 Well good afternoon everyone. It's a great pleasure to welcome all of you. My name is Bill Burns. I'm the president of the Carnegie Endowment and it truly is an honor for me and all of my colleagues here to host Kevin Rudd, a remarkable statesman, scholar, and friend. Kevin is that rare leader who likes to run towards challenges, not away from them. From the global financial crisis to climate change and the rise of China to today's topic, UN reform, Kevin doesn't merely admire a problem. He's got a plan to address it. In many ways, UN reform may be Kevin's most audacious undertaking. For just about everyone else, that problem inspires shoulder shrugging resignation. But Kevin's right. We cannot consign this issue to the too hard box forever. I can't imagine a more important moment to consider UN reform with new secretary general soon to take office. At a time when one in three people lives in areas affected by fragility, conflict, and violence, when 65 million people have been forcibly displaced from their homes, when climate change threatens our collective future, the UN matters more than ever. But in many ways, it's also under greater challenge than any moment since its founding 70 years ago. In the chair's report of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, Kevin rings the alarm bells about the UN's drift and its consequences. But he also lays out a clear and compelling vision for the United Nations and a practical and principled roadmap for reform as it approaches a leadership transition. Kevin believes deep in his bones in the promise of the United Nations at a time of pervasive cynicism and despair about our political leaders and institutions. Kevin underscores the possibility of effective international cooperation. The report is informed not only by his own extraordinary mind and extraordinary career, but also by consultations with experts and citizens around the world. I cannot think of anyone better equipped to run toward this challenge than tackle it head on. I'm very grateful to today's co-hosts, the Asia Society Policy Institute, the UN Foundation, and the Better World Campaign. So please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Kevin Rudd. Thank you very much, Bill, and thank you to Carnegie for hosting us here today. Kathy Calvin, my great friend from the UN Foundation, distinguished guests one and all. Well, yes, it was an audacious ask to look at the UN and say, well, what the hell are we going to do with this? But the reason I decided to take it on when asked was because I actually passionately believe in the institution simply because when you ask the existential question, if not the UN, then what? It leaves you with a very basic proposition. Well, we've got this institution. We asked ourselves four or five pretty core questions addressing the issues outlined in the report which are before you. The first is this. Does it really matter? We've got to the 21st century. A whole bunch of global institutions have arisen, both formal and informal. Is the UN still relevant to the demands for global governance in the 21st century? The unequivocal answer that we've picked up from consultations around the world in countries great and small, east and west, is yes. The reason for it, it's not sentimentality. Of course, it represents an institution which is capable of mediating on the question of great power relations and sustaining what we've called for a long time the post-war order. Order, as we reflect in the report, is not a natural condition of international relations. In fact, if you look at the history of international relations in the modern period, it's been more prominently characterized by disorder than order. Similarly with the life of global institutions, frankly they haven't lasted long in the past and this is only the second attempt. And if you sweep back to the beginning of what we call modern history after 1648 the Treaty of Westphalia, those experimentations have occupied only about one-fifth of that time and one of those attempts has failed, namely the League. But if you would imagine a world where suddenly this thing called the United Nations was pulled out of what we currently call the global order, then the unanswerable question is what would then reverberate in terms of the brittle characterizations of interstate relations from which we sought to escape in the arrangements after 45. The second question we asked was beyond an answer to the question, what would really matter is, well, if it really matters, then is it really broken? And the answer to that is no, it's not broken, but it's in significant trouble. And those of us with eyes to see and ears to hear, as we travel the world on these sorts of questions, know that to be the case. And if I could give you one simple characterization of it rather than going through a litany of examples, it is this. More and more governments around the world, not just the great powers, but other governments as well, we see evidence of them walking around the United Nations system to find solutions to the most complex and challenging of global problems rather than using the instruments of the United Nations. And you don't have to be a Rhodes Scholar to work out that if people aren't coming around anymore with real problems to fix, that you may not be the most relevant place in town. So I understand the reasons which surround each of them, but let me just pose one or two thoughts to you, is that when we looked for a comprehensive solution to what was unfolding in South West Africa on Ebola, with the WHO for a range of reasons failed to discharge its mandate, either globally or through the regional assembly of the World Health Organization in Africa, it was dealt with by a bunch of non-UN instruments at the end of the day. African NGOs, the United States, government acting unilaterally with the invitation of the state's concern, but it was not a UN solution. The problem arose in part because the early warning systems of the World Health Organization