 Welcome to the World Economic Forum Issue Briefing, coming to you from the annual meeting 2017 here in Davos Clostas. This is the issue briefing on human rights in a multi-polar world. I'm absolutely delighted to have here with us two distinguished guests and human rights leaders. First here on my left I have Zaid Raad Al Hussein, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. On his left we have Salil Shetty, the Secretary General of Amnesty International. The purpose of today's issue briefing discussion is to really have a challenging and provocative look at the state of human rights today. We say human rights in a multi-polar world, but we might also say human rights in a polarised world, in an increasingly populist world. And in a world that's being disrupted and driven in many ways also by technology and what we hear at the forum have been talking about as the fourth industrial revolution. So with that we'll take about 20 minutes or 15-20 minutes to discuss and get views from our distinguished panellists and turn to the audience here in the room for some challenging questions to us. I'd like to also welcome our viewers on Facebook and via livestream and please do comment and suggest things as well because this is an important public conversation to us to have. Zaid, as High Commissioner obviously you have an important role globally at the international intergovernmental level to look at, understand and shape the state of human rights in the world. Where are we today and where are we today particularly in that multi-polar, popular sentiment that we see, feeling and occurring? Thank you, Nicholas. It's important to realise that rights are almost like oxygen. You need it to maintain the semblance of a life and you take it for granted until the rights are withdrawn from you. The system we have in place was built on the embers of the suffering of hundreds of millions of people in the Second World War and in the First World War. And it was created from that energy without the enormous suffering in the early part of the 20th century. We would not have been able to create it. The risk now is that notwithstanding the enormous achievements made across an entire range of rights from the rights of women, the rights of children, the rights of persons with disabilities, the rights of the LGBTQ community. All of this now I believe is at risk, the proliferation of conflicts, the attacks by extremist groups and terrorism. I mean well understood and appreciated. The rise of autocratic governments unyielding in their acceptance of civil society that can exercise its civil rights properly and then unleashed also is the rise of populism. And here we have to be extremely careful. There is this discussion currently taking place here at the Weft that basically builds into this idea that we have failed those who have felt aggrieved, who have been left behind by shrinking labour markets, that economies have transformed countries into or let's say parts of countries into angry population centres, those who feel that they have not participated in the share of the pie or have accepted it. The dangerous part of this thinking is that yes we need to do this but not at the expense of doing the necessary thing of confronting the deceivers, the charlatans, those who are chasing their people, the populists into believing that if you attack another vulnerable group all your problems will be solved. We've been through this experience in the 20th century, it leads to catastrophic results and this is the great fear that we have at the moment. Thank you Zaid. So Lill Amnesty is an organisation that is dedicated to confrontation of the human rights abuses in many way and the organisation has, it works incredibly hard all around the world to do this every day. What's your sense of the state of human rights today and how Amnesty and others in the NGO space are moving to really be more effective, particularly in the changing circumstances and the fears that Zaid raised? I can come to the question of what we are doing and how we are responding but just in terms of what you're the first part, what's our kind of analysis, I think just to briefly touch on that. I think certainly it's at least been 10 years if not longer that many of us including me individually but Amnesty international organisations like Amnesty have been saying including the World Economic Forum annual meetings that we are heading for a train crash. This has been a consistent message and there are three fundamental reasons why we are heading for a train crash. Firstly, we have unaccountable governments and leaders. Secondly, we have growing inequality and thirdly we have failing institutions. We've been saying this time and again every forum, we ignore it and we're not that surprised that this has happened, what we're seeing has happened now. Since last five, six years we've had the Arab Spring, we've had things like blowing up in Brazil, South Africa as we speak and what's happened is that this space, this reality that people have genuine anger and outrage has been misused and hijacked by demagogues and populist leaders and we are now caught napping when this happens. So we have Duterte, we have in Philippines, we have Modi in India, we have Erdogan in Turkey, we have and now of course Orban in Hungary, let's not forget Europe, closer home and now we have Trump in the US, Brexit in the UK, all of those things. So the question is what do we do, where do we go from here and for us really the solution actually is to go back to basics because there is no retreat on this question. So what we are being told is that in order to have security, to protect the security of people in order to have development, the solution is to basically dump