 Let me start by saying a salamu alaykum, yaran Abu Dhabi. And it is good evening. Now I think it is evening. It's no longer afternoon. Speakers, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome all of you to discuss a very important topic on the economic and social issues of our region. Let me start by thanking the organizers for the invitation and welcoming all of you to this workshop. As I'm a person who is in economics and finance and not in politics, so I'll be mainly speaking about those issues. There are more qualified speakers to speak about the social issues and political issues. But for our region, it's anticipated that economic growth in Arab countries, of course, like the rest of the world, will be affected by several factors during this year and next year, including slower global growth, tight global and regional financial conditions, volatility in commodity prices, and country-specific factors. All those factors are likely to expose vulnerabilities arising from very high public debt to certain countries and weak external conditions. And here, I mean balance of payments in terms of economic issues. The growth this year by the forecast of the Arab Monetary Fund is expected to be around 2.2% for Arab countries and next year to increase to 3.3% for the inflation. And if we exclude three or four countries in our region, it's expected to moderate to stabilize at 3.6% next year. On the country's level, some countries in the region are experiencing several economic and financial challenges, crisis, whatever, with describe the situation leading to increasing the already high unemployment. And poverty. Some countries in the region also have issues of refugees and humanitarian crisis. So those tensions will, of course, increase risk premium, making borrowing even much harder. We at the Arab Monetary Fund are from our part doing all what we can do in a sense of design and manage the reform, the economic reform programs in several counties. So far on this year, we have provided financial assistance exceeding 1 billion euros that are since the beginning of this year. We also provide technical assistance and capacity building and provide also place for policy dialogue between our member countries. Today, we are very fortunate to have very well-known speakers. I will have no difficulties introducing each one of them as probably most of you or all of you you know those speakers. They have different backgrounds, and they have rich experience to talk about economic and social issues in our region. We will discuss regional economic landscape, explorer growth, development issues, diversification strategies, sustainability, and demographic trends, education, food security, water, social issues, and developments. Let me start by the only female on our panel, Dr. Mona Makramovic. She doesn't need an introduction. She is Egyptian senator, advisor to the UN High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations for my member of the parliament. She will be giving us an overview of the main political, economical, social changes in the region, facing the region at large. And probably she might focus on Egypt. And what would be the appropriate unit is whenever there are challenges. There are appropriate units too. And Dr. Mona, you have 15 minutes to have your introductory remarks, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I feel very honored to have to be next to you now. And unfortunately, I'm not an economist. I am a political scientist. And so I will approach more my subject in a political sense with social transformation happening in Egypt. So let me first start by Egypt. And how much this crisis, this Gaza crisis, this Palestine crisis has affected Egypt, has affected the whole Arab world and the whole world, in fact, from watching the horrific images that we see on television. But what I can say also is that the turmoil in Gaza is not entirely a bad thing for the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In many respects, his government would be happy to see Israel eliminate Hamas, an organization that grew out of the Muslim brotherhood hated by President Sisi, hated by the Arab, the Egyptian public opinion. The Egyptian public opinion, the Egyptians in general, have seen what it is to have an Islamist regime trying to change the identity of the country, trying to make it an Islamist, racist country, and so on, forgetting what the Egypt really stands for, which is a secular, modern, democratic country. Now, on the other hand, the Egyptian public today is outraged by the ongoing Israeli bombardment of Gaza. And like most of its counterparts across the region, it prices stability over domestic accountability. Now, in Egypt, the post-presidential elections as I just said in 2013 boiled down to a context between the military and the brotherhood, and in which a victory, which squeezed out a victory, but they proved the Muslim brotherhood meaning, they proved to be incompetent and mostly mediocre, and easily undermined by opponents, both at home and abroad, particularly in the Gulf region, where who feared Islamist political movements. Now, the removal of, he was called Morsi, the president at the time, his removal of office marked the end of Muslim brotherhood rule. But for the moment, Egypt's refusal to admit Palestinian refugees, which is a big question, is a matter of principle that many people don't understand. They think that Egypt is refusing humanitarian help. No, in so far, there is any residual commitment in the Arab world to a solution of the Israeli conflict. There will never be anyone accepting to displace the Palestinian or Gazan community into Sinai. So economically, Egypt's long-standing dependence on full and food imports has bloated its foreign debt, I'm talking now economically, has bloated its foreign debts, thanks in part to the war in Ukraine, the COVID-19, and securing international financing has grown more costly and more domestic subsidies continue to drain government resources. The resulting economic crisis has led to several rounds of currency devaluation mandated by the International Monetary Fund and skyrocketing inflation, which is hurting not only the poor, but also the middle class, which is the main support of President Sisi. As you know, Egypt is going through presidential elections this month. So Egyptians is more than any Egyptian government. Egyptians, now that they put pressure on Egyptians to accept the Palestinian community into Sinai, the president has refused adamantly because it means the end of the Palestinian question if these people are displaced once more. So Egyptians, more than any Egyptian government, could not tolerate such a thing. Moreover, many Hamas militants would likely escape into Egypt, creating yet another headache for the authorities. That is why one of the other reasons that Egypt is refusing. For the moment, President Sisi is insisting that the United Nations, the European Union, and others should help provide humanitarian assistance for the people in Gaza. I want to underline, do not underestimate General Sisi's role. Because Egypt has maintained very good relations with Israel, but the government cannot survive what Israelis are doing in Gaza. People are getting very angry, but also the pressure on him to mobilize his army and go forward to fight, to protest the Gazians is refused. He is adamant in refusing the Gazians into the Sinai, as I said, because this will mean the end of Palestinians and the two-state solution. Furthermore, the Palestinians in Sinai would create serious national security problems for the government of Egypt. Now, let me add that there is a great feeling. No, this is not. And now that there is a shift, a rising tide, it's very interesting that every day things are changing. From yesterday to today, there is a change in the American attitude. Whereas before, they refused to have anything else but to protect Israel. Now, they're saying there is a tide of public and private pressure from European, Latin American, and other capitals, even the United States, that are pressuring Israel to allow humanitarian pauses and EU leaders have rejected the pleas from that brutal Netanyahu to lobby Egypt to open its border with Gaza and accept Palestinian refugees. This shift comes from the atrocities committed by Hamas to the pummeling of Gaza due to the magnitude of the Israeli assault. And now that we are hopefully approaching the day after, everyone is talking about the day after, let us speak to a former Fatah strongman in the Gaza Strip and listen to his vision of the future, which I think is one of the most imaginative and creative vision. Once Israel's war on Hamas ends, he says, the Gaza Strip should be governed by a technocratic government for two years as it is an illusion that any single individual could take over on his own. If you want, you can remember what President Sadat's words when they offered him to take Gaza, said no to more refugees. Now at the end of that period, which is the present war, which he believes would unify the splintered Palestinian factions, there should be elections based on a Palestinian state. This man I'm talking about is a former Fatah leader. He's called Mohammed Dahlan. He's a name that you should remember. So there should be elections, he says, based on a Palestinian state without defined borders. The borderless state could be backed by Arab countries such as Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Republic, and the United Arab Emirates. After that, there should be international recognition by Israel and a final agreement with Israel, international recognition by the Israeli, by the international community, and a final agreement with Israel. The Hamas attack drew condemnation from many countries, yet Dahlan sees that this war is an opportunity that could bring a Palestinian state, despite talks between Israel and Palestine, having the whole Palestinian Israeli question had died. Nobody talked about it. And now that there is this attack, everybody, all the world is talking about the Palestinian conflict. So Mr. Dahlan's vision is one of surprising hope amid the horrors of the fighting. Let us remember that he has connections, Mr. Dahlan, has connections on all sides of the conflict, with Israel, with Gaza people, with the Arabs, of course, and he also speaks very warmly of his relations with some senior Israeli figures. More immediately, Mr. Dahlan, who has returned from Egypt, has close ties with Egyptian President El Sisi, and he has declared that he will not run for elections. But like all Arabs, you don't