 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Iowa. My name is Ronald Mariano. I am the director of ICT. I was given the task to welcome you. Welcome to celebrate with us the beginning of the end of unconscious bias. I am delighted to have you here and we are grateful for the panelists for taking the time from their busy schedule to be here with you and with us. So let me introduce the panelists before we get to the movie. Firewriters Kyle Ward, chief of program support and management services for human home OHC at HR such as Human Rights. And we have next to Kyle Kate Gilmore is the deputy director general for... Deputy Hectoration. Deputy Hectoration. It's only like a mediocre condition. Now we have the deputy director general. And finally we have just next to me Tania Odom the facilitator that will help us through this process so she will take over from you. So as soon as we watch the video. The video was produced by internal staff, ION and the human rights staff. Some of the actors you are recognizing here. Let me continue to thank those actors, producers and directors for taking their time and do this extra additional task that is normally under list of that. Any other task as assigned by supervisor to make a movie. This is a good collaboration between UN and Human Rights. So I think it shows that the two agents are trying to address this common problem and common challenge. And it's working from today. One DG and one Deputy High Commissioner are present here. And it's the staff ION and the Human Rights Commission that work together to make this a reality. To make the content relevant the team also sought the feedback from consultants to make sure that the concrete recommendations on how much the difficult issues are factored in. And this video will be live today at 2.30. From 2.30 it will be available on YouTube so you can watch and watch again and watch again. Please share it and re-tweet it and just multiply it. I also want to take the opportunity to thank the Belgian government for the generous support given to produce this video. And the two teams and thanks to that support, financial support from the Belgian government, we were able to deliver what you will see today. And I think it's enough of me that it's time to watch the video. So, you've been a hiring manager for a while now. You know your job well and you go through each recruitment confident that your decisions are made professionally. But are you sure your decisions are based on integrity and respect for diversity? How do you make sure you are choosing the right person for the job without any bias? Throughout the day we tend to make assumptions based on the affinities or differences we have with certain groups of people. As our brains receive millions of pieces of information each second, we create shortcuts based on preconceived ideas or past experience in order to make decisions quickly. Doing so we tend to have preference for people that we perceive as familiar or similar to us. So, how does unconscious bias affect you when hiring? How does it put you at risk of missing out on the best qualified candidate and missing out on contributing to the diversity of the team? As a hiring manager, you are trusted to make these types of decisions daily. And here comes the first. Hi, this is Wu Weixia on the line. Can you hear me? Hmm, should you call her Weixia or Wu? Ah, let's see. First name Weixia, 32 Chinese. Hmm, wonder about her French. Oh, she spent three years as a field coordinator in South Sudan. Yes, this is quite challenging. Women often have to provide more evidence of competence to be seen as equally capable. But not in the UN system, right? In studies where equally qualified candidates were considered, mothers were 79% less likely to be hired. Women take five and a half years to get promoted to a P4 level, whereas men take four and a half years. Hmm, I guess she was lucky to be led by such a charismatic chief of mission on that project. Actually, I took the lead on that particular project. The words and attitudes of male and female candidates are usually assessed differently. In performance review, women receive two and a half times the amount of feedback men did about aggressive communication styles. Not a big deal, is it? Overall, more men work in hardship duty stations than women. And while 30% of applicants are women, they are not being selected. Hmm, so what prompts her to apply for a post at HQ? Well, I guess it's time for me to settle down for a bit. So she'd like to become a parent. Won't that be too difficult to combine with a career? The family and personal aspirations of women are often a break on their careers. Having children is seen as a hindrance to their career progression by 62% of female staff. At senior positions, 16% of males versus 40% of females are more likely to be divorced, separated or single. Wait, aren't we being a tiny bit biased? And how about you? Yes, you watching this video. Are you ever biased? We all have biases, regardless of our gender, nationality or position. Will you let your bias get in the way of hiring the best candidate for your team? I thought not. Here is what you can do. One, recognition. The first step is to recognize your own unconscious bias and that of a panel. Taking a few concrete steps to mitigate biases. Two, priming. Prime your brain to make decisions based on objective criteria before looking at their qualifications. Have each member fill in the evaluation template individually to avoid groupthink. Three, impartiality. Put aside your gut feeling towards some candidates, in particular during