 Gweithio. Dwi'n ddiddordeb i chi o ddullwch gweithio'r dweudio ar y cyfroffinio eich mynd yn Gweithgaredd. Oedden nhw'n Christopher Cramer, a hefyd yn y gallig dros ymgyrch yn y ddîm ar hyn o'r ddeunydd. Mae'n blaid yw bod nesaf i fe bryd i gweithio'r cyfanol ac ymgyrchu'r ffordd Wittaker. Felly mae'r ffordd, mae'r ffordd, yn gweithio'r gweithio'r cyfanol. Mae'r ffordd, rheswm, yn y blwyddyn o'r ffordd yw'r bod. Mae'n swyddfa'n bwysig o'r ffordd. In 2007 he received an academy award for best actor for his portrayal which probably most of you have seen of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland, a performance for which he also received a BAFTA award, a SAG award and a Golden Globe. You may well also remember him from Good Morning Vietnam, from Clint Eastwood's film about Charlie Parker, Bird, from the Jim Jarmusch film Ghost Dog or even as the voice of Ira in Where the Wild Things Are. Forrest has also produced several award-winning documentaries that touch on a wide range of social issues. Through his production companies, Significant Productions, Significant Productions and his other company Junto Box films, Forrest aims to support young, talented filmmakers. His belief is that film can enlighten people across the globe and can start meaningful dialogues about important subjects. He's dedicated to cultivating young people's artistic talents and as a member of the president's committee on the arts and humanities, he's working closely with schools to demonstrate the limitless power of the arts. Forrest is also founder and CEO of the Whittaker Peace and Development Initiative, an organisation that empowers young people in communities affected by violence to become forces for peace and voices for change. He's also co-founder and chair of the International Institute for Peace. He's UNESCO's Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation and a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Advocacy Group. Tonight, he will be in conversation with the director of SOAS, Baroness Valerie Amos. Baroness Amos joined SOAS as director in September 2015. Before that, she served as Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator at the UN. Their conversation this evening will focus on how youth in conflict affected societies can be trained and equipped to transform their communities from within, and I'm sure you'll all agree that will no doubt be an interesting and very stimulating discussion. Now, before I move on, I'd also like to say a few words about SOAS's 100 years celebrations, as this evening's event is in celebration of our centenary year. First, I hope many of you saw coming into the building today, SOAS's Brunei Gallery exhibition, Academics, Agents and Activists, a history of SOAS from 1916 to 2016. The exhibition offers a fascinating insight into the history of the school from a very human perspective and it highlights SOAS's wider impact on the world. Second, our centenary lecture series, of which this event forms a part, is also in recognition of our first 100 years. The series features lectures by high-profile guests speaking on subjects close to the SOAS mission. Next year we'll be hosting the food writer and author Claudia Rodden, Palestinian legislator Hanana Shawawi and human rights lawyer Hina Jilani. Our history and events such as this tonight in many ways demonstrate the important space that SOAS provides for debate, for discussion and for asking the questions that matter. And that is why for our centenary year SOAS has launched the Questions Worth Asking campaign, so our students and academics can keep on asking and trying to answer today's most important questions. So for example we ask, is there a solution to the world's refugee crisis? What happens after war? Should we all be speaking the same language? What makes a global citizen? And will there ever be equality? It's true to say that for 100 years we have been asking, searching questions and through this campaign we seek support to carry on doing this. We seek support for scholarships and student experience initiatives, for academic projects and endowed posts and for transforming the SOAS estate. And you can all learn more about this campaign on the internet at soas.ac.uk forward slash questions and please do all take a look. Now finally please could I ask you to have a look at these things, check your phones, turn them silent but not necessarily off. And if you're tweeting, which I'm meant to encourage you to do, please use the hashtag SOAS 100. So thank you very much and I would now like to join you in hoping that we enjoy the rest of the evening's discussion and to welcome on to the stage Baroness Valeriemos and Forrest Whitaker. Forrest, welcome to SOAS. I feel slightly jealous because I never get a cheer like that. What is it I have to do? I don't know you've done so much. But I'll cheer you now. Thank you. Thank you. Forrest, welcome again. It's really fantastic to have you here and we're going to start off the conversation. Then I'm going to come to the audience and take a couple of questions and we'll talk some more. We have a hard finish at 8 o'clock so we'll do our best to get through quite a lot of issues by then. And I wanted to start, I know the focus of our conversation is going to be very much around the work that you've been doing in countries like South Sudan. But I really wanted to start with America. Well, there's a certain election happening today that you were born in Texas. You grew up in Los Angeles in the 1960s. Can you tell us a bit about what those places were like then and how they've changed? I was born in Longview, Texas. My mom and my father, they had actually moved to Los Angeles and my mother would go back home to have her children. They left Longview, Texas, which is in East Texas because there was very few opportunities. It was really difficult for people of color in that region and my mother and father wanted to give an opportunity to their children and to themselves. There was always a line in the city was the river and they would say those across the river. And at that time on this side of the river would be the black community and on that side of the river would be the white community. My folks went back, I was born. I came back when I was about six weeks old to Los Angeles to South Central LA. I