from Sunny Honolulu, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii, welcome one and all. The world is facing a myriad of problems. We have Ukraine, we have Gaza, we have starvation in Africa. But people who have really studied the issue know that there is an 800-pound gorilla above all the problems. And that is climate change. It is already affecting us, costing us billions of dollars. It'll probably cost us trillions of dollars down the road. And thank goodness, we have young leaders emerging who are going to focus on solving the climate change problems we have with us today. Rena Camarillo and Mira Fujii of the Climate Change Forum. And I'm not going to go into any more. I'm going to let these wonderful high school students take it away from here. So, Mira, I believe you're going to do the introductions and the explanations. Yes. Hi, my name is Mira. I was the climate justice policy area leader for the Climate Future Forum this past December. So this past December, we had the Climate Future Forum. So we brought in a bunch of high school students along with policymakers and other organizations. And we all kind of gathered together and focusing on different areas like regenerative food systems and clean energy and transportation. And our group was focusing on climate justice and human rights. So in our group this past year, we talked a lot about what climate justice means to us and kind of like our priorities in this area specifically. And we did talk a lot about education and finding ways to bring climate change education into legislation and just encouraging more education on climate change in order to further climate justice. One of the other things that we did focus on as well was with the Navahine trials that happened earlier and other aims or lawsuits or legislation that is focusing on bringing more awareness to climate change and ensuring that all people, all of all socioeconomic status can receive the benefits of fighting climate change. So yeah. Aloha, everyone. My name is Reina. I first became involved in climate activism, this past year when I joined the Hawaii Youth Climate Coalition. Last year, I also had the chance to serve as one of the youth organizers of the Climate Future Forum. And this year, I was honored to serve as one of the co-chairs for our climate justice working group. So as Mira touched on, a large part of our working group discussion was focused around the idea of what is climate justice. We determined there are several avenues through which you can approach this concept. The precise technical definitions from the UN Development Program is, quote, climate justice means putting equity and human rights at the core of decision making and action on climate change, end quote. Basically, the societal or human side of the actions we take to combat climate change. And we also decided that climate justice also means approaching climate change through the courts. So for example, as Mira mentioned, the Nava Hina versus Hawaii Department of Transportation trial just this past April marks the first efforts among youth to kind of push for climate justice in the courts. And Howard, as a matter of fact, we were wondering what would be your take on this notion of climate justice? OK. I like to give examples instead of speaking abstractly. So I'll give an example of something I'm working on, namely the urban heat island effect, where if you have a rural area and in a suburban area and in an urban area and measure the temperature, you will find that the temperature goes up and up when it's concentrated in the urban area. And then within the urban area and suburbia, you have some stark differences in temperature. And I'm thinking of Hawaii as a very warm climate. In the wealthy suburbs with plenty of trees or in the nice areas of town, again, with plenty of trees, you are cool and comfortable. Where the less fortunate people live, generally there is a lack of trees and a concentration of solar radiation, which be experienced as heat, something we're doing to mitigate that is cool roofs, cool walls, and so forth, to reflect the heat back up. That's one example. People live in hotter, more uncomfortable climates when they are of the poorer status. Another stark example is, say, Louisiana, which has a lot of oil refineries. And they are just polluting as heck the plumes from those refineries. Guess who lives in the shadows of those refineries? Poor people. And of course, they have the resulting respiratory illnesses and generally a shorter lifespan because of that. Final example, there are several different suburbs in Washington, DC. In one suburb, there is a concentration of very wealthy people. The average lifespan is 93 years old. Then you go a few other neighborhoods down, concentrate very poor people. The average lifespan is 67 years old. It's those type of problems when you're thinking of climate justice that we need to alleviate. Absolutely. It definitely seems to be a pattern that we leave out people of lower economic status or people who don't have the same resources as us. And in fact, one of the concrete examples I thought of during our working group is the problem of the ecoabilism. So even when we're determining legislation towards combating climate change, we often neglect this large portion of, the large portion of disabled people within our community and forget to encompass them within all the preventative and protective measures we take. So in all of