 It has a plan to... White nationalism in our... White nationalism has become mainstream now. Whether it's right or not, we need it. There are very few African American men in this country who haven't had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. I want to be dead. I began to yell, but he's life is to carry. After that, he began to take off socks. This is a set of FBI data that suggests that if you are white and you kill a black person, you are more likely to be deemed having engaged in the justifiable use of deadly force. And if you're a black, particularly if you're killing a white person, you're less likely to be seen as justified. It has always been the case that the way we apply the law in this country, we clearly value white life more than we do black life. Good morning. Good morning. There we are. We got to all wake up this morning. This is a topic that could be on center stage of the Congress Center in prime time. And here we are. And look, all of you came out early in the morning. This is an important statement about how important this topic is. The race against racism. Jim Wallace is my name. I'm from Sojourners in the U.S., which is a magazine and a movement, our mission statement says to put faith into action for justice. That's what we do. We've been in the middle of all these issues back home. We have a wonderful panel. I've just been talking with them in the back room. I'm going to just say who we have here today, then frame the issue a little bit, and then we're going to turn to our panel and see how, from a global perspective, issues of racism, immigration, refugees are all deeply tied together, all around the world. So for our discussion, we have Mr. Abdulie Alim from Australia. He's a global shaper. And I love his title, Head of Practice for the Lighthouse Strategy. That means you have to practice the things you say you believe. I like that title. Mrs. Yasima Filali. She is from Morocco. President, founder of the Foundation-Orient Occident in Morocco. She's had a lot of experience in Morocco and in Europe. We're looking forward to that. Mr. William Lacey Swing. I've learned he's been an ambassador all over the world. He's been in South Africa often. He's got stories to tell. We have Simone Boll, who's from Cluster Davos. She's our local girl on the topic. She knows what's happening here with asylum and refugees. Then Maena Kiay, who has joined us, and he is a lawyer from Kenya, and he just traveled to the U.S. and saw all this racism there. And so I always like it when lawyers from Africa travel to the U.S. and see what's going on. So we're grateful for all of you. I'll say more about them when we get to their contributions. I'm not sure if those who planned this panel on this day were aware of the irony of the timing. In my country, today, we have the inauguration of a new president of the United States. In this election campaign, racial bigotry was a constant focus of the election discussion, as was the demonizing of immigrants, as was the fear lifted of refugees and the call for the banning of all Muslims coming to the U.S. Though I put it this, the racism that is always at least implicit in U.S. politics became explicit. What was often covert became very overt. And I want to tell you that many people in the U.S. this morning are very afraid. People who were targeted directly by the candidate who is now going to be our president. People who already have experienced incidents on the ground in their neighborhoods. Young Hispanic children, African American children, black parents, black pastors are very fearful, as one has said to me, the pastor of Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, Georgia where Dr. King went, it's going to be open season on my young people now. He said to me last week, there's a great fear. I want to say more as we go on about how the faith community is now mobilizing to protect vulnerable people in the U.S. But there was a session again in a tent yesterday on immigration and refugees. And Tim Dixon, who I think is here today, Tim's done research on this for purpose, and I love the way you put it yesterday. These are not unrelated policy issues. They're not just different issues. In fact, they're all about what you call, Tim, otherness. Otherness. How we treat people who we think are other than, different from us. So at a deep level, this isn't just a series of policy questions that we can analyze and debate. It's about how we deal with otherness, which now is an issue in the U.S., always been, but all around the world. In Europe, it's become very, very powerful. So how do we address this as people who care about how we treat the other? As I would say in all of our traditions, it literally is a test of faith. How do we move from us and them to who we want to be? What kind of people? What kind of nations do we want to be? And I want to go to the title here of my young friend, head of practice. I don't want to just analyze the issues today, but how we practice different behaviors and different policies to change otherness from asking what do we want to be? Who do we want to be as a people? So I'm going to start with you, head of practice from Lighthouse Strategy in Australia. Abdullah Alim. You told me you're 24 years old today. Well, this is a great youth perspective. How do you see this in Australia, but now as you see around the world, and you were the one who told me today, this should have been at the Congress Center, prime time, tell us why. So I think the subject is very important, and I think the past year has given additional light to that, but it's always been the case. And I think if you look at a comparative analysis between the US and Australia, the US has, so this is in very simplified terms, the US has low levels of high level racism, the kind of videos that we've just seen, the footage that we were just showing. In Australia it's quite different. We have high levels of low level racism, so the kind that's passive, it's coded language, it's wrapped in different institutional discourse, but it's certainly there, and it's equally punishing to those who come from racially minority communities. I think this conversation is important because I work at an innovation lab, and the priorities that I have is to ensure that we maximise the talent that is dispersed and I guess equally spread in our communities. But the truth of the matter is that in this world, talent is universal while opportunity is not. And to that latter point of opportunity having, I guess being afforded more to certain communities over others is certainly something that I see, particularly when we talk about race. Racism is certainly real, it's certainly visible, and it's a lived experience for many people like myself. And I think that it takes so much away not only from our communities, but also just from the broader perspective of nations, from the world at large, and I think it's definitely something that we have to A, acknowledge and be addressed. So you're saying it is systemic? Absolutely. It is systemic and it can be implicit or explicit, individual or structural? Absolutely. For both, okay. Now, William Lacey Swing, you have a lot of experience in these questions, so let's move from the global shaper to the elder ambassador. You've been all over the world. Tell us about your experience and how you see this issue. How do we win the race against racism? Thank you very much, Mr. Bob Raider. Thank you all. I thought you could hear me. Good morning again. No, I'd like perhaps to be very parochial and talk about what I do today, which is migration, because migration is a real aspect of the race against racism. I think the easiest way to describe it quickly for you and give you an image is that we are in the middle of a perfect storm. What do I mean by that? There are more people on the move than at any other time in recorded history, about one billion, a quarter of a billion crossing borders, three-quarters of a billion moving in their own country. China alone has more migrants internally than the rest of the world has migrants coming to them. If you put them all together, national migrants, 250 million, they would be the sixth largest country in the world, slightly smaller than Indonesia's population, slightly larger than that of Brazil. On the other hand, of that number, you have the largest number of people forced to migrate since the Second World War, about 65 million, 23 million refugees, and about 42 million internally displaced persons from conflicts around the world. We have eight armed conflicts going on simultaneously, complex and protracted, and I see nothing out there right now that can give me any hope of a short to medium-term solution. We start with Boko Haram, Nigeria, Lake Chad, Libya, Yemen, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Somalia, half-century, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and I probably missed one or two. There is violation of international human law on all sides. There is a serious erosion of international moral authority. There is a lack of political courage and leadership on the issue of human mobility and migration. And like Archbishop Tutu, we were talking about him earlier, it's hard to be optimistic on that, but we have to remain prisoners of hope that we can come out of that. It's packaged into attitudes toward migrants, the stereotypes, they're coming to take our jobs, they're probably bringing in disease, they're probably criminals, and now they've added terrorism to it also. And these are people, the cruel irony is they're fleeing terrorism and being accused and suspected of terrorism. So that is the scene I would set for you, Mr. Moderator, in terms of what we're dealing with. There was a session this week, a reception about the white helmets in Syria. You must have heard of the white helmets, a powerful example of how to respond to conflict. And Neil Kenny Geyer of Mercy Corps said something I didn't know. He said that 10 years ago, 80% of the migration or the movement around the world was caused by natural disaster, 20% by other things. Now 80% is caused by conflict in 10 years. 