Hello, everyone, and good morning. Thank you for joining us at this panel where we'll be focusing on the future readiness of SME, so small and medium-sized enterprises. I am delighted to be joined today by three very interesting and wonderfully strongly engaging in future readiness entrepreneurs, Stemis Lasbouple, the founder and chief executive officer of the Pelo IT Group, Elizabeth Rosiello, the chief executive author and founder of AZA Finance, and finally Akshay Shah, the group executive director of CLA Africa. And today we're going to be discussing sort of the attributes that contribute to this idea of future readiness for SMEs, and specifically looking at ideas of growth, of different forms of sustainable impact, so economic, social, and environmental, and also looking at the importance of adaptive capacity. This work is building on a recent report that we have been working on as partners with the World Economic Forum, focusing on the impact of these attributes towards creating the future readiness of SMEs, and specifically looking at how important these are in terms of the context of sustainable development. Oftentimes, SMEs are not given the attention or importance relative to their weight within the economy and society and are often overlooked. Therefore, we think that it is absolutely important that we're engaging with these entrepreneurs and discussing ways in which we can look forward towards creating stronger future readiness for many of these organizations. And specifically, we're interested in discussing the challenges and also the opportunities that are presented within this framework. We would be very, very excited to hear today from the three entrepreneurs joining us, and I believe we are ready to go. All right, thank you again for being here today. The first of the questions that I would like to pose to our panel is that of how you've responded to the challenges that we've recently seen. So I'm specifically thinking of things like the recent COVID pandemic, which I'm aware has impacted all of us quite substantially, and especially SMEs, potentially also looking at things like the climate crisis, which we're aware is slightly more of a longer-term impact, but will undoubtedly have also a strong need to shift how you are practicing within your organization. So, Stanislaus, I would love to hear from you first. Thank you, Ariel. For sure, this kind of crisis, on my point of view, are always an history accelerator, and I think that's a good news. At the business level and for companies, it has been, I think, a really wake-up call. Clients, employees, communities, market are more and more conscious about those issues, and the company will have to shift fast. At Palo 18, my company, we are fully dedicating the tech innovation and the business transformation, and the first step for us was really taking a hard look to our current business model, our value proposition, and stepping up to be an engine for this change. So, it was a good moment to do and stop to talking, to talk. So, sustainability is not really a target anymore. It's not enough. We can't get back with what we have already destroyed, but we can generate something new. So, to transform our business, we develop an internet transformation program called RedGenesis. The purpose of this program is, one, first, it's really to insufflate a new mindset within the company, explain the company vision and the target, the long-term strategy, align the corporate values, develop consciousness leadership, reshape new governance model and with more transparency and accountability. The second was to revamp our value proposition and to augment with impact technologies and impact businesses how we can propose a new front of the market. And the third was really to integrate a new ecosystem globally and locally in order to propose a added and augmented value. So, we face also during this period, we say a new human resource challenges. It was a period to reinvent the work model to be more efficient, to improve a better life-work balance and opportunity to accelerate the adoption of the learning, flat and agile organization model. And finally, I will say, it's very important to have an authentic transparent humble and continuous communication, which is definitely key if you want to, that your teams embrace this massive change. Okay, thank you. It certainly sounds like you have looked at the whole ecosystem in terms of how you are being able to move your organization forward and keep it properly, future ready. Yeah, for sure, the ecosystem is very important and it's important to start to map it. And there's plenty of ways to identify your ecosystem. So, from a school, forward thinker, partners, clients and so on. But it's also to embody some core values to share with your ecosystem and to try to figure out how you are going to build a new added value, a new model to have an impact as your own level because we are still SMEs, small companies, but we can act locally and also globally through this kind of event of your system. Wonderful, and I know your organization has been certified, so we'll get back to that slightly later. Elizabeth, I'd love to hear from you now, speaking to what you've experienced and how you've navigated your SME through all of the recent challenges and upcoming ones. Well, thanks so much, Ariel, and I agree a lot with what Stennis Law said, but I think the difference for our company at ASA is that we're an eight-year-old company, a growth company, but at heart we're startup culture, and not only are we a startup culture company, even though we're no longer a startup, but we are one who has been based and focused and building in frontier markets. And what does that mean? And that means that we've never had the luxury of a stable environment in a lot of