human rights. That the way you provide security is by dumping human rights, the way you create development and growth is by not having human rights. Actually it's quite the opposite. The reason we ended up in this situation and we ignored all the early warning signs is what's caused the problems. We have turned it around and so for an organisation like Amnesty International which is a people's movement, it's based on 7 million activists on the ground. We're just going to go deeper to build the moment to go back to this basic question as to why do human rights matter, why do checks and balances matter in the current reality and I'm sure we'll talk more in the context of the fourth industrial revolution as well. So two interesting dichotomies you set up there. So the shift of anger and the expression of that anger in populist movements and yet the fear that those populist movements actually create this undermining of a system that came out of the market in 1948 after the Second World War and the second one being this false dichotomy between secured and human rights which would suggest that we may be entering a period of a vicious reinforcing spiral of more security, worse human rights, worse security etc. But Celil, you also mentioned failing institutions so maybe something provocative to the High Commissioner said is that the High Commission itself that the international institutions around human rights are failing or what else is here at the heart of how we need to approach and ensure that human rights really serve to protect and support and go against the neglect and abuse by governments of people. If I can take a leaf from Celil's book, I've been coming to the World Economic Forum on and off for the last 15 years or so and seldom if ever did I ever see any of the literature from the World Economic Forum or indeed in any of the panels, even the two words human rights mentioned. There seem to be somehow toxic and the economists would prefer to talk about all inclusive economies and then the subsets of human rights, the rights of women, the rights of children and so forth and the idea that you can mention human rights seems to be at variance with the aims of the corporate world, the business world and it's not the case. I commend the World Economic Forum to just having this panel and talking about this issue because Celil is absolutely right. There are a number of countries that can post good numbers when it comes to their economies, low rates of debt, low debt to GDP ratio when it comes to the current account, good foreign currency reserves. But you know that if the head of state of that country were to suffer a stroke within three or four months it will be in turmoil because the rights part of it was just not there and as Celil said it surprises us that economists are surprised that we've gone through this because we have detected that human rights is a very sensitive seismograph and we picked things up very early and again you're not aware of rights until you begin to lose them. And the people that support Celil's organization are the first ones to sort of sense this and so we think it is appropriate. In terms of the institutions, I mean there's a considerable amount of discussion about Brexit, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom spoke yesterday, she's here in Davos today but we have seen in the past a threat made to the United Nations of wholesale withdrawal of membership. We've seen it with the International Criminal Court, we've seen it with the Regional Human Rights Commission, the Inter-America Commission, we've seen the UK at one stage threatened to withdraw from not just the European Court of Justice but the European Convention on Human Rights and this is something new. This is an acknowledgement that somehow these institutions, this set of laws doesn't serve the public anymore and Celil is absolutely right, I mean they were put in place because we recognize that in the end if you don't pay attention to this you end up in a sort of not in a literal sense but you end up in Sarajevo. You end up either Sarajevo 1992 where you have these vicious regional wars or you end up in Sarajevo 1914 something much greater but that's where the density of hatred takes you at the very end of the road. If you take the UN Security Council which is supposed to be the paramount body in the world set up to ensure peace and security, those five countries are behind most of the wars. They are the biggest arms traders and manufacturers in the world and they are busy playing politics and so at a minimum we are saying that don't use the veto at least when it comes to crimes against humanity, you know serious crimes of that nature. And the populist question is to go back briefly to that, you know the challenge we have now is that since they can't find a solution to the real issues what they are doing is scapegoating, creating fear. So if you're a Muslim, you're a refugee, you're a migrant, you know, or now if you're a woman as well. So you're just being attacked for being the other and that's the big challenge we are facing but the only way to deal with this is to fight it head on, that's what we're going to do. So let's talk more about fighting and helping to reform in different ways, the kind of the confrontation element here that we mentioned earlier, calling out human rights abuses and those that enable it and the way in which we need to build institutions or reform institutions to actually have that kind of peaceful runway to provide the oxygen that Zaeid said of human rights in everywhere. High Commissioner, in what ways do we need to fight and what's the responsibility of those privileged enough to be here at Davos who are representing major corporations, large