have to believe what he says. And yet, he firmly sets out his credentials for leadership. He has become a close advisor to the ruler of Abu Dhabi. He believes that Israel has destroyed the two-state solution. Listen to that, because this is what is quite new in his declaration. Everybody is talking about the two-state solution and who would accept and who would refuse. He believes that Israel has destroyed the two-state solution and now is the time, he says, to strive to achieve the one-state solution. The real problem lies in the Israeli occupation. So what I want to add at the end is one of the main things that we are asking for to end this Gaza saga is the liberation of the hostages. This is what all the international community is asking for and it is part of what Mr. Gargash has just said now in his speech. And I believe that he is quite right and that the international community should get together for that. I think it is enough. I have said enough. I hope you will have questions for that, because it's a new proposal to have somebody really come out with a suggestion. Thank you. Thank you so much for your insightful, deep thinking and for your energy at the end of the day. You are clear with your ideas. You are very energetic. She was preparing since the morning early morning. And she is challenging everybody at this late hour. So please write all your questions. I don't have questions for the panel. I am relying on you to ask them questions. But you brought a lot of ideas and proposals on economics. You said enough, I think you said, issues of challenges to the region and to Egypt. And thank you for your clarity and your intervention. Now our second speaker is Abdrahman Niyadi. And I welcome him. He's the director of policy planning of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the UAE. And he will be speaking on the link between economic prosperity and security in the region, how increased economic cooperation can benefit the Middle East, given the leadership role of the UAE. We are all, of course, interested to listen to you. Abdrahman, please. The floor is yours. Thank you so much. And thank you for the opportunity to be in this very important workshop. It's difficult to really discuss the region without shedding light on what's happening in Gaza. And I would try through my remarks, and I'm not going to take 15 minutes, but less, to basically try and put the wide lens on what's happening in our region and where we can be constructive. The region has been through crises, moving from a crisis to another for a long time. And yet another big crisis with this magnitude happening divert our attention from every aspiration that we seek for our region and focus on trying to reach this humanitarian ceasefire and the unhindered access of humanitarian aid. And then looking into the day after, as Dr. Muna has mentioned, the day after in which we know that the status quo prior to what happened is not sustainable as well. So I would try to put some diagnosis and speak about why we think prosperity is part of the regional security where we speak. That's, first of all, the way we look at it in the UAE, that any regional security architect requires a strong component of economic prosperity. And why do we say that? I believe maybe you heard it in the last session by Dr. Anwar Gargash mentioning the same idea. And why do we say that? We say that because we live in a region with one of the youngest demographies. Over 55% of our region right now is less than 30 years old. Unemployment, 30% of the unemployment rates in the region is of people who have university degrees. Poverty is hitting one of every four child in the MENA region. And that's basically the statistics that are online. This takes us to the importance of addressing these socioeconomic factors if we want to reach a sustainable peace and stability in the region. The socioeconomics factors that led to what so-called Arab Spring since 2011 are not addressed yet. The socioeconomic factors in the region through the multiple crisis and the ramification of all the crisis of the region has multiplied by COVID, by Ukraine, and now by the Gaza War. And that leaves us with the reality that any pursuit toward peace and stability requires to address these socioeconomic factors through trying to achieve economic prosperity. So what do we need to do that? From our perspective, there are three main elements to pursue that. Number one is basically that regional countries need to move from the geopolitics of things into the geoeconomics of things. And engage with a mindset of creating the economic denominators that we need in our region. That requires, obviously, in many parts, the move from what we try to do prior to what we see right now in Gaza, from de-escalation in the region to cooperation in the region. And that move from de-escalation to cooperation requires a fundamental confidence-building measures that many regional security initiatives neglected in the past. These confidence-building measures are very important in that exact goal of moving from a fragile de-escalation to reach a sustainable cooperation in the region. Number two, it's very necessary to address extremism in all its manifestation. And why do we say that? Because we understand that extremism is something to be addressed. We understand that extremism is conducive to terrorism. We understand extremism is violent. But extremism has a disruptive impact on social development. So even if it's not that extremism that passes the threshold of violent, it still has an impact that jeopardize social development. And it's important to be addressed. But how do we address it? Countering the extremist messages is not enough. The way we should address it is in a longer-term vision of enhancing education, educational systems, encouraging and building resilience in society by educating our youth in critical thinking and also working on women and youth empowerment. And this is very important. We in the UAE, if I'm going to speak of one of our most important achievements in the last 50 years, women empowerment will be right there as a very clear achievement for our country. And why women empowerment? Because an empowered woman in a society creates a healthy society and prevent extremism. And this is the way we look at it as one of the most effective preventive measures against extremism. Number three is to provide an alternative narrative. There should be not only countering extremist messages, but also providing an alternative. And the alternative requires the opportunities for our youth that we spoke about, which requires also the prosperity overall. These alternatives are the coexistence, the tolerance, the freedom of religious practices, and building bridges and people-to-people engagement. All these alternatives are very important to achieve the alternative narrative in the region. And number three within that, what we should do, all what I said is something that could happen, but that also requires strong institutions. The region requires strong institutions on the national level and also on the regional level. And that strong institutions should be the way forward to enhance the quality of life for our people. Because that's the sustainable way of doing it. I think I'll stop here. I can take any question later on. I try to be brief to diagnose and see the UAE perspective on how we see the region. Again, it's very difficult at this time to speak about a future optimistic vision, but I try to sum up the wider lens on the region at this place. Thank you. Thank you very much. Always going back to the basics, to the basic issues would provide a lot of sense, the education. So prepare the youth to the labor market. This is extremely important. Empower people, empower women. That is a preventive measure to counter the extremists. Provide alternative. So it's not enough to say, I'm against this opinion, but then what is the alternative? Tolerance, strong institutions, not only at national level, but regional level. There are a lot of questions. Please write down your questions, and then you will have the opportunity to ask all those questions. Our third speaker, Rayat Sharaveddin, I know Rayat for so many years. He was with us at the board of the Arab Monetary Fund. Rayat is still a central and commercial banker. He was former Ferris twice governor of the central bank of Lebanon. I'm always proud of having him as a good friend. And I know he has depth in the way he looks at things and in terms of strategic thinking. And Rayat will have his opening remarks and the socioeconomic impact with the displaced population crisis on countries in the region. And he will take Lebanon as a case. I think this is a very difficult issue for several countries in our region. It is sensitive. It is difficult. Whenever you speak about it, it becomes so emotional also. And as we have heard him in the last session, please write. Thank you, Dr. Hamidi. It's great to be here with you again in one of those beautiful sessions that you run. As Dr. Hamidi has said, I was asked to talk about the socioeconomic impact of the Syrian displaced population crisis on Lebanon. In the introduction, I would say that the issue of the Syrians, the space in Lebanon, evolved from a purely humanitarian one when the war broke out in 2011 to a massive call for a swift plan of action to repatriate them as they constitute an existential quote unquote threat to Lebanon's again quote identity, image, and future, and I'm quoting the minister of the interior. Like Germany's 2014 versus 2018 reversing sentiments, populists rhetoric in Lebanon is recently echoing calls for self-protection, controlling measures against their movement, and even against their residential arrangements by heads of municipalities, governors, and the minister of the interior. Excuse me, while others went all the way to facilitate their immigration by sea to Europe. Additionally, there are demands to review the modus operandi of the UNHCR, which is the United Nations Higher Commissioner for Refugees. And the other relevant NGOs and even terminate their operations altogether, especially with the unfulfilled financial pledges of the international community and European unions strong stance on the premature quote unquote return of the Syrians to Lebanon. This is compounded by the disputes among the cabinet members of Lebanon, of the caretaker government in Lebanon, which prevents it from convening and addressing this issue. While thousands of Syrians are infiltrating the northern and eastern common borders between Lebanon and Syria. To give you