that, we talked about the need for a just transition and ensuring that in our process of combating climate change, we don't leave anyone behind and make sure that all of our interests are represented. This is part of a much larger problem that we're seeing not in just in Hawaii, not just in the US, but worldwide. The richer getting richer, the poorer are getting poorer and the poor are living in worse and worse and worse environmental conditions. Whereas those of us who are among the fortunate, we're just comfortable as anything. So Proceed didn't mean to interrupt you there. I think we wanted to also make sure that when we're creating legislation that we're not placing an unfair burden on people who are of lower socioeconomic statuses. So I think when we're considering a lot of this legislation, we wanna make sure that we're not just making the less fortunate people pay for our problems and ensure that that gap doesn't widen even more. So I think Raina was gonna talk about one of the legislation that we were talking about in our groups. All right, so one concrete piece of legislation we all determined is crucial to climate justice is this idea of carbon cashback. Now, unfortunately, the carbon cashback bill of this year has been deferred by the Agricultural and Environment Committee, I think, and the Energy Economic Development and Tourism Committee. So it looks like it won't make much more headway this year, but it's something we're hoping will certainly resurface in the coming years. So in any case, carbon cashback as stated here is part of SB number 2525 and establishes a carbon barrel tax system in which proceeds are distributed among all Hawaii residents. So that applies to you even if you're on the wealthy side or on the poorer side. And what's special about this program is that it will deliberately target low-income residents. A quote here says that, quote, the 20% of households with lowest incomes would gain more than $1,000. So alongside combatting climate change, what carbon cashback really does is ensure that we're not leaving anyone behind economically. That's going to raise the price of oil and price of gasoline. Did you people actually get to the capital and sit in the hearing rooms and testify and listen to the other people testifying? Yeah, I think a lot of more youth have made efforts to go directly to the capital. And especially with Zoom testimony these days, it's become a lot easier to express our voices. Yeah, good, good, good. That's a tremendous experience, yeah. Absolutely. And what more do you have for us? So another one of the bills that we were talked about that we think is important during our session was the climate impact fee, which used to be called the green fee, I believe, but it wasn't passed last session. So this year it's being called the climate impact fee. And this one, I think it was proposed by our governor, Josh Green. And it's a $25 fee, but the exact price of it has kind of changed as it's gone on. But it's basically a fee that would be charged to visitors who stay in hotels or vacation rentals. And it would create a fund and a new kind of, yeah, a new fund and a program to implement those funds to go to different, go into reducing climate change impacts such as, I think a lot of emphasis has been put onto the Lahaina wildfires and also addressing flooding, pollution, other shoreline issues and things like that. So this would kind of create like a new kind of way to put money back into our own land and I guess take some of the resources from our, and I guess some of the damage caused by our tourism department. So I think we thought that this bill was really important because it would provide a way to fund these projects. Like all the reducing climate change impacts like the fires, the flooding, all of that. But in a way, that would not, I guess, take more money or taxes from the local population in Hawaii. And then in fact, a lot of those dollars would have created more jobs, maybe and including environmental jobs, perhaps. Yes, yes, that would be. So onto the next slide. During our workshop, we also touched on the idea of research and how important it is to kind of focus our efforts on this somewhat neglected area of climate research. And when you think of climate research, you probably think of scientific or technological research, but we think it's equally as important to place emphasis on the societal implications of that research and of our efforts in combating climate change. So some bills we've pointed out here are SB number 657 and HB 441. And these are companion bills. They create a database of research included in a climate justice report, specifically on the social vulnerability to climate change. So it focuses on things like the income gap and data indicators. So it's based in empirical evidence and it's at least finally shedding some light on what we can do on the human side of climate change to mitigate the impacts of our efforts in combating climate change. And some core questions at the base of this issue are that of which groups are the most vulnerable and how do we ensure a just transition? How do we ensure and transition to a sustainable future without leaving anyone behind, whether that be in the job market or members of the disabled community as I was talking about earlier? Howard, if you have any input on either of these questions, we'd love to hear it. Well, President Biden pushed through