the first five minutes of the interview, making sure you guide all candidates equally, both in your tone and in follow-up questions and comments. By allowing for a pause during interviews, panelists can have a chance to discuss any biases and refocus on the job criteria before concluding the interview. Four, diversity. Out of the best qualified candidates, choose the candidate that will bring the most diversity into the team in terms of gender, geography, background. Make sure to have the facts about the team composition to be able to do this. Teams with a maximum of 70% of the same gender, nationality or ethnicity perform better than more homogeneous teams when the leadership is inclusive. And finally, accountability. Collect data desegregated by sex and nationality at all stages of recruitment and include them in the final recommendation file to the head of the organization. The data will tell you where you should start and how you are doing moving forward. What will you make sure you do differently next time you hire? Take a step forward and make those values a reality, starting in the UN. You can begin now by forwarding this video to a colleague. Thank you to the panelists for being here. Before I ask for your reactions and some thoughts, I just want to also publicly acknowledge Theodora, Saori and Beatrice for working on this and Theodora for really organizing this, coordinating this and working on this. So we can also give them thanks to the panelists. Maybe we go this way first, starting with you, DTG. What do you think about the video and your reactions and why do you think this is important? Thank you very much. I'm really happy to see Theodora here. I still wanted a little bit more men in the room. I made a pitch this morning, but it didn't work. So I'm really happy to have everybody here. Thank you very much for being here. Well, I think the first thing is a fantastic video, and it shows exactly what is happening. I think one of the most important things that I personally learned when we got the opportunity of being trained by Tanya about this, is that we all have unconscious biases and that it's not a reality that doesn't affect us because we're women, even with regard to gender issues, but it's also much broader than that. And we have to realize that as a first step in order to try to address it. I think the video brings it very clearly to all of us that indeed there are issues that we all have and that there are ways of tackling them, maybe not getting rid of all of them, because probably that is almost impossible since the moment that we are unconscious, but nonetheless that there are ways to avoid them when we are making selections. And I think this is the message that we want to pass, and this is the way that we want to raise awareness of everybody and try to avoid it in the future as much as we can. At the end of the day, what we are facing in organizations like IOM, and I'm sure that in other organizations in the system it's exactly the same thing, is that even though we have a real commitment of doing progress on gender issues, on diversity issues in general, and we have a real commitment coming from the top, we don't make enough progress. And the reality is the numbers, and we can see the numbers, and we see that after five years I have been in IOM, now almost eight years, and we have failed to make the progress that we want. So that's when, and I will explain later a little bit what have we done in order to really get to the point that we are today. But I think this is an extremely important starting point for all of us here. I'm so excited to see this asset created. I thought Meryl did a great job. Not as good as Brad, Angelina perhaps, could have lifted it. I think to be at this launch at this moment in partnership with IOM is a thrill for us. I mean, we're very honored, and I just want to say thank you to the courageous colleagues who led on this project, who allowed us to receive this gift, and it is a gift to our organizations and far beyond us. And thank you, Lauren, thank you for the generosity of IOM and working with the OHCHR Human Human Rights on this important work. For me it's a thrill to see something that's practical, that's solution oriented and confronting. I affirm very much, you know, the issue is not to imagine or arrive at a supreme state where bias is not present. The real problem is when we don't make those biases conscious and really challenge ourselves, and I love the way the film makes it doable and practical and in that way removes all excuses from us all in regards to how we grapple with the biases that, for which there is no inherent shame in the first instance, what is shameful is when we don't own them, admit to them and work on them very, very hard. I myself am an Australian. Is there any New Zealander? Just saying. No, it's a problem. I love you. I'm just saying. Can you do a bit of a move, please? I'll be starting out by saying I am not from New Zealand. Clearly. That's why you're doing your work. Otherwise I probably wouldn't be sitting right now. My point. It's hard to come up with these two, but I think in respect of the video, what I think makes it very powerful is that it's very recognizable. Everything that comes up there, there's no, oh wow, it's all something that we know, that we've seen, that we have had to deal with at various sites. I have to say being relatively well educated myself in a number of years and working with colleagues on issues of gender sensitivity and mainstreaming. My first reaction when we got to the starting point of this video was, oh, come on, a