think Longview has shifted some quite a bit. That disbursement of different people of different cultures is more apparent, more clear. But there's still undercurrents of the similar things that are going on. I remember particularly, actually I come from a family of teachers or preachers. My aunt, she was a principal in school. In the school, predominantly it was an all black school but there was one white kid there. So they actually bussed him across, sent him away to another school far away. I remember my aunt fighting this proposal and talking about it. But that wasn't so far removed from where we are today. Was it 10 or so years ago? So it's different, but I went to LA and I was raised there. I don't want to keep talking too long. I can talk about Los Angeles and South Central as you like. Please do. We want to hear. My folks moved to 49th Street in South Central LA. I guess I know what we're supposed to talk to about lessons in life. I guess I learned a lot from my mom and dad because they made this journey. It was a big trip. I come from a family where you have land and you can put a trailer on it and your other relatives live there. So for them to do that was a big lesson for me to think about facing your fear but to try to strive for a better life. So they went to South Central and for them that was an upgrade where they were. I was raised amongst a lot of changes during the civil rights era. I touched some of that stuff because at the corner of my street wherever I would walk home, the Black Panther office was around the corner and they would pick me up and play with me during the day. I remember one of the big lessons I learned there too was one day I walked there and they weren't there. I went by their building and it had been blown up. It had been shot up and blown up. As a little kid it changes your perspective so you try to understand. So I was constantly trying to understand my place and I was trying to understand conflict in a way. I think that's why I'm working in conflict now. The SLA was destroyed behind my grandmother's apartment. For some reason it was like the zealog-like effect where I was in these different places where things were going on. Then the birth of the gangs, the Crips and the Blood, so I was constantly trying to understand that. I was trying to search for something. One of the things, I guess the lessons my mom told me was that she wanted me... Well, she used to go to church on Sunday and I would argue, why do I have to believe what you believe? My mom would say, you don't have to. You can get up. You just got to find something to believe in and you got to follow it. I think those things were things that were kind of dictating some of the next movements in my life. What's that something for you? Your mom said you have to find something to believe in. What's that something for you? I believe in connectivity. I believe that we're all connected in some way. I believe that in the annals of time at some point we'll realise that we're all moving towards trying to be good and be in this space together. I'm willing to try to be a part of connecting myself. If someone wants to open the door for them to connect deeper to me and to others and to other things. So these last few weeks and months in the US where we've seen a lot of anger and a lot of hate unleashed. Why do you think that's happened now and what are your hopes and fears for your country going forward? I think that the tinder under belly has been exposed. There was always problems with this nature. You talk about some of the issues with the Black Lives Matter and the death of people of colour and police officers who have been killed and all this stuff. Those things have been going on since I was a kid. I know that I've personally been touched by friends who have passed away from that type of thing. I think it's unfortunate that there's some polarity between people and this break is making me a little concerned. People are talking about isms and against immigration, against sexism and all these different things that are about hatred and not about people coming together. The country itself, I think in order to address issues that are already there you have to see them. I think unfortunately this has opened up a giant wound. You can see that people are unhappy. You can see that people don't have their needs met. You can see that people are frightened for their own security. We have to address that. I've been trying to address it in my way but I think that the country is about to go through something that I'm not quite sure. If I was looking at it, if I was in another country, certain places I've been I would think are they on the brink of a civil war. The breaks and ideologies are so strong. I'm not sure what's going to happen. Certainly we'll wake up and we'll have a new president. Either case, unfortunately we're just going to be a schism between people. We can talk more about it too as we go along. Very sobering. I wanted to ask you, Chris in the introduction talked a lot about all the different things that you do in your life and we'll come back to that. But you first went to university on a football scholarship. American football. I can't play soccer too well. Not soccer as we know it. Then you went back to your first love classical music and then you ended up acting. How did all that happen? I was playing football and I showed some aptitude. I was pretty good at it, I guess. I decided I wanted to go into the arts or I was thinking about it when I was graduating from high school to go to college. I took a football scholarship to college to play and it just wasn't working out right for me. I had been singing too so I got a scholarship to sing at USC Music Conservatory there. I was accepted to music program and had a scholarship to the acting program at the same time. So I decided to switch. I was only playing to be able to afford to go to college. I didn't really have the money to go so I needed a scholarship so that's what I did. They both taught me something. I think playing ball taught me a lot about playing as a team, pushing myself to my limits, passing my limits, trying to reach a goal. I guess singing started me to move towards the art that I do as an actor. So they both led me to different things. I read in an interview, the interviewer said that