 Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for taking your seats and being prompt. Thank you all for joining us today, those of you who are here in the room and those of you who are viewing online. I'm Paul Butler. I'm the president and chief transformation officer here at New America. Through our work here at New America, we hope to respond to global forces of demographic, technological, and social change. And we focus our work in five broad clusters of work, democracy, education, technology, family well-being, and global security. Today's event is hosted by our Planetary Politics Initiative. Planetary Politics is the brainchild of a few folks, our CEO Ann Marie Slaughter, members of our international security and our political reform teams. It was launched a year ago under the leadership of Candice Rondo as a call to action for reimagining a world order that is inclusive and responsive to the challenges of our time. We saw the problem then as one that was simple enough to name but super hard to solve. Our international institutions were built for another era and we need to find ways to revitalize them, to secure the rights of all people, and to protect the planet. Over the past year, Planetary Politics has focused its work in two domains, digital technology and climate change. And both of those will feature heavily in the conversations that we're going to have today. Our goal is to help stakeholders understand the new and evolving geopolitics of digitization and decarbonization. Alongside many university and nonprofit partners, we have produced critical research, most recently a report titled, Governing the Digital Future. We've been convening workshops and task forces to bring global perspectives and novel thinking to these challenges. And like today, we have been convening global leaders and practitioners around these critical issues. We've gathered an amazing group of them here today. We're going to begin the afternoon with a fireside chat on the call for a new global governance. And before I introduce our distinguished guest, I'll first introduce our moderator. Bina Venkatraman is a former New America fellow. She's a science and technology policy expert. She was senior advisor for climate change innovation in the Obama White House. She's a columnist for the Washington Post, focusing on the future, and is an author of the acclaimed book, The Optimist Telescope, Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age. Thank you, Bina, for joining us. And on behalf of New America, it is our distinct privilege and honor to also recognize and welcome Nobel laureate and former Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She has come all the way from her home country on the heels of an election to help us explore critical issues at the intersection of global governance, equity, and transformation. She was Africa's first democratically-elected female head of state, serving as president of Liberia for two terms from 2006 to 2018. Taking office shortly after the decade-long civil war, she steered Liberia through reconciliation and recovery, as well as the Ebola crisis. Her achievements in acting economic, social, and political change earned her international acclaim, including a Nobel Prize for Peace in 2011, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States' highest civilian award, the Grand Croix, the Légion d'Honneur, France's highest public distinction. President Sirleaf has also served in various regional and international leadership positions, including co-chair of the UN Secretary General high-level panel of eminent persons on the post-2015 development agenda, chairperson of the economic community of West African states, and most recently, co-chair of the UN Secretary General's high-level advisory board on effective multilateralism. She is a tireless promoter of freedom, peace, justice, women's empowerment, and democratic rule. We are honored to host her here at New America. Thank you for joining us. Bina, over to you. Thanks so much, Paul. Welcome, Madam President. Thank you so much for being here for this conversation and for traveling all the way. Bina, thank you, Paul, for this initiation to have this session today. And thanks to everyone for being here for an important conversation on a critical topic, which, of course, is planetary politics and global governance. So I think it won't be a sort of controversial thing to say in this room that there are many global crises underway right now. There are slow-burning crises like climate change, which is becoming more and more urgent, and the problems and challenges that arise from artificial intelligence, the war in Ukraine, the war now in the Middle East. Problems that imply that we need transboundary, global, multilateral solutions. But at the same time, it seems there's a growing skepticism, and maybe even cynicism, that we have the kind of international institutions, and you heard it in Paul's welcome remarks, that could actually help us deal with these kinds of challenges. And I just want to start by asking, what's your take? What are our international institutions? Are they up to this task? Well, you know, you mentioned the different crisis, global crisis that we face. But I think we need to first look at what's happened that led to those crises. The fact that there's been a crawl toward a fracturing of global governance structures, effective multilateralism, global cooperation, have all been undermined over the past decade. And the fact that we've not had this cooperation, we find that different countries are