an idea, this is the map of Lebanon. And we have the northern, this is Syria from the northern borders and from the eastern borders. So we have about 387 kilometers of common borders. So this is really, that means I will get to some statistics later on while I'll be talking. So the Lebanese army arrested 25,000 Syrians during the first eight months of the year. While the conflict has abated in Syria where regime is recapturing more key rebel areas and where most Arab countries started the process of approaching the administration, the economic pressures there are mounting and pushing more citizens to flee the country into Lebanon. Benefiting from the United Nations' current policy of offering them $300 per person monthly. Against this backdrop, let's look at the Lebanese economic or macro socioeconomic scene. Actually, we have been facing ourselves as stressful conditions resulting from multi-dimensional crisis that has been going through and aggravated by regional and global economic turbulences. Lebanon's crisis emerged from a decade of regional turmoil on the one hand, particularly regarding the repercussions and risks of the searing crisis and the difficulties in public finances in terms of the budget deficit and the exacerbation of public debt and its service on the other hand. In the Q&A, if there's any Q&A, I'll get to some numbers and statistics while I'll skip that for now. But the inflationary and monetary financial factors that are really pressured Lebanon more and more, the exchange rate, the devaluation, the imbalance in the balance of payment, the government's dumb decision to discontinue payments on all its outstanding US dollar denominated euro bonds on March 9th, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic consequences and the Beirut port explosion factor of August 2nd, 2020, the energy crisis, the fuel and economic effects and on and on and on has really put us in shambles that is aggravated again with the presidential vacuum since little over a year, since October 30th, 2020. I'll get the statistics if there's any interest about that. Let's look at the numbers of the Syrians in Lebanon and how much they constitute as percentage of the Lebanese population. And here comes the interesting part. We don't really know for sure how much they are. We have statistics and we have statistics and we have statistics. So we have statistics running for about 900,000 and we have statistics going to 2 million and 80,000. So look at that range and I'll talk a little bit about this variation in numbers because the registered population of the UNHCR and they are not registered population and there's the general security at the number that I will talk about here is the official number that the Lebanese general security, general director of the general security had talked about which is 2 million and 80,000. This is 30% of Lebanese. So they constitute 30% of the Lebanese population. In addition to the new waves actually coming into Lebanon we'll see all kinds of videos of them coming in and hurts. Well, the unofficial estimates indicate that the number of newly displaced people between June and July this year reached 15,000 per month with a total population of 6.77 and this is, you know, if we don't really know how much we are, how many people you are. So we had 6.77 million according to the World Bank estimates and 7.3 million people in habitants according to official estimates. So this is what we have. Lebanon hosts the highest per capita concentration of refugees in the world. And definitely as you well know, we're in addition to the Syrian brothers, we have the Palestinian brothers who still have about 300,000 Palestinians but the Palestinians are considered refugees. So that's for legal issues. The Syrians are not considered refugees, are considered displaced. And I have here some, a table talks about the percentages of how much they constitute in our neighboring area. For example, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt and Lebanon and actually in Turkey they constitute 3.8 and Jordan they constitute 5.9. In Egypt they constitute 0.14 while in Lebanon they constitute 36%. And based on the numbers I took, I just played with some numbers and in case they continue with their birth rate that they have which is more than the Lebanese birth rate, actually we will be equal by 2043. In 20 years the Lebanese and Syrian population will be equal in Lebanon. Definitely the, as with the impact, just consider that the country is in shambles already. We are in deep political, social and economic problems. Not much infrastructure is built and let alone, maintained let alone built. So all the pressures are, we have those, the guests of ours are using exact same roads, exact same electricity grid, exact same hospitals and x-rays and what have you, transportation. So the education, communication, water and sanitation requirements. So when the same thing that hasn't, not much has been done on this infrastructure over the past several years. The World Bank estimates, a report estimates that the economic losses caused by the Syrian conflict in terms of lower GDP is more than $1.1 billion in 2012. Nearly $2.5 billion in 2013 and up to $3.9 billion in 2014. Actually based on the Lebanese Central Bank, it is about $4.5 billion annually. So recurring. According to the estimates by the Ministry of Finance, between 2011 and 2018, the cost of the seeding crisis inflicted on Lebanon amounted to $46.5 billion. So, and as we have said, it's concentrated mostly in the sectors of health, education, energy, water, agriculture and the environment in terms of solid waste, sanitation and others. Some more, I skipped the statistics and tell you where they are concentrated. Because of the proximity, as you would expect, they are concentrated mostly in the East, like 36% in the Eastern part of Lebanon. In the North, there are 25%, which is next to Syria. In the Beirut and Mount Lebanon, we call it, there are 27% and there are less so in the Southern part of Lebanon, which is 12%. In conclusion, in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly 10 years ago, delivered by the former High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, the current Secretary General of the United Nations, he stated, and I'm quoting here, the burden of refugees on a small country like Lebanon is equivalent to the influx of about 15 million refugees to France, more than 32 millions to Russia and more than 71 millions to the United States. Well, this was 10 years ago. If we have to extrapolate, take exact same numbers that he has talked. So now it's about 27 million refugees in France, 61 million refugees in Russia and 140 million refugees in the United States. Well, certainly there are some positive implications about the Syrian presence in Lebanon in terms of labor market and we can definitely capitalize on it and this is something, one of the ideas that I've talked about in the United Nations personnel several years ago, but our government was not interested at that time. This was about 2016. Unfortunately, they want to pressure the Syrians just like they pressured the Palestinians. They want to make their life looks like hell so that they will just leave as much as possible and as soon as possible. So they were, our government of 2016 was not ready to accommodate any of the ideas that we have talked about for Lebanon to take advantage of them and for really, which is in the best interest of our community and theirs. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ray. It's so much and we have to go to the Lebanese, their education and your skills of the Lebanese. You are everywhere in our region participating. Also the vibrant private sector, even though all those difficulties, you go to Lebanon and as if the private sector is isolated, which is not isolated, but it's very vibrant. The good thing about this panel is we go from colleagues into the parliament, to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to ambassadors, to central bankers, and then to scientists. So let me also, our fourth speaker, Ernesto Demiani, he's a professor at Khalifa University for the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He's also the Director of Center for Cyber Systems. He will be, his remarks, the opening remarks will be about trust and governance issues of multi-regional deployment of AI, please Ernesto. Oh, thank you very much. I was the only one apparently who had taken the opportunity that was given to us to present a couple of slides. I don't know if they are available or not. I will just try to press this button to see whether this is the case. If not, I can, okay, here they are. So basically, I really listened with a lot of interest to what was said before me, and as you said, I'm not an economist and I'm not, but I'm very much interested, of course, in the economy of the processes, especially the processes, large-scale processes and the regional processes, in terms of large-scale supply chains, business processes that involve multiple countries. And I'm interested from the point of view of the underlying technology. And so I would like just to add a few words on what could be the day after of a de-globalization that is taking place. And there are two words that I want to say before starting to show you a couple of slides. And the two words are words that are very fashionable in Europe, and I also heard them in the region here a lot. One is decoupling, and the second one is de-risking. So what is decoupling from the point of view of a technologist? Introducing redundancy. So if a part of a process is not feasible due to some conditions that happen. For example, a supplier is no longer available and then you want to have a second sourcing, right? So you need to have this second alternative part of business processes. And this is called decoupling. You are introducing means, of course you are in a sense paying more. You won't be at an optimal solution just because you want to decouple. You want to be able to cut out some parts if this is needed. And the second is de-risking. So the fact that I wanted to put risk as a first class citizen in my decisions. And these are decisions that from the technology point of view are decisions that are about business processes and supply chains. So this is what I wanted. Very interesting picture that we have in front of us of de-globalization and arising areas or conflict. And of course this is the impact is that we have a technology platform that needs to handle decoupling and de-risking. These are the two words. So in a sense