ways. We've dealt with flooding, we've dealt with election violence, we've dealt with violence, we've dealt with bombings across the street, we've really dealt with everything that sent our team home. And so we've had to had a work-from-home strategy from day one, and also since we are an infrastructure for financial services across the African continent, and we're a competitor to a lot of very strong incumbents, the way that we win and the way that we've grown is being agile and lightweight. So it's in our DNA from the beginning. So we had a real advantage, and I'd say a lot of fintechs globally, but especially those in frontier markets saw huge growth during the season of COVID, the first season and now the second season. And part of that because our teams were so ready, we even had a petrol allowance to fuel generators in our Nigerian team. At the ready, we were able to distribute mobile money to get internet backup. So within an hour, we were operating at full capacity while a lot of the brick and mortar banking institutions had their teams offline for months. And also our management model is such that it's a hub base, so your manager could be on another continent, but we talk constantly via tools like Slack and Telegram, and we have those tools integrated into our core systems. So we were very ready to service our clients. I think the biggest change for us came in our clients themselves. So a lot of our clients are corporates that work on, across, in and out of the African continent. And in some regions, of course, 55 countries who can't generalize at all, but in some regions, it was very difficult to win the larger clients or the more traditional clients with the biggest market share because they had very strong physical relationships with their brick and mortar bankers to the point where they were starting to accept very manual processes as the norm. So I told this anecdote before, but we have a customer in the Sahel who goes into the office in Dakar and deposits a million dollars of cash. And this is not a non-compliant customer. This is a very large wholesale importer who is of the top tier business people in the country, but because the same day settlement system in the financials infrastructure across the Sahel and into the Umea zone in Francophone, West Africa is so weak, they were not able to guarantee either T1 or even T3 settlement. So when they were, you know, the relationships were so strong prior to COVID because of the physical relationship of going into the bank. They would never have worked with FinTech, the great equalizer. And then a lot of companies came to us and they saw how wildly more efficient our processes are and how instant settlement, instant reconciliation, reporting, you know, zero error rate down from 20% manual entry, error rate, great pricing, entire continent service. And they were wowed. They almost like their eyes had been blindfolded and they hadn't seen what was out there. And I think sometimes we see these incumbent relationships and business practices and even protectionist policies kind of go away in what we call an emergency zone. And I think that's been very exciting for our challengers such as the startups and the growth companies and the technology companies. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. It sounds like it was a combination of your team and being able to adapt so quickly and use the technologies that you both have at your disposal and sort of a growing adaptation to what we need to do in times of crisis that really have made it so that you've been able to move through this period. Looking forward to hearing more as we go on with the session. Finally, Akshay, I would love to hear from you about your experience with your organization because I believe that you were able to really target some sort of key pain points that were brought up by the COVID pandemic through your work. Yeah, thank you Ariel. So when the pandemic hit, our first reaction was how do we keep our employees safe? We're a manufacturing company that produces packaging in Kenya, Tanzania and East Africa. So the first thing was just up the whole safety levels in the company. Then the next thing was to change the way of managing from sort of business as usual to a crisis management approach and to make sure that we are able to continue to supply packaging for essential items because we largely do packaging for food and beverage type of products in East Africa. I think once those things were sorted out, we then started looking at what's happening in the community and how can we help? So 10% of our manufacturing capacity, we commit to making an impact in the communities and our focus is around providing access to water, to sanitation, to hygiene and also support jobs in the informal economy. So part of that was looking at what's happening with hand washing, as the pandemic started to expand and everybody was asked to wear masks, keep social distance and wash hands. Many of the schools, low income communities, slums, markets, they just didn't have those facilities and there was a lot of companies putting out these water tanks or drums or something like that with a tap on it. But nobody was able to really provide a sustainable solution as in most of these communities operate in an area where water itself is not available or it's not reliable, the grid doesn't exist. So we wanted to think a little bit beyond just simply putting a water tank and actually connect it to a reliable water supply. So over the 2020, we kept iterating and ultimately came up with a solution where think of it as a smart water station that has a sensor on top of the water station or on top of a 3000 liter tank and it keeps track of how much water is inside. We then partnered with a company called Maramoja who developed a mobile app