 Good afternoon and my name is Michael Collins and I'm the Director General of the IIEA here in Dublin. I'm very pleased to welcome you to this IIEA webinar, which is part of the Institute's Global Europe Project, which is supported by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs. We're delighted to be joined today by Kirsty Calulade, President of the Republic of Estonia from 2016 to 2021. In fact, yesterday was the President's last day in office and we're gratified indeed that she is available to be with us here today at the IIEA. President Calulade will speak to us about Estonia's Security Council membership and particularly Estonia's presidency at the Council, most recently in June of this year. The President will speak to us for about 15-20 minutes and then we will move into the Q&A session with your audience. Both of these sessions will be on the record. We'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom in the usual way, which you should see on your screen. And please do feel free to send your questions in throughout the session as they occur to you and we will come to them once we come to the question and answer part of this meeting. Please also feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. As I said, Kirsty Calulade was elected as President of the Republic of Estonia in 2016. She was the first woman to have served as President of Estonia and indeed the youngest person ever to hold this position in her country. She previously served as a member of the European Court of Auditors, advising Prime Minister Maart Lar and holding different top-level positions in energy, investment banking and the telecom sectors. A genetic engineer and economist by education and training, she has been a member of the supervisory board of the Estonian Genome Centre and the Council Chair of the University of Tartu from 2012 to 2016. So with that, President, you're very, very welcome to the IIEA, the floor is yours. Thank you for inviting me indeed and let me first congratulate Ireland for your successful and very well organized Security Council presidency in September. The Irish team in New York did an excellent job. I would like to really thank your Ambassador, Mrs. Geraldine Biden-Eisen and political coordinator, Mr. Martin Gallagher. You had great signature events I would especially like to highlight the high-level open debate on climate and security on 23rd of September because it was very timely as we are leading up to COP26 in Glasgow. Now turning to the topic of Estonian Security Council June presidency. This was our second United Nations Security Council presidency ever and probably the last before 2050 when Estonia hopes to join the Security Council once again. How will that project go? We never know, as you may remember last time we actually had a competition to join the Security Council and even if it was, I would say, expensive and tiresome campaign which I led myself. I have to say that we probably did a much better work on understanding the whole world, each and every nation who belongs to United Nations because we had competition and we were forced to race to the line to the second round of voting. So I'd really like to thank also competitor Romania for helping us to make sure that we were all for two years during all the active campaign phase on our tiptoes and by making sure we know really what this is about. So our presidency, it was guided by our five core priorities in Security Council for 2021, world order based on common rules and international law, protection of fundamental values including human rights and human dignity, conflict, prevention, increasing awareness among Security Council members on the applicability of international law and cybersecurity norms as you know Estonia strongly supports the world view that analog legal space fully applies in cyberspace as well. And all academic analyses and declarations by a few nations globally of how they see international law and for that matter national law to apply in cyber conflicts, all proves that we should simply take our analog law and apply in cybersecurity. For Estonia the aspects of international law and its formation that are essentially linked to the birth of the Republic of Estonia and the right to self-determination holds particular importance. And it is crucial to follow the policy of non-recognition when it comes to illegal occupations and annexations for us this has to be one of the guiding principles for our stay in Security Council. It's natural Estonia when we rejoined the free world 30 years ago actually was pulled out of our occupation by the Bulls straps of non-recognition policy. And even, I mean, nowadays I see very strong parallels that I mean sometimes particularly here in Europe people get impatient about for example situations in Ossetia and Crimean Peninsula. And we have to remind ourselves that Baltic states were occupied by 50 years and all this time our occupation was not recognized and that helped us 50 years later so strategic patients is something which we always advocate for. And fifth limiting veto rights in situations that concern genocide or other crimes against humanity. We really consider that very important for the international community to condemn crimes that are motivated by anti-humanitarian ideologies and committed by criminal regimes. So this is the strategic framework of Estonia UN Security Council stay. June was an extremely busy month in terms of the agenda we held 45 meetings. In addition, an informal interactive dialogue seven discussions took place under any other business and 11 meetings of the subsidiary bodies of the Security Council were held. In June, how our priorities were human rights, we emphasized the inseparable link between human rights and peace security conflict prevention. In the month of June, we held a virtual high level open debate on children and armed conflict, which I had the honor to share. The objective of the meeting was to focus on the main developments and concerns related to children affected by armed conflict from 2020 and the impact by the COVID-19 pandemic. The briefcase where Secretary General Gutierrez, Mrs. Endetta for Mr. Forrest-Wittak and Mr. Laban Onissimus. It was a particularly moving meeting and I would really like to share with you one element which was not on the meeting but actually to place before it. I forgot my papers on the meeting, namely Secretary General's report on children in conflict in my car and my 12-year-old young son read it and his fluent in English and French and he read it and he got really, really thinking and asked me a discussion that shouldn't we share more with children and teenagers, what UN is doing in a simple work, in simply written papers shorter than that one was. So that children in the first