 Good evening. I am an expert so I will talk to you about what I call the Arab Awaknings. You know, today we see similar historical transformations taking place in the Middle East to what we saw in 1848, in Europe or in 1988 in the Soviet bloc. What they tell us is that people matter, fundamentally people matter. What is so incredible is that this is a transformation which is happening right in front of us. By and large, it is happening without exception in the Middle East. You know, they used to say that in the Arab world, Arabs don't do democracy, well they do and they've emphatically proven that in 2011. What they have in common is what the other people had in common in the generations before them in other parts of the world. People want the greatest say in their lives. Though the change was coming, we didn't know when. Certainly in this rapidly growing region of 350 million people, it was right for change. Did you know that from 1980 to 2000, the rate of growth was half a percent a year in this part of the world. In fact, countries industrialized no more from 1970 than they did in 2007. There was rampant corruption. We know that happens in other parts of the world. That eroded the legitimacy of their leaders. There were repressive police states, six states of emergencies in this part of the world in the 23 Arab states that we call the Arab region. And overall average unemployment was something like 15 percent and the rest of the world, six percent. These factors and others put in sense of humiliation into people. These regimes treated their people not necessarily as citizens, but who could meaningfully participate, but as people unworthy of that role. Now, all that's changing. And now the real potential for regeneration. There is an Arab society's renaissance that is going on in front of us. And that is being led by the majority of the people in this region, the young. Did you know that some 60 percent of the population is under the age of 25? It is the youngest population in the world. It's also increasingly well-educated, worldly, connected and politically engaged. Imagine the entrepreneurial potential of these young people who do not want to see the world as it was. They want to help create what it will become. Why is it different this time around? Revolutions are not new to the Middle East in the 18th and 19th century. Truly popular revolution, the Anada or renaissance took place, something called the Arab Awakens. Of course, in the mid-1920th century, we saw the surge of Arab nationalism, which many thought was a panacea for the sense of humiliation that people felt from the colonial experience. But these revolutions featured relatively narrow elites. This is why they failed to deliver. The difference this time around is the non- ideological bottom-up nature of these revolutions and the society in which they're based. The society which is now looking for greater justice, for freedom, for dignity and prosperity. It is the people who are creating new playing fields for their societies based on universal democratic values. Let me warn you though, and many of you say this guy is being too optimistic. Yes, we are seeing the process of transformation in the Middle East in Europe and in the former Soviet Union we see just in this century how difficult and drawn out and tortuous that process can be. It's a transformational moment though on a scale where there are big, big dangers around the corner. The divisions of the colonial era, independence and divisions, need to be fundamentally reimagined in this part of the world, the sectarian divisions. We know this is a mosaic of people, a mosaic of people who incidentally have lived together for centuries together, but where rivalries and divisions are now coming up in places like, of course Iraq, but now in Syria. They're dire economic conditions. In fact the conditions have got worse. There will be a crisis of expectations where people are frustrated and eager and impatient for change in their lives. Therefore the challenge of forging strong, viable and cohesive states will be the overriding cause of the coming period, and it may get worse. It may get more difficult before it gets easier. Who should then lead these transformations? In my view, the region doesn't need icons. It needs doers. It needs leaders and highly competent people who are good at what they do. And they're there. They're all around us. I've seen it as I've traveled around the Arab world in this current period. People who can inspire and are inspiring a common sense of purpose. These people are emerging now from the ground up. I can't tell you the young, brave people I met in Beirut who are now directly driving the revolution in Syria, or the people in Egypt that we've come across and put together in study groups. In the long run, the Arab revolutions should see the closing of the gap between the rulers and the ruled, between the citizen and the state, as the state is being made anew. Before the gap was filled with police repression, economic payoffs, fear and managed social divisions, today it must be filled by a new politics. And this is key. A new politics and by institutions that genuinely reflect and represent society as a whole. This is something the leaderships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are having to understand. They represent not just a particular country of followers, but a whole country where religiosity is now becoming more individualized, whilst it's also part of the community. And let me just finish by finally saying that an important element of the process of this transformation that we're seeing is the establishment of national dialogues for state building involving all levels of society. Discussing constitutions, the delivery of basic services, education, the role of religion. These are frozen societies where debate has now again become not a taboo subject for which you could be in trouble, but which is now celebrated. And we have to support that. It's important the role of civil society, important the greater transparency in government where citizens make more informed choices based on the technology and the information that they have to hand. Let me finish by just saying that there was one particular person that I met in just who came out of Syria. And he said to me, you know, the thing that we fear the most is that these revolutions come to an end. We breathe a different air and we won't stop until they're done. Thank you very much.