the problem is that our platforms we run them based on data. So supply chains are optimized every day. Cargo shipments are optimized every day. Regional, of course processes are and inter-regional processes are particularly important in this region. We are in a place which is the hub, the hub between the east and the west. So I don't want now to enter into this from the point of view of the economist or the politician because it's really not my daily way. But from the point of view of the technologies this makes a very fascinating place. On the other end, the problem is that normally we have to optimize jointly. Meaning that we have to solve jointly some problems of optimization to run global airlines, to run global cargo, to run the business processes. And in order to do that, the big problem is that the notion is that we must have some joint strategy. The actors that will take decision together need to be able to basically trust each other enough to do joint optimization of large scale regional and inter-regional processes. So my problem is that we have, most of the tools of the technology tools we give to decision makers are based on this assumption they will trust each other enough to make a joint decision. Because this is a major part of any. So in a sense, well, being a scientist, well, you see, I have a nice picture. This is called the Pareto Frontier. Pareto was, you know, so in the decision making you tended to find those points which basically will be a sort of a compromise so everyone can agree on them with a minimum of damage or a minimum of penalty. The problem is that in order to do that you must have a joint knowledge of the data, of the information that you are jointly taking a decision on. And the problem is that in this situation we are less likely to be able to do that. The worst part, now let me inject a bit of AI. I hope I'm not boring you too much. The worst part is that most of the optimization decisions today are taken by systems. Humans have a role in starting, have a role in sharing the information, but then the notion, for example, of optimization, supply chain, we did a master class here in the Califa University together with a number of European University on the pharma supply chain at the time of COVID. So basically you need to optimize the pharma supply chain to be able to, for example, to do the vaccination rates that are needed for the population. And this is something that you can do if you basically tell each other what are the sizes of the airhouse, what are the availability of the instruments. So the problem is that these days optimization are done using systems. And they are done using systems that are a little bit difficult to open and identify. I know there has been a session in this conference specifically on this topic in the previous days and by a colleague of Califa and I want to underline this notion. We are accustomed to optimize, trusting each other, putting the data in a box and then running sort of the algorithm and getting out of our solution that will bind us all. But the problem is that the data or the information, the trust level may be decreasing much in this region specifically in the near future. So the big processes may be, in a sense, less easy to optimize. So there is a problem of failure happens. And we may be seeing in the future our models we do run simulation models, of course, of this. And our models say that we may see lower accuracy of the joint models. We may see fast model degradation. So a number of assumptions that led joint running of processes may be sort of show that lower performance in the next future. And the mutual trust, mutual trust will become scarce. So scarce are then. So this is what from the technology perspective, I wanted to highlight. This is not just political. This is also technological because of the technology platforms and this has been discovered in Europe for the Ukraine war. And with the push for the risking and the decoupling the supply processes that involve certain countries. So this is something that, again, I would like to highlight to you here. So let me just skip all this part because I had a sort of a try that too. And I want, let me just arrive to this discussion point. We were trying to do a second digital revolution that was deploying large scale joint optimization artificial intelligence, especially across markets. We were trying to do it in this region specifically. We're still trying to do it. It's similar to the introduction of the internet in the 90s but in the sense for our pervasivities. The problem is that the introduction of the internet was done in a moment in which there was a globalization type of trend. Everybody was trusting each other or could pretend to trust each other. The deployment of AI and the joint optimization of large scale processes need to take place in a situation in which there is not enough trust. So we need to find another way to take joint decisions in order to handle this limited trust that we have. Of course, technically I could show you how optimization in a non-trustworthy environment could take place. But I just wanted for the moment to highlight this thing. It will be the day after because whatever the future brings, certainly the globalization in a mutual trust environment is going to be, I believe, a memory of the past. Thank you very much. Thank you, Ernesto. We, in economics, we did borrow so much from science and most of the terminologies, you have said we use them in economics but I hope we use them the right way. De-risking with correspondent banking. So this is the way we have been using it but in science it's being used differently. Our fifth speaker, he was Francois Gowit. He was the former ambassador of France to the UAE and to Saudi Arabia. I'm surprised today he speaks very good Arabic when he was in Saudi. We didn't know. So probably in our meetings, he did understand what we were saying about you and we didn't know you speak that good Arabic. Anyway, he will be speaking about social challenges facing our region. Please, Francois. Thank you, Mr. President. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests. I'm honored to be here today at the World Policy Conference alongside esteemed panelists, including my friend Mona, whom I am very happy to see after so many years, and experts to discuss the pressing economic and social issues facing the Middle East. Having served as you rightly said, Mr. Chairman, as former French ambassador to the United Arab Emirates 20 years ago on Saudi Arabia more recently, among other posts in North Africa, I have had the privilege to witness and engage with the complexities of the Middle East. My diplomatic career in this area has allowed me to experience the regions in tricky dynamics. It is from this point of view that I wish to address briefly before you the challenges and opportunities that the Middle East faces. I will highlight seven key points that I believe are crucial in understanding the nature of Middle East societies in the coming decades, drawing from my experiences and encounters in the region. First, economic diversification. It is of paramount importance in the Middle East. Many countries in the region have been heavily reliant on oil and gas revenues in the past. For instance, in Saudi Arabia, oil exports have historically accounted for more than 90% of the country's budget revenue. The recent push to diversify economies beyond hydrocarbons, as seen in the Saudi Vision 2030, aims to reduce this reliance. However, it poses challenges in terms of work for skills on creating sustainable industries. I would add also, of course, before being in Saudi Arabia, I was posted in Abu Dhabi. The Emirates have been pioneering this in this respect in terms of diversification of their economy. The point two is pertaining to youth empowerment. It was mentioned by our friend, Abd al-Rahman, in his Mudakhala. The Middle East has, it has been said, a young, ungrowing population. Therefore, youth empowerment is central to addressing social and economic issues. In Egypt, over 60% of the population is under the age of 30. Governments must therefore invest in education skills. Education skills development and job creation to harness the demographic dividend rather than face potential unrest. This is an imperative. Point three, women's rights and participation. It was also addressed by Abd al-Rahman. The role of women in the Middle East, as you know, is evolving, is changing, a transformation I have closely followed, particularly in KAC and also before that in the year. Empowering women economically and politically will not only enhance social justice, but also stimulate economic growth. Reforms in family laws, labor laws and political representation are essential. In Saudi Arabia, the lifting of the driving ban for women under increasing participation of women, the labor force have significantly improved gender equality. Four, social and political inclusion. Society in the Middle East are diverse with different ethnic religious and sometimes tribal communities. For the government of those countries, promoting social and political inclusion is vital to maintaining stability, ensuring representation and addressing grievances are key to preventing conflicts. For example, Lebanon, power sharing agreements in the past among religious groups have been, to some extent, instrumental in maintaining stability and political inclusion. Although to this day, the relevance of this system of distribution of power of governments is put in question. Five, regional cooperation. The Middle East is also a mosaic of nations with complex relationships. Increased regional cooperation is essential to address shared challenges, such as water scarcity, refugees, as mentioned by our friend, and regional security. Diplomacy should always prevail over conflicts. The war that is raging between Israel and Hamas as we are speaking today must reinforce our convictions in this respect. Six, sustainable development. The region is facing increasing environmental challenges including climate change. Sustainable development practices are crucial for long-term stability and prosperity. Investing in renewable energy and sustainable agriculture is paramount. The UAE has been also a pioneer in this respect. Saudi Arabia is also now a leading country in this prospect. And last, 7.7, digital transformation. The digital revolution is reshaping societies worldwide and the Middle East is no exception. Embracing technology and fostering innovation can drive economic growth. Even that Arab Emirates, for instance, has been