beginning to find different paths, staying away from the international order of peace and democracy, pursuing in some cases, different political systems, or being able to defend their own differences. So those crisis of having weakened effective multilateralism, and cooperation, has led to the other crisis that we now face. So do you diagnose the problem as fractures and problems within countries that are undermining already strong global governance structures? Or are you diagnosing the problem as global structures that aren't adapting to the changes that are happening in society? It's a bit of both. In one case, the fractures within nations, within countries themselves, the failure for inclusion to allow people to have, or say, to participate in those decisions that will affect their lives, that's part of it. But also, global cooperation because of the geopolitics, people being able to have their own spheres of influence, particularly as it relates to countries in the global south, and this has led to some tensions, and led to, as I say, taking away from a compliance with a general world order to which one realize that this was for the betterment of all society. And the fact that people, people who are affected by all decisions, national, or international, don't have a say at a time when our nations, our entire global community is now full of young people, young people who are demanding leadership, women who have been left behind, who are also demanding that they have equity and equal opportunity. It's a world that's changing and the crisis are severe, and something needs to be done about it. So groups like these that will have a say in identifying some of the root causes of these problems and what can we do, but more importantly, leadership. Leadership in both countries, as well as in international organizations that can see the value and the advantage of coming together as it used to be two decades ago. I want to get back to that question of how we include these different groups that you see as gaining more voice and needing to have more voice in these institutions and in our global system, but before we get to that and talk about leadership, right before we came on stage, you said to me, you might not like my answer if you asked me about how the UN General Assembly went. And being a journalist, that was like the juiciest thing that you could possibly say. So I have to ask you, how was last month's UN General Assembly, what's your assessment of how that went? I'm sorry, it's just, it's my job. Well, that's one thing, you know, I like to be truthful and I take it that, you know, this is a really fine group. No, because I've been in international public service for so long, I've participated in General Assembly too many times, you know, as an official in the United Nations and also 12 years as president. And so I thought this year I would be well off if I didn't listen to mostly the talks that lead to no action. So I thought it was more important to do something. And there was, I had a good alternative, more importantly, it was to sit in on a board meeting to talk about a foundation that is focusing on Africa and African development. So was I kind enough in that response? That was kind, it's pretty diplomatic, I would expect nothing less. You know, I think it's interesting because, you know, we lacked sort of four of the five permanent security council members, heads of state, you know, Britain, France were missing, China, Russia, the heads of state were missing from, from the UN General Assembly last month. And people were criticizing that as sort of an indication of the UN losing its power and its ability to affect change. But you're saying something actually, which is, I think something a general public kind of has as an impression of the UN, which is that there's a lot of talking happening, even with the heads of state who do come and not enough action that's resulting from that. And I wanna ask you, you've done some thinking about institutions other than the UN, which are more sort of multilateral institutions in the financial sector and that are working on global finance. And what's your diagnosis there? Is there more hope about getting those institutions to do the right thing? Let me say that I'm so glad that the CEO of New America is Ann Marie Slaughter. And she was one of those, you know, working on the UN Secretary General, New Global Agenda, the Common Agenda, leading toward what was gonna be a summit of the future. I see David partially sitting there. He was the mean coordinator of what we did now. I think the real encompassing message is that the world needs to change. The entire global architecture requires reform. Institutions that were established at a time much, much, much before today still use the same practices, essentially the policies reflecting conditions of old. Times have changed and all of the new threats faced by the global community need to be addressed through this reform. And this is why there was a group of very dispersed group, wide group representing all of the regions of the world that came together on the Secretary General's mandate to work on the aspects, the changes that need to be made. Do you want us to go through that all? Okay, let me just go through that and then you can come in. Well, I know one of those changes, and this relates to something you were saying earlier, just to give you a little area of focus for that, is your high level, I think you're talking about co-chairing the high level board on effective multilateralism for the UN Secretary General. And