members of the civil society community, the media, many of whom are watching this here in the room and online and other stakeholders. What's our responsibility as individuals and organisations to fight? The important point is that we do not become meek and do not resort to general statements. It's easy to say that we're all against xenophobia, that we're all against prejudice and we're all against discrimination. The hard thing is actually to name who the xenophobes are and then to speak to them directly and we've seen time and again that people can be very courageous and private and not so in public. Too much is at stake now and we need to, if we're going to speak about xenophobia, we have to name who we believe the xenophobes to be and be clear about it and I think both of us have done this and we will continue to do it. From the corporate side, I think there's a recognition again that we need greater precision when it comes to analysis. For instance, a couple of years ago, there was a very important conference that was convened in London to look at sexual and gender-based violence, an odious phenomenon that needs to be dealt with. Much of the attention was focused on the appalling conditions in the eastern Congo. When I was there recently, and I think Salil has been many times, and I asked the question how much of it is incidental, how much of it is just these wild armed groups that commit these horrific abuses against women, time and again. I was told that we don't have the data as such but anecdotally it's not believed to be incidental or sporadic. It's believed to be programmed at the behest of or to carry favour with the corporations that are mining in that part of the country. In London, to my knowledge, I didn't see those companies represented. Now, whether they know or don't know, they should be there because the implication is that these armed groups are doing this somehow in a way that no control can be exercised over them. We believe that corporations, for instance, need to be involved, but we're not there to beat them over the head with a stick. We're there because we need them to help us solve the problem. If they're not there, we're only dealing with half the problem and not in a genuine sense trying to solve it. There's a massive role for business leaders who are here and diverse to play. Again, it's not new stuff. We're saying that before you launch on stuff on any of your projects, it has to be part of your core business thinking that you need an ex-antee. Before you launch into it, you have to do a proper assessment of what the human rights impacts are going to be. Just like you do with the environment, you have to do that in relation to societies. Of course, the extractives are the big one, but coming to the technology question, if the big corporate tech companies cannot ensure encryption and the human rights defenders are then exposed, they're attacked. We know that. Encryption is not like a technological thing, but it's actually a very serious political issue. Absolutely. That brings us nicely onto the issue of technology, the number, the diffusion of technology, the rate of change of technology, and the ways in which different groups, governments of course, but corporations, non-state actors, others are able to use and employ technology for different purposes. I think there's two issues at play here. One is the misuse or use of this technology to further human rights abuses. The other issue is just that it changes the context in which we are able to detect and understand and appreciate and make impact in the general sphere of protecting vulnerable people when their rights are being neglected or abused. Salil, just to follow up on this, how do you feel technology has changed the context in which amnesty has worked and has it affected or made it worse or better in different ways? I always say that if you think about liberation theology and all the great things that liberation theology did to the Catholic Church, I think we're now talking about liberation technology. Power is amazing and it's done wonders to empower people. The mobile phone in some ways has empowered more women than most organizations could imagine including amnesty. All of the positives I take as a given, we are using it for crowdsourcing, we're using satellite imagery. We've just had a million people sign up petition to pardon Snowden. We couldn't have done that without having digital support. I say this, the four areas in which we really need to be cautious in terms of safeguards. One is the issue of technology and freedoms. You now have Apple pulling the New York Times app in China. What does that mean? The whole access to information, the role of corporates there is massive and encryption privacy is one of the sub-issues there. Second is dignity. You have trolling, you have abuses, 75% of women are saying that they're facing cyber violence. This is massive. Third is on jobs, so the whole issue of equity. Of course we need technology but if you're not conscious of the fact that this has very asymmetric results then it's going to be very, very big. I think the final issue is on peace, technology and peace. Use of drones, use of predictive policing. It's not like playing video games. People are dying. We've done ground work in Pakistan and places like that, Yemen as we speak. There's a whole issue of what role positive and negative technology can play on peace and security. I think we just need to be very conscious of these issues. Of course we want to move ahead but how are you moving ahead is the question. Sayed, what's your take on this on technology and human rights at the moment? My voice completely to what Celine has said. I think it's important to realise that the background