you've been described as inhabiting roles, not just playing them. Now the film that we probably know most about, although I'm sure that people in the audience have seen many of your films, is Last King of Scotland. How did you manage to fully embody the character of Idi Amin in that film? I think when I first started I started to study in the history. I was trying to study the history of the man and what was going on in the region in East Africa. I started to study Kiswahili because I had this notion that I needed to feel like English was my second language. So I wanted it to be the first thing I would think of when I was about to say something. Then I went to Uganda and I started doing interviews and meeting with people. I met his brothers and sisters. I went up to the area up there. I met with ministers, different people who had been dealing with him. I traveled and went down rivers that he went in and went into the moss that he used to pray in. I just tried to acquire this understanding. My assistance, the guy who was driving me around was really helpful in that. He was like giving me experiences, bringing me to go eat here, to go see this place, to go on riding through the streets on the back of motorcycles. All these things. At a certain point when you keep hitting it and you keep allowing yourself to be open to it, something starts to happen energetically. You surrender. I think in a way you surrender to what it is you're doing and you allow that to inhabit. Because I had this belief structure anyway that I went into acting because I thought it would help me understand my connection with others in the universe. So I felt like if you took away the different layers of a thing or a person at the bottom of it was, was an energy or a light that connected me to everything. So I was searching to find inside of myself that molecule that would vibrate enough to become him, the part of me that was him. And so I was continually trying to do that. And I continued to do that work up until the last moment of the movie. Even when I was continuing to do research, I would continue to go to different places, I would continue to try to understand. And I remember I asked Daniel, I said, you know, what else can I do? What else can I go? How else can I understand? And he said, well, you haven't been to the reserve because I was more concerned with the people. So then I went there and it actually opened up something for me to understand the beauty of the place, understand the power of it. And I had seen videos of him talking about it to this crocodile saying hello and all these different things. So, you know, it was, that's how the process went. It was interesting when that film came out because so many people saw Idi Amin as a monster. And actually you gave him a humanity and you made him likable to a certain extent. I still, I remember one time I had to do an interview while I was playing Idi Amin and I kept telling him don't let me do an interview. Don't let me do an interview because I have my belief structures in place around him, you know what I mean? But I think that his deeds and his acts were, some of them were atrocious, horrific. But there are reasons that built him. There are reasons that they helped him become president. There are reasons that he did brutality or expressed himself that way. And so I was looking to take away all those different things, whether it be his boxing, whether it be fighting the Mao Mao's, whether it be, you know, his cabinet, whether it's the 11 groups around him that's, you know, surrounding him that wanted to destroy him. Until I got down to the bottom and at the bottom of him, he's just like everybody else, you know, at the core. And then his experiences and his life and different things like that molded him into what he is. Does it mean that I agree with what he became? I just had a different point of view on who he was. The members of the cast said that you stayed in character for three months and you scared the hell out of them. Was that deliberate? No, maybe deliberately for me to make sure I could play the part. I remember one time I was, they had this, I had been working on him and I had his speech and his movement and stuff, and they had this meeting in this hotel where they wanted the social gathering. And I went down there and I had to kind of drop some of that to try to do this meeting. And then when I left, I was like, oh my God, I've lost him, he's gone. I couldn't find, I couldn't speak like the way I thought. Daniel kept saying, but you're wrong, I can still hear you. I was like, no, I'm telling you it's gone. So I needed to do that in order to play the part. It was a requirement for me to try to surrender to it. And you went on Oscar for that role. Only the fourth African American ever to win an Oscar. Were you conscious at that time that you were making history, you were part of this history and did it feel like a very special moment? I guess it felt like really special. I was electrified when it happened and when it went on. I guess when I was working on the part, I wasn't thinking that at all. I wasn't thinking about those kinds of things. I guess afterwards when people really speak about it in that way, then you start to recognize the true, maybe historical significance of what it is. So that came as I went along. That is a goal in the beginning. My goal was just to be true to him and to be true to the time and the place and to tell the story. And then that's what happened from it. We've talked a bit about you as an artist. I want to talk about you a bit now as a social activist. You're very proud to describe yourself as a social activist. You founded the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, which does a lot of work in places like South Sudan, in Mexico and elsewhere. You're a UNESCO Special Envoy for Peace and Reconciliation. You're a member of the UN Secretary General's Advocacy Group on the Sustainable Development Goals. You have a whole range of things that you do. You're also a director, you're a producer, you support young people coming through. How do you find the time? I don't know if I've had that solved. I've been lucky at times in my life where everything just fell into place, where it was meant to be, I guess, that I would be able to be at this event. During my work