one of the insights that came from that group under your leadership was that we need institutions, international institutions to be more inclusive. Can you say how do we go about making that happen? It sounds like something that almost everyone would agree with, but how do you get from here to there? All right, well, let's take the global financial architecture. The two prominent international financial institutions, international financial institutions that have really guided financial policies, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. They are owned and their leadership come from the major powers of the world as they were established after World War II. Clearly, we need some changes in that. And that means bringing into their leadership more representation of countries of the world. They also, through their processes, control the allocation of financial resources. Again, we think that changes would mean that some allocation, some partnership arrangements should be made with financial institutions in the global south, for example, development finance banks that have responsibility also for financial flows to support development. We believe that some of the longstanding arrangements of conditionalities, what do countries have to do to be able to benefit from these financial flows, need to be rethought. Are we going to, the size of the financial envelope has not provided the scale required for transformation in poor countries. So they find themselves, like in the issue of debt, being able to get debt relief through arrangements and for COVID-19, send them all back into debt. And so that scale of resources, being able to give to bill capacities for stronger domestic resource mobilization. And if I may say that one of the major reform that we need in the international financial architecture is the role of private sector, private capital, private capital that will be able to address the constraints that countries face to improve their economies, to have value added to some of their primary resources. Now admittedly, there's an issue there because private sector, profit seeking institutions, which is the right thing for what the way they are structured. And so that would mean if we're going to make sure that we find a means for private sector to also be a part of the flows to development countries then they'd have to be means to minimize the risks that they would face. So de-risking options would have to be determined to enable that to happen. We need more representation on a discussion that I held in G20, you know where the major better performing countries, the world sit down to discuss financial policies, financial allocation of resources. There are groups like finance ministers that are invited to some of those sessions, but they don't have real decision making powers. Should we not have a chance to reform G20 and they have been talked about in fighting the African Union to have a seat in G20. The same applies to G7, where the seven major powers of the world are the ones that make the real policies that relate to issues affecting development, affecting the world, particularly in the area of finance. How do you think this would apply to a specific area, for example, with climate finance, which has been both a really critical part of global negotiations on addressing climate change, but also a bit of an issue of disparity and an issue of conflict between countries in the developed and developing world. If you had a scenario where you had more inclusion of countries that would be beneficiaries of climate finance, whether from governments, international banks and financial institutions and also the private sector, how could you see that playing out differently than sort of the scheme of climate finance we have now? Well, I don't think we've yet seen a full determination on climate finance. I think we've seen many, you know, many cops, how many cops we've had. And we haven't yet seen a delivery of the resources that were committed, even though there's some talks on a bilateral partnership arrangements. There are certain amounts that are being given to deal with it, and I think maybe the latest meeting on that in Margarita is just something you might see, something different will come up in the, I think the countries of the global south have been those that are affected most by climate change and those that have led to the problems of climate change are those in the north. So I guess if one were saying that we all now are part of a global amphitheater, then we have to see some of the resources held by the global north be directed into the global south to be able to address the major effects of climate change so that we have a more equitable world and a more equitable world will lead to a better economically performing world that would benefit all. I don't think those decisions have yet been made in a very comprehensive way and a very structured way that one designs the allocation of resources based on certain criteria, the criteria of not only those that need it most, but those that are willing to do more for themselves. You know, those discussions are ongoing in different fora. I am not sure we found the right approaches or the right policies that will deal in a way that will be fair to all. And how does that relate to your point about conditionality of finance to the developing world? So your point is very well taken that the rich nations of the world have contributed much more to the problem of climate change while the poor nations of the world have suffered the brunt of the impacts thus