white guy has to be the boss. They couldn't have put a woman there. So of course when we had that, a hot woman. Thank you, Mayor. So pretty. Fantastic. So I think the issue, you can't hide enough that the recognition of it is important because no, it is kind of part of the furniture. But you have to really consciously think, okay, I'm not looking at that. I'm not thinking about that. We have to have a picture that we have an open playing field. And I guess I'm going to get out and myself and talk to some of the other questions that you're going to be asking us about. Many things that we can do, some very important ones highlighted here. But I think a lot more that we can also do in terms of trying to turn that around for the future. So if you want to hold the mic for a bit, let me ask you this question. Thank you. The way we're going to do this is I'll ask them each one more question and then we'll go to you. So start your brain thinking, please. Not that they're not, but just priming your brain. But I'm wondering, we saw some of this in the video, someone who sort of hires people and understands the role of leadership. What do you think are some of the constraints of hiring managers in trying to hire a diverse candidate? What would you say? Frankly, there is a lot. There's, first of all, just the candidates that apply. And you're obviously always constrained by what you have. But I think the starting point there is really that we don't have professional hiring managers generally. People are doing this on top of their workload. And you oftentimes find yourself in the conundrum that you don't really have enough time to devote to it because you're trying to fill the post. And you can't get the person on the job to help you because you're hostage to the process. So time is always one of the critical issues that you're facing. People want to try and get through this as quickly as possible. Oftentimes I know, certainly in human rights, I assume we probably have similar circumstances here, but if we get a list of candidates for any opening, there could be hundreds of candidates there. So you're kind of desperate to find ways to screen through them, to find a way to narrow down that field to something that you can actually work with. And so you're flipping through very quickly. And what do you do? You're focusing on things that jump to your attention, things that you recognize, things that mean something to you. And here is something very important. Value what we know. There's, you know, we know a certain number of universities. For instance, our world-known or well-known for producing high-quality candidates. Do I know anything about Australian universities or universities in China or in the Philippines or somewhere else? Not really. So the ones that are going to catch my eye are the ones that I know. Same thing with other parts of people's experience, where they've worked, what they've done. So have opening your eyes beyond that point and the very initial stages, I think, is very important. The time is really important. There's also issues of other types of unconscious bias, not just the unconscious bias to gender, which is very well-known and quite straightforward. But there's also other cultural biases. When you're conducting interviews, when you're talking to people, or conducting tests, linguistic abilities is one very important one. What languages do we do the testing? What language are we speaking right now? English. If you're a native English speaker, boy, are you lucky. If you're not, you're that much more challenged to be able to present yourself as eloquently as you can in your mother tongue. So there also testing or interviews need to be conducted in multiple languages to the extent that you can, to the extent that it's viable and valid also for the work that you're conducting. You need also to be able to focus on that and make clear people there, too. There's also the issue of disabilities. People with disabilities. How are we unconsciously biased against that? Someone shows up for an interview in a wheelchair. You think, okay, do we actually have the equipment requirements? Is it how it's going to work? What if this person has to travel? You may automatically start formulating things in your brain before you even get to the questions or you even look at their qualifications. So all of these things, you really have to, unfortunately, there's no way around it. You have to take a little bit of extra time to be able to be sure that you're giving a full and careful consideration to every client. Yeah, I mean, I think, and we know this from research and those of you who I worked with or met through sessions, it was something you said I just want to highlight and that is under stress, time constraints and deadlines, unconscious biases are triggered even more. So if we think about what you were just saying, if I have a hundred candidates but I have to fill this post, what does that mean, right? I think that's a really important point. Definitely, you all in this panel are thought of as gender champions. So you're thought of as people who understand this, as people who also understand diversity. I appreciate that you all expanded this because I think what we've been trying to do in all of our work is to say, when we talk about unconscious bias, we're using it as a way, a lens in which we can look at other things. So you're known as a gender champion as you all are. So what can be done to tackle these invisible biases and promote diversity? And what have you done? What have I done? Well, I should start with an apology. In that