that you can use to see how much water is in there. We then connected with water bousers or water truck operators. These are micro entrepreneurs who can be called like an Uber for water type of an idea that they can come in and fill up water into that water station if there's no other source of water available. And we're now sort of thinking, okay, what next? Because hand washing clearly is gonna be there. It's a problem that needs to be fixed but many of these communities even don't have access to water for drinking, for cooking, for sanitation. So the same solution that we put out there, we're trying to see how can we upgrade it, how can we retrofit it so that it can be available to provide water for all the basic needs. And for us, this is really important because if we're living in a healthy community, if we're operating in a healthy community, then we've got healthy cost consumers who then support our customers and then we ultimately grow together as a community and as a business. That's excellent. And it sounds like you in this instance were able to sort of adapt fairly quickly to the changing circumstances but also look for areas where you were able to create this sort of shared social and economic value which is very much something that we're interested in within both the report that I've been engaged with but also within the overall context of the UN SDGs. So thank you very much for sharing that. I would now like to move on to the second of the questions that I'd like to focus to the panel which is more forward-looking. So in terms of where you're hoping to be creating sustainable forms of value in the future, where do you see yourself engaging as the leader of an SME within this context? Sanislav, would you like to go first? And I believe if you'd like to, your BCOR certification would be a wonderful entry point for this. Yes, for sure it's, I think as we mentioned, it's a good moment whether or whether as a decision maker you are really an actor or you are a follower and for sure we don't have any more time to lose as decision makers. So at Palo, we use the BCOR certification really to as a framework to build our own transformation journey and measure our maturity level. And we continue to measure continuously. And in order also to take a more quality approach to our transformation, we have setting numbers of OCRs down to our corporate values that we aim to meet to 2025. So the first one, or it's to double the size of the company organically or it's one objective, OCR. The second, it's aligned with one of our core value which is we care about the world and to be a net zero carbon company and also helping our clients to shift towards net zero through innovative tech solution. So it's one of our commitment and it's one of the first step. The second major also OCR, it's really to continue the BCOR certification globally in all our new offices across the planet and also measure as a level of maturity to improve our level of maturity in everything in all what we do. Another one, it's really to, we are dedicated to develop tech innovation, develop software, innovative software and we really want to target that more than 50% of our revenue will be projects that will have a positive impact and serve the UN SDGs. So that's a very strong commitment. We want also to transform ourselves to become a NAPI company that means that we want to, that more than 90% of our employees across the world declare that they are up in their job and are proud of what they do and up in their company. And the last OCR, it's to train 100% of our employees, Paloan, to understand the different climate issues, to understand with an ethical way the impact of technologies. Also to be a conscious leader to be trained also to have common diversity, equality and inclusion practices within the company. So it's a massive shift but it's also super exciting for all our teams and our ecosystem and it's give you a great energy within the company and with our clients and the whole ecosystem. So let's go do it. Sounds marvelous. And it sounds like this is very much more motivated by your core values and just actually seeing that implemented throughout your organization, which is, it's great to hear someone both speaking to us but also actively implementing it. So thank you for sharing. Elizabeth, I would love to hear from you now speaking sort of where you're seeing future value creation around social, environmental or economic goals that are more sustainable in terms of how we're creating this future. So within our company, we do a lot of what we call feedback, training and coaching. And I think speaking to add onto what Stemis-Las said about changing the corporate culture but then how do you keep that corporate culture? But what we've seen in our company which is surprising and a very outspoken activist for diversity and leadership and not just in terms of gender but of race and for religion and sexuality. We talk about this and this is not something that a lot of companies in our geography talk about. And what we find is that, we can hire managers who are very supportive of that. And then the second there's a revenue crisis or there's a cash crunch or market closes or regulatory change, all the culture and core values go out the window and everybody just panics. And what we've really seen and it's great to speak about this when there's a downturn and COVID and everybody has time to think about how to restructure but how do you keep it live and living through all the business cycles and all the seasons that every business goes through? And we leave from the top on that and I feel very passionately that it's not just as we say in New York, a fair weather fan, you don't just do it when things are going well. And I think that is much harder. And so what we've decided