world, children in developed nations would know what is going on and what we have to discuss, what we have to discuss. It would help to sensitize the young generation and also it would help them to recognize and the privilege of their own situation. So it was very interesting for me to see how you really should work more and maybe as a global advocate for women and children, I need to take this thought of my own son forward, I think it's important. So back to the agenda, cyber security. We held the first ever high level open debate and sent an important message that the concept takes cyber threat seriously and takes it even more seriously after it last year already in March on our insistence. We decided that Security Council will discuss the cyber attack against Georgia last year and UK and US supported us in this attempt to have any other business meeting we had and it was indeed first time ever Security Council dealt with a cyber attack. This cyber attack had the criteria that it was linked to a conflict which is anyway under the monitoring of the Security Council. So it was easy to create the link and start creating case law that Security Council has to deal in cyber matters. We were able to have also an ARIA meeting last year which then all together led to this year's President's high level open debate, which was the first official discussion on cyber in Security Council. It was chaired by our Prime Minister and for us, this was something which you promised in our campaign to our electorate. We will bring cyber matters to Security Council. Unfortunately, we cannot do it because there have been numerous open-ended working groups and so on and so on debating these issues. Yet we found a way and I would advise that this is why the small mobile member states are elected to the Security Council. That they can find different ways and means to bring items on the agenda within the security council rules and regulations, but we are maybe a little bit more opportunistic. So this way, we were able to fulfill our campaign promise and this official discussion kind of closed our work on Security Council for two years on cyber issues. We hope that our partners and allies will now carry it on. Where I see the biggest need is that everything which we have now been discussing has related to the conventional conflicts and the conflicts which therefore had a cyber element in it. But I think one day we should also be able to discuss cyber conflicts which do not belong to any conventional conflict we are discussing and why I think so. Cyber hostilities very often show relations getting somehow bad between different parties. And therefore I mean taking first and strong recognition of cyber attacks may actually help us in our peace-building attempts because they do proceed very often in our days well, the real hostilities. Now to Afghanistan. In 2021, Estonia and Norway together are penholders of the Afghanistan file, including the UNORMA mandate in the Security Council. And in light of the concerning security situation and volatile political and peace process developments, we decided to hold a quarterly Security Council Afghanistan meeting in the format of a high level debate. It was done on June 22nd chaired by our Foreign Minister, Mrs. Eva-Maria Limetz, and preceding to that meeting early in spring I myself visited Afghanistan. And it so happens that it was just before the final withdrawal of US troops. So I was the last EU NATO or for that matter. Security Council Member States head who was able to talk to the then government still in office. And I have to say that nothing which they said to us indicated clearly what was to come so we know what happened with the devastating effect of that miscalculation globally. Cooperation between the UN and regional organizations, European Union on 10th of June. We organized the briefing on the cooperation between the United Nations and the European Union highlighting the increasingly important cooperation between the two organizations on international peace and security. And we invited for that meeting High Representative Joseph Borrell to brief the Security Council. We also had together with St. Vincent and the Grenadines working methods of the UN Security Council discussion on 16th of June. We organized the annual open debate on the working methods of the Security Council on the beam agility and innovation lessons from the future from the COVID-19 pandemic. For the last three years this debate has been the only occasion where the 10 elected members have agreed on a joint statement. And this year it was delivered by the representative of Kenya in his capacity as coordinator for the month of June for the 10 elected members of the Council. We're very grateful for that work. In June the Council also discussed other key topics like Yemen, Tigray, Myanmar and humanitarian situation in Syria. For us, another important topic was also in June that France and Estonia are being held as in the UN Security Council on EU Operation Irini. On the first open meeting of our presidency in June we adopted a resolution 2578. This allows offshore inspections and port diversions of vessels suspected of breaches of the UN arms embargo on Libya. This is an important step as the resolution represents the basis of the core task of operation UNAFOR-MED in Irini. And it shows the will of the international community to preserve the legal framework aimed at preventing the illicit trafficking of arms to and from Libya in the common effort to bring peace and stability to the country. I had also the chance to visit UNAFOR mission quite soon after the resolution adoption and they were very grateful for the work done but also said that we need to work more on the public opinion on this because quite a lot of people expect them not to deal with illicit trafficking of arms but actually take more policing commission on the Mediterranean which also might concern migration then. Estonia had also the honor to guide the discussions of the election and the appointment of the Secretary General in the Security Council on 8th of June, the Council adopted the resolution and recommended that General Assembly appoint him for another five years starting 1st of January 2022. I'm very happy that we were part of that process to reappoint my good friend Antonia Gutierrez. Again, we cooperated with you members of the Security Council also on the on the working methods that Presidents of Estonia in June, France in July and and you then in September. We adopted together a common working methods paper highlighting elements that we find important, including the need to involve more civil society brief as in Council's meeting. As a horizontal priority for all meetings during our presidency, we aim to include civil society briefs in particular