case. No. You know, there's something deeply significant for the United Nations and multilateral system that we are not recreating participation, equality, and engagement in the character of the world we serve. And I would like to say that this is the absence of precession of diversity in all its forms. And admiring the world that we serve is an impediment at the strategic level to what we live in. So for me this is, I'm going to be quite pragmatic about it. We will not be what we need to be in this world until we invite the world into us. And therefore, I think that this is very motivated. It is definitely about intersectionality and multiplicity of identities, including class. And I think one of the difficulties for the UN system is its elitism and its creaming of elites around the world rather than an opportunity employer. And I think this is a huge problem. But secondly, I think there's very little understanding of key parts in the House, including at leadership, that who you are affects what you do. And that one of the reasons why our relevance has been criticized, why we're seen as somehow more than when in fact we're working on a universal agenda and why I just came from a conversation with the new Deputy Secretary-General of her team with the transformation. And the messages back on who we are as an international system tell us that without getting diversity built into us by age, by disability, by geography, including of course a gender minority intersex LGBTI. Without that, our inherent authenticity is diminished. And so for me coming into OSCHR specifically, I felt very quickly from colleagues the pain of the gap between what we stand for and who we are. And with great colleagues like Saori and others including our staff committee and wonderful support from Kyle and managers and so on, we have really worked hard over the last 12 months to shift not so much the hard evidence that we're more diverse because there is a time lag in that but to open a conversation inside the House so that there is permission to express the disappointment, the pain, the resentment, the anger and the frustration that there should be such high levels of tolerance for what has to be biased if we're to explain the demography of our self-profession. It is too white. It is too male. It is too old. I want to a specimen. I'm being very frank with you. Good question. And trying to understand one of the greatest barriers we have to overcome is the silence of discussion of issues. The taboo nature in owning the racism, the sexism, the ages and the homophobia that flourishes in organizations that do not challenge unconsciousness. So we're trying to talk about we of course have targets, we're of course doing a number of other things but somehow this precious internal conversation between us all as a community to air that which flourishes in silence that for me is one of the most important things as imperfect as no doubt then our efforts may be structurally or in policy or procedure provided the conversation is open and people feel safe to be brave and forthright then I do believe we can gentle wrap it. So I don't think it is only procedural here and finally I might say I think it's time the UN thought about crafting its own identity because you know we have multiple identities we also have identities UN and international staff we love the fact that we're working closely with IOI on this because we can articulate an identity that is rooted in diversity rather than be fatalistic about the identities which we were born which were then reconstructed back to us by unconscious bias. The passivity in allowing unconscious bias to tell us who we are is something we absolutely have to challenge. You know before I get it to Ambassador Thompson I just want to say that both IOM and OHCHR so I've done unconscious bias work in 15 entities in seven countries at this point and IOM and OHCHR were two of the first including WMO, ITC or also in this room they also were taking risks and I've been in rooms with both you and with Ambassador Thompson where you actually have challenged people on things they said and so that accountability note at the end of the video on what can be done I don't want to surpass that because at this point I've been in enough spaces in the UN where things go unchallenged and to your point where things aren't spoken and both of you I've been in spaces where these types of sessions where you've spoken up so for me that's just something I want to put out there that there's a model for how we sort of look at this issue of accountability Ambassador Thompson just how do you think this video and the work that IOM is doing around unconscious bias and diversity can help change the path for women and others moving forward? Well I think first and most importantly when we want this basically to raise awareness I think we need all to understand what is happening inside of us and I fully agree with Kate but you know we have you have said too white, too main and too... I don't think he's looking at me I'm not a white guy but you have to represent the truth if it is that's our reality absolutely and that's the reality of the whole UN it's not you it's what we are it has historic reasons and it has a lot of unbiased things that have come to create a workforce that represents the powers that existed in the past the reality of today is a completely different reality and we have to adapt our own population to be able to serve better but we are certain that in general terms are not too white too male and too old but I'm exactly the opposite so in general terms that's our