to do is bring in outside coaching teams and all of our management and not just our senior manager but our mid-management receives coaching and we do peer mentoring. So I mentor a level five below me, somebody who's entered the company just a year ago and we do make time for these things. And it's not just nonsense or mushy stuff. These are my future managers and it's very hard to find good people that can really speak to these new agile ways. You can go on LinkedIn, you can hire a recruiter, you can find somebody with 25 years experience that comes from a institutional investor. Good luck getting them to understand what agile methodology is and that we work on an engineering sprint cycle and we've tried it over and over again. I've stopped listening to the investors or board that say, just hire my friend, he'll come in and he's the adult in the room. I'm 40, I'm already an adult. Bringing in somebody that's had 30, 40 years of work experience with a completely different work mentality is just not sustainable. And maybe you find a few but you definitely not gonna find all of your managers there. So you have to grow them from within. So how do you teach the junior team and how do you teach the mid-managers and how do you future proof them and get them to understand that, yes, this is all sounds great and there's cute colored coffee chairs and a really exciting open working space but how do you form resilience and how do you make sure you stick to those values and just run through what you've known or seen elsewhere in a down crisis and that takes I think constant diligence. And so we see also from our customers and our clients when they first were introduced to the technology that we use such as blockchain or digital banking or mobile money or all of these things, they were very cautious and what we've saw was a very interesting report from Deloitte that said, when we started the company in 2013 the number of corporate treasurers willing to do a large treasury transaction on a digital interface was less than like 20% or something and just four years later that number had gone to over 75%. So the willingness and the need to be absorbed to these new business practices is dire and how do we get these managers? How do we get these teams to stay that strong and not just be lip service? And I think that it's a very tough struggle that you have to do 365 days and I think self-reflection, coaching, measurements, not just having those OKRs like Stennis Laws mentioned but how do you teach your team to meet those OKRs and really achieve them? And that's something that takes work on every level. Great, thank you very much for sharing that, Elizabeth. It sounds like you're really focused on making sure that you have sort of an internal culture that's able to support this and grow and also be more responsive to the challenges we're facing rather than necessarily using older practices from the challenges we previously faced. So thank you for sharing. Actually, I would love to hear from you now sort of talking about how your SME is focusing on creating sustainable value into the future. Yeah, I think the core thing is all about resilience. The future of SME's entrepreneurs, micro-entrepreneurs is thinking about how can they become more resilient and how can the environment in which they operate become more resilient? And a lot of this means we can't depend on traditional sort of large infrastructural approaches, for example, to deliver water. We have to be much more agile. We can't wait for massive infrastructure projects to bring water to communities or bring sanitation. So we need to be thinking about what's an off-grid approach, how do we leapfrog and bring water, sanitation, jobs, hygiene? How do we bring all of that to these communities and not have them wait for another five, 10, 20 years? So there needs to be a quick fix solution. Otherwise, we're just going to end up leaving these communities behind as the rest of the world moves on. So resilience is the key thing. And then innovation to be able to come up with solutions that are a quick fix that don't cost millions of dollars or billions disrupting a lot of things. They can be plugged in very quickly. And later on, maybe after five years as the water grade or the sanitation grade is able to catch up, then fine. Then you redeploy this to another area where people don't have access. So I think resilience is the key thing. And if SMEs don't have access to some of the basic stuff, as I mentioned, water, sanitation, hygiene, connectivity to the internet, to education, then how are they going to grow? What kind of work are they going to be able to do? Even if they have opportunities, they won't be able to deliver. So I think it's all about working between large manufacturers or large corporates. And then the SMEs kind of co-creating this space together to become resilient together. And I think that's another important element of what I feel is the future readiness of SMEs is that we need to be thinking between large and small companies to collaborate because small companies could be more better at doing certain things, whereas large companies are better at other things. So how do you bring the two together? And the sum of the parts becomes better for the environment, for the communities. Great. Thank you very much for sharing that, Akshay. In terms of where we are in our schedule today, I'm now going to be opening up the floor to any questions from anyone who is currently watching and be posing these questions to the channel. So it looks like the first question that we've received is actually building on what you just spoke of, Akshay. So we can either start with you or we can work our way through the panel. But it is a question specifically asking about sort of the commitments of large