 Good afternoon. Welcome to the global launch of the World Justice Project's annual Rule of Law Index 2020 edition. It's hot off the press today. This annual rule of law index has become a touchstone, an invaluable tool of comparative analysis for the global rule of law community. Today we're broadcasting from the headquarters of the United States Institute of Peace. I'm David Yong. I'm a vice president here at USIP. I lead USIP's Center for Applied Conflict Transformation. This center houses all of the thematic peace building practices at USIP, and these practices include governance, justice, and security, which is very deeply involved in the rule of law work. The United States Institute of Peace was founded by the US Congress in 1984. We're a national, nonpartisan, independent institute. We're dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and indeed essential to US and global security. Our vision is a simple one, a world without violent conflict. We pursue this vision by empowering front-line peace builders in conflict zones with the tools, knowledge, and training they need to build a just and sustainable peace. We're honored here at USIP to be hosting this global launch of the annual rule of law index for a second time. We're grateful for our partnership with our colleagues at the World Justice Program. A special thanks to their board chair, William Hubbard, and their executive director, Betsy Anderson. Our two organizations are partners in this endeavor because we both believe that the rule of law is a key contributor to a country's transition from fragility to resilience. We also believe that the rule of law is an integral element of the foundation of a just and sustainable peace. We're happy that all of you could join us for this webcast. Please engage this conversation on Twitter. Please follow the handles at USIP or at VWJP, T-H-E-W-J-P, and if you're tweeting please use hashtag R-O-L index. Our forum today will take place in two parts. The first part is a set of short individual presentations about the rule of law index and in particular the 2020 findings. We will have three speakers, Ted Pecone, the World Justice Project's chief engagement officer. Delighted to have Ted on the stage. He and I have worked on promoting rule of law internationally for maybe even three decades. Next will be Joe Foti who's the chief research officer at the Open Government Partnership. Thanks Joe for standing in today for your CEO, Sanjay Pradhan. Sanjay wasn't feeling well today. We wish him well at home. Hi Sanjay, thanks to you and your team for the great work that OGP continues to do. And our third presenter will be Alejandro Ponce, who's the World Justice Project's chief research officer. Alejandro continues to be the main driver of the creation and production of this important index every year. The second part of our forum will take place in the format of a panel. We'll have three panelists. World Justice Project's executive director Betsy Anderson, Professor Margaret Lewis from Seton Hall University's Law School, and USIP colleague Maria Stefan who heads up USIP's team on nonviolent action. The panel will be moderated by another USIP colleague, Philippe Le Roux-Martin. Philippe is the head of our governance justice and security team here at USIP. So I want to give a special thanks to the lead organizers for today's forum and webcast to Ted Pocone and Joel Martinez from the World Justice Project and to four USIP colleagues, Philippe, Debbie Leong-Fenton, Danielle Gray, and Stephen Ruder. So on behalf of all of the colleagues at our two organizations, I want to thank you for joining us in this somewhat unusual format. I know it's probably a bit like watching March Madness basketball in an empty arena, but because of this, we're so happy that you could nevertheless join us and be part of this important discussion about the rule of law and peace building. So now I'd like to welcome to the stage Ted Pocone. Thank you, David. And good afternoon, everyone. Ted Pocone, chief engagement officer from the World Justice Project. And on behalf of our board, our officers and our staff, I would like to welcome and thank you all for tuning in today to learn about the latest findings from the World Justice Project rule of law index, our effort to measure the rule of law worldwide. We owe a special thanks to the United States Institute of Peace for co-sponsoring and hosting this event. We are great admirers of the Institute's efforts to promote peace around the world, and it is a real honor to be working with you all to disseminate our latest rule of law findings. We would also like to thank the many supporters of the World Justice Project rule of law index, including our league of law firms and law departments. For those of you who are new to the World Justice Project, we are an independent, multi-disciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law around the world. We do this in several ways. First, by collecting and analyzing original, independent rule of law data presented in the rule of law index, which you will hear a lot more about in just a few moments. As well as producing thematic reports on key rule of law topics like our global insights on access to justice and our Mexico states rule of law index, which measures rule of law performance in each of Mexico's 32 states. Second, we support research, scholarship, and teaching about the importance of the rule of law, its relationship to development and effective strategies to strengthen it. And third, we are building an engaged global network of policymakers, experts, and activists through strategic convenings and knowledge exchanges, coordinated campaigns, and locally led initiatives to advance the rule of law. We are particularly proud of our biennial World Justice Forum and invite you to please save the date for our next forum to be held May 25th to 28th, 2021 in the Hague, the Netherlands. One might ask, why should we care about the rule of law? We know from research and experience that effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease more effectively, and protects people from injustices large and small. It is the foundation for communities of justice, opportunity and peace. With more rule of law comes higher GDP, greater democracy in peace, and better health and education outcomes. Beyond these correlative effects, the rule of law is an indispensable principle in its own right. For it reminds us that we are all endowed with fundamental rights to human dignity and justice and that no one is above the law. For more than a decade, we've worked to promote a universal definition of the rule of law and rigorous technical indicators for measuring it. In summary, we define the rule of law as a durable system of laws, institutions, norms and community commitment that delivers for universal principles. First, everyone is accountable under the law. Second, the laws are clear, just and evenly applied. Third, the process of enacting, administering and forcing laws is open. And fourth, justice is impartial and accessible to all. To measure how these rule of law principles are experienced and perceived by the general public worldwide, we created the WJP rule of law index drawing on surveys carried out in 128 countries and jurisdictions in every region of the world. The index is a diagnostic tool for identifying a country's strengths and weaknesses in areas such as fundamental rights, justice delivery, corruption, open government and effective checks and balances. It is the most comprehensive data set of its kind and it is considered the world's leading source for original data on the rule of law. It is our hope and intention that these findings will be a powerful resource for advocates, policymakers, researchers, businesses, legal professionals and others looking to improve the rule of law in their countries. Now I would like to introduce Joe Fody from the Open Government Partnership. Thank you, Joe, for stepping in and agreeing to speak today. We really appreciate it. The floor is yours. Hello, everyone. Thank you. Truly wonderful to be here with all of you. Thank you very much, Ted, for your introduction. And thanks so much to the World Justice Project for inviting me here today and for all the work that you do. So I want to talk about some sources of hope in a time of generalized despair, about rebuilding the rule of law on a time of deep citizen distrust and in institutions and continued threats to democracy. Let me begin with the story of my friend and colleague, Aiden Ayakuse from Tanzania. Aiden is the director of a well-renowned Tanzanian organization called Twaweza and one of my organization's leaders. In October of 2018, Twaweza released a public opinion poll showing that President John Megafulli's popularity had declined. Four days later, his passport was seized on grounds that he had violated the Official Data Act, which created a state monopoly on the collection and publication of data. He was immediately cut off from travel to international events, from meeting with overseas partners, and from sharing ideas on how to improve government. A year and a half later, the investigations are still going on, with no end in sight and no transparency as to the process to restore his passport. We mark his absence at our international meetings with an empty chair. Aiden's story is a story of information suppression, of curved civil