simply didn't kick in. So on the second question, therefore, is it broken? Nope. Is it becoming broke in terms of cash? That's a separate question, but we do conclude it's in trouble. Third question we asked is this, if it's in trouble, then how the hell can you fix this thing? Is it fixable? We look at the constituent parts of what we call the modern global order. It kind of falls down into two big baskets. That within, let's call it the institutions of multilateral governance, the UN, the Bretton Woods institutions, those which have emerged since 44-45, and then the additional relationships which exist between the great powers, the additional relationships which exist between individual great powers and various of their allies around the world, and the separate relationships which exist between all governments in the world. If you like, we ended up with a system post-45 which was this untidy amalgam of the realist conclusions of the latter, state-to-state relations, where the exercise of national power is important and concepts of balance of power, but we decided to militate that process as well by inventing these institutions of liberal international governance and multilateral decision-making, the UN and the rest. But on the fixability question then, there ain't much objectively that any exercise in UN reform can do apart from make sacred calls for action to member states to behave better. That lies within the decision-making powers of individual states and how they contact their relations between them. What you can do, however, is look at the machinery of the multilateral system itself, in this case the United Nations, and make recommendations of how it can perform better, how we can reform its structure, its functions, its governance, and its funding over time to deliver a more effective result for the international community. And that has been the burden of where this report's recommendations has been. On to the nature of the recommendations themselves, and I don't intend to go through all 55. You good folks, I can do that with a glass of scotch in one hand and the report in the other as you settle down on a Friday evening here in Washington, D.C. to escape the troubles of your week, and I can guarantee you'll be off to sleep within three or four minutes. Let me instead go to some core principles of reform. Number one, multilateralism is a concept of global governance is itself deeply under challenge. The reason we decided it was a model for governance post-45 is that we'd seen what unilateralism could deliver. It was an unhappy set of circumstances pre-45. And we saw it unfold with terrible calamities for the world, including this country, the United States. And so if multilateralism itself is under challenge and we see increasing evidence of people walking around multilateral institutions to find solutions elsewhere, then one of the things we need to do is to look at the core question of do the political leaders of the 21st century still want a multilateral system which functions? One of the recommendations in this report, which some may see as just symbolic, but I don't. It's on the UN's 75th anniversary of its time that reconvenes at San Francisco. And at summit level, recommits itself to the principles of multilateralism as a means of global governance against the simple proposition that the alternatives are too horrendous to contemplate. It might also provide the occasion for people at head of government and head of state and at a political level to conclude there is a world of difference between perfect multilateralism and functional multilateralism. That obtaining a perfect consensus frankly is a way of slowing the processes of down and decision making when the challenges at hand may be in fact urgent and great. Principle number two, and what I describe as the core organizing principles of reform, relates to the UN's relationship itself with the great powers. Again, you don't have to be a road scholar to work out that at present there's not a happy state of relations between the United States and Russia. You don't have to be a road scholar that's more or less positive between the US and China than they were, say, 10 years ago. And there are a whole range of reasons for that. But the argument that I put forward in the report, particularly when it comes to the powers of incoming Secretary General, powers which should be used very selectively, but they anchor around article 99 of the Charter, which enables the Secretary General to bring initiatives to the Security Council, is to use the office of the Secretary General in fact to build bridges between the powers, particularly at times of enormous stress between the systems. You cannot, shall I say, exaggerate what the Secretary General can do under these circumstances, but there is something of a privately pulpit which can be exercised against the threat that it could go public to act as a militating agent to bring about better outcomes at a time when great power relations and the poor state thereof are threatened to derail the system altogether in terms of effective decision-making. And we can reflect later on, if you like, in Q&A as to how that might have or might still apply in the case of the rolling debacle that is Syria. Principle number three relates to the second and that is quite explicitly the UN not just being a price taker from the current state of great power relations, but actually from time to time through the Secretary acting as something of a price setter, a setter of prices in terms of what the institution could and should do. And that, of course, as I said before is reflected in article nine which gives the SG those powers. Principle number four I describe that as the adoption, inculcation, and implementation of a comprehensive doctrine of prevention across the UN system. Easier said than done, but let's simply go to the praxis of it. Institution, as the old saw would go, is much better than cure. It is certainly less expensive than cure and