multinationals on net zero and how these large multinationals tend to have significantly more resources, access to technology, and know how than smaller organizations. And this individual is asking if there are any areas in which any of the three of you believe you have more advantage compared to these multinational corporations, presumably in terms of reaching net zero commitments. So actually, if you'd like to begin, otherwise, if anyone else has some sort of strong opinion on this, we'd love to hear from you. Sure. I think the advantage we have is that we're, as Elizabeth said, we're more agile. So we don't necessarily have to go through a huge approval process. We can start making decisions at the operational level and quickly implement and iterate. If it's not working, we can quickly turn things around. So in that sense, we could move faster. Getting to net zero also means keeping an eye on what's the latest sort of innovation and technologies that allow you to become net zero. Silafika is really focused on circular economy, not just for the products and for our customers' products and packaging, but also how we run our own manufacturing business internally. So if we start applying the concepts of circular economy into our own company and making sure that we have no footprint at all, because we're recycling everything. We're reusing everything. We're minimizing our consumption. I think all those decisions require a bit of agile thinking, a bit of experimentation. And I believe where we are, probably I think we can move faster, even though we might not have billions of dollars of resources, but we definitely have been able to move faster. It almost sounds like what you're saying or implying is that Silafika's lack of resources compared to an MNC might actually make it more agile and perhaps even more creative as one possible advantage of being in SME.  So you've got to make do with what you have and do quickly. Excellent. Well, it sounds like those are skills that will definitely pan out well in the coming years, especially with more impacts of climate change approaching. Elizabeth, Stanislaw, do either of you have any sort of strong opinions on this? And if not, we can move on to the next question. Just a quick example of this. So we were looking to integrate into one of the largest financial services providers in the world. And they told us they had a two-year integration cycle, two years. In two years, our business could quintuple and has. So I mean, and we're working with some providers, a Guinean provider, an Egyptian provider, that do an integration in a week. And of course, different levels, different scalability, but you can't have such arbitrage in the amount of time it takes to get a policy past, approve how many people are involved in the project management. When in the end, it's just an integration, which is an API, a few engineers, and should only be a few sprint cycle. So I mean, what's the rest? What's that extra buffer? What's that?  I'm in London now. You look around at all these buildings filled with people. What are all these people doing? Very quickly, you get to these companies which the organization becomes so overwhelming. And I think that cut to efficiency, that cut to necessity is what actually mentioned. And it really is a very large quantum. And you can always say that an SME is never going to be as compliant or as stable. And they use these adjectives to describe large companies. But in the end, they're just bigger. And actually, they can be just as compliant, just as innovative, just as efficient. So I think we need to get rid of these vocabulary words when we're thinking about who do we look to, for examples of corporate policies and corporate business practices. OK, great. Thank you, Elizabeth. Again, speaking to the importance of what SMEs can bring, and just thinking about their size and their potential impact within the world, I think the future looks bright, despite the challenges coming up. So thank you for sharing that. The next question I actually have is specifically for Stennis Loss. Stennis Loss, one of the members of the audience would like to know exactly what type of certification your company is using to benchmark its digital transformation process. So at Palo, we have looked during this program has started five years ago, our own transformation. We look at a lot of different certification frameworks and so on. To be frank, the only one that I found quite mature was the B-Corp, which really goes very deeply in terms of granularity. We're getting different dimensions in terms of governance, in terms of what you put in place for your employees, how you build your communities, what are you doing, and how you measure the impact on the environment. And the more important, it's what you develop and how you impact your customers. So we use B-Corp as really a good framework. After there is plenty of different, if you want to go deeper in terms of to have some good referential, there is other framework. But I think the better way, it's really understand what you try to target and after to build your own path. There is not really other kind of framework. There is so many now platform or solution to measure different aspects. But so it's what we experimented. For sure, we mentioned that agile organization model mindset is key. And agile, it's not only metologies, it's a mindset and it's good practices. So I see too many companies, large companies or SMEs, who try to embrace agile practices and governance. But really, they do it with what is really convenient for them. So and this is not the way. The way is you have definitely to embrace everything if you want to move forward. And perhaps to emphasize what has been said before, it's a right moment to leap forward. It's a right moment to leap