far that we see disasters related to climate change now affecting the entire world. How, given that we know that that injustice and that asymmetry exists, but that we also know that we need all of the nations of the world to be developing in a clean way and reducing emissions, if not bringing them to zero, as soon as possible. How does that relate to what kind of conditionality there should be on climate finance going towards poorer nations, nations that are less wealthy, nations that have contributed less to the climate crisis? I think most times, conditionality is set forth by primary financial institutions or under partnership arrangements. Tend to be more one size fits all. Not really recognized in the specificities of countries. Their endowment, their capacity, even their culture. And those conditionalities then, some well intended, but if they don't fit the conditions and the timeframe to be able to achieve the results anticipated, then they don't work and you find the countries again slipping back. And I think we have so many examples of that. So if we're going to have reform, we need to again, we change institutions that would change policies and approaches and measures. One might see things like that address. Sometimes the conditionality is, don't fit the problem at hand. That also leads to some of the tensions in the major powers arrangements. The those who may see human rights as a major trigger of the climate crisis for development, quite rightly so for some. For others, they might not see that as being significant in achieving the level of support that they would like to give to countries. So that may leave again to differences and lead to some tensions in the partnership arrangements that we're not subscribing to the same ideals. That says that one needs to also recognize differences. You hear people talk about Africa, what Africa needs, what Africa should do. Africa is 53 countries with different endowment, different culture, different tradition. So if you're doing support for Africa, you may have to look at it with all these kinds of different specificities and see how you can tailor the response and its support to the real situation at that patience. This is, you're raising more complexity than our current institutions are capable of dealing with. So I am gonna ask you at some point maybe to elaborate on how we kind of get there, but I do wanna ask you about democracy because when we think about problems like the climate crisis and we look at the ways that democracies, including this one that we're in right now or have struggled to take to come together and take stride in action on climate change. I think there's some doubt being sowed about how and whether democracies can respond by sufficiently marshaling investment in clean energy, sufficiently cutting emissions. You rebuilt a democracy, you built a democracy from the ground up and I presume you're still a proponent of it as a system of government. And so I wanna ask you, what gives you confidence? Does anything give you confidence that democracies are capable of addressing this problem? My first answer is yes, but let me expand on that a little bit. I believe it's clear from an African perspective that democracy has worked for us. It has enabled many countries to be able to achieve a level of development they have, even if insufficient for the achievement of their overall national goals. The slippage today that has led to five coup d'etats in Africa again has its roots into the global geopolitical environment again, the fracturing of leadership at the global level. But democracy I think is it. In Africa we still have one or two variations of democracy. We have places where they are managed succession, anticipating who's gonna take over. So you don't have, you still find that in places like Botswana and Namibia, some of these are African countries, but by and large I think the people of Africa believe democracy is the way to go. We've had military rule, we still have authoritarianism, but democracy is what has enabled us to achieve what most countries have. I think that's one thing I must say. Whether we're dealing with conditionalities, or we're dealing with the allocation, again in Africa it is clear that primary responsibility for the development of Africa rests on Africa. And African leaders, and African leaders must be the one to take responsibility. So in forging conditionalities we should build into that package the fact that only leaders who do all the things we say we want to see done by others, are done by themselves. We're gonna open it up to questions in a few moments and I hope someone can give me a time check if possible. But the question I wanna ask you before we do that is about that. So you've talked about the responsibility of leaders in Africa and of African nations, including some of the smallest countries in the world. What is the responsibility that these countries have when it comes to some of our big global challenges? What are the actions that from your perspective need to be taken by even small nations when it comes to these bigger planetary problems? I think first of all we need leaders who lead with strong commitment to the development of their country with the participation of the people in the different governance structures that exist at all levels. We need particular emphasis on certain things like education to create the capacity to govern effectively health, to ensure the safety of people to be able to work. We need integrity in governance to ensure the allocation of domestic resources used