women, civil society briefs in the Security Council meetings considering that the civil society often gives an early warning on serious human right violations and escalation of violence. We had eight civil society briefs, six of them were women during our meetings on Minoosma, Yemen, Syria, political, Syria humanitarian, Mino, UN, Miss and the high level meetings on Afghanistan and on children and armed conflict. And on the happy note, June was also the first full month since the pandemic started, but the Council was back in the chamber for all its meetings, except the free high level events which were held in VTC. And I had to say that VTC high level events. I have a nudging suspicion that if we continue sometimes doing them this way, we can have a higher level participation which might be an element to consider for the future, even if we can come together why not to preserve at least hybrid meetings. And I'm quite sure that this is something which will make UN work in the future as well, in the future as well more efficient. And finally, thanks for Ireland participating at high level at all of our main events. The debate on Afghanistan, his excellency Mr. Simon Covenay, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence, 28 June, his excellency Mr. Michael Higgins, President and 29th of June Cyber Security, his excellency Mr. Michael Martin, Prime Minister. So thank you, Ireland, for helping us through our second presidency in the Security Council and I would hear my longish speech about the month indeed was busy and I tried to put you in the picture. I would be very open to share with you all the feelings, emotions as well and not only the facts about meetings, I mean how a small country, first time ever in Security Council works and also an important element which we didn't think ahead but which became really more and more important during our stay and still is important here in Estonia is to answer the question why you are there. And if you want, and if you prompt me, I would really like to a little bit dwell on that as well. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President for a great presentation. Can I just, while we're just encouraging people to send in their questions. In Estonia itself, I mean to what extent is has Estonia's membership of the Security Council presidency of the Security Council, has it been an issue of, you know, of popular appreciation I mean is there a widespread appreciation of the role that the Security Council membership gives to Estonia. And what's the level of popular support for what you've been doing. It's varied. We've had to during the campaign phase it was very easy to explain why we are campaigning to join the Security Council because all through this campaign I made sure that we involved Estonian business delegations and and we kind of broadened our network globally also to the benefit of Estonia society and everybody understood that. Okay, the Security Council is an obscure thing we don't think about it daily, but at least this campaign is doing something positive for Estonia. Then as I said it was a contested seat, which means that I mean when we won. Then I would say that, well, my press officer at the day said to me that congratulations Madam President the weekend is all yours because the World Rally Championships is not on this weekend and is not driving so. So the weekend is yours so Estonians really follow this vote and follow this as a sport event. And this of course was really big thing we won we got into the Security Council. And then of course was a half year of preparation time when when it was relatively calm and as soon as we went then join it. You know, if you are a small country. We are not elected because we are stickers to international law law and stickers to our value value based foreign policy and and we are pretty vocal about these values and and all this. But once you are behind the Security Council table, you have to make compromises, and you have to talk about the subjects and topics where I mean taking a very strong conditional stance does not help you very much forward for example if you look at the current situation in Afghanistan, then we first need to make sure that we stabilize the situation that you and missions could continue to feed the population. And thereafter we have to start looking about how we could negotiate in a more conditional way to make sure that I mean also the rights of women and children in Afghanistan are protected. But of course our society wants everything at all at once. Since we have been always I mean if you're out of the discussions it's very easy to kind of say we need and we should do these things as soon as you are in your people ask you why are you even talking to these people. And this has been an interesting revelation I believe for Estonian foreign policy. I feel as including myself including our minister including all our ambassadors that we have to do much more explaining inside the country why we are doing these things. To the extent that people say, I mean it's tough. You might make some of our partners and allies angry, because you sometimes have also to take a stance against them. I have been explaining it to our people this way that you know, international laws, previous agreements and all these we our role in Security Council elected members is to stick to these principles stick to these previous agreements. But we all know that the big moves globally sometimes step a little bit aside of this framework in order to try new avenues of finding solutions. And nobody, none of our partners and allies expects us to I mean forget this concrete trailer events, forget to forget what this I mean has been agreed previously, and how we stick to it. So everybody understands, if you are always relying on the previous agreements and international law, and nobody among our partners and allies why they might be a little bit more adventurous holds it against you. I hope Estonian people are understanding these nuances and and it's been an interesting interaction between our own people. And the last question finally which is the weirdest of all which I absolutely didn't think we will have to deal with but you know Estonia as soon as we regained our independence. It took us only two or three years before we started I think three finally when we went to the first international military mission, which was Bosnia Herzegovina EU mission, that after we've been part of various UN and NATO missions some of them really daily like in Afghanistan Estonia is one of the one of the one of those for lost per capita most most of the lives. And people have accepted all this, and now when we are actually doing the same work, but in a diplomatic environment taking our responsibility for international world