often more effective than cure. And this applies not just to the way in which we manage our physical bodies, but it applies to how we manage the system of international relations. By and large, our UN system as it's evolved has become a primarily reactive institution. I am the first as a pragmatic political leader from a country down under fully aware of the fact that many, many crises in the world, by definition natural disasters, are utterly unpredictable. But there's a bunch which are human made which are. And as a consequence, when you've got many predictive tools available to people who know their business about when we're going to have emerging crises in country X or country Y or region A and region B or around a new form of armaments may it be artificial intelligence-driven systems now being increasingly applied in the armed forces of the world then a flare should go up in terms of the doctrine of prevention about which I've just spoken applied across the UN system. What might that mean in practice? UN does not have an effective policy planning capability. The State Department here prides itself and so it should, given what it's achieved in the past, on the policy planning staff in the US State Department I was once a policy planner on the Australian Foreign Service back in the Mesolithic period of my career. Bill, did you have time as a planner at some stage? I did. Bill was a planner. Also in the Mesolithic period of my career. Okay. No, Bill in your case would only be Neolithic. I go back further. But the point is there's a discipline around planning. It's a hard discipline, it's complex and sometimes you think you should be producing learned papers which go 5, 10 and 15 years out but some radar on one year to two and three years out frankly that becomes operationally useful around the table of decision making and the allocation of resources. Secondly, I do believe you also need, in addition to a planning capability, a sufficiently empowered Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, which I designated in the report as peace and security with an ability then to act on the conditions on behalf of the Secretariat and put them to the Council about what might be done by way of preventive diplomacy in country X, Y and Z or region A, B and C or new weapons systems as I've just described and a range of other areas as well. C, you also need a Department of Political Affairs with a budget in the dispute mediation process with which they can actually do stuff. I think Geoff Feldman at the State Department now of the DPA does a great job. But on the mediation budget, he told me recently that his effective operating budget is about 20 million bucks a year. Now I don't think that's a lot of cash in terms of the mandates which the UN looks at most comprehensively and if through mediation you can prevent an emerging crisis from becoming a total civil implosion and then a civil war and interstate war frankly, acting early can be effective. Therefore that mediation budget needs to be improved in order to provide the capacity for a Deputy Secretary General peace and security to recommend to the SG and through him to the Council or her to the Council that action needs to be taken. And there are examples where this has happened. Guinea-Bissau most recently is one small country emerging dispute, early mediators sent in and as a result no full-blown peacekeeping deployment afterwards. Relativities of the budget of some tens of million dollars for mediation and a peacekeeping budget which is now somewhere between 8 and 9 billion a year frankly I think speaks cogently to why we need to take seriously what I describe as a comprehensive new doctrine of prevention and not just in peace and security. Number five, I argue for the effective implementation and measurement of existing major UN global initiatives and the reason I argue about that is that we have such a truckload of initiatives out there as the United Nations system that we are in danger of frankly losing credibility over time as the industry of report writing for the UN vastly exceeds our capability to do anything about them. Let me give you the classic case in point. Three letters SDG, Sustainable Development Goals. I am a huge supporter of the SDGs. I am chairman of the global partnership on sanitation and water for all. As my kids say, I am the sultan of sewage. So I take this stuff seriously. I am on the sustainability advisory board of Morgan Stanley but when I look system wide and I see this enormous benchmark that we have established for ourselves with agenda 2030 going out to 2030 and we are now one year into it, our second year then the credibility crisis we will run into by the time we hit 2030 if we have not made your progress across all those measures will potentially be deeply systemically damaging for the future reputation of the institution. Easy to say, so what do you do about it? The answer to the SDGs lies not in global public finance 80% of the answer lies in global private finance and therefore the need for the UN through the secretary general, the president of the World Bank and through the World Bank the regional development banks but most critically global private finance to form effective partnerships around each one of the 16 to 17 sustainable development goals. If not it won't happen, the cash won't be there. So when I talk about measurement that is what I am talking about, accountability that is what I am talking about because the absence of them produces the fracturing of the credibility of the system. On further point in terms of organising principles is this and that is what I describe as a new application of a new comprehensive doctrine of delivery relates to what I have just said in terms of measurement. It goes here to the field operations of the United Nations organisation. When you have got multiple UN agencies involved in a particular country take for example Vietnam where I visited for the purpose of this report. It is a low middle income