80% of the migration around the world is caused by conflict, which is what you're saying there. Now, Yasmina, we're getting this right. Americans are terrible, by the way. Yasmina Filali, Morocco. We hear a lot about Morocco in terms of all these issues. So your context shapes so much of what we think and do. Where we live, where we're from. So from Morocco, how does all this look to you? Allow me to, at the very personal level, tell you that I am half Moroccan, Italian and French. So I am a mixed identity. This is to tell you that I know before making bridges between communities, I had myself to make bridges, internal bridges, between antagonism. So I know it is difficult and I know it's a long-term work. In Morocco, we are operating since over 15 years and dealing with migration and refugees issues from mainly Sub-Saharan countries. We have more than 2,000 refugees in our centers. And what I want to point out is mainly that the migration problem is politician, is economic, but it's also and mainly cultural. I think that we are here talking about identity, about sometimes wanted, damaged identities. And this is why integration, making bridge between people is so long and so difficult. So Morocco before was a transit country and all of a sudden, six years ago, Spain made a huge wall and built fences. So they close mainly the African continent and we became a hosted country. So we had to really understand how we are going to integrate those people. How are we going to change the image of a migrant from a terrorist, from a vegan, to a man who has dignity? So we mainly made that work between many years and I have to point out that it was quite difficult and if we succeed in Morocco, I think we can succeed in many places. Why? Because we are a Muslim, Berber country, Arab and we received black Africans, mainly Christians. So you can understand how difficult was the gap. And we succeeded again by culture, education, culture, education, culture. We have been meeting interactions, day-to-day interactions with festivals, markets, cooperatives where we mix locals and migrants. The most important thing is of course education through school. We have been also making sensibilization to medias. So this is a long-term work, as I was saying, but this is the most powerful one. You identify culture and identity, that's key, which I think we need to get back to in this conversation. Back in the U.S., the way fear of losing culture and losing identity has been used politically is very, very frightening to see and it's going to be at the heart of the inauguration today in Washington. So Maena Kikiai, you are a lawyer from Kenya and you work for the U.N., tell them what you do for the U.N. But you went on a trip to the U.S. in July, was it? And as a reporting trip. And you went to Ferguson, you went to Phoenix, you went to Birmingham and you reported what you saw and you reported very directly what you saw and you got some people saying, whoa, it really is direct as all that. So I was intrigued by a lawyer from Kenya visiting all of our city's place of conflict and your report from that, which I found fascinating. So tell them what your role is and why you went to the U.S. and what you saw and your perspective as a lawyer from Kenya of what you saw in the U.S. Well, thank you very much and thank you all for coming to this session. I've done a few sessions here in Davos and this is really the easily the biggest group that we've had. So it's interesting to see there's so much interest in this topic. Now I am the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association. So my mission to the U.S. was in the context of protests, looking at protests and how those go on and then also looking at how people are associating and whether the U.S. government in various levels is respecting people's right to associate, to form associations, to form NGOs and other things. So I went at a time, of course, when the big protests were the ones around Black Lives Matter. And so as you go around talking and finding out about how the states responded to the protests, you really have to get into the reason for the protests. And one of the things that has emerged within the analysis of protesting in the U.S. has been the militarization of police response. And the police response, especially in Ferguson, in Baltimore, and other parts of the U.S. against Black Lives Matter has been incredibly, incredibly illegal, even by American standards and clearly by international human rights law. Now what is interesting is that when you look at how U.S. police, how the U.S. police protests in protests that are not by Black Lives, it's much easier. The response by the police is clearly different when it comes to Black people protesting. There are some, let me also make it clear that the U.S. is an interesting place because policing is done at a very localized level and each city has its own police force. It's like many other places, it's got a national police. Each city in the U.S. has its own police force with its own chain of command and its own habits. So you'll go to a place like Washington, D.C. where the police properly, and the police knowingly knowing what to do. Then you'll go to Ferguson, which is interesting because Ferguson is one of, I think, 91 little towns around St. Louis. And there's so many little towns of about 3,000 people, 2,000 people, and they each have a police force. These police forces need to arrest people to be able to pay for themselves. So they find people, they ticket traffic, little offenses. And all that means then they generally pick up on Blacks. So there's a huge animosity between the Blacks and the police. And that then results in when, so when there's a killing by the police of a Black person, the response is bound to be very angry. But then how the police then responded made things worse, and as we all know, we've followed how the militarization, they come out with tanks, they come out in full body armor. You would think they're at war. They are at war in Syria as opposed to being in the United States of America. So that's the context of what I was doing in the U.S. And as you go into it, of course, then the issues of race emerge, of racism. And I'm very conscious these days that the idea of race is a product of racism. So what came first was racism, and then we began defining people as races. It's not that race creates racism. There's nothing phenomenal or interesting about races. It is racism that is the problem. And I think that once you have racism, it then begins defining us in different ways. So what was clear in the U.S., and it's clear is that the issue of racism has not been dealt with. I talk to a lot of people who in everyday life at workplaces, at other things, it happens every time. And the person who understands racism is the victim of racism. It's very difficult for somebody who's not a victim of racism to explain it and talk about it in a coherent manner. There are many people who I've met as well and one of the things that I also talk to the police when I was in the U.S. and many police forces, and they were angry at me and angry at the Black Lives Matter and say, you know, blue lives matter as well. And this whole idea, in fact, there are now these t-shirts and things going around, blue lives matter, which police color is blue. And others then say, all lives matter. But that is really denigrating the real issue. And the issue is that in the United States today, a Black person is more likely to be killed than any other person by the police. That is a fact, not nothing. There's no, you can't hide away from that fact. It is a fact. So