reality so it's in a certain way a contradiction that we have now in IOM what we did how did we get here? because I think it is important when the Director General and myself came to IOM we put as one of our priorities to increase the number of female senior at the senior level colleagues because there was a big gap whereas we have in P2s and P3s are more balanced the workers in the high levels it was extremely that so something like between 50 and 20 or 10 so we did a conscious effort we took some administrative measures to get there and five years after we sit down we have done almost no progress small progress but not really consistent with the commitment that we both have and with the efforts that we have made so we did something wrong and one of the things we got a group of people we got together we said well why women are not progressing in our ranks and I was in that discussion and we get different views probably because women abandon their career or because they don't dare to apply or because they don't go to different difficult locations anyway, a variety of views and there was a point that we said ok we need to know why and that's the first thing we need to know why what are we doing wrong and we did a serious study looking at gender and diversity not only gender but diversity as well because we have the other problems as well so and what that we really found out, a series of a data that gave us much more hard evidence of what we were doing wrong and that's when we found you a moment of absolutely delight for us so we started looking at uncontrolled bias as the selection process because it's the most important part and it's the only way that we are going to change our workforce and so Tanya came to us and we started doing a great work with her we did a training of our senior management team we realized that that is not enough that we did a training of the whole chief of missions of IOM environment in every hand that is not enough neither we went and started developing specific trainings at country level and with the original offices and we have done something like 5 or 6 now in different contexts in different cultural environment we did a Panama we did Somalia in Nairobi in Burundi in Cairo we are doing now in Vienna so anyway we are trying to do but we are also as part of this we have another also female leadership training because it is extremely important because we have to recognize it like this that we do not apply very often because there are at least those 10 requirements and we have 9 and we don't and we say ah we are not qualified this is not whereas the men do the opposite they seem not 10, they don't fit 1.9 and it's amazing and sometimes again we are part of the program and we have to recognize that because if we continue saying that we don't take our own responsibility then we are not going to progress in case at the end of the day we all have unconscious bias we have to realize that we have also unconscious bias where we deal with others but we can find ways of fighting it and I think the video it has to become viral you know how many are we here I don't know maybe 70 80 I want 100,000 hits by tomorrow because that's the way that you make peace we didn't have a bigger room we didn't have enough men but all the men that are not here should see it at some point in the next week in order to make it really okay thanks so now we are going to open it up for a couple of questions from you what questions do you have for the panel and or reactions to the video anybody if you stand up I can repeat your question maybe there's a question right here thank you hi my name is Leah I'm from the GCSP and I'm a general inclusive security I have a really controversial question so why is this we know based on stereotypes and one of the biggest stereotypes around parental responsibilities and caring Google has put analytics to see where their teleboxes coming from and it's from the women that are leaving because they find you too tough and I've got two young children I know it's tough what are you thinking about shared parental leave that's mandatory for men and women that will challenge and encourage that shared responsibility from the beginning and really get to the heart of what's forming the biases around women's responsibilities which actually are often a reality I know Peter McKenzie a lot of the management consultancy firms have implemented this the private sector are actually leading the way and it would be really wonderful if the UN has a human rights institution because they actually men have equal rights to in terms of their responsibilities at home that we can make some of the needle both in terms of perception and reality the one in charge it's interesting the UN is better than some in terms of maternity leave it's still kind of a medical concept rather than a parental responsibility concept and since the time when I had young children men now do have the possibility of taking parental leave as well two weeks four weeks I don't know but still four weeks how on earth are they able to actually contribute during that period maybe great postpartum when they really need some extra assistance to help out but after that it's normally the mother's responsibility I think it's a great idea that parental leave should become the norm rather than maternity leave as such keeps a medical aspect of it which is very important frankly as we all know four months passes like that how on earth can you possibly organize yourself and participate in all the incredible moments of a young life in that short period of time so I agree the idea of