the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, which in fact is very, very environmentally oriented and it has attached to it hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars. And I was at a conference in Atlanta not long ago sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency and the big push there was for heat pump water heaters. I don't know if you've ever heard of those, but those are air conditioners in reverse which create hot water in a much more efficient manner than do your conventional old fashioned water heaters where they are up to four and four and a half times as efficient. And in low income homes, very often, well, low income homes usually have a lot of people under one roof. The more people you have under that roof, the more hot water you're going to be consuming and water heating can account for 40% of the utility bill of a lower income home. The use of the federal funds, the IRA funds would engage the manufacturers of heat pump water heaters to get into the lower income neighborhoods and meet with community leaders so they gain trust and then sit down with the individual homeowners and say we can take out this old water heater of yours, very, very inefficient. Stick in a heat pump water heater and the cost of that would be in Hawaii over $3,000. And immediately the homeowner is going to say I do not have $3,000 just sitting around to do this wonderful thing. So there's something called an instant rebate where if you agree to install this, the government writes you a check. In essence, it's not quite that simple, on the spot for $3,000. So you're getting a free heat pump water heater and your utility bill is going to drop like a rock. Does that sound like a good climate justice? And this is confined only to people, the AMI, average medium income, I think of a 1% or less, you have to be below the average income in order to qualify for this. Does that sound like a good climate justice initiative? And you multiply that by thousands of homes and you've got some real savings there. Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. Absolutely, I think it's clear there's kind of a correlation between initiatives that take on that effort of redistributing the wealth while simultaneously leveraging those practices to combat climate change. So for sure that sounds like a fantastic initiative. Your fossil fuel use will go way, way, way down. That actually wraps up our section on climate justice legislation, but another important area of climate justice we talked about and touched upon a little earlier is that of fighting climate change in the courts. So we saw this, for instance, in the Navejina versus Hawaii Department of Transportation trial, which featured 14 youth plaintiffs fighting for their right to a quote, helpful environment. And so it's interesting, we were talking to, I think now retired Supreme Court, Hawaii State Supreme Court Justice Michael Wilson, and he's talking about how efforts to combat climate change nowadays don't always have to go through the legislature, but also in our courts and in our judicial system. So even at a technical level, the word climate justice can mean a lot. Howard, what do you think about the possibility of fighting climate justice not through legislation but in the courts? That would be fine. The instances I've heard about have to do with pollution and the fact that people in lower income neighborhoods usually live in dirtier environments with more pollution in the air. And that has its effect on more sickness in these lower income communities. And these are exactly the people who cannot afford to be sick and pay doctors bills. So that's definitely one instance. And I'm wondering, this was Department of Transportation. How did transportation get mixed in here? Yes, I believe it was, they were suing the Department of Transportation for the pollution caused by their systems. And I think that the kind of, although yes, it was like, I think it was very symbolic and like a show of how I guess, how far we could push the court system and just push climate justice further. I think there was a couple other instances in a couple other states that tried to do the same thing. So I think we're hoping that more will pop up around the country and around the globe and that kind of awareness around it will also help to make, I guess, government change their mindsets and other organizations think more green, I guess, yeah. On a specific note, I think what the plaintiffs pointed out is the series of Aloha Plus goals set for the year 2030. They argued that the Hawaii Department of Transportation specifically is not on track to reach those goals. So we're hoping to see some progress there. Would this be referring to electric buses or? Partly, I think that's one of the core initiatives alongside the transportation system currently is shifting towards renewable energy in their bus system. Yeah, I know that there's at least one electric bus out there, the inauguration of it was right outside of our office in downtown Honolulu. And another transportation equity situation is indeed in our bus system, where some of us feel that when you get on the bus, you have to pay for it. And if the bus system were free and if the rail system were free, this would incentivize low-income people to go out of their way to use the bus and the rail. Is that possibly a good idea? There's other systems worldwide who charge either little or nothing for writing public transportation. And