country should not therefore be in receipt of large levels of UN insistence because it is developing quite nicely. There are 12 UN agencies there under the UN's program of one UN, they now occupy one building. This is progress because UN often has 12 different offices in a given country. But when you speak to the country coordinator which is a delightful Edwardian term which means not a lot. They have no power of command and control they have no ability to deploy resources they have no ability to shift resources between agencies and some would say well that is just the way it is each agency has its own mandate to which my response is well why the hell can't we actually in New York through a deputy secretary general sustainable development or humanitarian support bring about an integrated mandate for said country which brings all 12 independent mandates within a single document which is agreed corporately in the UN structure agreed nationally with the government concerned and then the appointment of a director of UN operations in the field who can do something about it and be held responsible for it with the great Harry Truman sign across the front of their desk the buck stops here. So that one as well. The other recommendations are there for you to see but in summary we need to do something at a fundamental political level to rehabilitate the concept of global governance through the agencies of multilateralism otherwise I do fear the death of a thousand cuts I don't fear the UN collapsing one day in a heap I do fear it's slowly fading away as an effective institution of global governance a comprehensive doctrine of prevention a comprehensive doctrine of delivery and the appointment through the management structures of people who are accountable for each arm of the UN's operations given the UN is currently structured by de facto all by design to leave no one ultimately responsible for anything and that I believe needs to change my final and concluding word is this and we're here in the good old US of A we're facing elections within a month and I would say this to my American friends this is so much your baby the United Nations if we examine its diplomatic history extraordinary thought and effort which went into the formation of this institution given the fiasco that became the League of Nations in the conferences in 41 42, 43, 44 culminating in San Francisco in 45 and you put together the planning staff State Department planning staff reports on this in the build-up process and compare those with the final content of the charter there is a very big American footprint over the transformation of this institution and in the terms of the context of 45 it could only have been thus because America emerges the unipolar power and I say on that point God bless America because the alternative could have been for unipolar power to say well we run the show now we'll just do better than the British and the old imperial powers because they've screwed it up twice now not just once therefore I say to my American friends as well as those competing for political office if there is any country in the world which has a deep historic and I believe future interest in rehabilitating the operational effectiveness of this institution against the entirely valid principles laid down in the UN charter it is the US of A instead what I've observed in this country over many years is a culture which I've seen in my own country of Australia which is one of incremental disdainment of this institution but it's kind of just too impractical for the purposes of contemporary governments I humbly submit that is a wrong conclusion that is very much a political factor for this incoming administration the next Congress to wrestle with it will be a crying shame for the reputation of the United States globally regionally and when the history is written this country itself having created this noble aspiration of humankind out of the ashes of the Second World War to then sat idly by while it crumbled into the dust I think Americans are better than that I think the Congress is better than that but we the international community each and every one of us we share an equal responsibility with the American who bring this institution to its own so that it is fit for purpose to meet the challenges of global governance for the 21st century I thank you very much for what was not surprisingly a very thoughtful presentation and an extremely thoughtful report we have about 25 minutes for a discussion and we just launched the conversation with a couple of questions and the first one revolves around one of the themes that you highlighted in your remarks and that is the role of the Secretary General of the UN in bridging differences and relationships sometimes between the great power something always easier said than done you've written and spoken as eloquently as anyone I know about China's rise and its significance so can you talk a little bit more about how best to deepen China's stake in the reform agenda that you just described in the future of the UN thanks for the question Bill because it really goes to the heart of what multilateral institutions we share in the decades ahead and that China is now such a large country in now every measurable respect not just one or two including land mass and population the bottom line is this if you look at what the Chinese government is now saying about multilateralism it is quite new there's been a bit of a sea change in the last year and a half I follow these things relatively closely one was Xi Jinping's statement to a work conference on foreign affairs held by the party centre at the end of 2014 second document I draw people's attention to is what Xi Jinping had to say to the General Assembly last year and thirdly there was another quote study session of the Chinese Politburo on multilateralism only about 10 days ago these are quite fascinating documents the historic Chinese view for China scholars amidst this was Haoguang Yang Hui hydra