liberties, of abuses of power, of rising populism and authoritarianism. And Aiden's story is by no means the worst, nor is it unique. Rather, it's all too common story among those who strive to make their governments work for them rather than for the officials. Indeed, the last several years have seen an erosion at the foundations of how we govern ourselves and how we are governed. For the first time in decades, the rule-based government, democratically governed societies that we have struggled for for years are still under attack. I work for the Open Government Partnership. It's a global network of reformers from civil society and government across 78 countries who have agreed to make governments more transparent, accountable and participatory. We work on Open Government, but we understand that it's part of a bigger matrix of issues within rule of law. And when we're founded by eight prominent democracies in 2011, perhaps we assume too much. We assumed that people would be free to think for themselves, to speak their minds freely, to join together and to act freely to voice their concerns to their governments. We had assumed that economies grew, so too with the strength of their institutions and their checks and balances. We had assumed that the voices of citizens would mean less corruption, better public services and more trust. We never thought that it would be easy or without a struggle, but the road has not been as straight as we had hoped. In too many countries, people like Aiden have not been able to speak their minds. The world has become more dangerous for journalists and activists, and this is even true in many of the founding countries of our partnership. Yet we still believe in the power of open, accountable and democratic governance. Indeed, the evidence as Ted was laying out of their effectiveness grows day by day, but the trend towards personal rule, the rule of man over the rule of law, has cast a shadow over this growing body of evidence. But this is not a time for us to despair, and I'll let you in on a little secret, which is there are reformers everywhere. Even in some of the most closed countries and closed spaces where you work, there are reformers in civil society and government working to improve the rule of law. At the Open Government Partnership, RIE work or OGP, we are seeing more courageous reformers working towards more responsible, more responsive, accountable and inclusive systems as a countervailing force to this distrust. Across all of our countries, government reformers and civil society groups have co-created more than 4,000 reform commitments. Let me share a few examples of where I think it can help to restore the rule of law in their societies, one incremental reform at a time. So the first area is transparency, which is covered by the rule of law index. It's a critical element to ensure more responsive governments. Reformers everywhere are empowering citizens with meaningful information. To take one example, in Uruguay, the government's Atu Servicio portal publishes vital health care information, enabling citizens to track their health care choices, tracking costs, comparing providers, viewing treatment times online. But this is just not enough by itself, this transparency. That's a lesson we've learned. It requires accountability and more importantly, access to justice. Let's say that I'm a Uruguayan citizen. I use Atu Servicio to help me find a doctor who's going to help me with my medical problem. I do my research. I go select a doctor. I go see them. They provide me the treatment and when it comes time for payment, they ask me to pay far more than the portal has indicated that I should pay. I know that it's unfair. I know they're not telling the truth. At that moment, I have no choice but to pay. So what use is transparency or openness if at this point I feel like I've been cheated? I have no way of holding the doctor to account. What use is an open data portal if the legal system is too complicated or unfair to let me try to deal with this issue? It becomes a legal issue. And so this is where open government requires the rule of law and as the rule of law index and the recent access to justice report from the World Justice Project show, many people with unresolved justice issues just don't even realize that they have a legal issue. And if they do, they often continue to have them be unresolved either because of the lack of legal help or because the institutions that provide that justice are unfair. These problems can fester, become much bigger, become life problems, and they can become, they're in fact more acute for marginalized populations. So today we'll hear on whether there's been progress in this area in civil and criminal justice. And for us, having the data that WJP produces is really essential because it helps move general complaints and general ideas to specific reforms that governments can take in the next few years. And indeed, we're seeing a growth in effort to address justice problems beyond just transparency. But beyond the problems of individuals, it's not just that individuals have problems, but the institutions themselves must be function. And while Uruguay is a good example of a well-governed country that's been seeing decades of improvement, in too many places the institutions are just not capable of providing just outcomes. And this again is where the data and the action can be more promising. So in OGP, we're working to move contracts into broad daylight. In Ukraine, to tackle the capture of public procurement by powerful interests, young reformers have leveraged OGP to expand and enhance engagement on some of the contracting platforms, prozoro and doorzoro. Before contracts were handed out in backroom deals, and now they're disclosing open data so citizens can search them and, importantly, report suspect transactions. But more importantly, this oversight is done with the involvement of investigative journalists, private sector organizations, and civil society organizations. The rule of law index helps us to identify concerns across these countries and helps identify where we might be able to expand this type of reform to other places. But there's a third area, which is civic space. Even as evidence for open government begins to strengthen and help public services, limiting corruption, state capture, there's a more fundamental and even more difficult area. We started talking with a story about Aden, who's in trouble for his opinion poll. When we begin, like I said, we assumed that colleagues like Aden would be able to collect information, share data, and process that data and publish it free of restriction. In many cases, unfortunately, we were wrong. And some have called this a problem of fundamental rights, other civic space, other's basic freedoms, civil liberties. Whatever term we describe it with is the capability of people to shape their own futures, individually or collectively, with minimal interference. By whatever name, we think that OGP and World Justice Project together can help begin to tackle the issue of improving civic space. We can provide a means of implementation. We and OGP, that is, can provide a means of implementation to help secure concrete reforms. But we need WJP's honest assessment of where the gaps are and what governments can do to help empower our network of reformers. So we can't do any of this, of course, as I said, without evidence and data for this, for our activities, the data is paramount. So we need to know what the problems are at the country level, where the gaps are, which policies are the gaps, and what kind of problems people are facing and what they're experiencing as they try to resolve them. Without that data, what happens is governments engage only in their comfort areas. Without the data, the problems of individual activists or individual citizens remain their individual problems rather than social phenomenon that policy reform can tackle. And this is the strength of the World Justice Project. And hopefully, over the next 18 months, we've been collaborating over the last 18 months, and we will continue to collaborate. Just two quick examples of how helpful this has been, and we look forward to it as, for last year's OGP Global Report, our first ever, we use the rule of law index to look at issues as specific as police harassment during public assemblies, and whether this was prevalent in OGP countries. And we found that perceptions of this were in fact greater than number of interference with professional NGOs. We've collaborated on access to justice more specifically, and now we have five and a growing number of members of OGP countries trying to tackle the issues pointed out by WJP. So we will continue to collaborate in the future, including on issues of criminal justice and open justice, as well as how the justice sector can promote rule of law through their open government work. So in closing, I'm sure that all the news we hear today will not be good news, unfortunately. Maybe very little of it will be. But I also know that, at least among our network and among WJP's partners, the resolve for reform is as strong as ever. Perhaps not at the tops of governments, then the middling ranks of today's activists who become tomorrow's reformers. And work like the rule of law index helps us map the way forward to hear from both citizens and from experts how they experience the rule of law or its absence. We look forward to working even more closely together, going forward and extend our warmest congratulations to the World Justice Project on today's launch of the rule of law index. So now I will introduce Alejandro Ponce, World Justice Project's chief research officer, who will be walking through some of the key findings of the 2020 World Justice Project rule of law index. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Joe. It is a pleasure to present the findings of the 2020 rule of law index report. The report that you have in your hands and that you can look on the website is the result of assessments of more than 130,000 people and more than 4,000 legal practitioners in 128 countries around the world. It summarizes the perceptions and experiences on dealing with the governments, the police, the courts, the perceptions about accountability, openness, violence, or their experiences. Let me repeat, 130,000 people and 4,000 legal experts who contribute their expertise, who contribute their views and the status of the rule of law and that our team collected, checked, and aggregated into the rankings and scores that you will see today. The information that we collect is organized into eight factors, constraints on government power, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, ordinance security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice, criminal justice, and an additional one, informal justice, recognizing that in many countries is an important form of justice. This indicator reflects two basic ideas that the law imposes limits on the exercise of power by authorities, but also that the state limits the actions of the members of society and has duties towards its citizens so that the public interest is served, that violence is controlled, and that individuals have access to mechanisms to solve their problems and redress their grievances. These indicators are further disaggregated into 44 subindicators. The subindicators are presented in the report that it's online as well as on the website. This year's report includes 128 countries and jurisdictions in total. We have included two new countries as compared to the previous report. We have included Kosovo and Gambia. The assessments, the rankings and scores are the product of aggregated more than 500 variables drawn from the assessments of 130,000 household interviews and 4,000 expert surveys in 128 countries that represent approximately 94% of the world's population. Let me now pass to some of the findings. First, before going to the global results, I would like to invite you to check the results in our website, where you can find first the rankings, tables, these table shows, for example, the scores in a scale between zero and one for all the 128 countries where one signifies higher adherence to the rule of law. You will be able to see the scores organized by region or by income group. You will also be able to see the scores organized by factor, so for each one of the eight factors that we measure. And more importantly, you will be able to see the scores for each one of the 128 countries. In each one of the country profiles, you will be able to see the scores, the rankings, the income group rankings, as well as the regional rankings. And importantly, the scores for each one of the 44 sub factors that are included in the report and the index. You will be able to see as well the changes in each one of the factors from last year to this year, as well as whether the changes were statistically significant or not. Let me turn now to the global results of the report. Before going into the report, into the global findings, I would like to emphasize that we have a lot of different stories when we look at the country specific results. And I invite you to look at the country specific results. As Joe was saying, we still find a lot of stories of success in many individual countries. And it's important to look at those that countries are doing and to monitor their progress as well. First, I want to go to the top and bottom performance. The top performers in this year report are Denmark, Norway, and Finland. And the bottom three performers are Democratic Republic of Congo, Cambodia, and Venezuela. These countries performed the same way as they did in 2019. Next, we turn to the countries that improved the most. In the map, you will be able to see just how several countries actually improved by several percentage points, most notably Malaysia, that increased by 5.2% and Ethiopia, that increased by 5.3%, driven mainly by changes in constraints on government power and in fundamental rights, and in the case of Malaysia, as well as changes in regulatory enforcement. We can also see changes in the countries that perform or that show the most improvement and the countries that show the most decline in each one of the regions of the world. For the improvers on top Malaysia, Ethiopia, we can also see how El Salvador and Afghanistan showing important improvements. On the other side, we see countries that show significant decline, such as Iran, Cameroon, Egypt, and Brazil. This chart plots the status of the rule of law, just how the rule of law is changing from the previous year on one axis and then in the other axis, how it changed in the last five years. What we can see there is that most of the countries that show a decline in rule of law this year also show a decline in the previous years. So, importantly, however, you will be able to see that in the left corner. Now, importantly, as well, is that you will see that countries that actually experienced a decline in last year, many countries actually have experienced improvement over the previous year or the other way around. Countries that have showed the clients over the previous year have been able to show improvements over the last year, which shows that changes in the rule of law are not necessarily monotonic over time. This picture shows the scores, how the score, the changes in the score over time plot against the score in 2020. What you will be able to see is that most countries or more countries declined in the rule of law performance than improved. Overall, 55 countries declined, 40 countries improved and the rest remained unchanged. This has happened the fact that more countries are declining than improving for the third year in a row. When viewing, when looking at the drivers of these changes, we see a very interesting picture. First, the drivers of these declines are mainly constraints on government power, fundamental rights and absence of corruption. In these areas, more countries declined than improved during the previous year. This pattern actually is something that we have seen over the years. In these areas, when you look at the shaded area, more countries have declined than improved over the last five years, with the largest decrease in the area of fundamental rights with approximately 65% of countries have shown a decline over the last five years. On the other side of the spectrum, we see that this year, more countries improved and declined in the area of civil justice. And when looking at the five-year picture, we see that in the area of regulatory enforcement, more countries improved than declined by a significant margin. In the report, as well as in the website, you will be able to see the changes from one year to the next over the last five years. As I was mentioning before, what you will be able to see is that changes are not constant, changes are not monotonic. So countries that are declining now do not necessarily decline, did not necessarily decline yesterday. There is a lot of variation and a lot of it is coming actually for changes in the political regimes. I was mentioning before the area of constraints on government power. Let me go a little bit into detail on some of the countries that experienced most decline in this area. So most importantly, Egypt is a country that show probably the biggest decline this year. However, there are other countries that experience as well significant declines, such as Brazil. When we look at five years, we also see that the countries are not necessarily the same, but there are also countries that have continually been deteriorating over the years. Importantly, countries such as China, Poland, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt and Nicaragua. This is a picture that is similar to the one that I show about the rule of law, but for factor one, constraints on government power. The picture here is more pronounced than the one that I showed before. Here, the countries that declined this year are more likely to have declined during the previous year, which is the countries at the quadrant in the left. When you look at the table at the right, what we will see is the scores of the countries and the distribution of countries over the years. So what we have seen is over the years, there are more countries with lower scores and fewer countries with higher scores over the years. Now let me go to some of the changes in various regions of the world. First, rule of law changes in Europe. So in Europe, the rule of law remains still strong. And when we look at larger, larger time horizons, the European countries have actually shown improvements in rule of law over the year. However, last year, half of the European countries or half of the countries in Western Europe showed a decline in rule of law, with