properly for the achievement of national goals. So I think those are those other things that we do find a certain level of that in certain countries and we also need a regular peaceful transfer of power so that we don't have too long, we need change and we need changing people too. So those are all some of the basics that those are discussions that are ongoing now and that's what might lead to change in the global but we have to change first, right? Thank you. I want to invite people to come up and ask questions of the president. Hi, Richard Ponzi from the Stimson Center here in Washington. Congratulations on the new high level advisory board report. As a think tanker, I think many from the policy advocacy community be keen to hear two of your favorite proposals from the COP 28 around the corner and climate broader environmental governance. What is something that we should be thinking about maybe championing in the run up to the summit of the future next year and then similarly, you started talking about it today the section on development financing and the momentum we're seeing around the Bridgetown Initiative on changes in the global financial architecture. One final related point, why should our government here in Washington, the United States get excited and focused on this agenda especially with a big presidential election coming up next year? Okay, three questions in one. One at a time would be ideal. Just I'll throw that out there just on behalf of the interlocutor here. Well, let's take it one by one. I think on the entire financial agenda, we believe that much of what's in the Bridgetown Initiative is one that talks about the blending the scaling, the blending, the private sector, the insurance of proper allocation. It also reflects the same things about decision making in financial institution participation of some of the other institutions from the south. So all of the rest of the measures to improve the global financial architecture I think are well stated. It goes beyond the Bridgetown Initiative but the Bridgetown Initiative is the core of all of that. And then what was the other ones? So the first was what were your sort of one or two sort of favorite or priority recommendations from the high level advisory board on effective multilateralism looking towards next year's summit on the future, is that right? Well, that number one priority has to do with the global financial architecture. They change of that, change in the structure of the World Bank and the IMF, bringing participation of the multilateral development banks, being able to have the allocation of resources made in such a manner that they address the major causes, being able to make countries and able to their endowment to get the domestic resources to develop their own country. So that for me is number one. Number two, the whole global security architecture. We haven't talked about that. But that means that work changes have to be taken at the security council. Today, we have a moribund security council and it's been going that way. It's been that way for the past several years because of the fracturing of global politics or something. So I think that sort of relates to the final. That sets the basis for why we're saying democracy is slipping. And we have coup d'etats and you have these wars today. I mean, and with the existing situation in Ukraine, now Palestine and Israel, it's going to bring more pressure. More pressure on finding the right solution to these. At the same time, granting groups like terrorism granting groups that would like to see military regime train that feel that they can get away with it because there's not a body. So again, how do we bring better representation in something? If I may also talk about the on pandemics and health, I can say that we had a group, I was co-chair of a group with Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand that worked on a whole measure of trying to make WHO is stronger and better finance institution, international health regulation being set up for reform. And we've been on advocacy for the past year so talking about international health threat council. And we haven't succeeded in getting any focus on that. So here we are going to go into another global agenda. People on planet, any matter report, effective multilateralism. You're gonna be talking about that. How many global agendas will we have until we see the political will to make them happen, to make some of them happen? I think that's the challenge to everybody. Hi, my name's, this thing sucks. Steve, I work and study here in the city. Thank you very much for today's forum. I appreciate it. Madam President, for a number of us who were young producers, one of the last times that you came through the city, we really appreciated your comments and your interaction with members of the Hill, Chris Coons, Ron Klain. Could you amid today's sort of fractured political environment, and that's probably being charitable, could you give us an overview of your last interactions with members of Congress during the Ebola crisis? And my other question is, is there a great game for Africa? Wagner Group comes to mind, some private military outfits, resource extraction, that sort of thing, and the PRC's efforts in China also. So thank you very much. Okay, so just so we, the second question, can you sum it up in a sentence? Is there a great game, a renewed great game, game, G-A-M-E? Oh, great game for Africa. Great game. Okay, I'm not sure I understand the question either. I understand the question. Okay. I think the question