strength by Jutang Drebudang Kuo never stick your head up that was Deng Xiaoping's accent well we've got to that stage where that's no longer possible even if China wanted to do so so what you see with Xi Jinping this very determined strong leader is saying we will now have a much greater role in the multilateral institution beyond the Security Council as well I think if I was therefore to look carefully at the text the one that I find most confronting is that one Xi Jinping is saying the system must be reformed to keep place with the demands of multi-polarity which means observing the relative contributions to the global economy and proportions of the global military which lie in various national baskets second he says given changes in the international balance of power China must seize the opportunity which is this term it's a very powerful word to advance the reform of the United Nations system now this will not necessarily be of comfort to people in Washington or elsewhere and that is completely understandable its practical and our reflection will be what we've already seen partly through Chinese greater contributions to peacekeeping operations China is now one of the largest contributors he's outlined last year a billion dollar fund between UN and China to assist with development projects for the first time through the UN agencies as opposed to bilaterally by the Chinese and that's before we got to Paris where we had the end of a 3.4 billion dollar fund to assist developing countries with climate change adaptation adjustment and most recently at the UN an announcement I think of 200-300 million dollar contribution the first time through UNHCR and China has now joined the IOM the International Organization of Migration Yes, International Organization of Migration that's right, we just called it the IOM so this is a new pattern a bold prediction to you all here today five years time the face of China's multi-lateralism which I think will be called China's new multi-lateralism will be quite different will they take initiatives in terms of the charter say the Security Council level or for other systemic reform I think they will can I predict to you the pattern of that no I can't, I don't think the script is that well developed here within Beijing but if you seriously read the two weeks here there's there is big movement on this question and we should not assume that a Chinese view of the proper deployment of the UN is in any way comparable to what might be a Russian view of the UN there's a deep view within the Chinese system for example that given they have global interests right now and economic interests in every country in the world Chinese workers dispersed in at least half the UN countries but they actually have a deep deep the felt concern for global order because it meshes with their national interests their global interests abroad where you want stable environments to the maximum extent to support your investment community and you need to have institutions like IOM or UNHCR to help out when you have tens of thousands of your national sector board now thanks very much Kevin the theme that throughout your report you highlight is the challenge of prevention and you talk at one point I think about the importance of implementation of a comprehensive doctrine on prevention across the UN system and looking at specific organizational changes to help accomplish that Carnegie along with US Institute of Peace in the Center for New American Security recently released a report on the problem of fragile states and prevention which echoed a lot of the themes in your report and I just wondered if you could talk with us a little bit more about some of those steps that you could use across the UN system to put into practice a workable doctrine of prevention I'll make just two or three comments about that Bill one is I'm a kind of guy who doesn't believe anything happens unless it's on someone's duty state and who's senior in the system and it's up the top of their duty state it's an old fashioned view of the world but I kind of think things don't happen unless you're held accountable for it so that's why I'm unapologetic about a recommendation that there be a Deputy Secretary of the United Nations brackets peace and security close brackets responsible for prevention so that when any matter is before the Secretariat or the Council or the General Assembly that it's been always looked at through the lens of should we be acting now to militate against greater risk later on and for that not simply a single person's responsibility but to be supported by an appropriate planning staff as I mentioned before and the operationalization of it because you know it gets tricky when you've got the sovereignty of states which is I think what you're pointing to but again I go back to the example of one I quote around the world of Guinea-Bissau and the reason why no one has heard of this intervention in this room probably is that it worked and it cost the UN 500,000 bucks it took about a year and a half and the eternal patience of José Ramos bought it. He went in there speaks Portuguese, knew them all they drank tequila or whatever they do in Guinea-Bissau I've never been there and he was able to fashion a set of new political arrangements which satisfied the contending parties in a manner which then didn't lead to civil strife in the usual trajectory I think at a at the level of humanitarian intervention and human rights abuses leading to or manifesting unfolding political crises and then reflective of other elements of instability within and between states the predictive barometers of that as you know from your own book are pretty clear now I spent a couple of years as chairman of the WEF's Global Affairs Council on Fragile States so if you look at the predictive data now around climate around the economy around ethnicity and around human rights and the rest of it and frankly there's about five or six pretty reliable something but the question is how do