countries such as the UK, France, Romania, Greece, Portugal showing declines of more than 1% over the previous year. Importantly, two countries that I mentioned before, such as Hungary and Poland have shown important declines over the year, both in rule of law and each one of the components, such as constraints on foreign power and fundamental rights. Turning into Asia, as I was mentioning before, Malaysia is the country that improved the most over the previous year, followed by Indonesia. On the other side of the spectrum, China and Mongolia were the countries that declined the most in the region. Looking into more detail at a comparison between China and Hong Kong, we see a contrasting picture. China declined the previous year by 1.5% and when we look at the longer time horizon, China has declined in their performance of constraints on foreign power by more than 20%. In contrast, Hong Kong declined by less than 1% and has shown strong rule of law and minor declines over the years in the areas of constraints on foreign power and fundamental rights. Finally, going to Latin America, we see that the big countries in Latin America experience a decline in rule of law, significantly Brazil and Mexico that experience declines of more than 2% over the previous year. There are copies available and the report is available as PDF and online. And importantly, just we have a new website where you can see some of the results and you can look at the data. We have interactive data. You can explore the rule of law performance for the 228 countries. Look at the findings that I just went through and compare the different scores. Look at the country profiles. Look at the changes over time. Select a country and so on. Thank you very much. With these, I'm going to give the floor to Philip Leroumartin so he can moderate the panel that we have right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alejandro, for this presentation. Good afternoon, everyone. I want to welcome everyone. My name is Philip Leroumartin. I'm the director for Governance, Justice and Security here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. I'd like to welcome everyone who is watching us online right now. What we want to do this afternoon is to essentially proceed in two steps. We want, first, I'll be moderating a discussion with panelists and experts where we will take a bit of time to dig into some of the specific insights and trends that we are seeing in the index this year. And then we want to move on to a question and answers period. And so we invite you online to post your comments on the chat feature on YouTube. And then please do so while we go through the discussion and we invite you to post your questions so that by the time we reach the question and answer period we can answer some of those questions that you've posted. So let's get started right away. I want to turn to my panelists. I have the pleasure to welcome to USIP three people who have particularly important perspectives and sources of expertise to help us analyze some of the insights of the reports today. So I'm joined first and foremost by my colleague Maria Stefan. Maria is the director for the nonviolent action program here at USIP. I'm also joined by Maggie Lewis, Margaret Lewis. Margaret is a professor of law at Seton Hall Law School. Maggie, thank you for joining us. And then Betsy Anderson. Betsy is the executive director of WJP. So thank you for joining me today. Let's jump right into it. And I wanted to ask the first question and to get the conversation started by asking the first question to Maria. And to preface the question, Maria, we've seen in the key findings that Alejandro presented to us a number of very interesting insights. One that caught my attention is that 43% of the countries that were surveyed have witnessed a decline in an important indicator, which is the fundamental rights indicators. And then we've also seen that 66% of those countries have witnessed a decline with respect to this indicator in the last five years. And this, for me, caught my attention when thinking about your field because this indicator covers fundamental rights like freedom of opinion, the freedom of assembly, and there seems to be a suggestion there in the data that there is a closing of the civic space worldwide. And I know that you just recently co-authored a piece in which you explain why today's protests are somehow easier to organize and to put together but somehow more difficult or less, more difficult to succeed or less successful. So I was wondering when looking at the data whether these two things are somehow tied. Are we, so my question to you is, are we really seeing a reduction or a closing of the civic space? And if so, how does that have an impact on nonviolent action and its strategy as well as its tactics? Well, thanks very much, Philippe. Yes, as we've heard, there does seem to be this unfortunate continuation of authoritarian resurgence globally and authoritarian practices, including restrictions on assembly, speech and association. We've seen crackdowns on activists who engage in peaceful protests around the world, including in many of the places that you mentioned where there had been or Alejandro had mentioned where there had been steady declines in Nicaragua, Brazil, places like Zimbabwe. So we're definitely seeing an uptick on the kind of government crackdowns of dissent around the world. But I think what is particularly noteworthy for me is that these declines in constraints on government power and declines in fundamental rights are steady. They've been accumulating over time. This didn't just happen overnight. And that kind of brings, I think reinforces an important point about, you know, we're not seeing the onset of authoritarianism overnight. It's kind of this steady erosion of democratic norms of authoritarian practices that start with dehumanizing opponents that involve, you know, criminalizing dissenters that involve, you know, going after political opponents using spurious legal means, attacking journalists. So these are kind of steady practices that I think we're seeing that are deepening in many countries around the world. But also it's not just the physical civic space that seems to be shrinking. It's also the cyberspace. And I think this is an important development is that we're starting to see this export. As Jonathan and I mentioned in the article, we're seeing an export in cyber repression tools in surveillance. And so it's becoming easier in many ways to mobilize online. But also governments are getting very savvy and sophisticated at cracking down using these various tools and exporting it like China is exporting to different countries, including democracies around the world. So I think it's both the physical and the cyberspace that seems to be shrinking. But at the same time, we see this resurgence of protests, so people pushing back on these attempts to close civic space. Thank you. Thanks, I wanted to turn and you just mentioned China. I wanted to turn to Maggie and ask the following question. When we look at the report and its findings for the Asia and the Pacific region, the report shows that there are a number of countries that have witnessed a decline in the rule of law and be it Australia, Mongolia, Singapore, Hong Kong and then more generally China as well are identified in the index as countries in the region that have witnessed a certain decline. So you follow China particularly closely. And in our previous discussions on this issue, you pointed to the fact that when we think about China and the rule of law, it is particularly important to adopt what you call, I think, a multi-layered lens and that they are different layers at play and that are helpful in understanding the situation or the state of the rule of law in China. So can you tell us more about what you mean by these different lenses and what these sorry, these different layers and what these different layers tell us about the rule of law in China? Well, thanks for having me and I'm not bringing the good news today. So I'm sorry, I'm sorry for that. But thank you for giving this opportunity to focus on China. It's the only country specific presentation. I think we need to start looking first domestically within China. I think what's happening within China's borders. And that's been a concern for the rule of law for many years when I first went to China in 1995. That was the time that you couldn't nail Jello to the wall and WTO and the internet was going to change everything. And there was a tremendous sense of optimism and I don't think that's completely gone. There's still a civil society that is trying so hard against all odds. And so I don't want to act like the ship is sailed and there's nothing, you know, there's no hope because there certainly is. But while we were used to those of us who work with China, seen domestically cycles of repression and relaxation. What we've seen in the last really decade is continuing repression. And I think some of this can be traced back to the Olympics when you think of the surveillance technology in 2008 and that was China's chance and Beijing really showed or started showing the world what it could do technologically with authoritarianism. And so with China today, you know, and particularly what I do working with lawyers and law professors, their space to even voice muted criticisms, you know, not