having a parental leave responsibility entitlement as well as the maternity leave that can then be shared by both men the idea of mandatory I think is quite interesting a great idea one that we'll have to take forward obviously now you're part of the same system that we are part of not so long ago I guess you had a little bit more flexibility on your own now we have to fight the beast that is UN headquarters but it's an excellent idea I'm not the great one that's not for the regular no we didn't this is to be his team in Feast Feast that is the secretary I think we are still this is extremely important but I think we are still too traditional as organizations to be honest it's difficult to move into that direction even home and working for home or other type of concepts that can facilitate gender access equality are difficult for us we are not good at measuring neither I'm controlling and as a result we are afraid that people are going to be working at home are going to be doing something else so I think there is a lot to do in order to be able to get there it is important to do it but it is not as easy as just taking a policy decision it has to be supported by a whole system behind that private companies have and that works well because they have a different way of accounting for performance whereas international organizations I don't want to say that we account performance by our sitting in the office but we are not as good at accounting in that sense so I think it is easy to talk about it but administratively it is not that easy to get there and I think we need to do a whole big process in order to get there and just to build on the wonderful intervention let's recall that families are not just men and women let's explode out the bias of the nature of caring men and men women and women can be a single parent and it can be not just the newborn but the aging parent in fact what the aspiration has to be that we find a work life balance that enables us to do the work for people who have far less than we have and every time we advantage or seek to be in world class terms and conditions let us be very clear where the costs of that come from in terms of our program work so I think we have to live very humbly with our privilege in the UN and very critically with our privilege particularly in a place like Geneva but that being said there's even the way we narrate our story of the balance between work and life I think can have bias in it and we have to really be very challenging to ensure that we have a lockdown on the basis of more stereotypical ideas as you said about who cares for whom yeah and that was going to be my addition that the I appreciate you both connecting at two larger issues other than just maternity leave because in fact woven through the maternity leave systems oftentimes are biases as we know and the other thing is connecting to what Ambassador Thompson said that the research done by Mackenzie around work life balance policies about a year and a half ago talked about the fact that men have to take advantage of them too and work for them to be important right but again this whole piece about policy is one thing I can tell you after being in many entities they may have a policy on the books but if women feel that they're penalized or men then they're not going to take them so if it's an assumption that I have to be in my chair in this office so I think we have to do a dual combination I think we can't just change policy and by the way this for me is very similar to this push to have 50-50 representation if we don't also look at our cultures and how we're respecting people valuing people allowing them to achieve what they can then we may have women just go out the door I think that's an important piece as well another question before we actually give you a task my question is to Ambassador Thompson she did mention that the number of series of traits have been given to senior management and health admission but she didn't seem to talk about what the traits have been given to the HR personnel or HR officers because I think with regard to the comments about constraints of time and pressure to make good quality selection of candidates I think if the HR were qualified and were to do that it would take a lot of the burden from the managers and it would just give them the very best to go through and then this could help so we we just had a suggestion to get a couple of questions at a time and then go so that's it my name is Cornelia I work in WTCHL I have a quick question around how unconscious is the bias because we here in Selections have very direct biases being spoken about and is it polite to say unconscious just so that it's more acceptable or is it a reality so I can answer that almost quickly but not quickly Fortune magazine had an article two weeks ago that said unconscious bias is a feeble excuse for prejudice literally so and what I say in any of my sessions is this does not take away any of the blatant prejudice of discrimination that exists I actually definitely separate this from that but I do think it's the level of creating additional awareness can help so this does not take away from direct bias I think most people here have already said there is bias so I thank you for that so one more and then there's another comment and then we can ask people to answer so Kate not too long ago you were talking about gender-based violence down at the Graduate Institute and I was wondering if we're looking just at gender and beyond of course we have the SCA but pulling women into the workforce and considering both report the