when you start talking about blue lives matter, you're trying to say, you know, you're trying to equate police who are armed who have the right to defend themselves, their lives to those who are not armed and those who are being victimized. It's a very interesting way of reducing, of trying to reduce, if you wish, the impact of a real issue that's going on in the United States. And then I've met people who say, of course you've seen this, all lives matter. Of course all lives matter. But in terms of victimization, in terms of survival, in terms of energizing people to stand up, Black Lives Matter is an incredibly strong slogan and incredibly strong approach. And I happen to participate, actually, when I was there in a march by Black Lives Matter in Philadelphia during the Democratic Convention because I was also going to see how people do their organizing or they're associating for political purposes a Democratic Convention. I also went to the Cleveland one for the Republican Convention. But it was interesting again seeing how that march happens and how brave it is. And I think one of the most fascinating things is how this new movement of people is happening around Black Lives Matter is going to be a new model of organization. I think one of the things that struck me most is that the old forms of associations that we have known, the NAACPs, for example, and other forms of formations are reaching their sell-by date. And it's the new forms that are happening, young people are coming out. And it was incredibly great to see in the protests how many white people also come to the protests and they come out because they care. And I think that's the part you feel hopeful. That there is an understanding about these things. And I think that when you're dealing with racism, it cannot be... You can't solve racism by the community alone. It needs everybody's inclusion. It needs everybody to understand what it is and everybody to come forward and say, this is part of who we are and where we are going. So in that context, that's been one of the most fascinating parts of the work I've been doing. Abdulla, he talked about racism as structural. And you saw that in the U.S. Warriors to Guardians is one of the phrases in the president's new commission on policing. And what's behind that, he had a meeting in the Oval Office, Barack Obama, with the leaders of Black Lives Matter. And it came out from that meeting and put forward this new policing commission. And, you know, the fact that many people don't know, the drug war, the U.S. drug war, Brian Stevenson talks about how we've moved from 200,000 people in prison to 2.2 million in about 20 years. And the drug war is the cause of most of that. But white drug use and black drug use is exactly the same in the U.S., exactly the same, no difference at all. But the incarceration is all black and brown. And then, as we talked in the green room back there, when you're incarcerated and you are charged with felonies, even for nonviolent drug crimes, when you come out of prison, you lose your right to vote. Millions of black men and women have lost their right to vote. I would say systematically disenfranchised and who couldn't vote in this last election. So this is all tied together in all kinds of ways that often it takes a lawyer from Kenya to reveal to things in the U.S. But, you know, it's always all local. And so we have Simone Boll, who is our local panelist today from Davos Closter. And you want to speak in German, where you're most comfortable. I told her her English is much better than my German. So she shouldn't apologize for that. So put on your headphones if you need it. And we like to hear you're working with asylum and refugees here, right here in the community. So tell us how all this translates down to right here in Davos Closter. Yeah, good morning. Well, first of all, good morning. I work with refugees. Ones have been recognized initially as being refugees coming to Davos. I have to support them financially and find a place for them in our society. Take care of their integration. Here, as in the rest of Europe, there is a fear of the other. I think we're increasingly recognizing that. There's a fear of that, which we don't know. 65 million people are now, as we've heard, refugees. That's equivalent to the size of a country like the UK or France. Many of them are coming to Europe. So there are many lessons to be learned. And the issues that we're dealing here are issues of belonging. What we have to do is make sure that we can give these people who are arriving a story, a face, so that they can be recognized. I'd like to tell you a story to illustrate this. A young girl came with her mother to Davos two years ago. They came to my office. She was very young, under five, and I was very moved by her background and her story. She'd had very traumatic experiences in her early life. In her family, she'd experienced how her father had been killed in front not only of her, but the whole family. The family had to run. She and her five siblings embarked with her mother, but they'd been lost on the way so that at the end of that terrible journey, only the child and her mother were left. Their siblings have since then been found and two of them have joined this family. What I'm deeply touched by in this story is how happy this girl is, how much confidence and trust she has in life, in her new life in Switzerland. And I look at that and I think, well, I can learn from that. There's only real hope and confidence when I see that this is possible. There are many stories that are very positive, that much positivity is being brought by refugees who are coming to Switzerland. They're certainly not all terrorists. We can't stop terror, the best secret services in the world cannot stop terrorists who are becoming radicalized alone. It's very difficult to do this, but putting that aside, we see huge positivity coming. We see the possibility for new relationships, new stories, and we can really encourage the curiosity from those of us who are already here to learn what these new arrivals are bringing with them. Another example is somebody who has worked in a hospital with an understanding of relationships. This is somebody who hasn't grown up with all the technology we have now, but the people who are working with this, the new arrivals said what an incredible lesson they learned from the warmth of their relationship, so we don't need to have fear. We've raised the issue of stories and seeing faces and being changed by the people who are immigrants, refugees, and I'm finding that every place I listen to this conversation, it's what changes us is those, as you say, new relationships. I'd like to put that to the panel in terms of to talk about how to overcome otherness. It really is about these stories, the changed people. We heard yesterday in Canada all the people who are volunteering to take refugees into their homes, and every one of them who told the story on the video, they got very emotional when they began to speak, as you just did about particular people that they've come to know, and it changes their sense of who these people are and then who you are. So I'd like to raise that question of stories to the panel. How do these stories change us and how have they impacted your work? Anyone? Respond to what Simone did. Yeah. Marina. I think it's a great question you've asked about how we can, in a sense, embrace otherness. Because in every society, no matter how homogeneous it may look like in the racial makeup or even ethnic makeup, there's always bound to be differences somewhere, whether it's clans. Somalia is a great example of a country which is ethnically homogeneous, it's culturally homogeneous, it's religiously homogeneous, every single part of it. But then it breaks up into little clans and sub-clans and other things which then causes conflicts. You've seen that in Europe as well, in the way there was First World War, Second World War. People always break up into small things. All of us is how to do it. Now, one of the things around this so-called migration issue, when it was at its height in 2015, and for me, looking at it as a non-European, seeing people crossing borders from Syria, from Eritrea to come into Europe, and the labelling was that they are migrants and it disturbed me because how we name things makes a difference. I consider anybody leaving Eritrea as a refugee because it's a jail. Eritrea is a prison. And so if we start calling people migrants, we start then thinking that they are economic migrants as though that's something wrong. But refugees evokes, should evoke some sympathy. And when people are refugees, then we have also conventions that then mean people have to take care of them. So I think the way we name things also is important. I want to tell a little story. I was travelling in Central America again from Africa. I