the main way that we middle-class citizens do cause pollution and do use energy is via our cars with one person in the car. Absolutely. In fact, I was in Japan and Switzerland this summer. Both countries have incredibly robust transportation systems and they consider it their main means of transportation at that point. So it's interesting how the more we invest into public transportation, the better it is for our environment. Yeah, and that also involves more walking. You have to walk to the bus stop, from the bus stop and so forth. And guess what? Walking is great exercise. Yeah, when I was a kid here in Honolulu, we had an electric bus system on trolleys and there was electric lines up above and the bus was connected to them. And I think it was the automobile industry who said, no, that's too good. So we no longer have that. And Switzerland, Japan, yeah. Two of the best, best, best countries for public transportation. And if you look at the energy use index for the average American versus the average Swiss or the average Japanese, you will find that we are usually about double. We use each one of us uses about twice as much. Energy is the average citizen in those countries and they have the same standard of living that we do. That's a good indicator. And finally, well, let's see, we need to wrap up. Do you have any final words of great wisdom? Well, I think Howard, we'd just like to thank you for offering us the chance to speak, especially as youth, it's not often that we get this opportunity to share our voices and what we discovered throughout the forum. Oh, and final note, what is in the future? Climate-wise for you two? Well, we're both off to college next year. Hopefully we'll get involved in climate activism there. I'm certainly hoping to continue working with youth organizations. I really like kind of being a part of that band of youth to stand up for ourselves and what we believe in. Yeah, yeah. Now in any given city, you will find that there's a concentration of green and that concentration of green as in green culture centers right around college campuses. You are the optimistic, dynamic-driven people. And mostly the colleges very much encourage that because the professors are educated people. They know that climate change is the 800-pound gorilla and they want to encourage you to get after it with activism. Yeah, I think we also hope to stay like still involved with Hawaii climate change politics and legislation as well though, because I think Hawaii has started to be the kind of leader in that area and we wanna, I think, encourage other states to do so. And I think by staying involved in all, wherever we are would be really great for us, yeah. And thank you for having us here. That's something that gives me satisfaction is Hawaii was the first state in the nation to declare the goal of zero net energy where on average, we will not be using any fossil fuel energy within 25 years, very ambitious. So on that very, very cheery note, we must bid fond of you, Rena and Mira, thank you so much and take the leadership role and run with it. That's all from Think Tech Hawaii, Howard Wigg. See you next time.


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 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 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.  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.


What what is your top five MCU films now that you have seen Captain Marvel? Yeah, the Avengers Endgame is one month away. So we're gonna do this again in a month But as of right now as of March 14 2019 at 9.52 Central Central Time 1052 Eastern Time What is your top five Marvel movies? So do you do you want them from five to one or one to five five five one baby five five to one all right Well, you know rounding out my top five and these are just because these are I'm not grating them on there, you know cinematic quality or you know the performances It's how I felt how I feel you know the way I like these films So it's just it's personal bias right there. Do I like it or I didn't like it.  Yep first one number three adventures infinity war Okay, two was the winter soldier And number one was Ragnarok Alright That's my top five So we had Captain Marvel. Mm-hmm. We had Guardians the first one infinity war winter soldier and Ragnarok Wow, so Okay, all right. Well, so my top five sort of similar. What do you got number five is Age of Ultron number four is Guardians of the Galaxy number three is Ragnarok Ragnarok number two is infinity war Number one is Thor the Dark World number one is the winter soldier. Come on now I've only said that about five billion times on this show.  I see I didn't I didn't include the Incredible Hulk It's part of the MCU. You have to yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, then whatever and that's down there Then that's gonna be 20. Okay. That's 21 is the Incredible Hulk and then I probably put Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3 up there Thor 1 would be up there. See I liked Iron Man 3 Yes, this is worth it.  