also a pioneer more than 20 years ago when it has established free zones like Dubai Internet City, by instance, encouraging technology startups on digital innovation. In conclusion, to stay within the limits of the seven minutes which were important to me. No, no, no, no, no, no, less than you, Mona. In conclusion, by addressing these challenges, national authorities in the logic of win-win partnership with the West, including France, my country, but also reliable investors can shape a more stable and prosperous Middle East. Fostering peace, prosperity, cooperation, and a broader respect for human rights. Thank you for your attention and I look forward for the insights of my fellow panelists. Ambassador Francois, thank you so much for your comprehensive remarks. This is very much, it discusses the issues of the region, the challenges that's facing our region, the youth is an issue that should be paid attention to. And thank you very much for your participation. Our next speaker is Mamdou Karakochua. This is as good as I can pronounce your last name and please excuse me if I didn't do it well. True, but it's a bit longer one than I am used to, which is a very nice name, by the way. I have been trying and training myself, but somehow I did not get it yet. I will next time. Mamdou who will speak about the economic factors that will impact the region and shape the region's economy, whether it is energy dynamics or prices, public debt, capital of low, excess supply of labor, technology and the productivity. So will you speak about all the issues that previous speakers spoke about and you will be limited to the same time. Thank you. I will keep it short, don't worry. I mean I won't keep it short, but within 15 minutes for sure. Thank you, chair. It's good to be back in Abu Dhabi. It's good to be back with World Policy Conference friends and colleagues. So thank you. Now of course this is all happening under the tragic shadow of what's happening, transpiring in Gaza. So I shared the sadness. In Turkey we all shared the sadness and you can feel it in the people. It's very real. Moving to the actual substance of my remarks, I will be at the intersection of geopolitics and geo-economics, but more to the geo-economics side. For the last few years actually we were on the same panel I think last year. I was more on the geopolitical aspect of things, but now today we go get into economics. Of course, Abdurrahman did a great job of sort of painting that picture then the intersection. So I'll try to build on that. I will sort of challenge him maybe on a few things. You know when you are sort of marginally a part of the Middle East, I am Middle Eastern but just sort of associate. One needs to be very humble. I'll try to do that. But as a speaker I need to provoke a little bit so I'll take a bit of a risk. So forgive me if I just don't get that balance right. Now I, when I was thinking about this presentation I just sort of thought back and it was exactly 10 years ago in 2013 that I was asked by the Allied Command of NATO to write a piece on regional economics. So I thought, okay, economics, geo-security this has been with me for some time. And I thought that would be a good reference that I was going to take for myself. So that's the past 10 years. And that gives me some feel, at least I try to get tease out a feel for the next 10 years where things can go from here. When I look back at those 10 years, the reference that what I got out of my first analysis in 2013 was that the fundamental for me issue of development in the region is trust. The trust between its people and its governments. And that trust was fractured. And how do you rebuild it when there's so much pent-up frustration and impatience in the people? I mean, well-meaning governments even if you try to deliver, execute fast when people have been waiting for 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, it's very difficult. The challenge is immensely difficult. That's what I got. And with that sort of, when I think about it, I mean, if I divide the problem into two pieces, one is, will these economies grow? Will they create wealth? That's one question. The aggregate wealth. The second question is, will these economies put in place the mechanisms where the created wealth will be distributed to the society? It's the distribution, the engagement of the citizens that seems to be the problem in the Middle East. It is the creating wealth. I mean, you compare it with other regions in the world. It's not the best, but it's okay. It is the distribution. Getting the people, getting the young people to be a part of this is the challenge. That's the problem. So looking back over the past 10 years, I wonder whether things have progressed in the past 10 years. Has the region come a long way? And when I think about that, the answer is not all that positive. I mean, the unemployment is high. Youth unemployment, still high. Informal economy, still huge. Women participation, still very low. The quality of jobs, they're still low-skill, low-paid, low-tech jobs. Not much change on that front. So, and then the weak private sector. I mean, the dream has always been to get the private sector going so that the private sector absorbs these new, bright, well-educated people. It's not happening. It hasn't really happened to the extent that we all hoped. And this is not because the governments, the bureaucrats, the technocrats didn't try. Everybody tried. I think well-meaning people, very intelligent people, are trying. They've been trying. And when I look back, I go beyond the 10 years. I remember, I do sort of remember the 90s and 2000s, definitely. It was the heyday of neoliberalism. And IMF was in the region. There were programs with Egypt, with Morocco. So all this reform talk of you don't get rule of law, governance, reform the trade sector, reform the, it was all on the table. We've had this before. And this, until 2010, I think we had quite a bit of it. And then the last decade, of course, we had all these other realities. We had the aftermath of the Lehman crisis. It was the aftermath of the Arab Spring. I still call it the Arab Spring. And one after another, so these 10 years didn't really alleviate all these problems, but it wasn't for lack of trying. I think people have been trying. And I put the problem in sort of two different baskets. One set of problems is, as I said, there's this repetition of sort of their well-meaning and accurate, I mean, sort of well-targeted platitudes, but they don't go far. You know, when you say governance has to be improved, sure, rule of law, sure. I mean, we all want that in my country as well, but it's the how. I mean, how does it happen? How will it happen? And we don't really see those, even incremental steps getting in that direction. That is one bucket of repeating sort of platitudes, right platitudes, but that don't get you to the result. Then there's another set where actually things were done, but we figured out that you do the policy, you actually implement the policy, but you don't get the result. And some of those examples, as I sort of delved into this, is, for example, I realized that in the last 10 years, number of years of education have increased in the region in many countries, but that did not translate to better jobs, higher pay. So those better educated young people didn't end up getting good jobs, which is strange. So the thing was done, education, there was investment education, but the result isn't there. Then you look at, I mean, we always talked about the bloated public sector, the Egyptian public sector employs so many people. Egypt has actually reduced the number of the percentage of employment in the public sector. That's progress. But unfortunately, it seems, I mean, you would know better, of course, but it seems from what I read, is that the people who were the jobs that were left to the private sector were displaced not with formal sort of, again, high tech, high value added private sector jobs, but they were substituted with low-skill informal sector jobs. So people, the new job opportunities that were released from the state were not picked up by the sophisticated private sector. So that isn't working. That link doesn't work. So, I mean, Egypt did, Egypt government did what it had to do, but the other piece isn't in place. Then we look at FDI, the foreign tract investment. There is some FDI coming in, but the shift from the real estate construction, energy to the more labor-intensive industries, not happening as well. And the worst thing or the worrying thing is FDI. We always hope that when a multinational comes for with a green field in a country that it will sort of ripple around. People will work with this multinational. This multinational will hire people. Skills will flow to the other companies. That doesn't seem to happen. That link isn't working. So things are, we're doing things. We're implementing these policies, but not getting the results. Something is wrong. So that's the sort of what I teased out of the last 10 years. That brings me to now. So what happens in the next 10 years? Will we in 10 years, if we all gather here again, 2033, will we again be saying, ah, you know, it just didn't happen. We tried and we didn't get the results high unemployment, low women participation. I hope that's not the case. And we have to figure out a way. Now, what is different about now? What is different about now? What I'm feeling, I mean, our chair has introduced the headwinds coming our way for this region as well. We have the energy transition. We don't know what's going to happen to the oil price. We have the reasonably, you know, relatively lower global growth coming our way. That will impact the region. We have probably after 10, 15 years, positive real interest rates coming that will hit the public debt of these countries. So, you know, there's the climate issue. There'll be drought, there'll be food insecurity, food prices going up. So the next 10 years, if it is business as usual, doesn't look any better than the past 10 years. So we really have a problem. So, you know, I've given so many negative messages. What am I saying? You know, I don't obviously have the clean answer, but I'll just, you know, sort of try something. The one thing we know is we're probably, you know, you go to any meeting and we're in the midst of transitions. We've come to the globe is going through multi-layer transitions, poly crises, so on and so forth. That's the talk. So that means, I mean, every transition is uncertainty risk, but at the same time, every transition, it's a