was there for a number of days, a few weeks. I was in Guatemala and I and you walk around Guatemala and I was the only black person. Then I see these two guys there who are black so eventually we make contact because we are so isolated and we have a cup of tea together. And it turns out they were both one guy from Senegal and one guy from Ghana. First to Colombia, flying to Colombia and then driving up their way up north and their goal was to get into the U.S. And they said we are going to go to the U.S. We are in Guatemala now. Mexico is the next stop. When we get to Mexico, we will work a bit, make some money and then we will buy papers to cross the U.S. And I asked them because they have been doing this for six months and I asked them but why do you want to go this? They said look, what we have, what strikes me most and when you hear the stories of people walking over the Sahara Desert to get to Morocco and Libya to go to Europe what strikes you is how creative and determined these people are. So yes, there may be economic migrants but if you are an employer and somebody has dared to walk across Sahara Desert, for crying out loud employ that person. They are going to be hardworking. They are not going to be draining your system and your social infrastructure. These people are determined and that's for any employer. That's what you want, determination, creativity, fortitude and that's a good thing. So in fact, it's Africa's loss when people are crossing the deserts to go into Europe but I think it's Europe's gain and rather than seeing them as dangerous, honestly speaking, somebody and if you see how tough that journey is and what people have to go through, honestly speaking, I don't understand how people can turn their backs on them. It doesn't make sense because this is quality, this is quality in every sense of the word and I think it's something that we have to start looking at when we are looking at all this and the third thing I want to say is, and this particularly affects Europe and when I look at it it's something that worries me, is that Europeans were the original migrants going off into the US going off to Canada, going off to Australia, perhaps by force from the Brits but when you hear a statistic that a third of Swedish population migrated to US and Canada in the late 1800s, it is an amazing statistic. It's an amazing statistic, a third of the population, there are more Irish people outside of Ireland by far than they are in Ireland and you can go through across Europe and talk about how much economic migration has done and happened and then all of a sudden now people have migrated and say now we don't want anymore it's enough, it's an interesting phenomenon because I think it's a real human thing to try and move and want to get a better life for yourself and I think one of the issues for the next few years in our world is look at how we are forced to you're born somewhere and you're stuck with that nationality without your choice, we have no choice about which nationality we have and maybe something we need to start looking at as just the same way we can do, we have rights to do things but nationality we expected that because you're born in Belgium, you're going to be a nationalist Belgium, you're going to like Belgium but why should you why should you, why can't you be a French, you know, be Australian, we should have the right to choose our nationalities and not be pegged down there simply by an accident of birth I'm always I'm always struck by activists who are involved in these issues they can give you a good analysis of the problem but what motivates most of us are involved is stories what motivates us, what's changed us what makes a difference in our lives is stories and as we all go out from here I hope we don't go out with oh I found that interesting or I learned these three things it's more what's going to motivate us to take action against the kind of racism the kind of otherness that separates people it's very, you just said, it's very human to want a better life and so stories, other I saw when I said stories, some of you prayer-broked up, other stories that you like to share that motivate you in this work in the space of storytelling while it's very important to give space for refugees to speak of their experiences and speak of their narratives it's also important for us as well to analyze the narratives that we are consuming of and about refugee communities it seems impossible in today's world to talk about refugees without having to talk about national security it's impossible to speak about migration without speaking about terrorism we've highly securitized and politicized the experiences of refugees to the point where they're one and the same and I think the ultimate insult that you can make as a human being is to lump the perpetrator and the victim as one and so I think while it's important to showcase the narratives of refugees it's also very important for us to analyze the narratives that we are consuming and we are perpetrating I think that in Europe mainly we have lived a bankruptcy and a failure of the first, second and third generation of migration the integration didn't work that is why today we have the reflection of this failure into the migration and refugees issues so my interest and my meaning now is to understand how politicians will make a vision of what society we want to live in how are we going to shape that society as you said Ambassador we are going to live a huge and massive arrival of more and more migrants how are we going to deal with that how are we going to interfere and some countries of Europe resist Austria maybe France some countries did not resist like United States so I think that we have to fight for a better world and we have to ask politicians to give us the vision of it fighting for a vision of what kind of society we want to be it's a very powerful phrase and not let others define what that society is I remember years ago back home when I began to do anti-racism training for in America white people calling themselves white white people I would always find it interesting how most Americans with European who are from Europe have very little ethnic connection anymore with their European ancestry they don't think of themselves as from Europe and so I try to get them to do that and I would finally make jokes I would say you know you sweets you're just like the Irish I could never tell you apart and they all laugh are you Germans and Italians you must be the same because when you came to America you all became white people this notion of a white race we invented that we created that there is no white race there are ethnicities but we all became white people and our white identity is even more than our ethnicities it's important to look at what race is and the reason that people say all lives matter it's to counter what black lives matter is saying and they're saying all lives won't matter until black lives matter and actually blue lives won't be safe until there is community policing and not the militarized policing you saw in Ferguson so now I see all this conversation in Europe and it's interesting to me and I would like to know what you all think about this it's like almost Europeans who came to America and became white people for the first time now it's almost like becoming white people again back in Europe back to a racial identity instead of the ethnicities that you're talking about what kind of society do we want to be I find that a very fascinating question any thoughts I had a number of thoughts on this and I don't want to be too long but first of all I think if you're going to deal with racism you cannot and you've just made the point you cannot resolve your fears or the whole question of racism on the basis of identity we're not going to change the color of our skin we're not going to change the way we speak we're not going to change the religion we practice but we might be able to come together around something more common like values or interests the IMF has just published a study if people can't get it any other way business and others understand that migration and diversity is good for business so let's argue it on economic grounds IMF came out with a study in October at the meeting in Lima, Peru that basically said that countries with migrant friendly in other words diversity friendly policies will do better economically in the medium to long term than those who don't now on the European question I think Europe is going through a transitional phase and we're very pro-Europe, all 28 members of the European Union are members of IOM but they're facing three problems one is what I referred to earlier refugee amnesia we've forgotten our organization IOM and UNHCR we were joined at the hip in 1951 for one purpose to take Europeans all these different groups you talked about ravaged by the