All right. So, okay, I'll just accept you This is the non-definitive Probably biased always changing and most likely wrong change next week list of MCU films. I like All right, I'll just tell you mine. I said the last one's Incredible Hulk I guess because I wasn't gonna include it because it's been I've never I've sought once and I was like well, whatever Then I got the Dark World and then Iron Man 2 and then I got Thor Which really sucks. I relate that movie and then I have Guardians 2 Wow and and then I have Age of Ultron Then I have Captain America Then I have Civil War Then I have Black Panther Dr. Strange Spider-Man Ant-Man Ant-Man in the Wasp Iron Man 3 Iron Man the Avengers Captain Marvel Guardians Infinity War Winter Soldier Ragnarok Interesting I see and I listen you put Ultron number five.   I'm just like well besides the top four. I Mean I mean really I could put the first Iron Man up there with them, you know up into you know number two on my list but you know in just terms of you know pure enjoyment You know The first four are gonna be so Winter Soldier Infinity War Ragnarok and Guardians Like you're gonna have like you know a 10-place tie for fifth place You know It's like ties it But then at that point you're just like all right. Well, you know this one has a scene in Prague I like Prague someone put this one above this one.  Well, I mean listen Thor is my favorite character and two of his movies are my bottom four Bottom three, right? I mean, but his the number one is is Ragnarok. Yeah, I mean That was a really good movie that was so good I remember walking in that theater.  That was awesome. It was funny. It was good It made I mean it made sense like it progressed this MCU story.  Oh my god, but it would probably be in the top ten We yet we have to do this. I think after in-game comes out.  Well, if we're gonna do a weekly Bros. Top 22 films Gotta agree. Oh, it'll be more challenging Well, yeah, okay, so you'd make a list and I make a list and we did the average And then we do the comparing contrast and you can be you know You can make your argument why this is there And I'll listen I'll fight for Carol Danvers and put her in the top five somehow, but yeah, you'd be fine Ultron will be dropping on the list. Just let you know


Beagles are used in medical research to test the safety of new medicines. The beagles are kept together in pairs or small groups in pens. They are let out of their pens for regular exercise. Dogs are only occasionally used in medical research. Most research is done with mice, rats and zebrafish, with dogs making up less than one in a thousand of the animals used for research. But dogs are needed to test the safety of new medicines. And for research into conditions such as muscular dystrophy. The reason why beagles, as opposed to other varieties of dog are used, is largely an accident of history. Beagles are fairly small and easily managed. And these dogs have been used in an experiment. These dogs are on study currently and it's their time for exercise. They seem very happy coming out and running up and down the corridors and saying hello to everybody. Yes, they are. When a potential new medicine is being tested in animals, researchers need to be able to tell whether the drug is causing any unwanted side effects. This is done by measuring the drug's effect on the body while the dog is alive and by studying the dog's tissues after the dog is humanely killed. And where do the dogs come from? The dogs are all purpose bred for research and they come from licensed breeding establishments. In the last group as well there were two people with five dogs. It seems quite an intensive sort of human-to-dog ratio. Is that usual? Is that normal? Yes, we would normally have one or two technicians. We would never leave the dogs unsupervised. So here we've got some dogs that are going to be primatised to jackets. So this is for a jacketed external telemetry study. We've got an under jacket that will be placed onto the dog and then an over jacket. I like to see the dogs being shaved there in a couple of places. Is that so that something is going next to the skin? Yes, so we can put the pads on for the readings, the telemetry readings. There are many different ways of taking medical measurements with animals and researchers have worked hard to make this as comfortable as possible for the animals. So this is the under jacket. So the technicians will just reach each leg through the leg holes. Technical innovations now allow measurements to be taken by instruments that are outside the animal's body. In this case the measurements are taken through a jacket. So using the jackets means that the animal can be free roaming in its pen and there's no surgical techniques needed. The dog will be free to move around in its pen with its pen mate. And how long do they wear the jackets for when they're used to them? So it depends on the sleep design but normally up to a day. So the collar is just going on last there and that's so the animal doesn't turn around and start nibbling out the jacket and pull it off which could interfere with the experiment. So is this the first time this dog's been used in research? So where we can, where the study allows, we will reuse animals after a period where they've not had any procedures done to them. This dog's been used previously. These dogs have already taken part in medical trials and will take part in testing new medicines again. They are a bit lengthy these two, aren't they? The advantage of automatic monitoring is that the dogs can be left to live as usual and do not have to be picked up and restrained for medical measurements. Without research with dogs, we could never have made the breakthroughs that led to insulin for diabetes, drugs for heart disease and organ transplants. Treatments that have saved countless human lives.