in South Africa, maybe I'm mediating some conflicts that are going on from a conversation that I had before. But it aligned itself unfolded as naturally as it could and I tried to, of course with me, try to force pegs in the holes and stuff. I'm always thinking that I don't have enough time and I'm not able to do things in the way that I really want to do them completely. As fully as I should, but I try my best. I wanted to quote you something that you said about the work that you've been doing to try to stop the recruitment of child soldiers around the world. And you said, I first became really passionate about this issue a little over 10 years ago, this is at the time of the interview, when I was in Uganda shooting The Last King of Scotland. As a father, I was horrified to hear the stories of what these children had to endure. I was also moved beyond words to see their resilience. Was this part of the motivation for you to form the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative? Yeah, it was. I think I started working with people in the States, gang members and different things, but I think when I met them and I realized that there was a connection in what was going on with them, I wanted to see if there was something I could do. So I started working with them first at Hope North, in the north of Uganda in Girondonga, and working with the student stare and stuff, and working with the child soldiers that were there. And then it just grew from there. I was very privileged to have the opportunity to travel with you to South Sudan when I was working at the United Nations. The depth of your knowledge and expertise, the number of times that you've been to the country, the way that you almost faced yourself when you were with those communities, really listening and hearing what people had to say. There are many people that will set up foundations, they care about something, but not enough to be right there in the middle of it actually doing the work. What motivates you to spend so much of your time, given the other things that you're involved in, and given that you have a successful career, to spend that time in the middle of South Sudan two, three weeks at a time working with young people? I think I recognize that other people's pains are also mine. I've met them and you can't help but be motivated by the struggles. I had an idea about how to do a methodology that would hopefully work, and then we started to implement it and that started to work. We started to train them in conflict resolution and ICT computer technologies, trauma skills and entrepreneurial skills. I think working with them because we're working with the community and they're guiding us. I think I start to see the door opening for them to be able to together with others resolve different issues just because we were allowing the tools to be available. I felt an obligation in a way to try to be a part of what was going on there and many places that I've been and work in. Have you seen it make a difference? What's been the impact? The impact has been massive. The Great Eastern Equatorial State, we've trained and used there in South Sudan during this conflict, during this war. They've become the mediators for the state itself. Two of them have become members of parliament. They have been mediating conflicts with the SPLA, had their forces in schools and they've went and mediated to get them out of school so that they can bring the children back to be able to bring the environment back. They're building projects and developing projects. They're working together to build roads. It's been quite impactful to work they're doing. I'm going to bring the audience in for a couple of questions right now. The hands are going up everywhere. We have one here. Have we got some mics? Thank you. Just along that row there's a lady just... Thank you. Hello, there we go. I thank you very much for being here and thank you for holding this. I saw you at the World Humanitarian Summit and it was very pleasant surprise to get to hear you speak there. My question is, do you see yourself as part of the African diaspora? Does this influence the work or the amount of work you do in Africa? Certainly I consider myself part of the African diaspora. I'm African American and I consider myself a citizen of the world. As far as influencing my work, I guess it was there when I first was working in Uganda where I got my first feeling of Africa and understanding it and trying to let that seep into me to make me feel what that is. I was in Awakening and I think it started the work that I was doing. We're working there in Uganda, in South Sudan, South Africa. We also work in Mexico and we also have programs in the United States. We have programs around the world. I can see the rubber hands. Hi, really lovely to have you here. My name is IO. I'm really interested actually, as someone who's very famous and who's done some great films, how aware are the people that you work with of who you are behind the humanitarian and social activism and how hard or easy is it to break down those barriers so people actually understand that you're here to do something completely different. In the community, the acting community, I don't think that a lot of people necessarily know the work I do. There's a big period of time where I just wanted to do the work quietly so I can try to make it to see if it was successful and if it was really working before I would go out and even speak about it. The only reason I would go out and speak about it is if the model was working that could help others to do other things. For me, I don't think they're that aware. I think the question was about the people. For example, when you go to South Sudan, are the people aware of who you are and does that have an impact on how you're able to work with them? I would say in South Sudan, in many places I work, they don't know who I am at all. They don't necessarily haven't seen any films, they haven't been to movies necessarily. We're working in cattle areas in different places. Certainly, some of the people on the political side might know my work more specifically because I have to do also advocacy, also policy-level issues. We spoke with the President of South Korea to speak to him about what was going on in the country. I spoke to him with Children