. And when people flee a conflict or persecution, I think it's the obligation of states to grant them protection. And I'm worried with the fact. I have to say that during the 10 years in which I was a Zikomission for refugees, basically borders were in general open. There were very limited situations of the so-called Ruffoulment, which means when people are sent back to where they might face persecution. And there was, I would say, a clear integrity in the world protection regime. Last year, we have seen all these things shaking. We see more and more borders closed. We see more and more people not being able even to escape. It's the case of many Syrians that cannot flee the country at the present moment. And we see that international protection regime is in a crisis. There is now a decision by the General Assembly to have a global compact on migration, a global compact on refugee protection. And I hope that the integrity of the refugee protection regime will be re-established. And I hope that there will be effective solidarity, especially with those countries of First Island that are in the front line, not only in relation to the protection of refugees, but in relation to the protection of our global security and need much more international solidarity than the one they have had, the Jordans, the Lebanon's, the Kenyans of this world. But at the same time, I think one needs to have a fresh look on migration. I believe migration is there to stay. I believe migration is part of the solutions of all problems. But if migration is necessary, at least it should be managed. And instead of leaving migration to the control of smugglers and traffickers, I think there should be a much stronger international cooperation on migration. And that development cooperation policies should be defined in a way to avoid those forms of forced displacement. I recognize, for instance, the fact that Spain was very successful when defining forms of development cooperation with Eastern Africa. They managed to reduce, quite substantially, the movements of the Canary Islands. Unfortunately, most of all development operation policies ignore the questions of human mobility. It would be essential that those policies would address the problems of human mobility, making migration something that happens out of will, not out of necessity, and reducing this pressure on migration flows. That's because they are not managed, because they are left to a large extent in the hands of smugglers and traffickers, have also created an enormous anxiety and enormous feelings of fear in many of the societies. And they're mining the social cohesion of those societies. Secretary General, when looking at the UN, you see sometimes this tension between, on the one hand, the secretariat, on the other hand, the Security Council. I would phrase it in the following way, will you be a more political secretary general? Well, the secretary general is the chief administrative officer. At the same time, there is a space for the good will of the secretary general, namely in the prevention of conflicts or in support to the solution of conflicts. But I think it's important for people to recognize that the UN is not a normal genius entity. There is a Security Council with a number of very important functions on peace and security. There is a general assembly that takes decisions on a number of other areas. There is a secretary that the secretary general leads directly and that has important roles in different aspects. And there are the different funds and agencies and specialized agencies that funds and programs and specialized agencies that work covering all aspects of human life. And what I believe is essential is to understand that the fact that the Security Council takes a decision or doesn't take a decision doesn't mean that this is the responsibility of the secretariat or of UNICEF or of the World Food Program or of any other of the UN agencies. I think it's important that any part of the UN is able to assume its responsibilities. And it's important for the international public opinion to recognize what are the different areas of intervention of the UN and to be able to judge the merits and the negative aspects of each one of those segments without mixing everything and creating a perspective about what the United Nations is that doesn't correspond to the reality. But you, as a secretary general, you are in some ways the moral conscious of the world and this gives you a particular high responsibility and probably also the necessity to act on certain occasions just on the basis of your moral status and not necessarily on the basis of your function. That is absolutely true and I intend to do it whenever I find it necessary or useful because even if sometimes we have not the power to do things, if we have the moral authority to intervene, that can help to change things. I think it was Stalin that when he was asked about the Pope, he asked how many divisions there's the Pope. The fact the Pope has no divisions doesn't mean the Pope has no influence. So I believe we all have the responsibility to use our capacities, whatever they are, in order to make sure that we are able to promote the values in which we believe and, namely, in this case, the values enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. To summarize, Secretary General, I take out the important role other stakeholders will play in the implementation of your vision and of your politics. Second, to move much more from crisis management if possible, you will always have crisis, but much more to prevention and to look at human development in a broad sense in all its dimension. And I think, yeah, how shall I end? I think you are reform-minded, that's clear, but I think I end by saying I think we have a great Secretary General for the next five or 10 years. Thank you. That's very kind of you. Thank you very much. Thank you.