Second World War to safe shores and new lives last year was the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution you remember 200,000 Hungarians fled to open arms, open hearts open pocket books in Austria and former Yugoslavia so that's number one the second problem is the dysfunctionality of the union on such questions although the commission and the council are really trying hard but if you have a train going under tracks and the wheels have fallen off some of the wagons you don't make much progress and the third one is an interesting one I think we were talking about psychologically the people of the world for three centuries colonies everywhere business and now multinationals etc so they were a continent of origin today given the demographic challenge the demographic deficit in the north and the demographic surplus in the global south they become a continent of destination and that changes everything because you've been used to sending your people out again I guess the other change is the challenges we face are to change the migration narrative it's currently toxic and to do that we have to come back we all have to do a better job of storytelling let the migrants tell their stories my country, our country yours and mine was built on the backs of migrants with the brains and the talent of mine the same people who struggled to get to a place motivated, eager to work and wanting to contribute right now we're robbing migrants of their dignity we're putting them in danger and we're depriving ourselves of their contribution so I think this is our issue I have a sorry because of course we need to talk about emotions and by the way the day in the life of a refugee was a very emotional experience here in Davos how many of you went to that, saw that experienced that? you should because then you will change your mind about what is it to go through terrible things and what does it mean to be a refugee and I don't want to tell you more but please go my story is about human trafficking that we experience in morocco we worked for two years in a forest camp with and we have a transmission point in morocco for the Nigerian mafia for prostitution and they take the women from Nigeria, they stuck them in the forest and when I went there to visit the camp I didn't believe it because I saw like 300 women and all the women were pregnant eight months so I said to the people but what's going on and they told me in order to go to Spain and not to be sent back they have to be pregnant eight months so the gang were reproducing a real implementation you have the chief you have the major you have everybody and you have the dog and after the dog you have the women so I said but why is the dog so important because he prevents when the moroccan policy will arrive so they close everything and they hide and I said to myself but what are they hiding in their country to go through all that experience this is I think I'm the only faith leader on the stage here to make one comment about that this notion of otherness how we treat the other really is a test of faith in most of our traditions how we treat the other and back home now we have this crisis because so many people are afraid and so next week we're going to launch a project from the faith community Matthew 25 the gospel of Matthew 25th chapter is the words of Jesus where you might remember he says I was hungry, I was thirsty I was naked, I was sick I was a stranger, immigrant I was in prison and how you treat those people is how you treat me he says in that text so we're launching this pledge and project to protect vulnerable people and it focuses on three groups in great danger right now after today after the inauguration one is undocumented immigrants people who are undocumented 11 million people in the US 11 million are undocumented and President Obama gave these young people executive order protection they turned in their names and now are working as young people and they're undocumented now they're in great danger of being deported having their families broken up second is young people who are in danger from police in their communities young people of color and so they're the second group that are most fearful black pastors black parents being afraid for their children third is Muslims who have been who have been demonized in this election who have been threatened with banning and registration and so you've got now people saying to this new government if you arrest if you arrest and try and deport these 11 million people you're going to have to arrest many of them in our churches in our seminars in our home we're going to take them in and provide sanctuary you'll have to arrest them in our homes and churches two to the police question clergy will be going to local police and saying we want to help you with community policing not the militarized kind but if you do racialized policing as you saw in all those cities we will hold you accountable as clergy we'll watch you we'll film you we'll record you and we'll hold you accountable and if they with Muslims if they indeed call for registration which is frighteningly possible of Muslims in America you'll have priests, pastors and rabbis being the first in line in those registration lines so this is a policy of resistance against what could happen to those people so you'll hear about that next week taking a text Matthew 25 pledge in project to protect those who are vulnerable and then what happens is when we begin to get close to people who are vulnerable they change us as you've heard their stories change us and how we think and that motivates us to go further I think we are ready to open this up in a moment when we talk about these huge policy issues migration immigration and refugees and underneath there's this I would say almost spiritual question of otherness who the others are you all on the panel you're all actors you're activists you are working on these issues what is it that you when people in this kind of an audience when they listen to what you're saying what is it that you most want them hope that they begin to do or say how do you want people to act to hear this kind of conversation let's just go down the aisle what are you hoping for why do you come and speak to me what do you hope to see them do sensibilize to testimony seeing what they are passing through we are a voice maybe to be a voice and let you decide whether you want to interact if you want to understand if you want to resist also maybe we'll have an appointment later on just listen I think I think the more you can help migrants to have access to tell their own story we have a campaign now called I am a migrant we've recorded probably at least 500 migrants recorded their story you can go to our website and see these at the contribution they're making how they feel about it secondly the way you vote is very important because politicians rather than helping people to deal with their fears about the other are actually exploiting those fears to be elected and re-elected and migration is not something that gets you elected these days and it should because migration contributes to your society those are two things you can do and try to help us to change the public narrative and try to help us if you can to learn to embrace diversity it's good for us I would say give a listening ear if somebody is telling you their experiences let them live in that experience do not delegitimize their truth and the narratives and the experiences that they have I also want to say that it's also very important that we have open and public discussions about these issues there is a difference between race and racism it's okay to speak about race and the subjects that come around that the subject it goes underground and any time a subject goes underground it usually manifests and comes back to the surface in a much uglier form so it's okay and if you want to have public discussions it's very very easy to do so in today's tech savvy world I would like to quote Nelson Mandela who said something like nobody is born to hate hate is something that we have to learn as humans so I think it's important to give people a chance recognize that everybody has human rights inalienable human rights you don't have to earn those human rights they are ours changing our perspective can come from having an open ear for migrants for migrants listening to them and I believe that in that way we can change the future William? I think for me there are two things one is that just put yourself in the other persons in the others shoes that really is one of the most important things we can do and the second thing is the fact that and I think just would like us also to leave with the fact that even though we are talking now today about Europe maybe a bit of Australia and the United States this otherness issue and this phobia if you wish against migrants and others is a