you get to a stage where that is not just left as a wonderfully elegant piece of analysis nice piece but then flips into the intro of the guy with the Harry Truman sign on his or her desk saying I'm responsible for prevention so how do I take that through the SG to the Security Council and with the member state concern all with the AU to say can we do this my final point is just on the mechanics purely of prevention back in I think it was 2011 I remember this getting this panicked phone call from Josette Sheeran with whom I now work at the Asia Society and Josette rang me up she was then head of the World Food Program and said we have from all of our predictive data an emerging drought in Somalia which is going to be lead to a repeat of what we found in the early 1980s the problem was that the funding disciplines of member states did not allow them to contribute to a humanitarian provision for crises which should not exist so what she did was bring me and said if we pre-position food medical supplies what we think is now inevitable we will turn what will be a humanitarian catastrophe into a manageable small D disaster and actually it turned out better than that so we unilaterally gave her a bunch of money and I think one or two other governments did the same and as a result on the borders between Somalia, New York and Somalia and Kenya there was stuff in place so that has led I think to a review about how you describe the preconditions around funding contributions for humanitarian crises which you know are about to happen but cannot prove that the crisis is currently in force by which time it is too late well thanks very much and now I'd like to open it up for your questions all I'd ask is raise your hand please and once you get the microphone please identify yourself and remember to end with a question mark so yes sir there's a microphone right behind you hi my name is Dmitry I don't have an affiliation but thank you very much for your work on this very interesting so recently I had the chance to listen to Anders Rasmussen former secretary of general of NATO and he was talking about the Libya situation and he said that NATO did its job but when it left there was a failure in institutions or anything else to create some stability and when they asked him whose fault it was he said the United Nations so I'm wondering if you think that and recently Boop Jeremich the guy that was running for secretary of general he proposed much more robust peace stabilization missions so I'm wondering what you think and how do you think the role of the United Nations could be improved in this and if you agree with Secretary General Rasmussen thank you very much well Anders Fogg Rasmussen is something of a friend of mine but I'd like to see what he said specifically about what went right and wrong with the Libyan intervention complex business I was among those who called for the intervention publicly, loudly at the time when I was in office to prevent what we all concluded under the butchery of Benghazi what happened after that is a separate set of questions which are worthy of a deep reflection by the way this interesting book was released by a colleague of mine in New York former Indian Ambassador Hadi Puri Ambassador to the UN which deals specifically and at length and exhaustively with what went wrong with the subsequent elements of the Libyan intervention that's worthy of some serious study on your broader question though about what's the spectrum here of peace and security the spectrum of peace and security if you're serious as a global organization is everything from what I described as planning that is, it's your early warning systems it's your forecasting systems two, it is prevention either by mediation or by the range of other tools available to the UN system three if that fails and you're into a crisis then of course it's the deployment of peacekeeping forces assuming that you can get the proper mandate for the security council and a sufficiently robust mandate to make it work but then in terms of peace stabilization that is often where we fall down as a system and then there's the other associated discipline of peace building which goes beyond peace stabilization and peace building as a concept then flows through directly into what we're doing in terms of long term sustainability for the state or the region concerned so it's a spectrum like that and that's described in this report again, none of this happens effectively, institutionally almost some guy or girl has got a sign on their desk saying that they're responsible for it or it's number one in their duty statement one of the reasons I've recommended here that there be three deputy secretaries General of the United Nations one for peace and security one for the development agenda and the terror agenda is that around that daily management table of the UN system you should therefore have an ability to I won't say command and control but at least with a secretariat level to direct resources across the spectrum of those needs in a given, shall I say peace and security environment are we at the planning stage the prevention stage, the peacekeeping operations stage are we at the peace stabilization stage are we at the peace building stage and when do we need to enter the development stage and get beyond the humanitarian injection stage the only way to do that I think is to have that discipline entrenched in those defined responsibilities amongst three senior people whose job it is around the table to manage review and system on a weekly basis thanks, yes sir wait just a minute one second for the mic, yep thank you I'm a journalist with India Globe in Asia today in Washington I do not have a copy of a report yet but you made a very interesting some points listening my question is that coming from the UN meetings and now from the World Bank can UN be reformed without China to India has four members including the US but not China on the UN Security Council seat and finally what is the future