of Armed Conflict. I tried to get him to sign a document that would allow the children to child soldiers to be released. I do have to operate on that level. I will meet more people that meet me than know who I am. But on the ground level, probably not. Can I say that the way that Forrest behaves in those situations means that nobody would have any idea whatsoever. It was great travelling with him. I'm going to take you guys in the next round. I'm just going to deal with Dan here. There's a lady here. Thank you. Dawkins goes to working global health in Africa. Impressive philanthropic profile, which I don't think many people know actually. So to hear this is impressive. I'm going to ask an unfair question but I'm going to ask it anyway. That means you don't have to answer. There's a whole lot of debate around aid in Africa and our dependency on aid. A lot of that budget will be coming from the US. That's debatable on whether it's going to be cut. I wonder what your views are on aid in Africa. I say that because you're sitting next to Berners who has quite a global profile. Hopefully maybe Valerie will speak a little bit more about it too because she's been dealing with humanitarian aid a lot. That's the question, but I'll answer part of it. That was such a bomb. I think directed aid can be very helpful. I think that my limited experience because she's much larger perspective than me. On a grassroots level when you specifically target aid that allows people to acquire skills or to be able to activate change in their own communities I think can be very effective. In case of the health situation I think training community health workers can be very helpful. It's also a job that deals with the economy. It deals with eradication of poverty. It deals with a lot of things. So I think that's very good. I think trying to raise enough money sometimes to build certain facilities. Those monies don't always get utilized in the way that we would like. But certainly it's necessary. I mean, fortunately it's people that are living in abject poverty at times in different places in the world, not just Africa all over the world. Indonesia everywhere, you know what I mean? I think as human beings we have to try to lend a hand. But for myself the programs that I found in my program works most specifically with the people themselves and giving tools that allows them to take control of what they want through education. That's in my experience. I think it's a very mixed picture. When I was at the UN and going to places like Sudan for example and seeing what was happening in camps like Dadaab where people had been there for years and years and years with no opportunities for employment or anything else that this sense it was keeping people in a sort of forced dependency which I think is highly problematic. I also worry that there are governments that become dependent on the aid and aren't necessarily managing or controlling how it's being spent. In the sense of this is a priority of a government that is a donor not a priority of the government in terms of what the issues are in their country. But like Forrest I've also seen people right at the grassroots level who have been able to transform their communities particularly women when they are able to have access to some resources. I think we need to learn a lot more lessons from the way that we have done aid in the past and think about how we can better utilise it in a way that brings positive not negative benefits. But I mean there's an entire conversation that we could be having about this. I wanted to go back if I may to the work that you're doing with young people because you're very much focused on working with young women and young men and it's not easy to find models that work particularly in terms of trying to prevent young women from becoming sucked in to violence on a large scale. So what are the particular things that you feel that you've been able to do through WPDI that have made the difference and that you think others need to learn from? I think a lot of people know, I mean at the core of a lot of these things it's like education and different things of that nature but in our case it's by buying in with the communities and buying in with the different power sources in that area. Training a group of individuals or working with people in that area that are willing to commit to going out and helping in others. So what we've done is we've trained a group of individuals, that group becomes trainers of trainers and they go back into the community. We chose to choose two from every single county and they've chose to choose two from every single village and they go back into those places working with them, creating peace councils and then going into development because I think the understanding of how to develop, of creating jobs, of creating opportunities is at the core of a lot of the problems when needs aren't met then there's conflict that's going to arrive. So what we've done is worked with those communities, financed those projects and those projects grow out as economic sources of income for the community and also sources of pride and empowering those youths and individuals to take control of those things and make them continue to grow. These are young people, so they go back into their village or community. I mean how do they persuade the elders in that community to actually hear what they have to say and to actually understand that they have something to offer? I think I've made a mistake because I didn't really describe all of the methodology. Initially, before we even chose to use, we have gone and we've talked to the elders, we've talked to personality types, the economic sources, the churches, the religious leaders, all these people become a part of a group that help us even choose to use. So they're a part of the project from the very beginning. So as a result, they help move the project forward. Once we've trained the individuals and they go back into their communities, they create another group of the people in their particular regions of elders and different people that work with them to be able to move forward. So their voices can be heard. It's worked very well. The elders have brought them in to even mediate conflict. They brought them in to mediate the problem of moving those kids, moving the