order behind the diplomatic table even if it's the most difficult globally. People question that. Why do you do it and we had to indeed draw the parallel that our diplomats are in a similar way. In the same mission, like our our our militaries in the international peacekeeping and NATO and EU missions. It was interesting, but we were more accepting of the military participation for world peace than diplomatic. But we've had all these debates now and I believe that the overall Estonian people, if they asked about what they think about Security Council presence the proud of it. Excellent. Yeah, and you live in a neighborhood obviously where the overwhelming presence of Russia is so evident. To what extent as a member of the Security Council and indeed during your two presidencies of the Security Council. Was there the possibility to engage constructively with your with your Russian neighbors or course or permanent members of the Security Council. I mean also not in the context of Security Council during my presidency constructively engaging with Russian leadership and myself been to Moscow to speak to President Putin, where by the way he was quite favorable about our then ongoing campaign for the Security Council and I believe they also looked with certain interest on what we were up to and what were our approaches. And of course, they've been they've been doing what we have been expecting when we discuss Belarus and Avesha's in the Security Council for two years Belarus Ukraine Georgia. So it's always tough and and and and of course we all realize that there are no quick solutions but but I cannot say that it has been unconstructed. And that has been for me the greatest the greatest revelation that in United Nations Security Council, we're able to deliver and accept very different different viewpoints and then gradually move on and hope that we could achieve something. Because sometimes it also makes you impatient because we are everybody's in there in there I mean on their own bench of the river and we never swim across so you cannot you cannot say that this is the most constructive area probably in in foreign policy and people must see globally. So it has been it has been let's say constructive and warm but but not not extremely fruitful cooperation. And to what extent would you obviously these great initiatives the this great this great priority that that Estonia has given to its membership of the Security Council and the fight core priorities that you identified. To what extent would you be concerned that having, you know, moved forward on these issues, including in the area of cybersecurity. To what extent would you be concerned that these about the longevity of these initiatives in other words, will they have an enduring impact, or once the concern would be I suppose once Estonia leaves the chair and leaves the council that some other presidency is going to come in some other council members going to come in, they'd have a different set of priorities that it'd be really hard to maintain the momentum of progress that you will have achieved over the last 18 months. Well, considering how many countries are gradually moving and particularly in the pandemic, it was obvious that countries are moving their public services offer online more and more and therefore actually the interaction between any state. And it's not even developed states only it also concerns middle income countries. Any state and its link to its citizens can nowadays be easily broken by cyber means. And you can protect yourself indeed you have to make sure that your people have a certain level of cyber hygiene you have to make sure that your systems are constantly up to date and renewed and and your morning talk constantly there's a safety and security. But finally things go wrong. You have to have a place where you can go and complain and cause some international reaction if that is cyber attack against your sovereignty. And I believe that more and more countries particularly in pandemics realized that this is something which is more and more important. And security council is indeed the place where we normally come and report the conflicts. I see, and many, many other countries with whom we've been discussing. See this as an ultimate layer of protection starting from technology, cyber hygiene of your own people, then your own national law which protects you, and then you have to have the international legal space which will finally then help you to protect your sovereignty also in the cyberspace. I cannot see how this topic could could fall off the agenda. And of course Estonia is always remaining if invited an active participant and advisor to everybody who or anybody who wants to take these issues forward. And as I said, we have achieved something we have achieved that if there is a conventional conflict, then we can take cyber element as a part of this holistic conflict analyzes as we take for example say that there are women and children in the conflict. And, and, and this has been achieved but we are still quite far away from accepting this is a natural way of life that if somebody comes on the massive cyber attack attack against their sovereignty. And they are able to attribute it to that they should be able to come most time reporting. And this is not yet the natural thing this this should be the next step to take a security council and as I said, I think this is a good, good, I mean element of peace building because cyber perturbances are the harbing of the bad things to come. Very often nowadays. And of course, the Irish health system, our own health system here in Ireland was the is still recovering from a very, very large cyber attack, which should place earlier this year. A question here from one of my colleagues in the Institute, Luke wants to know given Estonia is a global leader in cyber security. What advice would you have for countries looking to enhance their cyber resilience. First and foremost, I would, I would invite each and every country to become part of those nations who have declared their own intentions in the cyberspace. How can you expect the global world and your, your international partners to kind of help and participate in regulating cyber conflicts among them cyber conflicts which take place on your territory. And if you yourself has have also declared how you see how your own national law and how your own international law applies in the cyberspace. Great academic work, including telling manuals one and two and in NATO Center of excellence and cyber security, provide ample information for governments to discuss and decide and make such cyber declarations I led in Estonia, the process of arriving at the stone and so we have made very clear what is our intent. If we come under attack, how we do