directly confronting the party state and calling for a fundamental change in government, but even more tone down criticism. So for example, now, of course, with the coronavirus, we've seen this so much where there's very little space to even think about saying that what Xi Jinping is doing is anything but fantastic. And whistleblowers like Dr. Li Wenliang who tried to bring attention to this issue much earlier. And his voice was totally squelched. And of course, you know, he unfortunately was he died because of the virus. So domestically, it's a very hard time. But what's changed from even 10 years ago is that increasingly we're looking at China's influence beyond its borders. And Hong Kong is a particular situation because Hong Kong is technically part of the PRC. It's under the basic law, it has its own legal structure, which is supposed to remain largely unchanged for the next 30 years. But of course, we've seen a very, very difficult time in the last year. And it's kind of amazing that we're in a few months be to the one year anniversary of the massive protests that came from the anti extradition law. So I think Hong Kong is a special situation because it is technically part of the PRC. Then you look at a next layer out and China is increasingly having bilateral relationships that a lot of this is around the Belt and Road Initiative, the BRI Xi Jinping's signature initiative to have China have greater influence economically and build these connectivity through sea routes through land routes. And that has tremendous infrastructure investment in a number of countries around the world. Some of this, you know, it's good that countries have infrastructure. We want them to have trains. We want them to have roads. But right now what I think some scholars are doing that is so important is really drilling down to see what does that mean for those countries? What are they coming with that? What is the sort of practices with respect to labor? What sort of debt are these countries taking on? Is that debt on terms that they can handle? And so those bilateral relationships are also something which is increasingly under scrutiny because when the money shows up from Beijing it's not coming with and we expect you to give your workers a voice and we expect there to be dispute resolution that's free and fair. So it doesn't have some of the package that when we look back to like the Washington Consensus we would have hoped would come along. And then even a star layer beyond that multilaterally China's become a much bigger player. I'm particularly concerned about the UN Human Rights Council and we just had China's universal periodic review which involved a number of countries saying positive things about what China has done in the last five years. And we also had some very critical voices both from some countries like Australia or Canada and also from civil society. But at this point not only are we not seeing as much pushback as I might like to see we're seeing China's language as far as win-win cooperation, common destiny for humankind, putting the right to development over other fundamental rights and even saying that is the fundamental right. And I am not seeing perhaps the pushback I would hope to see from the international community that Beijing's definition of human rights doesn't change the international definition of human rights. Thank you, Maggie. To stay more with our geographical focus I wanted to turn to Betsy and another point that I think the index seems to be suggesting and Alejandro mentioned that specifically in his presentation is Europe. And if you look at Western Europe we seem to be seeing an interesting dynamic in Western Europe whereas some of the top performers on the index are Western European states. But then at the same time the index seems to be suggesting or showing that approximately half of the Western European states have seen a decline in the rule of law. So Betsy I wanted to ask you if you could help us understand or analyze these specific trends. And so what is going on there and should we pay close attention to what's going on in Europe on the basis of this year's indexes findings. Thank you, Philippe. And let me join my colleagues in thanking you and USIP for this collaboration which is really a terrific partnership for WJP. This is a really interesting and important question I think as Alex mentioned and Maria underscored one of the things that we see in addition to the fact that there is this global trend of more states with declining rule of law than improving. We also see persistence in those trends particularly with respect to constraints on government powers. The third significant development that jumps out at me in this year's index is that these trends are not just where we would expect them to be in states that get labeled as authoritarian. But in fact, we are seeing these trends in all types of countries, all income groups of countries, democracies, established rule of law states, as well as those that are less free. And what you have described as happening in Europe is really maybe Exhibit A. Of that and is quite concerning. A for the rule of law in Europe in those countries, particularly in Poland and Hungary where it is most egregious, but also in a number of other states as well. It's also, I think, very concerning for the broader neighborhood, the EU accession states and other partners of Europe and that it might engage in its diplomacy. As Maggie has described, there's a bit of a global competition now about governance models. And we look to Europe to really play a leadership role it has for two decades, particularly in its neighborhood, played a very powerful role in incentivizing reform for states to join the EU or to join the European community of states. And we see that commitment, that consensus weakening within the EU and in its dialogue with its neighbors. Now, the situation in Poland and Hungary has become so acute that it has been a bit of a wake-up call in Brussels. And now you see a lot of action on that front, the development of accountability mechanisms, infringement, enforcement mechanisms, and a new rule of law monitoring mechanism that is being put in place. So that's welcome. In fact, we are to roll out our rule of law index in Brussels next week to provide this data as an input to those conversations that are very important for European states and the broader set of states that are in dialogue with Europe. So if I hear you well, it seems that it's not all bleak because we seem to be painting a rather bleak picture in a lot of the trends and the comments on the trends. But there are a number of positive things happening in the EU's attempt to institutionally respond to a number of challenges that it sees either within its own membership or outside would be one of those trends. But I wanted to focus on the bright spots and because I think it is important to focus on the bright spots and go back to Maria and ask Maria, I'm sure that in the field when you look at the field of nonviolent action and you think about the trends in the rule of law, that it's not just bad news. What are the bright spots when you look at nonviolent action and the activists and how in some cases this year it still managed to have a very positive impact on a number of issues that are important for people who care about the rule of law? Well, I think the main bright spot is that people are pushing back and we're seeing a surge of citizen-led protests and movements around the world. In fact, we're probably living in one of the most contentious times in human history with a massive uptick in the number of protests and also the number of major campaigns over the past few years. And this is happening in authoritarian states, in democracies, in backsliding democracies. Frankly, one of the most troubling trends that I gleaned from this report and also last year is that democracies are being subverted from within, that most authoritarians that arise today are elected. And then they gradually do away with fundamental rights and freedoms and that can make it very difficult for people to protest and engage and organize because it's not happening overnight. But I mean, on the one hand, last year alone in 2019, at the end of the year, we saw three heads of government who were forced to agree to step down in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Bolivia following mass protest movements in a place like Chile, which was considered an oasis of stability in Latin America, but yet where there's massive inequality, we saw protests that were triggered by an increase in subway fares that led to a dramatic spread and now the government is forced to address corruption. They're even talking about revising their constitution to make it more in line with democratic practices. And so you have these positive examples. Two of the most hopeful spots probably were the people power movements in Sudan, in Algeria. I mean, in these cases, kind of major military dictatorships were challenged successfully by unarmed civilian protesters. So I think, you know, people are pushing back all over the world and that's probably one of the bright spots. And the temptation, thanks, Marie. The temptation would be to ask Maggie about Hong Kong because I think you did not mention Hong Kong as part of your list, but let me open up the question a bit more and Maggie, feel free to talk about Hong Kong