conditions in many countries can be described as pretty serious to say the least. Deep structural discrimination exists in many of these countries. The prevalence of technology can widen the gap. It is debatable to what extent it is a real leveler because it can just expose the prejudice to even deeper forms of articulation. I think both of us agree it's not entirely a panacea. You do need, if you're going to have all inclusive development, sustainable development, you do need for the elites in countries to recognise patterns of discrimination against minorities, against ethnic groups who have been excluded, against indigenous groups who are often marginalised. It's only with this transformation of the mind that you can then use technology for the benefit of all your people. If you do not open your mind up to this way of thinking then it's extremely dangerous. I've often been asked, you know, you sort of liberal types, are you not passe now? Are you not a sort of a beleaguered group because you're being passed by? My response is, that may be so in the minds of some, but those of us who have been in conflict and I spent two years in the former Yugoslavia 20 years ago, you see where it takes you at the end. We know what the destination is. It's not a joking matter and I think more and more corporations, the more they have this discussion with us, the human rights movement, I think the better it is. There is one other point I'd like to make and that is that the people we talk to, so I did a Facebook chat live two months ago. We had a very strong response. Most of the people who were asking questions were young people and they are concerned about rights issues. They really are and if you are a corporation that wants to think in terms of market share in the future, you are a smart corporation if you think about values and if you think about rights, not just in the supply and the value chain but the vision statement and what you represent because then you're on the right side. What we see happening is clearly a challenge to human rights but we think the long arc is there and in the end hope will trump fear and I use the middle word purposefully, hope will trump fear and the liars can lie for only a certain amount of time. In the end, I think the historical record proves that they do not succeed either in reputational terms or even indeed of their own experience. Can I make one thing concretely because you're talking about business leadership, responsible leadership. So the UK has now come up with investigative powers law which is probably one of the most invasive surveillance legislation that's come anywhere in the world. So you can imagine what Ethiopia and all these other countries are going to do since the UK is a role model for many of these police states. So where is the business voice in the UK saying, no, this is not, this is a responsible, we are going to challenge this. In Europe, not very far from here, we have tens of thousands of refugees freezing in the cold and living in camps in miserable conditions. The richest continent on the planet is abusing its own refugee convention which it has signed up to. Where is the business voice saying, this is gross abuse, we cannot allow this to happen. Thank you both. I think it's time to turn to the audience. We have ten minutes left and we want to make sure that we reserve that time for questions and debate from those of you here in the room. So if I could ask you to identify yourselves and put your hand up, we'll get a microphone to you and please do feel free to be challenging, be provocative, but do be concise and we'll see how many questions we can get before we ask Zaid and Salil to do a closing statement. So who would like to start us off in terms of a short comment or a question from the audience for the panellists to respond to? Both of you said the institutions are failing to do their job. What can regular citizens and individuals in the United States, for example, it's pretty clear we do not agree with Trump and his statements and his discrimination. So what can regular citizens do to cooperate or collaborate with organizations like yours? It's a question that we frequently have to deal with in many parts of the world and the response is always, you know, you exercise your freedom of expression when you have it, when you lose it or have lost it, it's too late for you almost. You use it when you have it to make the points that will have impact because, as one of my predecessors said, the space between a government and its people is a very narrow space, but it's the most sensitive space as well. And we know that when we criticize a government by name and they brush us off, it's not truthful that it has an impact because it elicits a reaction. And the more we do it, the more there is a reaction. And ordinary citizens need to be aware of what their rights are. Many of them don't know because until they disappear. And then once you know what the rights are and the rights of others, defend them, speak, use your voice to do this, you would be amazed how many human rights defenders around the world are willing to risk everything for the sake of speaking on behalf of principle. And they forfeit their families almost, their lives, their stuck in miserable prison conditions for years, but they will speak out. And if they can do it, everyone can do it. And I think that's the point that has to be driven. I mean, for honesty, this is kind of our core business. In some ways, we are a people's movement. We have more than 7 million activists and campaigners from different parts of the world. We take no money from governments or companies to do our research campaigning because we have to remain independent, impartial. So honesty