see that international law allows us to attack. And the more the governments declare their intent in these cyber attack situations, the more we have clarity in international legal space. And this is how every nation could contribute, definitely should contribute in my, my understanding, and only then come the, the technological elements of course, all the public service offer which during the pandemic rushed online. I have really my own worries about it because you know, unless you build carefully a cyber architecture of government services that you have a platform of identification where people arrive identify themselves, only this should open the door for the services should be, I mean offered to people in an encrypted format, which normally comes from the fact that I mean both ends the provider and and and the demand of this service are signed in and identifiable there is no data in the system, no data in public service should move in an uncrypted encrypted format for example no emails for heaven's sake, but I know that the world today is full of the rushed online services. They're very good because otherwise there would have been no service during the pandemic I just visited Kenya for example they have a court system online, but they themselves admit that it's not encrypted. So they should take a next step and build the platform now even behind I mean even after the service has been online already to make sure that people are signing in identifying themselves and that will be encrypted service offer. And I mean this applies to the most developed nations as well. The big worry is that now when these, I mean rushed and not safe systems start to I mean fall prey of the attackers, or some other cyber disturbances will happen in these services people will get this courage from using the services. And however loud noise we hear in a stone I might make that with safe architecture we've been using them for 20 years. We might have to think through how you do these things. We might actually see that the reputation of digital services could fall prey of this rush service delivery online. And is the, is the cyber security challenge is it breaking down on traditional or historical kind of east west cold wars where kind of lines are. Is it far more diffuse than that the threat from cyber security are the threat to our cyber security. And where is it seen as primarily coming from is it just a cold war reincarnated or is it is it something a lot more diverse than that. It gets more and more complicated I mean first first and foremost, we must understand that the threats of the cold war, mainly for example nuclear threat. If nuclear weapons were developed, they were developed under the control of governments, be they I mean respecting international law or not respecting international law. But they were, I mean, basically always part of the government portfolio. When we look at the technology development, then if you think even of the five G or other other systems which we nowadays build. They are built in a much more diffuse way by private sector actors who are independent and governments don't know how these services are built. There is an intermediate service which should should actually be our trendset and this is the global position positioning system GPS. Most of the younger generation thinks GPS is a natural resource, but it isn't. It is a complicated technological system, which is delivered to the whole world and service by a democracy whose threshold of withholding this service is so high that we never see it. I mean treasure to withhold the service to achieve your political objectives for us is obviously very very high as a democracy, and they're not done it. And we should take this way about our, our greets. And we should make sure that we have trusted connectivity. And this is where Estonia has taken initiative now parallel to our security council work together with OECD, it's new Secretary General Mattias Corman together with European Union with Charlie Michelle mostly. And also the US government and we held talent digital summit this year which was, which was contributing to the development of the idea of trusted connectivity as a consensus of free world. And because you cannot, I mean build rigid standard it has to be consensus which we then all apply. And, and the trademark of this consensus could be the blue dot, blue dot development which was was created by Australians Americans Japanese was a little bit not not so, so much on woosh for a couple of years during the Trump that is now is now back on the agenda and, and it could be the physical element of this. This consensus which sharing talent will probably call talent consensus after telling digital summit established that this is indeed something which all the free world realizes it needs to needs to have. And we hope OECD will move forward with the blue dot development as well. This would give us the security of the greed that it is always available. And that it does what we wanted to do, and it doesn't do anything which has not, which it has not told us that it does. This is very important, and only then now we come to the less conventional element of cyber risk which are then all hybrid risks information mis spread hate, and all these elements. So there are more and more layers with which we need to be as governments. Let me get on a little bit if I may Madam President. When Estonia steps down as from its membership of the Security Council. And, you know, at that stage I think it is only in terms of European Union membership of the Security Council will be France and Ireland. And I think the answer is in a very particular position as a permanent member of the Security Council but a question here from one of my colleagues Steven frame. He said how would you assess the EU coordination at the UN Security Council, and is there a need for greater unity on common farm and security policy matters on the Security Council. So, I mean, do the permanent members just go their own way, you know, and, you know, follow their own agenda as a war, or is there scope and better prospect and the better possibility of better cohesion by the European Union. You know, it's very interesting but I think it very much depends on our ambassadors to UN and I have to say that in Europe indeed we very often agree that we do not have a common foreign and security policy. We probably had a stronger pull push towards it when Federico Mogherini was the was the person responsible he developed our understanding on how we could work together and do it in a loose format without actually I mean having having too much legal framework for that. And I don't know somehow we have felt that this kind of well harmonized but not not not totally I mean, well, let's say united on paper united