of UN after Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who is a good friend of mine who is going to leave now and he has done a great job of course according to many many more leaders including Prime Minister Modi thank you sir on the China question which builds on builds on builds earlier point about China's attitude I wonder what I describe as China's approach to its own new multi-lateralism it is critical that the Chinese are in the tent it is critical that they are on the bus called UN reform and the cogency of the delivery of UN services and the Chinese I know in Beijing through their own think tanks and their own governmental advisory they are working on these questions the sooner we as other member states engage directly the Chinese on the question of the future evolution of each of the UN agencies and functions the better because it is not simply a case of one state however powerful indicating what they want it is a question of actually forging a consensus on these questions and that will be how it happens in the UN so I would strongly advocate early direct intervention the part of states who are concerned about the future shape of the UN itself to do some partnership with our Chinese friends now and secondly I note in the SED arrangements between China and the United States the strategic economic dialogue that one of those areas of long-term strategic engagement between the two is on the question that performs the UN as I've read it from the outside not just the agenda questions but also the viability of the institution I would just also come back on this point that China I believe beyond the tensions which arise around its borders with its 14 neighbors the largest number of neighbors which any state has in the world apart from Russia it also has 14 China when it looks abroad and to the wider abroad has a deep invested national interest in continued global stability for the reasons I outlined before so we should look to the Chinese to become strategic partners in the revitalization of the system its agencies and critically its resources very soon the Chinese will be this institution's second largest funders what I know from my Chinese friends I'm now hearing for the first time questions such as Kevin do you think that agency is efficient and which I find is music to my ears because it's a question which all of us who fund this institution permanently ask so is it going to be easy? No should we engage early? Yes are there sufficient commonality of longer-term interests about global stability and global governance? I think so Thanks Yes sir Don Bless president of the United Nations Association of National Capital Area if there ever were a need for maybe an opportunity for the doctrine of the responsibility to protect it would be in Syria today I would think for the huge humanitarian crisis is there anything a new secretary general could do differently to be more effective in addressing the situation in Syria? As you know I can only answer this question retrospectively there was a huge debate around 11 and 12 which Bill will recall much more intimately than I because he was directly engaged my key question was did we in those days engage the Assad regime or didn't we? It was a very deep and difficult question our decision not to engage the Assad regime given all that they had started to do I do think has probably had some profound downstream consequences there will be a range of views on this I fully accept that but if our primary prism for analysis is how do you protect the poor people of Syria then working with the uncomfortable folks was to run in the country is not unique terrain it's not terra nova for the UN in the past we had to do it in multiple different theatres so that is one thing secondly would have been possible earlier on to begin to carve out humanitarian corridors if we had direct negotiations with the regime open question I think of the other retrospective point I would make is if we had an effective system of policy planning working with the UN at the time and we're looking ahead there I say it one to three years taking the starting point as being 2011-2012 it would have been very interesting to hear what the direct policy planning might have had to say about how this thing was going to unfold bearing in mind that you got a whole bunch of other states active in Syria who would not be parting to an early and peaceful resolution so this is a complex question to ask I think stuff in the for example the UN Special Envoy who has done the best he could possibly do on the current circumstances given the geopolitics of Russia Syria the Syrian regime plus the attitudes of a range of the other external powers including the Iranians I'm not about to assume a comfortable position of the armchair on stage to say this is what should have happened and this is what can now happen it's more complex than that Thanks, thank you we have time for just one more question Yes ma'am One second the microphone is almost to you Yeah I had just a footnote though in Syria I just thought about it is because I said it in earlier session somewhere today or maybe it was yesterday in the launching this report in Berlin is maybe when things get to extremists in situations such as Syria you may well need the clarion voice of the Secretary General under article Mardi 9 to bring forward an initiative half hard difficult call because you know what you got absolutely no guarantee of success and there is a bit of a history of SG's acting in that manner hearing the gentle soaring of timber behind them as they are quite rapidly descended to the ground but when you're in the midst of extremists as we are in Syria and when there is deep geopolitics involved I think there is value to be served for the clarion voice of the institution anchored in the principle of the charter that articulated through the provisions of article Mardi 9 which is the SG bringing forward initiatives sorry please now that we are past the prevention stage to end the