abuse website and the report that was recently released in the UK about women's experiences of bullying and harassment and much more than that how does this initiative and dialogue extend beyond to some of those more intangible support or lack of care of so can we start and ask questions yeah sure well certainly the training of HR people is extremely important but you have to realize that the majority of the people are not selected by HR staff the panels that we have are the people that are working thematically on the issues as a result of that it is important not only the HR people but everybody else what we have done as I said is leadership including HR director but also at the country level what we have done is training of several people it's the whole office basically all the managers within the office so it doesn't matter if it's are the people that are selected other people I think just very quickly we have both biases and unconscious biases but I think what is interesting about the unconscious part of it is that everybody assumes that I personally I don't have it you might have it but I personally I don't have it and I think that what brings this whole exercise is the realization for all of us that indeed we do have a lot of those and that they affect our decision making and our deal with people all the time and that if we realize that maybe we will be called better persons thank you thank you colleague from WHR for the question I want to be very clear bigotry over bigotry and prejudice has no place in the UN and when it happens I mean it is prohibitive conduct when it happens it should be reported investigated, prosecuted and disaccumulated should be taken and if there is any way in which to talk about unconscious bias is instrumentalized to give a sense of permission to that then that would be the precisely opposite of what we are trying to do now so this is in addition to being very clear about prohibited conduct this is in addition in the same way as our conversations about microaggressions is different than assault assault is a criminal act and should be taken in that direction whether it is sexual or physical and should be reported to the police and duly investigate it my microaggression on the Monday morning because I don't really want to come to work I've done again that's I'm just using it as an example like that is something I have to master you know I really have to work on that and I have to work on it every Monday every Monday there's not a moment where I say I'm no longer as biased towards Monday do you see I have to live inside that space and I think that is what the ways in which bigotry and prejudice overtly express themselves we more or less know how to deal with it we have to make the place safe for reporting to your point but this need to be eternally vigilant with your internal preferences that at times amount to biases that can then accumulate to prejudice and bigotry that's a professional discipline and that there isn't sort of an inoculation you can take there isn't a moment in time thank God I've learned to love New Zealanders no I'm a bad days and after two beers I regress so to me that's what we're trying to get at but let me be same thing on bullying and harassment let's be very very clear about what is prohibited conduct and let's not think that there is no judgement by the system on this behaviour what the failure is also for us to create a culture that's acute enough for us to feel comfortable and safe in reporting bigotry bias and prejudice and getting it investigated and getting people accountable for it so that's quite precious the second piece thank you for drawing connections to our work again because that's effectively what it is and the interagency steering committee for humanitarian effort as appointed champions on these issues starting through the lens of sexual harassment abuse and exploitation we're actually as one of the champions I'm privileged to be involved in setting a benchmarking exercise right across the humanitarian system explicitly so that we understand not only the incidents and prevalence of violence against both women and men within the context of the workplace because it is certainly occurring but also what measures have we taken at this point to address it and on the basis of that benchmarking exercise which we'll conclude in the next week or so we will be meeting once again with all the focal points across the system to change the system to stand up against this but you can ask systems to do a whole heap of stuff there must be modelling from the so called top let me be clear on that that's true but everybody needs to become complicit inequity and equality and intolerance for discrimination we all have a part to play and that's part of what I think the video the gift of the footage is that it's an empowering space and I think Laura and I with Carl and other colleagues are trying to say look if you stand up we will stand with you we'll have you back but help us stand up against this nonsense it is so destructive to the UN's effort so destructive in a world that in a world in a world where you saw this morning what happened to the Paris climate agreement this is not a world that can afford for us to be part of the problem but they are not unconscious I think he is like I can only switch it off because I've got a few things to say no but you know what we saw this morning multilateralism, norms and standards are under threat we too cannot be made complicit and one of the most basic norms and standards is we are all born in dignity and in rights equal in dignity and rights