 She started out as a social worker and working against violence against women in Australia. Today, she has one of the highest posts in the United Nations system as the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights. I'm honored to welcome Kate Gilmour. We are going to talk about Leave No One Behind initiative that is the core responsibility of the Agenda for Humanity and the duty of the humanitarian community. It is also part of the Sustainable Development Goals. The Leave No One Behind initiative includes being able to capture all the vulnerable groups needs, including children, person with disabilities, elderly, refugees and migrants. Okay, Kate, let's talk about this initiative. It's rather ambitious but it is also contradictory as the humanitarian system often has to prioritise and also have cost-saving strategies. So is this initiative really working in practice and what can you realistically achieve? The concept of Leave No One Behind is not new to humanitarian effort. Almost by definition, humanitarians position themselves with people suffering the worst of times, the worst of circumstances with the least access to assets and opportunity that enables them to respond resiliently. What's different here is that each and every member state of the United Nations signed on to that promise. Now that's a remarkable affirmation, a remarkable mandate. And the idea therefore as ambitious, yes it is and that is because it should be. It's a global agenda. You don't involve every government to be modest. You involve every member state because you're convinced that there are universal values and universal obligations aligned to universal entitlement that need to be upheld even in the toughest of times, in the toughest of places with people experiencing the worst of conditions. So this is the essence of the humanitarian project. It's familiar. It's a challenge of reach, of relevance and of speed but here's an interesting nuance to it that is I think fresh and it's got two pieces to it. One is it's an invitation to be more fully conscious as humanitarian actors of the way in which the context creates barriers and imposes exclusions so that despite people's own resilience still they are left behind. They're left behind deliberately by choice, by decision of those who have the power to affect their lives. The second challenge to all of us in humanitarian responses, are we part of that problem or are we really part of the solution? The iotrogenic question, are we doing more harm in the way that we're responding to the humanitarian challenge or are we ourselves dismantling those barriers, attitudes, prejudices and targeting that ensures certain types of people and certain types of situation with certain types of need are always left behind. Now that is what's particularly an opportunity for us all as humanitarians given the nexus now between the agenda for humanity which is the humanitarian promise and the sustainable development agenda with the common bridge of leave no one behind starting wherever possible with those further aside. So the old separations between humanitarian intervention and development strategy have to stop and we have to integrate them and the integrating point has to be if you ask me human rights the idea that people are partners in their own resilience. The first responders are not humanitarian actors they're people themselves and our respect for them, our understanding how information education and engagement can fundamentally shift the strength of a community's resilience that we have to give much greater priority to. It can't just be all about us it has to become centrally about them and again I would say this is leave no one behind coming truly alive as a dynamic is shut no one up bring everyone in, engage people and orient capacity to the people themselves and that's truly the nexus. But there are numerous examples where people are left behind like in the Central Africa Republic, in Sri Lanka, in Syria, in Myanmar. Can you see any good examples where humanitarian work and human rights have been integrated and where it actually has given good results? There are a number of settings, Myanmar, Ukraine, even Syria, Palestine where the fundamentals of human rights contribution to the larger humanitarian family are paying off. Identification of the specificities of needs of certain groups of people at humanitarian risk and suffering, women for example and the ways in which through the placement of gender advisers as part of the human rights component in missions we now know so much more about sexual violence, we know so much more about sexual reproductive health and rights in the context of conflict and we are so much better at dignifying and seeking to dignify the specificities of women and girls experiences, fears and needs in those contexts. Second example is through human rights monitoring we get better early warning signs and early warning analysis of deterioration you know once a conflict has broken out or a humanitarian crisis has occurred things can still get worse. Now what are the signs of that? Forced evictions, movement of weapons, indiscriminate attacks, targeting of schools and hospitals. If that information is monitored systematically, brought into the UN family and the broader family of humanitarian intervention, analysed, shared, interpreted, the challenge can go back to the various parties to the conflict to stop that particular behaviour which is threatening protection of individuals. This has been very much the story in Syria and very much the story even in the context of Palestine but also for example people with disabilities, a more medical model suggests in a way that the focus should be on that person's inability to interact in their environment. A human rights analysis says it is about creating reasonable accommodation and adopting universal design in the facilities that we build so that everybody is included and in that sense it is