if you want, for you, what would the bright spots be for you when you think about China and the region and more generally? And I know in previous conversations that you talked about Taiwan being an illustration of what you, I think, call the beacon of hope in the region. What do you mean by this? Yeah, and Taiwan is not in the report and I hope that there will be funding available in the future to include Taiwan because it's a shot of adrenaline and hope to go there. I was just in Taiwan in January for the presidential election and it was a celebration and you had a free, fair, efficient election. We went to one of the schools where people voted, watched them as they put out the little stools for people to sit there literally while they pull out one piece of paper at a time, announcing the votes and put marks on the board. I mean, this is direct democracy and it was really touching and we had grown men in our delegation crying as parents were there with their little kids and these were parents who probably, they were born under martial law because it was until 87, 86, and really until the early 90s in the outer islands that Taiwan was under martial law and their first direct presidential election was 1996. So I think with all this backsliding and feeling like the light is kind of dimming, it's great to see a place where it really is a bright light and I think that we need to celebrate those moments and think about what's going right there. One thing that is going really right in Taiwan is about disinformation and this is of course a huge concern for every democracy. How do we get our information when we're making choices in elections? And we went to a place called the Taiwan Fact Check Center which is a non-governmental organization working with the government and trying to find out not just politically aspects that are disinformation but health claims, food safety claims, and they're actually working with Facebook and Google and if a post on Facebook has been found to be untrue, they can gray it out, put a link to a report and actually ping that report back to people who have forwarded it to explain why it's disinformation. And I think the US could learn a lot from this. How do you, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube necessarily when that bad information's out there but how do you slow down its spread? Thanks. Betsy, I wanted to give you an opportunity as well to share what are your own bright spots? When, and you have a very strong and intimate grasp of the index and its findings, where's the bright spot in the data when you look at all of this from your vantage point at WJP? Right. Well, I'm an optimist so I like this question and I am drawn immediately to the high performers and I wanna know what's going on there and I think these are cases this year that reflect some of the points made by my colleagues here Malaysia and Ethiopia, two countries where we've seen a pretty dramatic political change in the last couple of years to no small degree attributable to people power kinds of movements and bottom up accountability, which is very encouraging and that's typically what we see in the index data. Normally countries don't change very much year to year where you see a big change is when there's been a regime change. And so that's the good news. The maybe little storm cloud on the horizon is that those windows of opportunity that change is often pretty short lived and particularly countries that are emerging from sometimes decades of poor governance. There can be pent up grievances and impatience that make it difficult to govern and the opportunity to see lasting change and rule of law regimes that are sustainable is pretty narrow. And so that would be in my cautionary note is look at those places where we see real jumps in the data and opportunities for change and that's where we should be focusing and investing. So I wanted to end with you since we're looking forward and a big part of the interest in the index is to inform not only the countries themselves, the states themselves, but a number of actors who are willing to strengthen the rule of law to be able to gauge trends and indicators and then take a number of decisions as to what were to focus their efforts. So I wanted to end our discussion with you before we move to questions from our audience and ask you, according to you, where should our efforts go as we look forward on the basis of this year's results? What should we be focusing on? Well, there are lots of candidates for that but what I would suggest is if we look at the rule of law index, there are eight factors of the rule of law and the first four of those factors are all factors that go to constraints on government authority in various ways, things that the government shouldn't do. So it's constraints on government power, it's absence of corruption, it's fundamental rights, it's open government, those are the first four factors. The second four factors are more affirmative responsibilities of governments. So it's regulatory enforcement and order and security, civil justice and criminal justice. And when you look at the data over the last five years and there's a chart in the Insights booklet that Alex put on the screen there briefly that shows this over the last five years quite strikingly, we're doing much better on the second four factors than we are on the first four factors. So governments are doing better at their affirmative responsibilities than on the things that they are supposed to constrain themselves from doing. And so that would be where I think we should redouble our efforts. Look at those first four factors and think about what are the interventions, what are the tools in our toolbox that we can use to move the needle on issues like constraints on government authority? How do we build and sustain an independent judiciary? What is gonna be effective at lasting respect for fundamental rights, open government and combating corruption? And on that I would maybe put it back to you in USIP. I think this is where this institution has some real strengths in its research and analysis about what works. I think the work that you all have done on fragility in particular can be very valuable to us as we think about what can work in countries of opportunity, particularly on those first four factors. Thank you. Well, that's why we're co-hosting this and we're taking good notes of the findings of the index every year. And I can guarantee that we will continue doing this. But thanks, Betsy. I wanted to now move to the question and the question period. And I wanna again ask our audience to go on the YouTube chat function or feature on your YouTube page. And please post any comments or any questions that you have for our panelists here today. And then we will start answering those questions. I will ask Alejandro to join the panelists as well because some of your questions might be linked to some of the key findings in the report. So we've asked Alejandro to join us to be able to answer some of those questions. So let's move to question number one. Yes, this is David Yang again from USIP. Thanks to you YouTubers out there. We have quite a few questions are all good. So to facilitate a bit, I'm going to group them into groups of two or three and then pose them to all the panelists. So the first group really, they're more methodological than bleeding into political technical questions. So let me just talk about them. The first question comes from Marcelo and he's asking a methodological question about the significance of changes, whether declines or improvements of less than 1%. He asks, should these be considered significant changes or are they more like in a public opinion survey, the kind of margin of error plus or minus margin of error? That's a great question. A similar, now this gets into broader questions about the hydraulics of the index. Michelle wants to know what are the main factors that lead to positive changes in rule of law? And here I interpret to be really among the eight factors, the eight drivers, are they all co-equally weighted in the index? And then finally we get to the beginning of the profound questions of causation and a colleague from Uruguay asks on behalf of his very small country, in the data do you find over the years that small countries are successful as large countries in having good rule of law, improving rule of law? Is there something innate in small countries or in large countries that benefited in having good rule of law? So let me stop there. So I think Alejandro and maybe Betsy, you're better positioned to answer those questions. All right, thank you very much for the questions. These are very good questions. The first question about the change, many countries are changing less than 1%. That is true, the way that we present the results, we use a band. So we have been talking about countries that improve, countries that decline and countries that remain stable. So this is for presentation purposes to look at broader trends. Now, looking specifically at countries and all the results actually hold when we do these tests. For each one of the countries, we conduct a statistical test to see whether the changes are indeed statistically significant. So we do bootstrapping exercises to create margins of error and then against those we compare whether the changes are statistically significant or not. The patterns, the global