global trend it's not just in Europe and Australia where I'm from in Kenya we have a real phobia with Somalis who are African as we are when the Somali people run away from Somalia we put them in camps and the largest refugee camp in the world is in Kenya and it's something that's very un-African and it's interesting to hear you say about how religious leaders are coming together because where I'm from the Christian leaders have absolutely nothing to do with the refugees who are Somali or from South Sudan and they are part of the problem as opposed to being part of the solution and then we know of course what's going on in Burma with the Rohingyas and the Burmese majority across the world and I think the thing we need to figure out is why is it that we as human beings have this intolerance against those who may look different may worship differently may have different views and this whole idea of fundamentalist it's okay to disagree, it's okay to be different but do I have to finish you off because you're different my comment would be responding to Abdulahi race and racism, very important I call racism America's original sin original sin because we just didn't do slavery, that had been done before we said it was the Christians speaking of how faith can be on the wrong side Christians who said you can't do what we are doing to indigenous people taking their land and their lives and kidnap Africans, making them into chattel property you can't do that to people who are made in the image of God Genesis chapter 1 so we have to say they weren't really made in the image of God they're not fully human we have to throw away this notion of image of God Imago de, we threw away Imago de in our slavery to make people less than human and if you think that's an old idea out on the street in Ferguson one night with a 16 year old kid during the protests, he said to me I still feel like I'm treated like three-fifths of a person which is what the US wrote in the constitution that blacks were three-fifths of a person so this notion of how slavery continues the original sin lingers on because it's the dehumanizing of the other the other is not really made in the image of God that's what makes us all one we are all made in the image of God and for me from a faith point of view that's foundational to overcoming the otherness but our continuing original sin goes on and it was the fears were fanned by this election and now we're going to see what happens in the governance from the campaigning and so the faith community is wanting to protect vulnerable people because that's what always changes us and reminds us of in fact how we're made now it is time to open it up do we have microphones or yes we do okay I see a microphone right next to an open hand then I want to bring Dixon here in front in a few moments but go ahead I'll ask my question in German my name is Alec Gania and I welcome what Mr. Swing has said that we need to embrace diversity the greatest diversity that is being destroyed is the fact that we are losing so many types of plant and animal Warren Buffett said that there is a war of the rich against the poor we the rich are winning this war if you like this is a kind of racism that is taking place at the moment the racism of rich against poor I also think there's a racism against compassion if people die in France or Germany from bomb attacks then Google suddenly changes its homepage to the flags of Germany or France if that happens in Libya or in Iraq that doesn't happen our monuments don't have don't pay tribute to people lost in illegal wars we need to underline that immigration can take place voluntarily many people are coming from war zones and those who sell weapons sow the seeds of refugees now some people might say this is good business and the weapon business is one which increases GDP nobody seems to be worried about GDP but I don't believe that it's genuinely linked to quality of life and finally I think that we should stand together if we are diverse in our religion in the colour of our skin then we can recognise that but we should not be divided by it the most important thing is to say no to the export of weapons and closing NATO bases and that's a whole world thank you could you bring the microphone up here I want Tim Dixon who's done research on immigration in Europe fascinating things right here in front to share a bit of that briefly and then I want you to ask questions of panellists about what we are seeing and how to change it very specifically so Tim thanks Jim so I'm very interested in I mean I think the we've been doing quite a lot of research we've got reports coming out Germany and France that are really digging into what's driving the appeal of populism and I do think that from what's unusual about this moment is the political dynamics are really similar across the West and it's quite remarkable and it's the issue of otherness that's working everywhere I think what the research points to for us is that we're in something of a race against time not just a race against racism it's not because whole countries are embracing racism but it's because maybe a quarter of the population responds to the directly to the populist xenophobic appeal there's another group 25-35% pretty consistently across different countries who've got more cosmopolitan values highly educated, city dwelling more affluent, there are us and then there's a group in the middle 40-50% who have a set of anxieties about I think fundamentally it means economic insecurity and so forth but it's a loss of belonging and a loss of identity and the populists are coming along and saying here's the answer define us and them the threat is them we have to define ourselves in America Germany, France, whatever we make ourselves great again by drawing these lines the challenge I think for us is that the conversation that we have as the mostly belonging to the sort of cosmopolitan liberal citizens of the world identity we don't actually relate to the more localised identity our way of seeing the world doesn't work for that group in the middle the anxious middle, the 40 or 50% they're being persuaded that the problems that they're seeing around them the loss of identity is actually to do with immigration and it's a threat to culture and to security and to their economy so I think the question for us is how do we reach the middle it's a different question for us than how do we persuade ourselves and so much of the way that we're talking about the issue in a sense doesn't really reach much beyond that 25-35% of the population so I think the pragmatic question for us to ask is where do we learn from each other about how we shift the dynamics of rising racism and the rising appeal of racism not just at the individual level but across whole countries what lessons can we draw from past history where that rising tide of racism which is a fundamental threat to democracy where do we learn the lessons and I think one key insight that we get from our research is that it's not the appeal of the message of diversity is great and difference is great which actually terrifies an awful lot of people in the middle who aren't racist but they're just scared of change but a message more around inclusive patriotism that says this is what being French is it's being an inclusive society what being American is it's being an inclusive, it's being a melting pot and building those narratives that are local but are also inclusive I'd be interested in thoughts on that because I think that's what the research across different countries that seems to be the most powerful message that has a sense of belonging and identity and answers the need that people have and their sense of dislocation but does it in a way that includes other and doesn't define identity as being all about exclusion and I think that then says we need faith groups we need sports, we need mainstream culture you know we need and politicians aren't the ones who make that happen it's a bigger fight around culture thoughts on that, quick thoughts on that jump in I think that's very useful and very important just in terms of what might work perhaps in terms of lessons is looking at how the the LGBTI community has managed to mainstream itself across most of the western world in a matter of years I mean it's in a matter of in the last 20 years in very many ways where 10 years ago if you talked about gay marriage as an issue almost everybody in the west would say we don't want it, it's not a good thing but there's been cultural change I think on that aspect where people say it's fine I think there's a lot to do and from my perspective I think one of the most important changes has been in Latin America which is a vastly Catholic community in 1999 at the UN the leaders of the homophobe community were Latin countries, Islamic countries African countries, Asian countries today the leaders