discontinuity. Sort of cards are reshuffled and you can find ways to position, reposition yourself. So there is more room for strategic play when cards are reshuffled. That's probably where we are. That's what it feels like. And what am I saying? Let me give a bit more substance to it. One, the geometry of the world is definitely changing. It has already changed. So we were actually in a world of globalization. Everybody was integrating. There was a development model for that. You bring the rural population to the urban. They manufacture. You sell export to the world. That was the development model. Not working anymore. And because that's not the world we are in. Instead, the world we are in, let's call it a fragmented world, brings in other geometries. It is the French-shoring idea. So you look at the map and it seems, you know, Europe should French-shor in this region. That's just a no-brainer when you look at the map. Not happening at the moment. But the strategic discussion dialogue effort, I think it is there. It is, it can be done. In a narrower sense, the energy integration with Europe is happening. You look at the Morocco, UK, Exling's sort of the under-ocean cable. Impressive, very impressive undertaking. The Italian-Tunisian interconnection, impressive. The Algerian-Spain, interesting. So that is happening. Some integration is happening. That's a different paradigm. Then you look at another geometry. It is the Chinese-BRI versus the American-Indian-Europe corridor. So we have all these investments coming your way. Can these countries in the region look at this reshuffling and come up with a strategy and then focus on that strategy that will give them the push, the jumpstart, the leverage, where the communities, the societies will feel, okay, this is the new vision, the new direction we are going. That, I think, might be an opportunity, but it's not easy. I mean, I'm obviously just trying to imagine things. I'll just finish by giving one little sort of example from my humble history and experience. You know, in my 30s, I was given this great task of founding and managing Turkey's first technology park. So it was a development project, actually. And the idea was to get European-American high-tech companies to come to Turkey to work with the local tech companies. And that's what we want, actually, from FDI in the region. And what I noticed after what I got out of that experience, yes, sure, rule of law, good governance, all those things, they need to be in place. They can really make your life miserable if they're not in place. And they did make my life miserable, but it is not enough. It is definitely not enough. You need to have an agile vision. You need to have leadership that knows that vision and can maneuver with it. And you need to make sure that everybody in that community, in that society, knows about that vision. It is not. We cannot work with one-size-fits-all policies. These need to be agile. These need to be flexible. But you need institutions and institutional actors who can actually deliver, who can execute, who are given initiative, yet guidance. It is that kind of a structure works. So basically, to wrap up, I think if we look at this problem as business as usual the next 10 years, it does not look good to me. But it seems to be full of strategic opportunities for the region. The region may well find ways to negotiate, find balance with Europeans, Americans, Indians, Chinese to deliver. But it will require a different set of policy thinking, policymaking, and I hope that happens at the next time we meet in 10 years. I hope we'll have better stories to tell each other. Thank you. Thank you so much. We have one more speaker. Please write down your question. But thank you. You have covered so many issues, unemployment and formal economy. It's an issue. Economic reform, whether would it work or not, that would depend whether the patient in the intensive care or outside the intensive care before you start the reform program. Education, yes. There are very good educated people. They graduate, they go to Europe, they find good jobs, they participate. You have to have a private sector. You have to have a vibrant private sector and whether the government is crowding in or crowding out the private sector is something we kind of speak about. But our last but not least speaker is Dr. Kamal Abdullah. He's managing director and CEO of Canal Sugar. It's a UAE, Egyptian multi-billion dollar agriculture and industry group in Egypt that aims to ensure Egypt's self-sufficiency in sugar. He will be speaking about water, food security issues, food security was an important issue for financial institutions like our, during the pandemic and at that time we had meetings, we received calls saying, listen, if people will go to the streets, it's because of food security. So let us pay a lot of attention and we were financing balance of payment deficits over the last three years. He will be covering those issues and their relevance also to national security, economic and social stability of the region. Please, Dr. Kamal. Thank you, thank you, Mr. Chairman. First time I heard the word in Tifada, I was a kid in school and it was in the 70s, 1977. And it was the first bread in Tifada. They happened in Egypt on Lebanese and there was an attempt by the government to increase the price or remove the subsidies over food, over bread. And there were demonstrations and riots and it was called the Bread in Tifada of 77 resulting in over 100 dead, 100 people dead. Followed by 1984, the Tunisian in Tifada, again bread in Tifada, again 70 people dead, riots in the streets and again over governments trying to remove some subsidies on food. Food security now is a buzzword. I've been in this field now for about 20 years, mostly from the private sector, having worked in UAE as well as in the region, Saudi, Qatar and now Egypt, working on food security issues. The good news and the bad news, food security now is a buzzword used by the taxi driver eating a falafel sandwich as much as used by a government official talking about policies. The new buzzword will be, and we are giving you a heads up, it will be water security and water stress. This will be the buzzwords that we'll be hearing about. But let me connect the two. In the 80s, as I said, we had the riots then Tifada's over food, so governments came with their triple A, availability, affordability, accessibility. Bring the food where no matter where, Argentina or Australia or Romania, North, South, East, West, subsidize it to the people and just make it available so they will not go and demonstrate on the street. What happened is that we end up with a different problem. We end up with a problem that said, this is not enough, these people now are getting food, but unhealthy food. And so now they are becoming diabetic, they're having health problems, and now they're living longer. And now we as governments have to spend money treating them because they will live till 80, but they will need a lot of insolent child's gut for it. So that create a different move in food security. And we moved from availability and affordability, saying we need to move to wellness. The challenge though on both fronts, to subsidize it, you need money, but we are running budget deficits. And if we add the health cost that we have to pay for, which is not an option, then the food security bill is becoming massive. And hence we moved into food wellness by arguing, you need local production of healthy food, but much more important than production, another buzzword you will hear besides water security is consumption, healthy consumption. Regretfully we throw about 30% of the food we produce and even in our consumption patterns are unhealthy, not only among the poor, but among the rich in terms of consumption of food. How do we link this to water? Water is the biggest challenge now in food security in the region, in the Middle East. If we look at where our water coming from, 60% come from outside, direct Middle East. We mentioned Turkey, is it in or out? Assuming it's out, Turkey in terms of the water rivers that are leading into Iraq and into Syria. The big issue of water accessibility by the Iraqis, Iraq which used to be the birth of agricultural civilization. The rivers, they don't have enough water anymore due to the dams and other things, procedures done by their neighbors. Egypt now, we all remember Egypt, Sudan and the Nile, but the Nile does not start in Egypt, not even in Sudan. We have to go back to the other countries where it starts and who are all now building dams to control access to those waters. So if we are looking at waters coming from rivers, it's problematic. Water coming from above the rain, it's almost nonexisting and if it comes, it floods, it's even creates problems rather than solves. So where is the remaining water, which is now the most interesting part? Underground, the aquifer. Whether the aquifer in Saudi or in UAE, the aquifer in Egypt, Libya, of course we remember the big rivers that they wanted to do in Libya, as well as Tunisia and all that, the desert, it's relatively the same aquifers because only divided by the Red Sea. And on those, at least personally, I have a lot of experience in Egypt. We have a farm the size of Singapore, the size of Bahrain and the only water we have is the underground water. And we are working hard modeling the aquifer, modeling the use of the water. We have now over 200 wells that will go to about 400 wells. We dig as deep as 450 meters up to 1,250 meters, reaching the Nubian waters. Now of course, we are a large company. We have modeling, we have for every well that we put to use, for every 10 of them we have one which is sensor and monitoring the water. And yes, the water is dropping alarmingly, but we also work with 6,000 local farmers. And we know that most of the people in Egypt who are in agriculture, it's very easy for them to put a well without a lot of management of these wells. So when we look on the sources of water, we have a problems. We are sorting it in the UAE and in the GCC by using this cell. In Egypt, in UAE for example, one third of the water is coming from the cell. But the cell is expensive, and it's not a long-term solution. When we are looking at uses of water, most of the water uses now in agriculture, but we have different challenges. We don't have enough regulation on how to use and when to use and where to use. We are abusing water in every way when it comes to consumption and use of the water. For example, if you take sugar beets, which you use in sugar, you can use