by some kind of regulation or by some kind of agreement. I mean, we've seen that it works in UN. I mean, we've, we've seen it already before joined the UN, our European partners, where those who are very much helping us to understand before we joined the intricacies and the technicalities and and some of them were really helpful during the campaign phase. I have to say that in UN I have never felt and and our ambassador and the whole team have never felt that there is not a good cooperation among the EU members, because you know there are so many people in Security Council coming from different countries who have really different value base that it becomes painfully obvious that whatever our differences might be, finally we are safe in discussing even them because we all on the same value base this liberal democratic values actually carry us through together and and I've seen great sticking together, by the way. So first question in relation to the the just the the pandemic, the code pandemic obviously your first year in the on the Security Council was, I think all done virtually unavoidably and I think you took the lead obviously during your the Security Council presidency in May of 2020 I think to to really suppose promote and to identify more clearly the possibilities of doing working remotely as a Council, but just more broadly how would you evaluate the Security Council's response to COVID-19 the COVID-19 pandemic and what lessons can be learned for future pandemics or was this really not an issue for the Council to be to be what obviously is the issue to be concerned about. But was it a question really about having the WHO and other such international institutions take the major responsibility. Where did the Security Council come into an issue of existential challenge on the global level in relation to the pandemic. Well, frankly speaking, I mean the working method was far less important, but it took us really painfully long to agree on on any any press release on on on endorsing endorsing the secretary generals call for ceasefire during the pandemic, I mean this was not looking good at all for the UN Security Council on reputation, but this was totally independent from the working methods because the working methods. I mean, it's interesting I mean since I'm really I know very well our whole team which works in the Security Council and when we get together, they show me their what's ups and all all all I mean what they use in order to participate, prepare and negotiate discuss argue and everything. And our team is young and and really really quick quick reacting and I think other teams behind the Security Council memberships are must be quite similar because I mean the amount of messaging the amount of coordination which goes on and it all goes on electronically, and it all went on electronically also I mean before the pandemic hit. I don't know how familiar you are nowadays, but if the meetings for example on the sites of the UN General Assembly are organized. I mean all teams are in what's up. And I mean in what's up they coordinate my president is five minutes late my mind is two minutes early, we have had a mishap can you I mean postpone the meeting whatever I mean let's do it differently. It was much electronic and it was so much electronic before the pandemic. So it was only for the leaders probably for now first time had to take I mean they see it behind their computer and and come in and and communicate, which probably was unfamiliar initially. I really don't think it affected the work of the Security Council that much it might have affected the mental health of our collaborators I'm afraid because I know how hard and how long hours they've had to sit in front of their computers to make sure that everything finally runs smoothly. And just before we came on we were just talking about your first year in office and the Security Council was a year obviously when, when President Trump was to an office and he had a particular view of the, of the multilateral world. And to what extent, have you been able to see a difference between year one and year two, particularly in terms of American attitudes and engagement in the work of Security Council. If you look at the Security Council agenda, it is, most of it is extremely technical and and it's even weird to say that the political element is relatively weak if you discuss for example I don't know who know my mission in Afghanistan and so on so on. So on on this side on Security Council. Actually, there haven't been big fluctuations there is indeed a more more felt enthusiasm probably now but but it has been a good cooperation also in the in the last year we really cannot complain. It was, it was, it was, it was fine and it's, it's still, it's still good. The new ambassador of the United States puts great emphasis on the, on the African issues on the women and children issues and I'm particularly grateful for that being also a global advocate for women and children of UN. But this again depends very much on personalities but the Security Council work. US has been a great partner and ally for all these two years. And that's in your speech I think that it could be 2050. That's 2050 before Estonia, you know, turn comes up in terms of membership of the Security Councils yet again, that's a long, long time away how will, how can Estonia, I suppose promote its values and its, its priorities. Given that, you know, huge lapse of time almost 30 years before your number comes up again, it might come up sooner of course but assuming it's 2050. It's a long, long time to be out of the top table or away from the top table. Yes, indeed, our first worries that we have learned a lot about the work and the real life and the working methods of the Security Council. Of course, I mean, as you know from our Security Council campaign, Estonian African strategy was born, so we didn't let the exercise to go away. So similarly from this Security Council experience, we will probably put together a textbook for all our diplomats which they can then use. And it doesn't mean I mean that you have to be in the Security Council only to use this kind of textbook. I mean, you can work with your partners and allies who are there, who are preparing to join. Our closest friend and naval Latvia is starting their campaign. Of course, I mean, we are working with them in order to help them in their, in their run as well and so on and so on. So we will try to preserve this what we have to offer this knowledge and experience at the UN and the international and multilateral will debate as much as we can. I believe we have much more self confidence that what we can do really matters and can can really be important to the global community as well. So I believe it takes an effort but because