SPLA out of the school. But there was already a buy in a communal circle that surrounded the actual work. From there, on the outside, there's also another group that's supporting from a larger scale, from the outside scale, but this is the group that mainly allows things to happen. And you've gone on record expressing disappointment with what has happened at the leadership level in South Sudan, the fact that peace agreements have been signed and not been adhered to. What is your sense of what the future looks like for South Sudan and for these young people that you've been working with? South Sudan has been really difficult. I mean, there's been so many different peace agreements that have been overturned. And I think guys, some of the conflict inside of racial issues or tribal issues, I do think though that the people themselves will have to fight forward towards a solution. The outside, it hasn't worked when you talk about aid and things of that nature. A lot of the organizations, a lot of the countries are pulling their aid out. To force the issue amongst the community to make the need clear so that they'll make a solution. I'm not sure that that deprivation is affecting the upper echelon to the political powers. It only affects mainly the people. And I think the people themselves are going to have to take a stance to step forward. In terms of what we've been doing, things have gone really positively. We continue to grow. We have people coming to our learning centers. In the process of when they go into the villages, different community learning centers are being built by us to allow access to the community for education and learning and to congregate. So those things have still been in place. People have been so respectful of them that they've left them intact even during this conflict. And again, I think that's because the people and the buy-in from the people and the people have to make the decision ultimately to say yes or no to what's going on politically in their country. That's very powerful because they leave it because it has come from the community themselves. You talked about working in the United States as well. What's the difference between working in a place like South Sudan or Uganda or Mexico to working in the United States and working in your own country? I think there are core issues that are dealing with violence. We've had violence in our schools. Almost every day of the year there's a new point of violence in the school in the United States. It's not publicized, but it is. So what we've done is we started a program there to create a CRE or conflict resolution education to be infused inside of the core curriculum of schools. So when they're working in classes, conflict resolution training is inside of their math class, their history class, their English class, their science class. It's completely integrated to be able to start a dialogue to be able to create peer mediation groups and things of that nature. We're doing that in the middle school because we're trying to go at a younger level so that it can help when they move into high school. We're planning on taking that model across definitely the city and the state and hopefully the country to try to affect violence in the country and a grass roots or a seed level with the kids. Are you having the same impact in the U.S. as you can see that you're having in somewhere like South Sudan? It's a new program. I can see it in South Sudan clearly because it's been a number of years now. Mexico, the youth that we train, they go into prisons and train other youths to get ready for going back out into the world. They've created all kinds of businesses in Uganda where they train others so I can see it. I can only see the responses to the lessons themselves at this point because it's new. It's been very powerful and we've gotten a lot of feedback from the youth that it's really helping them in their school and being able to communicate and deal with things of that nature. I'll take another round of questions and I promise to go up here this time. So there's a gentleman here and then there was a gentleman. Do you not want to ask your question any longer? Hello Mr Whitaker, my name is Jay. I'm a PhD student here so last first year. I'm from Virginia by the way. Do you vote it? Yes I did. You can ask your question then. It's a quick question. I'm studying the first Liberian civil war, the mechanics of the war and there are a lot of child soldiers in that war in Sierra Leone. Just out of curiosity, would you ever consider working with child soldiers in that region? Sure. We've worked with child soldiers in Uganda and South Sudan. Actually one of my favorites is Simon and he was a child soldier and we worked with him for the last four years. Originally he couldn't even be in a room but now he has his own business and he's training other youths to start their businesses. So that was there when we worked with child soldiers in South Sudan. So we'll be working with child soldiers probably next in Miramar but we'll see. And there's a gentleman along. Thanks Baroness Amos but there's a job for you as an invigilator or interviewer with the other task force apart. Basically the question I wanted to ask was actually to you Baroness Amos and I wanted to take the liberty of doing a two-prong question for Mr Whitaker also. For Baroness Amos, as someone who's witnessed Mr Whitaker's work on the ground in South Sudan, what would you describe as the component that he brings to I guess what is a team effort that you think is most valuable to that team effort for what he's trying to accomplish. And for Mr Whitaker, the burning question is that we've heard that you're in the cast of Black Panther. If that is so, what role are you playing? Thank you. So what do you think about that? I will just rattle off some words. First of all a huge amount of commitment, understanding. I hope that what has come over this evening from Forrest is the depth of understanding and reading. Forrest really delves into a situation to get an understanding of it. Enormous humanity and a huge amount of compassion. Zuri. It's a shamanic aid to the Panther. There was one gentleman there and then I'll come down here. Thank you. It's two parts as well. What is this? One question. I'll blend them together. I know that you traced