about a more a justice based response. What's fair not just what's needed but what is fair and that's what good human rights practice asks and it can enrich and dignify and it can bring us to focus also on what the people themselves say is working well for them. I would describe this as the neck up engagement with people who are suffering in the context of humanitarian crisis as opposed to the neck down. No matter where we are as human beings, we have voice, we have choice and we have a right inalienably to participate in decisions affecting our lives. Humanitarian coordinators are over-faced with a very difficult dilemma. Should they denounce violations and risk not having access to the victims who are even being kicked out of the country or should they say nothing and risk being complicit with the violators? Is this a mission impossible? The humanitarian coordinator and the country team engaging and planning the response and its delivery should always include human rights analysis in their assessment of the situation, the circumstances of the population and the opportunities for robust programming. Analyse the legal frameworks, the jurisdiction in which the community exists, the obligations on the part of the host government where the host authorities exist. Analyse their circumstances according to factors that are only illuminated if you ask human rights questions. Ask certain parts of the population being targeted. Analyse it. Given choices being made by the local authorities, forcible evictions, disappearances, intimidation of community leaders, analyze that, assess the scale, its patterns and its trends and look at it through the lens of international standards. That can then inform programming, preventative action by the country team and can also provide evidence that the rest of the United Nations system needs to appreciate better where the levers for change are. Humanitarian coordinators with teams need to take a stand that rights matter. Because they're in law but because the dignity of those whom we're seeking to serve, people themselves matters enormously. And people have rights always without exception in all circumstances. But if we get that information and we can make it available to our political authorities inside the UN, then you have a way of switching on the assets of the UN to support your programming endeavors. You can use, for example, the affected countries universal periodic review recommendations that the government has already accepted to remind them of the promises they've made and encourage them to apply, to uphold those promises. You can invite in analytical, thematic experts from the human rights system, special rapporteurs on IDPs, on housing, on violence against women. They can come and provide you a way of naming situations that otherwise is difficult for those in country to name, but also their reports can give you analytical strength as you seek to position evidence-based programming. And with that evidence, you can also then advise the routine of regional reviews, the deputies and executive committee that the secretary-general has put in place to ensure that the system at least understands the reality on the ground. When we don't analyze, we cover up. When we don't share information, we're silent. And when we don't speak up at least inside, we're at risk of being complicit. But are you sure they would speak out about violations if they risk being kicked out of the country? So what can the humanitarian coordinators and their teams in the field actually do concretely? How do they deal with this trade-off? They don't need to make a trade-off. They have a whole system at their disposal. If it's not possible to safely and constructively use the information that you've gathered that reveals patterns of human rights abuses and violations, to use that information directly with the authorities concerned, talk to headquarters. Talk to other people in the human rights system. Talk to officials from other UN agencies. The critical thing is not in the first instance with whom you share the information. The vital thing is that you have the information. Create for yourself the problem of, I now know what is deliberate, what is targeted, the way in which even humanitarian response is being weaponized, and we've seen this in theatre after theatre. I've documented it. I've had colleagues come and help me do that. Make the question, who needs to know and who can make a difference? And ensure that your own ethical responsibility to not to be part of a speaking out chain of action rather than a pipeline of silencing and suppression is where you're headed. You don't have to be the one to speak out. High Commissioner for Human Rights can speak out. Special envoys can speak out. Other member states can speak out, but not if they don't know the facts. And I think we underestimate the value of that documentation, that analysis of the ways in which people's rights are being abused. We underestimate that in terms of its role in protection. That's what human rights up front was trying to say. Look, if we sit on information rather than feed it into the pipeline where it can join other information and we can analyse what power is doing in a crisis, we sit on that and we become part of the problem. It's not just a question of medicine, tents and food, as essential as that is. It is also the dignity and indignities to which people are being subjected and the way they're being targeted. That is also our business. So the human rights obligation at this point is to capture the stories, the evidence, the testimony, verifying, corroborate of what has happened to people. With the cooperation of humanitarian coordinators and humanitarian country tans, we're relevant. That business of dignifying people by virtue of not pretending their suffering didn't occur, that's a humanising act and that's critical for leaving no one behind. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.