patterns that we have shown hold regardless of whether we look at bands of let's say 0.5%, 1%, only those that are statistically significant, the patterns that we have shown in the data actually persist. So these are pretty robust, the fact that more countries are declining, that improving and so on. Simply what it changes is the number of countries that we classify as improving or declining. The big changers actually remain the same and all the changes are statistically significant. With regards to the second question, whether what are the main factors that lead to changes in rule of law? As it was pointed out, all the factors are weighted equally. The answer really depends on the country. In some cases, the countries that have experienced big changes, what we see is that in almost all factors, there are either positive or negative changes. However, just we have seen in the countries that have declined the most in rule of law, particularly those that have declined in areas related to the constraint of authority, we see declines usually in the first four factors that are driving the change. Another aspect that is important is the issue of security that we haven't really talked much, but that can drive important changes in countries, particularly countries that are affected by conflict or by terrorist attacks and so on. Just given the way that the variables are codified and usually just how countries can move from one year to the next very abruptly, that is something that can actually affect significantly the scorching security and that have an important effect in the overall rule of law situation in the country. And with respect to the third question about smaller countries versus larger countries, I think just based on the data, this is a difficult question just because we have variation in just we have good countries that are smaller countries that are larger countries and so on. Probably it is true from a reform perspective that it's easier to reform a country that is smaller than a larger one, but in the data, this is not a pattern that we observe whether just larger countries are performing better than smaller countries. I think there is variation. We have countries that are performing well, countries that are performing bad, so it's not really a driving factor. A more important factor is economic development. In general, countries that are richer tend to perform much better than countries that are poorer, although there is significant variation even within income brackets. Thank you, Alucano. So let's move maybe to another set of questions from our audience online. I think this set will involve more answers across the panel. This is really getting at some of the political drivers of positive rule of law change, and it's what I would call the inside versus outside drivers. On the inside, one questioner wants to know, well, she or he poses it well. It's a she, it's from Michelle. What's more important in the view of the panelists in driving good rule of law change? Civil society activism, I'm assuming, from within the country, or outside influences like development agency donors. A variation of this question is somebody posing the broadest question, meaning, OK, can the rule of law within countries really be influenced and encouraged by our global system of international law because that global system in this questioner's viewpoint accepts national sovereignty and national sovereignty Trump's kind of domestic human rights? So that's a profound question. Then there's a group of questions asking about different variations of external international influences. One asks about the EU and its planned rule of law mechanisms like Article 7 and the European Court of Justice procedures. Would these be important external drivers for improving the rule of law? Another question from a Central American colleague who works for Small NGO. We're a small NGO with very few resources. What can we do to most positively influence the rule of law in our country? And finally, a colleague from the US government asks about goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals and whether, as a normative tool, this might be helpful in promoting the rule of law. OK, so we have a lot to unpack from that. Let's, in order to maybe tackle these questions, let's start our viewers seem to be focusing on let's call domestic or inside internal factors and then external factors. Let's use this as a boundary to field some of those questions. And let me start with asking our panelists about the domestic or the internal factors. There were questions about civil society, about small organizations, sovereignty as well. And this being used as a shield or as this interplay between sovereignty and international human rights law. So anyone who would feel comfortable addressing some of those questions, let's start with the internal questions first, and then we can tackle the more external factors afterwards. Maria, do you want to jump in? The role of civil society, I assume, is something you? Sure, so the question was about civil society and the role of civic activism. And I think it plays a critical role in promoting rule of law, demanding accountability, pushing back against corruption. So I think that preserving and supporting the watchdog function within civil society is critically important. And this, too, is where the movements are important. The ability of citizens to organize and bring together diverse groups to be able to effectively demand accountability and to apply pressure on governments I think is a critically important part of improving the rule of law. And whether it's pushing forward freedom of information, demand for freedom of information laws, whether it's pushing for accountability of government officials who have engaged in corruption, I think this pressure from below is a really important part of improving rule of law globally. And does size matter? Does it really? One of the question was, we're small, we have very little funds. Does size matter in having an impact on strengthening the rule of law? I mean, size, I'm thinking, you know, often organizations are not working autonomously. And so the power comes through the coalition building and forming alliances with other organizations, groups, and individuals. And so there's a lot that a small number of individuals and organizations can do to kind of apply pressure and focus. So there's a lot that that little organization can do. Maggie, you wanted to add something. I think this is in China, watchers spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's going on in Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound in Beijing. And we don't know, it's pretty opaque. But certainly in China, there can be reforms from within. There's even though Xi Jinping is the most powerful single leader we've seen since Deng Xiaoping, it's there are other people in the top leadership and there's always questions, especially with a crisis like the coronavirus. So far he hasn't been shaken, at least visibly, but there could be forces from within. But there could also be forces from the outside and civil society, again, it's still going in China. It's difficult, it's small, it's been beaten down. It's harder to have foreign interaction since the foreign NGO law went into effect now about four years ago. But it's very creative. So for example, I was just reading today about the Harvey Weinstein verdict and not only that, but he was just sentenced to 23 years. Now, China had its own Me Too movement at the same time. And because it was getting censored, people got creative. And so it turned into rice bunny and why in the world would rice bunny be Me Too? It's because the word for rice in Chinese is me and bunny is too, tooza. So Me Too, rice bunny sounds like Me Too. And that was a way to get around the censors. And I was listening to a podcast on New Voices today which is through sub-China and D Wang who's a graduate student at University of Wisconsin. And she does LGBT issues in China. And she's still talking about what's happening within China with the LGBT movement. It is there, it is nascent, it's beaten down, but it's still there. Thank you. Betsy, I can't really, do you have any thing to add on the more internal drivers? Any thoughts? Well, I would just echo what the others have said here that I think as between external and internal, I think both are important, but probably internal is more important. And I would also maybe circle back to something that Joe said at the very beginning and the idea that there are reformers everywhere. So civil society is key, of course, but also we need to be looking for reformers and throughout government in different agencies and finding those people and supporting them. Yeah, just to reiterate what Betsy said a few minutes ago, the importance of political transitions and leaderships. So something that we see in the index is the big changes usually happen when there is a transition, just an immediate transition, when there are coalitions, when the government is new and they are trying to promote reform. So that's when a lot of the changes are happening. Those try usually dilute a little bit over the following years. So it's important actually to capitalize on those windows of opportunity. Just the one small thing I would say of where kind of bottom up the pressure and the reformist networks come together is the whole idea