no excuses make me stop I just want to do one thing and then I want to get last comments from each of you very quickly but what you have on your chair the organizers worked on these little forms on your chair before I ask the panelists to give a short what can they do leaving here I'd love for all of you to write down a note you are taking this away but you've heard such rich conversations some thoughts I hope one of the takeaways is share the video you can't do that because I just gave it to you that's an assumption that's just an assumption that's actually an expectation that I have so can you just take literally 30 seconds to write down one thing just from what you've heard that you can do leaving this room so when you see what it says in the cards none of that this is for you so you will keep thinking I'm assured I hope so I'm just going to ask the panelists just quickly if we can go down the row and sort of say what can you do for the rest of 2017 and forward around this topic what could you commit to doing as I started out at the beginning talking about various different elements of the processes and where we need to there's some more focus I think that in itself is an area where we can start with looking at how we participate in those processes and how we conduct the process there was a lot of good tips in the video about setting aside a bit of time at the beginning to be completely equitable across all of the candidates and taking time between them to discuss and to do your evaluation separately but simple things like like ensuring that every one of your panels reviewing, testing interviewing is in itself that you have men and women that you have different cultures involved in that as well so that you are conscious you can make more conscious effort to identify areas that might be culturally or gender specific that you can then account for and make it obviously tests in different languages I think having more resources for hiring managers in terms of when they're assessing qualifications I know that UNESCO used to put out an equivalent with equivalents of degrees in different countries you can see where it stands in that table so those kinds of resources would help people also and I think something that we also kind of falls in between what was raised earlier about the conscious bias or prejudice and the unconscious bias that transpires at all levels but also but especially at the management level is complicity in forging the process shortcuts turning a blind eye to what you know are deficiencies in the way that the process is conducted sometimes you have to send something back and say sorry we can't accept this on this basis because it's clear that you haven't had the right kind of inputs the right kind of assessment given to the candidates that are coming forward sometimes again because time, pressure, others we just sort of let it slide but I think that's the area where we also have to be very vigilant and almost your part thank you I think it's enormously important to be accountable for this conversation and I'm rather keen that we think about an interval some point in the future where we need again to give account for what's changed and to hear from you whether you see any discernible shift in either organization or beyond and I have the responsibility for trying to lead some conversation around this across the whole of the UN development system with one space which was hard fought for actually to talk about values, norms and standards within the UN development system and one thing we would undertake through that process is to put these issues at the heart of that conversation as the UN says it is approaching transforming its management system thank you I think we need to continue doing this there is certainly more things that we can do I think if we manage at some point to really increase the diversity of the senior management level of our organizations that will come more naturally and we have to get there and we are really late and we continue to be late because the same cycle is kept continuously and the same people have the same phrases and the same white all are selected as long as we don't bring that cycle we are going to continue having the same problem we have to be realistic about it we are doing a big effort to make it clear and loud to everybody it's not about numbers we are not talking about numbers here we are not talking about nice politically correct words we are talking about realities and we are really good in Geneva to talk about actually even good at that if you believe me I can be really politically correct but this is not the objective here and because we have a big emphasis in gender issues now in Geneva and because nobody dares to oppose that we have very often an absolute consensus of the importance of gender issues without any results so if we don't really make those changes at the higher level so that we really have diverse managerial teams that are at the higher level we will never get that so I think our commitment should be to continue in that process to continue being the way a kind of pain and raising the issue because it is our role I cannot accept to be a woman from a developing country in a higher position and not do anything and I think we all have the responsibility to do something absolutely let's thank the panel I just want to again thank Professor Ori and Beatrice for all of their work on this and I'm going to be told not to do that but I do want to acknowledge them again and thank you all for being here so we look forward to coming back and continuing the conversation thank you