instability in Syria how do we alleviate the refugee crisis and bring refugees back home to a peaceful Syria thank you for the question about refugees it's a telling and fundamental one in terms of what we do as a UN system on the member states in the future I say loud and clear in this report that this is one of the huge tests we now face the 54 convention was designed for radically different circumstances its principles are fine including the core principle of non-reformal you don't send people back before their status is determined against the possibility of death or persecution outlined clearly in that convention but you know something the institutional arrangements we build around it were designed for the circumstances of the 50s and 60s and frankly what was immediately pressing in terms of the outfall of refugees in the decade or so after the Second World War now this is global in its scale and we now talk about Iraq slash Syria by Jordan via Lebanon via Turkey to other parts of the world and our inability to cope well that's just one theatre in which this is happening we've been in my part of the world and saw the implosions in Sri Lanka five C years ago after the Civil War erupted similar outflows but not a spectacular and global media coverage and so it goes on so what I say in this report is that if we are serious about this core humanitarian pillar of the United Nations system this must be a number one priority to reform the institutional arrangements under the system under the convention of 54 and therefore reform the operational arrangements for the UNHCR to do four things must be four elements to this one, prevention how do you act earlier with preventative diplomacy to prevent small crises from becoming huge crises because then you know what you're going to be facing in terms of refugee outflows two, at the practical level the first countries to bear the burden are neighbouring states, I've just mentioned three of them did we as an international community support those states to the extent that they needed to sustain three, four million people coming out of Syria into Lebanon into Jordan and into Turkey no we didn't three, we then took the remarkable step instead of cutting their daily allowances from I think the summer of 14 on so that by the time you actually got into 15 people started to move with their feet and if I was a refugee in a camp in those parts of the world and suddenly my food allowance had been cut in half by the WFP or whoever I would move too because I would reach a conclusion with winter approach and I had to get out of there third element of it is transit arrangements transit countries, Greece comes to mind at the moment but so they exist across the world how do you properly fund, support and resource transit countries so there are humane and decent facilities to process people to accommodate them, to house them, to feed them while they're on the march so that we can determine through the UNHCR processes their refugee status do they meet the criteria of the convention and finally the hardest one but if we don't crack it frankly I think we're into a world of political pain, particularly in Europe where Mina, Middle East, North Africa is ready to move north is a global agreement on resettlement for destination countries other than if you do not do that based on destination countries who are able to resettle people then you're going to be boiling it down to the principle of geography which is whoever is closest and most able will then be overwhelmed and the future of German politics right now hinges with the rise of AFB and the rise of other multiple factors in that country on Angela Merkel's ability to explain to the German people while Germany had to take a million people in various other countries has shunted them on so it's much easier having been in this particular hot seat myself to say we are taking 20,000, they are taking 40,000, these are taking 5,000 so that you have a proper system of global distribution isn't it just much easier to I know it's a very complex issue with ISIS but not allow them to have left I know in retrospect we can't say that but to have really contained the issue of ISIS in Syria and to address that issue so that they can return peace only to their country are you talking about ISIS or refugees? both well I would just differ with you fundamentally you cannot equate ISIS with the people escaping from ISIS so you can't just say that because it's all a problem leave the problem at home put a fence around it and hope that something works out in the end in international humanitarian law we have concluded as a society of states we have a different approach to this and the reason we decided we have a different approach to this we all sat idly by why 6 million Jews got killed during the Second World War that's what happened and we all all of us as member states at the time failed in our responsibilities to evacuate Jews when we could and we didn't that's why we had the convention of 54 and that is any person in fear of persecution or death from the state in which they are who seeks escape should be provided at least temporary asylum while their case is assessed and then opportunities for permanent asylum otherwise we repeat that obscenity in international history sorry I'm afraid I promise that we'd I think I think the new SG Antonio Guterres has got great leadership skills for this job I've known him in the past both from his previous political incarnations and also from his experiences head of UNHCR I think he will do well and I know he's got the skills to do well and we should all wish him well and support him and what will be a formidable challenging task second only to the person who occupies a building not far from here ladies and gentlemen one of the less appealing aspects of my role as host of moderator is the need to bring really interesting conversations to a close so let me thank all of you very much for coming today and ask you to join me in thanking Kevin Rudd