we consciously take this effort to I mean keep this impetus which we have now been able to grow also to the future to the extent that we call some of our Stadiars in UN and young cooperators in our diplomatic force in UN the future PGA because we think that 2050 50 free Estonia will try to become also the president of the General Assembly. So there are a couple of guys who need to compete for that job. As you know Estonia and Estonian diplomatic services dynamic and young people can get really quite quite important. Well, tasks to carry out also in the security council work. So these people they're still below 30 for them 2050 is perfectly workable idea. And becoming a PGA competing for that job might keep them I mean involved in UN missions for the next 30 years. That's my objective at least when I call them the future PGA. Excellent. The question here from Kevin Cardiff, who's a member of our Institute and former Secretary General of our Department of Finance and he says re asks, and what is the balance for a security council member between, you know, insisting on, on rights such as women's rights as you be G be TQI and children's rights in Afghanistan, for example, and the need to retain external influence and normalize relations with states that don't respect these rights so how do you find the balance between, you know, having you know, concerns, priorities in terms of women's rights, children's rights, and the need also to engage with countries like like like the current regime in Afghanistan. It is tricky, but luckily the global toolbox is relatively varied. What we can use when we are when we are working with these kind of regimes, for example, for for a mission like one armor that is relatively low level of conditionality, even less for the missions of Red Cross, who keep working in Afghanistan, you and women, women of course already, for example, tried to set conditions tried to insist that they're female cooperators must be able to continue working. And they were or nobody works and then they were basically told that then nobody works but for example Red Cross also has their female cooperators in Afghanistan still working. And nobody has told them that if women don't if women work, we do not need your services so there are those bodies whose whose work is very much needed to make sure that I mean people are not starving and dying and the people at least can have their basic kind of needs met until we then figure out how we can involve bodies which demand, of course, higher level of conditionality. And we Estonians here think very much that any kind of relations with the new regime in Afghanistan, which I mean go beyond the agreed on our mission or Red Cross cooperation and actually needs to be highly conditional on the right of women to continue participating in the work in Afghanistan society. But we cannot really totally I mean pack our bags and leave because that would cause even more harm. It is a tight rope to walk, but luckily I mean there are different tools in our toolbox. And finally, Kevin, send me an email or something after this meeting I'm very happy to hear from you, your colleagues in the European Court of Auditors and responsible for structural reform there together so I have fond memories of him and Malachi. Okay, very good. You mentioned I think in your speech that you are I think the last member of the Security Council to be in Afghanistan to meet the that met the outgoing administration or regime there. To what extent I mean, did what eventually happened in the summer of this year. Did that come as a complete shock and to what extent did the international community and those participating on the ground in Afghanistan. Was it, is it a major setback for the general kind of international efforts to promote peace and security. Indeed, I was able to discuss with President Ghani and also Abdullah Abdullah, the position leader, and, and my understanding was that they, they expected there will be, but they expected that there will be maybe a gradual kind of retraction of the of the of the conflict line for them but that it will happen this quickly and that are now the Afghanistan National Army will simply not put up any fight. This, this was probably not expected from them and I have to say that our partners and allies we all, we all had an understanding that it will be tough, it will be hard. And as we remember that the Taliban didn't show up to talk discussions and anymore that when when the date of withdrawal of the US forces which then caused the withdrawal NATO forces was agreed so so the war was inevitable that that the war will happen this was kind of accepted by all sides, but that it will be so on one sided this was was was not probably predictable for us. How we should relate to it, I mean first and foremost, I do not think that finally. I mean, how would I put it, if Afghanistan National Army itself was not ready to fight for their women and children, it's their wives, they taught us their sisters. Then obviously that society have not developed as we have had hope that it had developed during the last 20 years. And it's not our fault. It was our miscalculation but it's not our fault. What indeed is our, our, our responsibility now is to make sure that Taliban, which must be today also recognizing already that the Afghan society has changed. I mean, young people do not. I mean, it's not very easy to put them back into the straight jacket. Now, but probably they are coming to a realization that they need to offer a little bit of a different more free way, we should be able to kind of be there and kind of insist that this happens rather sooner than later. And, and of course, it has to, I mean, be supported by what Afghanistan people themselves dare to say. And we see even today, I mean, nowadays we see women still, I mean standing up for their rights. We should make sure that each and every ray of hope is supported noted and pointed out to Taliban, but they need to build a different regime from which they had, I mean from which probably is, is their intention. But I have to say that the initial appointments, ministers, vice ministers, none of them has, has, has given me any hope that things could be better. So just maybe as we're coming to the end, I'm just curious as to the division of labor in Estonia. Obviously, you took the lead on and led the campaign for the successful membership of the Security Council and you mentioned your Prime Minister, your Foreign Minister, also attended and participated in meetings of the Council. How does it all, how does it all work in Estonia in terms of the division of labor between the office of the president, your office and the office of the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. Is that an easy relationship or is