is, is Africa up for grabs yet again? With, between China and Russia, yes, okay. And in school, colonialist friends. Right, is there a game for Africa, not? You know, I've heard talk about recolonization and all this thing, that's not true. There are, I mean, Africa's past the stage of being a place you can just come and pick what you want and, you know, and run with it. No, we've gone past that fun. Yes, longstanding historical and traditional relationship to exist, maybe to our own disadvantage that we haven't built a stronger, effective union among ourselves and have a common agenda, what we call the Africa 2063, the Africa we want. We've put it forward by so aspirational that we haven't moved it from aspirations to activism. And so in that respect, but there will be no recolonization of Africa. In terms of either soft power influence of China or resource, even just resource ownership of foreign companies, do you have any concerns about that? Yes, like I said, there's geopolitical intervention. And sometimes it's driven by greed, greed for resources. Sometimes it's driven internally by, again, my power and self-gain and whatnot, corruption and all of that. So that's sometimes part of it. And that exists within countries and exists in partnership between countries. But I mean, we have to take responsibility on why we have not grown up in such a way that we don't need French military support. Let's support the development of our own armies. You know, that's where we need to support. But not so much armies, let's build the economies first so we don't have to have too much money spent on armies. And did you want to share anything about your experiences talking with members of the U.S. Congress about the Ebola crisis or since then? Well, let me say that I'm proud to have had a very strong bipartisan relationship. We want to hear the juicy stuff, right? We want to hear it all. No, I'm very serious about that. That we've had that, it has enabled me to have the kind of cooperation that we were able to get for Liberia through legislative support because of that. And I think all our countries should work in that manner. When it comes to China, because there's always the question about China, China has a different approach to development. China has the big step approach. Build big football arenas, football stadiums, big, big. Yeah, they do really benefit everybody. They believe in big infrastructure, build the rate rules in the schools and all. But those have a place also in development, it's needed. That's why you see countries still want it. On the other hand, we do know that when it comes to the social services like health, education, I mean, those are the bedrock anyway of improvement in any society. And so, but those things are not quick fixes. At China has quick fixes. Five years, you may get a big railway. You need 20 years to get quality education. And so, how can we plan the approaches and the assets of both instead of seeing it as, well, we get into a situation where there's so opposite as a fight for that. And I don't, I know, just imagine, just imagine if we could get the major powers of the world to agree that they'll have a cooperative endeavor when it comes to development in the South and that the resources could be pulled from each into a common pool with the right conditionalities and the allocation that's fair and just to the need and the abilities of the country's own effort. Just think if we had that, how much we could develop, we could develop the infrastructure in Africa that would enable something, you know, 800 million people in Africa don't have electricity. How are we going to respond to that? It's very difficult. So this is why we really need to get, we need to get back, we need to get them back, back this cooperation to find a way to get it back. We need political will on the part of everybody. Political will, that's, can you hear me okay? Yeah. Yes. Jill Shooker, I'm a counselor for UNESCO here in the US and I'm going to try a trifecta which hopefully will be quick. First on the technology piece on AI, I'm curious if you have thoughts as to whether you think the question of international leadership and institutions, if that can be led by the UN successfully or should there be a different kind of institution that can reach the digitalization that's needed in Africa. Your comments on democracy and global security. The issue of coups that are taking place seemingly frequently right now in Africa. I'm just wondering what your perspective is on why that seems to be happening with more frequency almost back to the 60s. And with that, the third question is, you were saying you, Africans need to be able to, I believe you said, to focus more on themselves in terms of security. And I'm wondering what you think about the force that's going to Haiti and whether you think that's appropriate. Thank you so much. I'm going to help you with those questions. That's my best. Yes, so the first was about AI and whether the UN is an appropriate international institution to deal with the challenges of AI globally or if we need a different kind of global institution. I really don't know. Well, I know that I don't know much about AI. I don't feature intelligence. I don't. And I wonder if we all in the world know enough about and accept those that are who are technically strong in AI. As a matter of fact, I see some fear in the growth of AI as I see it take away from the human endeavor. So, but will we need a specialized invitation to respond to it? Maybe so. But I do hope we will see the institutions we