your ancestry to the Igbo ethnic group in Nigeria. And I wondered what did making that connection mean for you, for your kind of identity as an African American? And how that kind of impacted your perspective. And the slightly second part of the question was... Completely lost control here. I wonder what your thoughts were on the kind of prison industrial complex in the US and the kind of impact that has on African American communities. Particularly going off of Michelle Alexander's recent work. Just a nice easy ball there. The second one was the impact of industrialisation and particularly prison on African American communities in the US. Sure. And the first question... What was the first question? Sorry. You see what happens when you ask a two-part question? It was the fact of you having had your DNA done. I'm nervous. It's a very friendly audience. It was very powerful to me to understand where my origins were and where I came from. I think it's very powerful to be able to recognise your ancestry and ancestors that walk with you. And so I think it shifted something inside of me that affects everything I do. I was fortunate. I know I was fortunate to get a chance to visit and spend some time with some of the leaders there from different parts of the nation. It was really powerful. I think we have an extremely damaged prison system. We have more prisoners from than any place in the world. It's unfortunate that they've created certain laws that allow people to be incarcerated even for their lifetime for what I would consider small crimes. And we have to figure out how we can change this complex, as you say. We certainly have to change it with the laws. We certainly can't allow some of the... I don't know if I'm going to say that. I did a couple of documentaries in prisons. I did one down in Angola prison in Louisiana. 90% of the prisoners in that place will never, ever leave. And some of them for crimes of selling... Maybe they did or didn't sell drugs once or twice. The evaluation of what they did or didn't sell drugs once or twice. The evaluation of what they did or didn't sell drugs once or twice. The evaluation of what they did or didn't sell drugs once or twice. The evaluation of whether or not someone should be able to spend their entire lifetime behind bars and die. This actual documentary that I did was actually about prisoners who care for prisoners. We don't even think about when aging prisoners are in the prison. You're like 70 years old inside of a prison who cares for you. Then you got prisoners who are going to be there for the rest of their lives. Cairing for them. Then we have to look at, you know, and see the humanity inside of that. That care. And then decide to these people, to everyone, should it be allowed for these people to be in there. And our law is biased culturally, racially, you know. And then we have to do that. It's a big question and it's a big problem in the United States. Here. Thank you for your time this evening. It's a big question and it's a big problem in the United States. Here. Thank you for your time this evening. My question's open to both of you. Earlier tonight you talked about inhabiting roles. And it sounds like you've both been to some dark places. I'm curious how you get out from underneath the evil and violence and terror of conflict. What are some mechanisms you use to protect yourself and I think the loved ones around you. And hopefully extend the longevity of the good work that you seek to do. Well you've been to so many places. I've been in so many conflict areas. So I think... Thank you. I think the first thing I would say is it's very hard. So the thing that I realised when I left the UN, having spent five years doing this, was that I'd worried a lot about my staff and what they saw, and making sure that they got counselling. And I never got any myself. So I left with this kind of huge weight that I had to deal with. The thing that always keeps you going is the people that you meet. I mean they are in the midst of having absolutely nothing. People are incredible in terms of the support that they give to each other, the way that they just come through these very difficult times. And that always just takes you through. And the way that I protected family is a way that they didn't like, which is that I never talked about it. I had a sort of schism between... And I had to do that because I couldn't bring all of this stuff into my other relationships. But it does make it difficult to travel between places where there's nothing and incredible inhumanity. And then to end up basically in a supermarket with endless choice, for example. It's very hard to deal with that disconnect. Well, I think it is difficult to try to resolve and clean yourself of that kind of pain. I think some of the UN workers that I've met, they say that some of them are retired. Many of them die not so long after. I think from the adrenaline, from the chemically changing their body and their system as they go through these different spaces and periods. So I think for you, I mean you've been so many amazing things and so many powerful and ambitious things that continues to move forward. But for some it's I think they haven't been there not able to cope with that and have to find a way to wash yourself of different things. Many of which, I mean, we're talking about, you go to some place, we were in way once and you go there in the middle of nowhere and you meet this guy who's like, you can see the tension that he has and he's been dropped into this place and he's been dropped into this place and he's been dropped into this place. With nothing but like a tent. To start a hospital and start a place where everybody can come to. In the middle of a place where there are no one. He just builds a tent and people start to show up. This guy's been living like this for months and he turns into a year and then all of a sudden what does it mean? You remember that. And he was relentlessly cheerful. They used to hold their meetings under a tree and they slept in tents, the sort of size of this table. But then when you compared that to what the people that they were working with were going through, then for them, you know, what they were doing was nothing compared to that. There was a, okay, there's a gentleman up here. There are two