as little as 2,600 metric cube of water for every fat-dern, but probably most people use between six to 8,000, three times as much as they need to use in water. Okay, now there are different technologies that are there to use it. I won't get too much into the technical aspects of it, but I wanna come back to the three critical questions. Do we have reliable, efficient delivery of water in the region? We don't. It's getting there. Technology is helping a lot. Thank God for technology, we are now doing more self-sufficiency production of food in the region, but still that's not enough. Are the water resources managed sustainably and efficiently? When we are talking about aquifers underground water, it should last us for 200 years plus. When you're looking not at the quantity, but also the quality of the underground water, it's more and more salty water, which you cannot today use in agriculture, and that's a problem. Now, of course, there are technological developments trying to use salty water to produce agriculture products, but that's not enough. And probably the third biggest issue is our water risk being recognized and mitigated. And again, the answer regretfully is not enough. So yes, we are delivering waters better. Yes, we are using technology to use less water time after time, but when it comes to the government side and to the working with the private sector, not only with the large private sector companies, but also with the thousands and thousands of farmers, we have a lot of issues there. And are we mitigating and preparing for the risks using off water? We're not sure we're there. Many people, whether Lebanon and Israel's, you know, conflict over water use, whether it will be Turkey, Syria and Iraq, whether it will be Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt, we do expect the next war, God forbid, to be over water. And if it's over water, that means it's over food and it's over food, it means over nutrition, wealth and healthness. I try to keep my comments brief because I know we are running out of time for discussion and I will leave any other points for questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Kamil. This is a very timely issue. It's a very challenging issue. It's water is a very big issue. The climate change issue also. Food security issues, but let me please, there are questions or if you have comments, make them as short as you can. If you have a question, please let us know to whom that question is directed to and please introduce yourself first. Go ahead. Yep. My name is Pei Emensson. I'm an entrepreneur in education. And I think education is one of the most important things. As you said, one size doesn't fit all. A trend in education is that you are getting in more and more private entrepreneurs to work alongside with governments. I'm running at present 100 schools with 35,000 students in six countries. I have one school in Jeddah, with 1,000 students perceived to be one of the best in Jeddah. I had very interesting discussions with the Minister of Education here just before the pandemic because we see enormous potential to go in with private investments and do education here. So that's just my reflection when we are talking about this. Make sure to use the private entrepreneurs. I've also been part of a big UNESCO study, Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Peace Education in 50 countries. And you showed that there are more and more of alternative ways to do an education that could complement and be a catalyst to a change in providing a better education. Go ahead, please. You take it. Yes. Thank you very much. I'm Hiro Akita from Tokyo. So I'm not the Middle East expert, but since I'm from Asia, based on the experience in Asia, I really agree that the inter-regional economic cooperation is very, very key to sustain or avoid conflict and maintain a peace. Based on that, I have a question to Mr. Al-Nia Di. And if possible, I'd like to ask a question to Chairman. And my question is this. In order to deepen inter-regional economic cooperation, maybe ideally Israel should be included because they have a high tech, they are economic power, but I wonder if how do you see the potential or possibility in long run that Israel will be included in the Middle East regional economic integration and cooperation and related to that, how about Iran in that context? Thank you. Thank you. Let me start with Abdulrahman then, Dr. Munna, on that question. I'm not going to answer. It's good that I'm not speaking in this session. Yeah, I think I'll answer it in two elements. The first one is the idea of including all regional states, including Israel, within the concept of regional economic integration. And that has already, we've seen some initiatives on that going back since the Abrahamic Accords, they were the I2U2, they were the Negev Forum and they're all directed into reaching that economic prosperity goal in which it enhances the quality of life for the people and show that there could be a change of narrative in the region, that's the concept of these many literals as too many literals that came out of the idea of the Abrahamic Accords to start with. The other element I would like to mention is in term of compartmentalizing. We do not see I2I with many countries when it comes to politics, but that's not a prevention from pursuing economic mature interest. And that's where we engage all countries from the way perspective, we engage all countries in the region, we have dialogue with everybody, we build bridges with everybody, including Iran. And the idea is to expand on that mature interest ground to achieve the economic prosperity that we pursue. And maybe a part of your experience is basically that. But that requires also two main things. One is an agreed upon principles and values, values and principles of non-interference, of respect of sovereignty, of cooperation, and also requires pragmatism and compartmentalizing your engagement with countries. So you work on what could be a mature ground of interest and you avoid tackling straightaway the divergence of views. However, that also doesn't mean just being fixated on getting the low hanging fruit. You also need constant dialogue to deal with the divergence of views in the longer term. Thank you. If you want. If you want, if you want. Talking about education, education is one of the main themes we have in Egypt is to concentrate on education. I don't think we do that enough. The, what is allotted to education is far less than what it should be. So words are good, but the execution is not. So now talking about Iran and about Israel. Iran, as you know, Iran and Saudi Arabia were had an entente through China, which was very good and which was accepted by everyone. So it was the first approach to China, to Iran in the Arab world. This is one. The other one is Israel. As you know, Israel and Egypt have done the peace process now for 30 years and it has been sustained. We are very, very scared that this new tragedy might fragile lies the treaty with Israel. Israel. I will make a comment and there are questions here and there and here and there. You know, we have two types of meeting at our leadership. One focuses on political issues, the other one on economic issues. If you take all the economic summits, which we pay a lot of attention in my institution, they are all successful. They agree on the issues and we go and implement. For example, in Kuwait they have agreed on the importance of putting a mechanism for cross-border payments. We at the Arab Monetary Fund actually initiated a new institution based on executing that objective. In Saudi Arabia they agreed to increase the capital of the financial institutions. It has been implemented. You will take all the summits at the level of the leaders whenever it is an economic summit, very successful. Agreement, we ended up as our culture kissing each other, hugging each other, et cetera. Whenever it's a political summit, they will leave without shaking hands. So we need to pay a lot of attention to economic. What would, how Europe got together? Europe was in fights. They got together on the grounds of economic and financial issues, economic ties. This is what we need to pay attention to. And lately at the Arab Monetary Fund we have been advising certain relevant ministers on those issues. Let us please focus on economic and financial issues. And I think we are no different. We are no exception. We can agree if we would. And for example, electricity connectivity. We have made good progress in connecting different countries in terms of electricity. So whenever projects of benefit, we have no issue. The difficulty when we speak about political issues, where do we stand from different issues? That's where we have differences. We have a question here, please. Thank you. My name is Karima Ambar. I have a question for Mr. Abdelrahman Niyadi. As I work in the field of women empowerment, I would like to know if there is a national or international policy of the UAE regarding what you mentioned, women empowerment to counter terrorism. I mean, we have always saw it as a part of our women empowerment objective. We have always saw it as building healthy society, is building more resilient society to the ideas of extremism. And that has been always within the vision that we have. I'm not sure if there is a global push to look at it from that perspective, but that's, to be clear, women empowerment is one element of women empowerment. Women empowerment is much larger as well. It has also that economic goals of enhancing the economic workforce, the entrepreneurship, and all that within the same spectrum. But I wanted to shed light on addressing the idea of extremism through an angle of creating a healthy society which women is a fundamental part of it. Thank you. Very short one. People think of agriculture and farmers as men, very far from that. Most of the agriculture is done by women. We work with 6,000 farmers and we are shocked. We're starting, we reach 20,000 farmers in Egypt. When I go to the community, I move my office to Said. I'm dealing more with the women farmers. Oops, I think it's a sign from above. I should go. The second point is I talked about food consumption and wellness. This is purely welcome to the issues of teenagers and pre-teenager food intake. And this is again back to the women important role. So in terms of food security, women inclusion as a critical component, not as a nice thing to have, but as a critical component of either producing food through agriculture or consuming proper food and nutrition, women