forward and to accelerate. It's a right moment also to not only to target a carbon-free or sustainable business model, but it's to move forward and really to target to be a life regenerative business, which should be your long-term vision. But we have to go fast because as we have seen, 10 years, it's two more. So you don't have three to four years to start. It's now. Excellent. Well, thank you very much for speaking to that, Stanislaus. In terms of time scales, that actually leads us to the very last question we have before we move on to closing remarks. We've just received a question that has asked how each of you have navigated the tensions between the needs of the immediate present in your organization. And it sounds like survival with that of longer-term sustainability tensions. So it sounds like sort of navigating the difference between what you need to do now in terms of survival and keeping your business strong and then where you're aiming to go strategically from a more sustainable perspective. So I think we have time for either one or two responses before we need to wrap. Sure. I can try and answer that. Great. That would be great. Thank you. Yeah, so I think understanding where we are today, where we need to go, is really about getting different perspectives. If we've been operating in a certain business model, mental model, and suddenly the whole world has changed, we need to start looking at getting perspectives from other entrepreneurs and making those connections, learning from other people's experiences. As you know, there are a number of sort of these entrepreneur organizations around the world. I belong to one of them called the EO Network, the Entrepreneurs' Organization Network. And the beauty of it is when the pandemic hit, we could all learn from each other to figure out how are we preparing, how are we pivoting? And then now, as we look forward, again, we could go back to these networks, to these peers of other entrepreneurs and learn from them to figure out what different perspectives are they seeing that I am not seeing. So the key is, I think, don't get blindsided by sort of being in your own silos, thinking about it yourself or with your board or your management. There's thousands of entrepreneurs out there who are looking at the same problem, trying to operate in the same environment and learning from each other's experiences and failures and successes. I think it's the key to moving forward. Okay, great. Thank you. It sounds like you're almost speaking to the importance of these networks you have and your ability to rely on them and engage with these other founders through those networks. Okay, great. I think we have time for one more answer if Stennis Law or Elizabeth, you have any sort of last remarks on this and then I think we'll be wrapping up fairly soon. Perhaps to add to what has been already said, I've had something and it's more about, yes, to build resilient model. I think also financial independence and autonomous capital allocation is quite important because when you are under pressure on your market and you have some shareholders within your organization, within your board who are not aligned with your vision and your objective, that's a huge problem. So, and I think that a lot of entrepreneurs face this concern during the pandemic. I fully agree with what has been said also before. One other thing, it's to build distributed model. That means that perhaps not to be totally a focus on one market, one sector, one culture. Even if you are SMEs to build, to be multi-market, multi-sector, multi-cultural, it's really a key aspect for your growth or for your impact.  So it's, we said the two main other aspects that I could share also. Okay, thank you very much for highlighting those. It seems that from our conversation today, we've been able to hear very much about the importance of sort of networks and agility of being able to connect with other entrepreneurs in terms of business models, having that agile ability to shift to changing circumstances and talking about the need for having a very strong orientation and working with core values within your team and sort of finally touching a little bit on governance aspects, which are certainly critical from a more academic perspective, but are definitely coming up in terms of how we're understanding, how to respond from regulatory aspects as well. So for the very final remarks for this session, it is my pleasure and privilege to turn over to Francisco Betty, the head of the Future of Advanced Marketing and member of the Executive Committee for the World Economic Forum. Francisco. Thank you Ariel for the great conversation today and thank you to all of our panelists for their inspiring remarks. As we hear from most of you, small and new-sized enterprises are the backbone of our economies, representing up to 98% of companies in some sectors, such as manufacturing, which is the one I lead here at the World Economic Forum and actually representing 70% of employment worldwide. While SMEs are the most at risk within the context of the forced industrial revolution and some of the latest interruptions related to COVID-19, it is clear that they can also play the major role when it comes to boosting economic growth in a sustainable and inclusive way in particular. However, to succeed and be active drivers of change, SMEs need to be able to adapt and develop new strategies, build resilience and new capabilities. And through our work on the future of manufacturing, what we have observed is that to be able to improve their future readiness, SMEs can focus on two main areas. The first one is technology adoption, the ability to transform their processes, operating business models through forced industrial revolution technologies. And that's where collaborations