have now re-energize themselves and reinvent themselves and come back to the area where they are cooperating to be excess the existential threats that we face now. That many of the less developed countries have no capacity to understand or to be able to manage it. This sort of relates to your earlier point about inclusion and then I think we'll take a final question because we're leading to the end here. But you talked about more people being able to express their voices in these international institutions and I think part of the challenge right now and part of the reason there's a lot of skepticism about institutions responding to problems like artificial intelligence, like the United Nations responding to artificial intelligence is that people see some of the harms and they see some of these problems very up close and personal in their lives and they see something like the UN is very far away from their lives. Is there something in your recommendations that would help bridge the gap between people on these larger international institutions? I think inclusion, inclusion of people at the national level would need to move away from the centralized power and authority into building on the periphery, at the mayor level, at community levels and really those are really the front responders. In the health, that's what we find of community health workers. COVID-19, it was community workers. They're not given sufficient support, sufficient compensation, sufficient recognition. Being able to build the places where people can have town hall discussion not just when there's campaign, then campaign, you get a lot of town hall discussion. But as a regular means of understanding, UN decisions, African Union and other regional institutions decisions, being able to have places where people understand them and know them so that when you ask about a UN institution, most persons in the community, particularly in rural areas, will not even know about it because there's not enough opportunity to involve them, to know what it is for them to, even if they cannot make the decisions because they don't have the capacity and understanding to make the decision. But with their knowledge, they can have more ownership and more ownership will bring more self endeavor. You know, because talk about the coup d'etat, I will ask what was mentioned. The coup d'etat became because it started, through terrorism was not responded to, in security arrangements. It is not the security decision, the security council that can really prevent, prevent something from happening. You've got to have security bodies that are equipped, that are empowered at the regional level to be able to deal with that. Representation at the global level, yes, is good because more voices with diversity in knowledge, diversity in action is good. Being able to shift from, you know, peacekeeping forces, to forces of conflict prevention, so that you don't have to spend so much money responding to crisis, if you can use less money, preventing crisis. So it's trying to reframe the whole global agenda, I think that we need to spend more time on. Just a small task and I'm gonna give the final question to you here and please tell us your name. So I'm Ben Delt and I work here at New America. We have some online questions that are coming in, so I'll just keep this very brief. So one question is, are most of the reforms and changes that are being discussed here, do they rely on good governance and competent leaders? And if that's not the case, are you not essentially throwing good money after bad? Yeah, that's correct. Sounds like what she was saying. No, it's true, that's no denying that, it's true. We've reached the end of our, but I do wanna ask, I wanna just abuse the moderator role for a second and ask you to tell us, I think you've given us a lot of areas of concern in terms of the state of the world order and I think many of us wake up, if not struggle to fall asleep because of our concerns about current global affairs. What's the single most hopeful thing that you see happening in terms of world changing responses to these challenges? Five letters. W-O-M-E-N. No, seriously, I do believe women and youths have been the marginalized groups in society simply because that the way it's always been that things are dominated by men, you know, the sergeant. So I think you see a movement toward more opportunities, more equity for women, more educated, more knowledge, more demands and things for women and for youth. And I think unless we turn that around so that we find these two groups allow much more of a say in decision making at both national and international level. And I ask you to just look at the, you know, look at the results and the reports that we get and see where, where, when women lead, women have a little bit of a different approach, preservation of human life, empathy for others, trying to find means for bridging differences. You know, I think, but that's not to say that one wants to say women will rule the world. I wish it would happen, but it won't. But I think if we have more women participation in every aspect of national and global decisions and they have a say in leadership, not just as tokenism, you know, but in leadership that I think you'll find a more peaceful and more balanced world. Thank you. You've certainly blazed a trail there, not just for Africa, but for the world. And thank you so much for being here for this conversation and traveling all the way from Liberia to share your insights with us today. And thank you everyone for being here. Thank you.