gentlemen here and I think those have got to be the last two. Oh, sorry. Okay. No, sorry. There's just one. So you, the gentleman behind you and then one here. And I have a final question. So please. Good evening. Thank you both for tonight. My name's Kareem. I'm a master's student here. We've seen some of the horrendous images and videos coming out of the States towards people of colour, particularly black men. And my question would be what lessons or message can the Black Lives Matter movement teach us here in the UK or globally and how does that relate to Africa? Thank you. I think certainly it teaches us that we have to speak up and when we see injustices get on, we have to stand up and fight to change them and shift them. I think there's still a connective tissue that still has to happen between all the different organisations that are working towards dealing with this goal. It's been happening. Really, honestly, since I was a kid, now with social media you were able to see things that you couldn't see before. What does it teach you in Africa or other places? Again, I think it's a determination towards advocacy, a determination to effectuate change, the courage that it takes to actually speak up and to stand up and to do something about something, to recognise that we each have the individual power to make a difference. Each person in this room could do unbelievable things that they choose to. And doing that session of working on these losses, these deaths that happen to people of colour that we recognise that we can step up, we can step in between, we can speak out, we can videotape. There's a million things that we can do and they can do that in different ways. around the world. OK, I'll take the gentleman behind you. Yes, I know. I'm going to come to you. This will be quick. My name is Mervyn. Really interesting talk tonight. I'm just wondering how we can link with you over here because we've got issues in the inner cities and whether or not we can link in with your organisation to do some work with some of the gang members over here and how would we go about doing something like that? No, no, no. Gang members in quotes. I'm open to discussing it at one point. I think when there were some problems that we were witnessing going on, we were thinking about coming in some way. But I think we also like to always partner with organisations on the ground, people who are working already to create a structure with us. If those organisations were to reach out to us or we would reach out to them if we made a decision to come here to see if there is a synergy between us to be able to do some work and we would. OK. Final question from the audience. It's coming. It's your turn. Just in relation to that last question, I think if you go on the website and look up the Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, through that, make the links. Thank you for your patience. Got there in the end. My name's Sophie. I'm the youth advocate and engagement officer, advisor for War Child UK. So a lot of the stuff that you've been talking about is engaging young people in conflict zones. That's a lot of what we're doing. I've met with you guys in South Sudan. Fantastic. My question was related to the fact that people affected by conflict at the moment, children and youth represent 50% of that population of IDPs, of refugees. They are continually silenced. We don't really have it. It seems to be something that's not really acknowledged very much that children and youth constitute. There are such large numbers of these people that are affected, yet they don't really ever speak up about their experiences or get an opportunity to voice their opinion on the services, the interventions, the humanitarian aid, the policy that affects them. So I was just curious, particularly thinking about the population bold that we have in so many countries at the moment, what your thoughts are on the kind of scalability of what you're trying to do and whether you've really kind of thought about pushing to make that something that's a bit more standardised approaches to this kind of work? Yeah. We have a curriculum that we've been working with and a methodology that we feel works. We're just now discussing, after we've seen some of the movement, some of the things happening, how we're going to be able to scale. We have a lot of great workers in the field that have helped us with that. We'll be doing that. I think the next thing that we're going to be doing is a refugee camp in Uganda. They're in the Kyrgyn Longol. The scalability of it is based on funds as well. I think if we are able to acquire the funds to be able to scale out, then we will. We were talking about that with Carolyn Discompriese earlier today and talked to Dagu in the field about it. A lot of our people have been working on it. I was on calls about it all day today. You're right. 60 million people are out of their homes. 30 million are kids. 20 or so million of them are refugees. 10 million of those are still. It's a major problem. We're hoping that byscaling, as we raise more money, we'll be able to be a part of the solution with people like your organisation and stuff. Forrest, I wanted to ask you one last question. You've been incredibly generous with your time. One of the things that you said in the past, and I'll quote it, is you said, if there is inequality and that equates with colour, then I'm going to deal with it. So my final question to you is, what would you like your legacy to be? I would like to leave a legacy that concerns connecting with other individuals, making and filling this world with a space for people to have a decent life, to speak about those things, to illuminate those things, to illuminate the connection between those things. In that way, to truly be a part of humanity's movement towards oneness. I know it's abstract. You want it to be more like, but the fact is that I want to, and I'm hoping to leave a mark that just means that I was involved with everyone, moving towards human race, towards a better humanity. A credible body of work, both as an artist and as a social activist, you've allowed us a glimpse into some of that tonight, and for that, we thank you very much indeed, and I don't think that one round of applause was nearly enough, so we're going to give you another. Very nice.