of the openness debate at the UN, love with human rights it's Argentina it's these countries from Latin America how that change happened I still don't understand but I think it did happen over 15 years that there's been a real transformational change, the US the same thing if you look at how the voting at the polls around gay marriage just five years ago it was way 60% against gay marriage today I think polls are saying it's 60% supporting gay marriage that's a huge culture shift so I'm hearing from the research in that supporting cultural change not just political change hopefully so I think the work that you're doing is fantastic from a research perspective but I also think it's important also to look at the work of practitioners the organization that I'm involved with we do a lot of work in the space of combating hate speech and combating extremism and in that space we do work with a lot of former right-wing extremists a lot of former neo-Nazis they're willing to look at their narratives their experiences are often highly demonized as well and the same common threat comes through when you ask why did you choose this life why did you resort to a life of this form and the common answer is I didn't have an alternative I was never given an alternative so if you look at the past year and a bit and looking at the rise of populism it comes down to four main categories it's a tax, it's a migration crisis it's a disillusionment with the establishment and it's a stagnant economic system and unless you're able to communicate the why and provide an alternative to those communities you have to realize that you are actually fighting for those basically pools of people with populist candidates with violent extremist organizations and unless you can communicate in a way savvy and makes meaning to them you're going to just see more and more of this just talking to ourselves over and over again questions, we have microphone where's the mic Miss Filali at the beginning of the discussion talked about or touched upon the idea of building bridges between minorities and people that have different backgrounds and different stories and I was wondering which are the steps that you think are necessary to actually build those bridges I love short sustained questions not sermons and commentaries short answers too short answers too you were right saying that it is very difficult to go to the other because we feel so secure in our own community and we don't have to be naive to go to the other is a very important human movement it's kind of a journey and I really do think that you have to be supported to do that movement if you're not prepared it's impossible so we have been building a wild range of intercultural activities building having festivals where you can have people meeting through music through sports building a project together then they will see the future in the same way and they can make a movement in the same time I see a hand right back there yes right there and then back up here please good morning esteemed panelists I have been really kind of anxious to get to the mic not to be heard but to start something here my name is Gail Davis I'm listening to your initiative and I'm in the United Nations external partner around the Sustainable Development Goals it starts with each one of us in the home it starts with how we train our children but I'm going to leave off with this President Obama said in his speech recently when Irish first came to the United States they were seen as an issue when the Italians came to the United States they were seen as an issue when the Chinese came to the US and thereon and thereon they were seen as an issue but quickly they became part of the infrastructure that together built the United States that all of us together built countries we must look inside of ourselves because at the end of the day if you prick us we all bleed red and I think if we can come from that place of celebrating one another and celebrating culture and the belief structure of each person and get down to the human the very basic human form and needs that's where we begin the research is great and all of that is great but practicality and applying this practicality of just basic human to human needs we all put our pants on the same and we go to sleep the same at night thank you so the audience of our children who watch what we say and what we do is the most important audience right here right here then back here to close here my name is Ola Fiksotvit I'm the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches and I'm very keen to listen to your many aspects on these issues let me formulate my interest in a question we hear a very interesting example how religious and actually religion is part of the problem not only in Europe or in America but also in Africa and the question is then how can we together and I have to speak in a self-critical way on my part make the religious leaders and the religious communities really a source of solving the problem I think there are many indications of what they have said but I could like to hear more both how you hear how we are a problem but also how can we become part of the solution part of the problem part of the solution comments and then we'll go here on that I'm a faith leader so I should probably say something it's a difference in thumping your Bible or reading it the Bible is very clear on how we treat the stranger and Jesus is really a test of our faith so it's a I would say in the last elections white Christians were more white than Christian so finally it's a matter of what comes first what comes first and if we actually talk about what our traditions say about this this how we treat the stranger is as central in our scriptures as anything is how we treat the stranger the other so that's the foundation for all our traditions Jewish, Muslim, Christian so getting back to the tradition and how our cultures have captivated us or we've been conformed to our cultures and not the traditions so it's always getting back to what we say we believe you want to comment on that? Yes I do because I come from a very religious country and we like to say that we are Christian nation but I think the Christianity is very thin and after six years of boarding school and a Christian boarding school I have very strong views about Christianity which I don't want to say but I think the bigger part of it is the question you ask what can we do is I think in the context of where I'm from in Kenya the church is a highly politicised organ the church pretends to be Christian the church needs to because it's intolerant whether it is gay rights you're seeing the church the African church is moving out of all the structures because they're having more and more tolerance there's a huge problem with the African church and understanding what Christianity is what is the solution? I think we've got to find more African Christians who will take who will be in the line I think Archbishop Tutu who you mentioned is for us the epitome of African Christian he's tolerant, he's up there there's no one following in his footsteps I don't see any African Christian leader out there but for us again in Kenya the Christian movement has been seeing Muslim Islam as the problem and they say in the churches they don't say it publicly but that's how they define the problem Islam is growing you've got to stop it we've got one more one more intolerant and one more fundamentalist Immigration has been one of the key issues Francis has focused on in the Vatican Here's the question here The term damaged identity was used earlier I'd like to know how you see the difference between damaged identity and loss of identity and if there's a way that one can heal the identity or repair it Good question Who would like to speak to that Please Simone I think it's Well that's a difficult question I think a lost identity is nothing if I've lost my identity I have to find myself again completely A damaged identity is difficult to heal I think the way to heal it is to give people their dignity back and through dignity they can recover their identity Work can be part of that being part of a society can definitely be part of that Your thoughts? Identity? Well A damaged identity is an identity that has not been valorized and that has been point out from the entire society that has been isolated humiliated So this is mainly a big part of the first, second, third and fourth generation of North African in Europe will feel I'd like to get to a few more questions here Microphone over here I'm Thomas Vorath from Switzerland and I think what we missed is what you said before what makes the relation I think it's a question of number In Switzerland we have 20% foreigners and they're getting more and everybody says, oh, foreigners in the years you are losing the wide majority pretty soon what are you doing with that? That's