this, is it a relationship of practicality or how does it actually, how is it working in the context of the Security Council, for example. Well, in Estonia, the coordinating force or foreign policies, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. This is their coordinating force is demonstrated in, in, I mean, calling. I mean the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, also the members of the Parliament's foreign policy and defence committees and if needed then also other committees and telling them that I mean we have an opening here. We have a plan here where we think you as the tool of Estonian foreign policy might function best, and me myself. Similarly, I mean we of course discuss and I have my own views and because I did the Security Council campaign and led it. I have probably, I mean, quite a global view about what we could do now I mean to forward the Estonian foreign policy and our foreign policy thinking. We have an independent thinker on it, but we move together after having discussed these things, and that are very rarely any tensions between any of these actors. Well, sometimes Parliament says that I should have coordinated directly with them whereas we all should remember that it's the ministry who has the coordinating roles they sometimes forget. And of course there are people who relate differently to different initiatives, but all and overall I would say that we all see ourselves as tools of our foreign policy and when I go, for example, to, to, to another country for a meeting then my question to my ambassador there is that your, I mean highest level foreign policy tool is here. What are your plans with me now during these days, which doors you want to open where you want me to get in, I need to open away for you and then this is how we work here I don't know whether it's easy to understand but for Irish people should be I mean you're not that big nation yourself. Well, I think that's a different arrangement obviously here, but I mean obviously in your case it clearly works extremely well. As we're coming to the end maybe just to talk about yourself and your future, you're only one day since having been the president, which was yesterday. So you've had this extraordinary five years in office, a large part of it, and dedicated to the Security Council, the rather issues as well I'm sure. And how, how do you see yourself, what do you see yourself, what do you see as your role being, you know, in the foreseeable future and what, how do you see you, how do you maintain as the advantages of the profile that you have established over the last five years and particularly over the last two years on the Security Council, how do you see yourself putting those into a continuing effect? Well, there are various ways. One is that if you look carefully at the international scene, then my previous as Thomas Andrew Kilvers is still very active in think tanks in unisecurity conference, other conferences in foreign security policy as well. So there is space for more Estonian thinkers on the international scene, I'm quite sure about it. In addition, I have the role of global advocate for women and children appointed by Antonio Gutierrez for two years, where I'm concentrating on coordinating our age six bodies on how we resolve nutrition related dishes, maternal issues and how to make technology serve the world, children better. There I have a dream that each and every birth globally could be registered over mobile phone because nowadays 20% of children born never get registered how we can vaccinate them, how we can offer them food, how we can offer them schooling if we do not even know who is born where to who. And this is totally available nowadays thinking of technology because mobile phones are I mean have relatively high penetration rates even in the most communities, the service doesn't have to be, I mean really it's not a broadband service, it can be simply done by mobile phone like people pay for example or use WhatsApp in remote parts of the least developed world. There are some kind of islands of hope where I can see digital development is being thought of as a leapfrogging tool for developing nations, trying to get this kind of movement that every baby gets registered. This is something which I would like to bring to this to this world if possible from this global advocate role. It is of course a role which doesn't have a budget, and it doesn't have a working program. You can rely only on your own fundraising capability and we're establishing a foundation to sustain this work for the next two years. And also, I'm working with Estonian Digital and Startup sector which is far bigger than Estonian economies just to give you one example Estonian Unicorn which is well employing globally and mostly in developing countries by the way 300,000 people Estonian Unicorn workforce is 650,000. See, this is how big our Startup communities and our digital community, I also plan to work with them both on this, I mean they also very much social responsible companies they also interested in making sure babies are fed and willing to get to doctors. Join their great outreach to the world with my more humanitarian outreach and we will see where all this takes us. We are establishing the President Kalyolite Foundation to help us to work on these issues and and everybody who wants well can take contact with my office and participate. President, thank you for your time today. We really do appreciate it. Good luck with the future. Good luck with that. Those ambitions that you just outlined there. The role that you played on Security Council that Estonia has played and continues to play of course until the end of this year. It's something that we obviously follow very very closely. We like to think obviously we are kindred spirits in so many ways. It's slightly bigger than you but not that much bigger than you. But we very much appreciate you giving the time and sharing your insights with us. I mean, for us we are two believers in the multilateral process, just like you are. And we, we have a lot to learn from your experience. And hopefully we will acquit ourselves over the last the next 16 months, as well as Estonia has done over the last period of your time in office on Security Council. So good luck with the future. Congratulations on all you've achieved in the past and and we look forward to seeing you in Dublin at some stage in reality. The virtual world is great, but do come and visit us sometime too. Absolutely. I love Dublin. I once taken a kind of literary excursion through the streets of Dublin and on the on the text of change choice and it's one of my favorite sightseeing tours. I remember it's still very familiar. So thank you and see you sometime in the future. Thank you very much indeed.