wouldn't exist if people like you were not part of it. And I mean, honesty is not the only organization. There are many people who work. The benefit of doing things in a collective is obviously much greater than doing it alone. But as Zaid said, that shouldn't stop you from doing things as yourself. And yeah, we have like two big pushes right now. One is on the refugee issue and second is on the attacks on human rights defenders. And when we say human rights defenders, it's not like those are fighting for technically for human rights. They could be fighting for environmental issues. They could be anti-corruption activists. You know, they all under attack in so many parts of the world, including in the US. So please, you know, our strapline is taking injustice personally. Don't wait for it to affect you because it will soon or later. That's right. Another question from the audience. Please, sir. I am Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management and head of the Magnitsky Global Human Rights Campaign. One of the things which you didn't mention in either of your presentations is the intersection between kleptocracy and abuse of human rights. It seems that many leaders of authoritarian regimes abuse their leadership to steal money and they abuse their people to stay in position to continue to steal money. And one of the things that we've discovered in the Magnitsky Justice Campaign is the use of targeted sanctions against human rights abusers. If you find somebody who's abusing the rights in their country, it's pretty hard to get them to stop if they're profiting from it. But if you can freeze their assets in the West, then it does indeed create a great disincentive for them to do that. I'm wondering from both of you what your organizations think about the use of targeted sanctions against kleptocrats and human rights violators, whether that's a good policy, whether you would endorse that for other countries. Oh, it's a great question, William. I regret to say this part of the work is an underdeveloped part of the work in my office. We have spoken about it, that we need to focus more on corruption and the capture of the political space by elites because you have this situation in many countries where, and this terminology came out of the Center for International Development at Harvard, which are not really countries. They refer to as isomorphic mimicry. In other words, they mimic countries. They appear to be countries. Every investment is made into the appearance of a country, but the institutions don't really exist because this nexus or this joint enterprise between the political elites have captured the political system and then corruption is so deep. It's something that I have to confess we need to focus more on and look deeper into, but that it is an issue I think is beyond dispute, the more you travel around the world, the more you see evidence of this. In terms of targeted sanctions, they do seem to work in certain situations. Again, it seems to be anecdotal. We hear in specific circumstances where it's not for targeted sanctions, then the situation would not have changed. For instance, perhaps it's relevant to the DRC at the moment with the decision taken by President Kabila on 31 December. They don't seem to have worked in the case of Burundi, and we need to understand why is this the case. The US makes the argument under the Obama administration that they came too late, too early or too late depending on how you see it. So it is something that we need to study in a deeper sense. You've just got one minute left, so maybe Celil in answering Bill's question. In answering your question, we can also talk about if there are any other kind of calls for how we can be innovative in the way that Bill and his group are in terms of making a difference in human rights. On the corruption question, there's no doubt. International human rights law is a bit complicated with the relationship with corruption. Legally speaking, it's a hazy kind of picture. Leaving it on the legality of it, I think for most ordinary people, the connections are obvious. It erodes independent media, judiciary. Most of these countries which I named, they are in the process of decimating institutions. They either bribe them, they bully them, they intimidate them, or it's a straight corruption that's happening. So it's a combination of all of that. I think the question is how do you get smart targeted sanctions to work? It's a slightly mixed bag. We've called on asset freezes in the case of, say, Assad's and his immediate coterie, so we call out for that sometimes when it's clear that it's important and it'll make a difference. There are other times when we are a bit careful about it because we're not sure it's a blunt instrument so we don't harm people as well. If you're asking me beyond that, I think the thing is it's time for, that's what we always say, that the only time things get bad and evil takes over when good people are silent and inert. So it's time for us to get into the battle and fight it together. Thank you very much. I think we're just coming up to the time here, so I wanted to thank both Zeyal Dadaral Arsain and Salil Shetty for their time here as well as all of you here in the room. I'll just mention again, human rights exist to protect people against abuse and neglect by governments and other institutions. As Zaid said, they are the oxygen that we breathe. Thank you so much for taking the time to raise this issue with us at the World Economic Forum here in Davos in 2017. Thank you to the audience and please I wish all of you a fantastic weekend and all the opportunities to protect and support the most vulnerable people in the world as we move forward. Thank you everyone.