a question Well, I was wondering whether to raise that but now I will The most important political fact about the United States that's underneath everything underneath the selection result everything is by 2040 will no longer be a white majority nation for the first time will be a majority of minorities and older white Americans are having a hard time navigating that what I call the bridge to a new America So that's underneath everything our changing demographics are challenging all the old identities but the younger people really are embracing and often expecting my kids now their assumption, their expectation is diversity that's their life experience but this is the battle and it was underneath this election this election is because of a white backlash to that reality by 2040 we're no longer a majority nation so that's going to be the big battle ahead for the U.S. You're right on that Please speak to that This is a key question here and this is part of the problem we face today this is one of the basis of bias, discrimination xenophobia and racism right now all of our institutions governments, faith-based institutions all of us my institution, my organization we've not done enough to explain factually what's happening in the world we've got four major challenges first one is demography we have a global north in demographic deficit there's a negative replacement rate more people dying of being born and those who remain are getting older and the labor needs are widening Europe alone is going to need tens of millions of workers at all skill levels by mid-century meantime, Africa's population I've heard various estimates it could be as much as doubling by mid-century when I was ambassador to Nigeria I was told to country 100 million people today I think this number is 160 million or something like that and it's quite clear and I think you said it well we're all going to become inexorably more multi-ethnic multi-religious, multi-linguistic in every way but if we don't have institutions that are doing public education, public information to explain this is about to happen it's not necessarily bad and this is our plan and right now I think one of the problems in Europe is there's a feeling that people have little confidence now in government's ability to manage migration I would leave you with the thought that migration is not an issue to be solved it's a human reality that's been there since the beginning of time it's not going away and we have to learn to manage it and you do that partly through education and information the other challenge is of course to learn to manage diversity we're not doing a good job of that we need to learn to manage to prevent disasters like we talked about and I think if we deal with that we can solve the problem but this is the problem, you're right we've lost control okay how about I just want to ask a question and maybe it's a product of my background is it a problem if the US becomes a majority minority country is it a problem if Europe becomes majority non-white it's like becoming like the rest of the world becoming like that's in fact what's going to really change this can I also add that power and privilege at an institution level in the United States regardless of how many minorities you have it's still very much white so I don't know what the fear is in fact when Obama talked about in his farewell address he said progress toward democracy is not assured he said the three factors that can prevent democracy equality racism and naked partisanship he raised moving out of office I had a microphone over here yeah two last questions here so hi my name is Irvan and I'm from Indonesia me myself I'm also a double minority in my own country whereas I'm Chinese and I'm also a Christian where the majority of the population is Muslim my question would be how would you what are the steps as Miss Filali has already mentioned before what are the steps of this integration but when there's already so much hatred and animosity between one to another because I myself I had to experience first hand getting away from my own life by being a minority from a genocide in 1998 and it's been a lot of it's been it's been a journey of discovering myself how I am who I am as I am Indonesian but I'm also Chinese but there are a lot of different things that we already had to go through and I was just wondering how can we get this how can you solve this problem I'm going to take that as the last question then quickly go down the panel this issue of belonging you raised this old notion of sort of from our point of view the white the assumption of whiteness the assumption of white normality white power that's the US problem is the whole idea of being white as normal that's what's changing dramatically for a new generation this question of belonging quickly belonging and identity where you asked what do we do where do we go final words from the panelists quick comments first problem is that we are trying to preserve or to reinvent societies that never existed we were never monoethnic none of us none of our countries we all came from somewhere else and we perpetrated this idea that we're ethnically pure and anybody come so it doesn't really matter what the mix is in the end the real question is what do we have in common what values do we protect I think that's the real issue okay final comments jump in sure do we have to see categories do we have to feel that we belong to any individual category is there not a great opportunity in living together in diversity benefiting from one another's situation I think this tendency we have to put things in boxes can go too far I think it's great if we can benefit from each other's strengths and look forward together living in diversity long is the issue what do we belong to right it's very difficult because in a way when you really have a strengthened feeling that you belong to a country to a community you feel stronger it's very difficult to be part of a diversity so maybe if you are very strong in your belonging you could be able to go ahead and meet somebody else I think belonging is a very interesting subject and the unfortunate truth is that when you are a minority in any context you have to fight for your belonging nobody's going to provide that for you and the irony is that in that struggle and in that fight towards equality you still need the mass influence or the mass power of those who may not be giving you that space on your team and I think the most powerful thing for any minority community is to this is sort of work that we do is making the resonant mass so making your message as mainstream and as palatable as possible and we do that through content created challenges and in fact Indonesia in Indonesia YouTube and Facebook merging together to create platforms where young Indonesians particularly from minority communities increase their exposure, increase their voices particularly on digital platforms and to ensure that their messages reach larger and larger young audiences in particular and so I think it's such a long battle but I think it's very important that you remember that the biggest challenge and the biggest irony that we face is that you're always going to need the outgroup and you always always have to let your message be known because while it's exhaustive to be constantly out there and to tell people I am a human as well and all these other campaigns that are out there we have more to lose if we don't have that Maayana I think that's a great great question about belonging and I saw that in Indonesia I was there in December looking at issues around freedom of assembly and association but I think we all of us have multiple identities all of us, we're not just white or black, we are people of faith, we are also lawyers we are women, we are men, we have got all of us multiple identities figuring out which one to use when and what is important when I think it's an issue that we all have to grapple with and figure out where we are so I like that idea that we also can have an identity based upon values and a value system that says that that defines us because we've got a value system on where we are in terms of our identities but I think the other key issue for all of us to think about and I think it's how do we talk to those who don't agree with us and how do we get the entire world to accept that you can disagree agreeably is the big challenge so the issues are political, economic moral, spiritual really but about values who are we, what do we want to be and how do we change our cultures to have those value based cultures could you all give a hand to this extraordinary panel today and we want to we want to thank you thank you for your time and go out from here saying what is the one thing I can do the one thing I can do right now to make a difference in what we're talking about here today thank you for coming