of promoting positive accountability. So integrity idols in different places where civil society is voting and mobilizing around accountable government officials and rewarding them with positive action and with reward. So there can be kind of positive incentives as well coming from the bottom up. Great. I wanted to move to the external factors, maybe very briefly, because we've heard from our viewers references to international human rights law or international human rights institution. And I know that Maggie talked about some of those instruments and how certain actors are now playing a stronger role in shaping some of the outputs in some of those institutions. But if we can spend a bit of time on the external factors and feel free, we've heard about SDG-16. Can this be a mobilizing process or a movement? Maria, I know that you do a lot of research on external or support to nonviolent actors or processes from other actors as well. So if you have any thoughts, feel free to share. But any ideas or thoughts that came up when you heard those questions from our viewers online about the external factors or drivers that can have an impact? Maybe with Maggie to change the order a little bit. So I get worried when I hear because of sovereignty that you're rejecting international human rights. And because it's sovereignty is not a shield from outside scrutiny. So China, which is really, as I said, pushing this right to development and saying that instead of that human rights are indivisible and they're interrelated, saying we're going to prioritize rights. We're going to say first we're going to do development and then maybe down the line we'll deal with civil and political rights. And that is antithetical to the basis upon which the international human rights regime was put together after World War II. You have all of them together. It's a basket. And so here, of course, there's going to be some differentiation amongst countries. It's not going to be one size fits all entirely. But at the same time, when you think of things like freedom of expression, you can restrict freedom of expression in very limited ways. But you cannot use security as a way to restrict people, for example, who are promoting democracy in a peaceful manner. And we think back to, empty chair was mentioned. I think Leo Chalbois. And of course, he was the noble laureate from China. And he was unable to attend because he was imprisoned in China. And so at the ceremony, there was an empty chair. And he just advocated peaceful thoughts about what might China's future be other than the current government. And that's where I get worried that sovereignty, and you have to look at Chinese characteristics, is going to be used as a way to repudiate these fundamental norms that the international community has worked so hard to put in place. I mean, and just on the SDG-16, I think the advantage of it is that all governments have signed up for the sustainable development goals. And so it's something that the international community can mobilize around. And you're seeing examples, even domestically, in cities like Pittsburgh, where it's local, it's cities who are leading the effort to hold governments accountable to the SDG goals. And SDG-16 on inclusive, peaceful, and just society. So I think one of the most important roles outside actors can play is supporting and enabling environment for peaceful mobilization. And so that citizen groups, movements, and the light can thrive. And so using everything from the international human rights declarations to SDG-16 to keep civic space open, to enable the environment for nonviolent change, and to put pressure on those governments who are restricting civic space. So if I hear you well, there could be international or multilateral norms, or norms that are set at the international or multilateral level. But domestic actors or actors from within can use those norms in order to demand accountability or a strengthening of the rule of law within their own domestic or internal context. So the external and the internal are ultimately linked, if I hear you well. We have maybe one more minute for a couple of notes. I'll rip straight from the headlines and op-ed pages. And because let me direct it to Maggie and to Betsy. So the question is, are stronger rule of law countries better at addressing the coronavirus? And if so, why? Sure. Stronger rule of law countries are better at addressing the coronavirus, or should be better at addressing the coronavirus. And why is that? In fact, in the rule of law index data, one of the cohorts of professionals whom we survey are public health professionals. We ask them about how the rule of law is playing out in the public health sphere because the rule of law is so important to public health. Things like corruption, transparency, trust and institutions all play out in a public health emergency like we're seeing right now. So we should see better responses from the rule of law states. Now, there might be some folks who would say, gosh, in a situation like this, maybe we want a little bit of authoritarianism. Maybe being able to shut things down in a strongman kind of way is the solution. But that's a risky strategy, as we saw in the early days of this crisis in China. The flip side of that approach is that whistleblowers or that early warner of the crisis might be squelched in ways that really exacerbate the crisis. I think sometimes it's seen as we need the authoritarian government to then get everyone to listen to what needs to happen. And I disagree with that. Because even though human rights, a lot of it is about the individual and individual rights, that doesn't mean you don't care about other people. I mean, fundamental human rights is about having empathy and compassion and thinking about how you think about the rights of the individual, but also how that makes the collective stronger. And so particularly with issues like the freedom of the press and transparency, that's all the more important when you do have a public health crisis. It's too early to say who's done the best job. I don't think we can have a scorecard at this point. This is a marathon, not a sprint to deal with the coronavirus. But if I had to put my money down, I would go on the more open governments. Thank you to all the questioners and apologies to those who we didn't have time for. Great. Well, I want to extend my thank you to all our listeners and our viewers online. So thank you for submitting your questions. We have a few more minutes, and I'm conscious of time here, maybe for final thoughts. And I'll turn to each of the panelists and ask them if they want to share some final thoughts before we finish. Let me start maybe with Alejandro, and then we'll move this way just to change the dynamics a little bit. No, very short. Thank you. Thank you to our audience. I invite everyone to actually look at the report. As I mentioned before, beyond the global trends, I think the most interesting results are at the country level, so which is important to look at what countries are doing, just where the changes are coming from. So just invite the audience to look at those. Well, I would second that and particularly encourage folks to play with that interactive new website. The WJP has put the data on. I thought about drawing the audience to it at the outset, but then I thought I might distract folks from our conversation. But have at it now. I have found it as addicting as my kids do video games. And I think what we do this effort, this data collection, to stimulate discussion, to inform policy making and activists and dialogue within societies about a path toward greater rule of law. And every society has that path to walk, and we encourage you to use this data in your work. And I'm going to put on my professor hat for a minute and say I hope that teachers will take advantage of this great, not just the written report, but the multimedia. And I'm always struck when I look at the report that it both has the thematic and then, as Alejandro was saying, the country specific. And so I hope that in the US, one thing, that I'm deep down in area studies person. I was an East Asian studies person before a law person. And how important it is that we continue to emphasize area studies, regional studies, so that we have that deep expertise in places and not just in topics. And I guess I would just add there's definitely a gloomy picture. But I think there are some bright spots that ought to be focused, to receive focus as well. And I think even in places where we're seeing declining rule of law, citizens are still pushing back and organizing and trying to change things. And I think highlighting their stories and giving them support and space to continue to organize is something that I hope we can continue to do on the outside. Well, thank you very much to everyone. And on behalf of USIP and the World Justice Project, I want to thank all our viewers for joining us today. And please, you have all the tools at your disposal. And go consult all of the information and the links that were mentioned today on the panel. These are very important subjects and issues. And so you should have access to all that information on WJP's website. And we thank you for tuning in today. So thank you very much. And I want to thank our panelists and everyone involved in the organization of this important event. And thanks to all. Thank you.