are in the center of this puzzle. And we are now working more and more with women and that's getting us to a lot of issues related to it in the Middle Eastern society of who controls the economic wealth among the farmer community. But that's something I believe we need to look at. Sorry. Thank you, Mr. President. My question is to President Al Hamidi. I'm Riyad Tabet. I am a city planner and urban sociologist. In the area, the Middle East area, you have countries with a high income level per capita and we have countries with very low level of income per capita, even though these countries might have an important resources. So from your point of view, as a president of the Arab Monetary Fund, do you think that the development problem of the area is economic, demographic, or politic? For all the above. We have issues with political issues, security issues, economic issues, but I really think that when, Mandurati, you want to take that, so you relieve me from answering that. We, let us, I think we should focus on the issues. I think youth is very important. Listen, we have the right paradigm in the region. Other regions, they are getting into the old age. Our region is, has youth, 60%, in some countries, 65% below 40 years. Therefore, we need to change the look or the way of our economic development model on how to work out with this new generation. What I, as a Saudi, what I, the changes I have seen, because now those in the leadership positions are mostly young, they can interact with the youth, not my generation, they know what they want and they do it perfectly. So I don't need to go to Saudi anymore. I use my mobile for all my needs. And that was not introduced by my generation, it's introduced by the current generation. And I agree, you know, giving women opportunity. I was at the university, my first career was in the academia and I taught also ladies and I, you know, at that time they aids for them and seeds for the boys. So they are very, in Saudi, they are very educated. Once they are given the opportunity, now 35% of the labor market in Saudi are women. Who would believe this? In six year time, we went up to that level and therefore changing the model. Before it becomes imposed on you because you need it. This is, I think, what UAE also was a leader in this. And I think that we have other countries other countries like Jordan, Morocco, because we work with all those countries, also Jordan and Morocco in terms of the clean energy. I think they have done a very good job. And therefore, yes, there are models that are working, unfortunately. You know, challenges comes from everywhere. Sudan is an issue, Palestine now is another issue. And therefore, again, I believe somebody from this region we need to focus on economic issues. Our leaders should focus on economic issues. I think that could help in enlarging our market. You know, the Arab common market was agreed upon before the Europeans. If you go back to that, that was in the 50s. 56. Thank you so much. Yes. Where are we now? We implemented nothing. Because we went off the economic issues. I think we should go back. We have a very large market with the earth population. The private sector could be very vibrant with what we have. You know, with all those issues, clean energy, educated, young, male and female, I think we can, but we need to change the paradigm. Let us give the young generation the opportunity. They are given in the UAE and Saudi and they are making a change. This lady, please. Sumayyya Abdelatif, vice president of Robert Schuman Institute. My question is for Dr. Amuna. Can you tell us more about the solution of one state that Mr. Dahlan announced, proposed, or it's just an announcement effect? No, I think he's very well read about the solution. He is born in Khenyounis. He is from Gaza. He was in charge of Gaza before he fell off with Abbas. I think he is the best person to do this. Now, the idea of one state solution was first proposed long ago by somebody called Rashid Khalidi, in case you know him. He's a big professor of political science in the United States, very well appreciated. And it was his idea that two state solution is not feasible. After what is happening now, I don't think it is feasible. Mr. Natanyahu has killed the two state solution. Khalas, you can't go back to it now. So you have to think of something new. And I think that Mr. Dahlan, who is very much involved in this, he has the protection of the UAE ruler. He's the advisor of the UAE ruler. He has good relations with the Israelis, with the Palestinians, with General Sisi. You can't get better. I think that he has, he's putting all his credentials in place for people to pick up what he's saying. I personally will write an article about him. I'm very much for Mr. Dahlan. He must not, he might not be the best, but he knows the issue, exactly. And he has a very good supporters within Gaza. Just a question for Mona. On if the alternative was not Dahlan but Marwan Barghouti. If what? If the alternative was not Dahlan but Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti, whether it is Mustafa Barghouti or the other Barghouti, and the one who is in jail is Mahmoud Barghouti or Mustafa Barghouti. Each one of them is Marwan Barghouti. Each one of them is probably better as a human being than Mohamed Dahlan. But Mohamed Dahlan is a politician and he is accepted by many people on different sides. This is what we want if we want somebody to lead Gaza as it is now. Because he even has, he has connections with the people of Hamas having been born in the same community, which is Khenyounis. So the others, I respect them very highly, both Marwan and Mustafa Barghouti, whom I have known personally, but I don't think that they will be accepted either by Israel or by the rest. Thank you. Ahmad Awad, I'm in the area of human rights and they work for the UAE government, so I'm UAE-based. Yeah, there's so many things, very interesting, and my question is to Madam Mona. It's... You can't hear you. Yeah, to keep hearing you. You can't hear you. You can't hear you. You can't hear you. I don't understand that. I'm not like mine, but at least... Yeah, okay. My name is Ahmad Ahmad Awad. I'm in the area of human rights and they work for the UAE government. My note is for Madam Mona, whether... I wonder if you have thought about any reconciliation process. This is extremely important, especially in the light of what we hear on the some news that there is the Palestinian in Gaza and Palestinian in the West Bank. They're extremely important. So from my experience with the Geneva Human Rights Council and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, every time you have a conflict, if you don't have a reconciliation process afterwards, it will be very difficult to keep pace moving. So it is important, first of all, for the inter-Palestinian, inside the Palestinian themselves. Secondly, no donors, whether institution like the World Bank or whatever, or any state donors will not give a single euro or dirham if there is no consensus inside the country. So I think that the reconciliation process is extremely important to address before and going any further. Thank you. I think your remark is very well taken because there will be no consensus if they don't have some arrangement among them. But this is why I have spoken about Ahmad Dahlan because he has the connections, he has the connections for different sides that are mostly warring at each other. But as he is born in this place in Gaza, I think he has more privilege than any other. Questions, comments, speakers? Any comment? Abdrahman, please. I just want to comment on the presentation of... And I'll be quick on Ernesto's presentation. It's very important because in policy, in foreign policy right now, we see a lot of connection between policy and foreign policy and technical issues. We deal with it every day. It's very important when you spoke about debuckling and de-risking, we see it from a policy point of view in which you try to create a strategic autonomy somehow to address the issues or to build the resiliency toward issues such as COVID-19 and other issues. It's very important and I think we should embrace technology going forward and it could be a solution to many of what we see in our world. Thank you. I may make a comment on this. I will also try to deliver a warning that comes from the mathematical modeling. Deploying the technology with, you say in a not trust environment, may not deliver the quality of optimization that you expect the technology to deliver. So the less the trust and the more you want to control risk, the less you can benefit you can expect from the technological-based platform's collaboration. So this was just by, so we need to balance between how much risk we want to take and how much we expect for the joint optimization to deliver. That was just my point. Go ahead, please. My name is Eunice Zricum. I'm Moroccan and French. I work at the Boston Consulting Group. I just wanted to, I mean, many of you know that, but maybe for the others, about the Palestinians. And as we are saying that going back to the status quo, auntie is not an option. We have to remember, and maybe Mohammed Dahlan is an option, but we have to remember that there are different categories or different Palestinians. There are Palestinians in Gaza. There are Palestinians in the West Bank. There are Palestinians all around the region. 60% of the Jordanians are Palestinians. We heard 300,000 Palestinians in Lebanon, in Syria, so on and so forth. There are the Palestinians in Israel, almost 1.5 million Palestinian Israelis who have an Israeli passport. There are the Palestinians outside in Europe, in Northern America and elsewhere. So we have five categories of Palestinians and I think each category should be heard and taken into account in any political future solution. And I think it's what you said is important about the fact that Mohammed Dahlan was born in Hanyu and comes from Gaza, but I think probably a solution should take that into account because even in the Oslo negotiations, we know that they were mostly led by, I would say the diaspora of Palestinian abroad and maybe that is one of the reasons why things didn't go as well as they should have been. Thank you. Thank you so much. Do we have questions, comments? Time to go. Then please give me the opportunity to thank all those speakers, the seven speakers for their very comprehensive introductory remarks and thank you so much for making this session very active. And hopefully to see you in the near future another event, thank you.