with governments, with MNCs and other key players can play the major role. And with that, SMEs can be active drivers of innovation across multiple sectors. The second angle is the investment on people, upskilling, reskilling, and giving their workers the ability to be able to cope with the pace at which technology it's evolving. And I think that the very good news is that by developing these new capabilities, SMEs can have a clear and develop a clear competitive advantage enabling disrupted innovation. They can be among the quickest, the most agile to adapt in an increasingly complex environment and be able to respond to customer needs very often faster than larger companies. And finally, there can be clear champions when it comes to implementation of sustainable strategies and practices. Through our work, and I'm getting to the end of our, and especially our work on future readiness for SMEs, but also other initiatives, such as the global smart readiness index, we are committed towards supporting SMEs and helping build the public, private, multi-stakeholder partnerships that will help them thrive in this new global environment. And with that, let me thank you once again Ariel, our families. Thank you for a great conversation today and for joining us. And we look forward to seeing this in touch throughout the SDI 21 program. Thank you.


So good day, dear friends, morning, afternoon, wherever you are and whatever time this event is being broadcast. So my name is Dan Perel, I serve as one of the representatives for the Baha'i International Communities United Nations Office. I serve in this capacity in the great city of the Covenant, New York City. I've been here for about 11, 12 years. I've had the good pleasure of working with colleagues like Julia Berger, with whom we'll facilitate a conversation after you watch this video. So I was approached some months ago to just spit ball a few ideas about how to talk about the BIC's engagement in the discourse on global governance, which is a focus of the office for the foreseeable future. It might seem obvious to some that we would focus on this because we are sitting at the United Nations or across the street from the United Nations anyway. However, there is not really a strong discourse on global governance, per se, at that level. Most of them are issues related, whether it's the equality of men and women or climate change or human rights, all of which are very important. The conversation around global governance has really begun to emerge particularly fervently in response to the COVID pandemic and then the fallout from that. And as a result, and because of the 75th anniversary of the UN, which was in 2020, the office has begun to more intentionally engage in that space. So when Julia and I were discussing this possibility, we had a couple of ideas. And where we landed was that it might be nice to call in somebody with whom we work in this space. Her name is Dr. Azha Karam. She's a dear friend of the office, personal friend of a number of us in the office. And she has ample experience in this space. She's a former United Nations official with the UNFPA, that's the Population Fund, where she did a lot to do with culture. She helped set up what's known as the Interagency Task Force, an engagement with faith-based organizations. That is a UN interagency. So there's all these agencies at the UN Task Force to engage in faith-based organizations. And then resulting from that, there was also this MFAC, M-F-A-C, which is the Multi-Faith Advisory Council, which was set up to provide advice to the interagency task force. It's all super simple. But really, it's all initiated by Dr. Karam, who really did this sort of in the face of a lot of tension around the role of religion in society. So kudos to her for those good efforts. She's since has left the United Nations, and she's now the Secretary General of Religions for Peace. She's also been appointed recently as a member of the High Level Advisory Award on effective multilateralism, which was appointed by the Secretary General himself to look at different strategies for effective multilateralism, as the name would imply. There's a lot of letters, but luckily they mean things that sort of make sense if you can get past the strange language. She's also a member of the Steering Committee for Stockholm Plus 50, which was this big event that took place last week as I speak to you in Stockholm. And so, you know, and more than all of this, she is a close friend, as I mentioned, and she's very familiar with the Baha'i Faith and the representatives at the office. So she and I had a conversation about the role of global governance, about the role of religion, about the Baha'i community, the opportunities of the international order, some of the tensions that we see arising now. And so this conversation is really a back and forth, very organic. We didn't necessarily, well, we certainly did not rehearse it as you will see, but it was a nice chat. It was meant to be about 30 minutes, and it took an hour as these things do. She had a lot to share, and I hope that it is worthwhile to those gathered at the ABS, those who are joining us, either live or afterwards. And as I mentioned, Julia and I will have a little conversation afterwards and hopefully opportunities for a question and answer if there are, if there are any, which I'm sure there will be. And I look forward to seeing you then. So awkwardly, I am probably watching this video right now and we'll watch the next one. And then I'll be with you afterwards. So enjoy the viewing. There we are. Well, thank you so much, Azza, for agreeing to join in this little conversation for the Association for Baha'i Studies. So we'll just jump right in. There are a few questions I wanted to ask you about sort of this moment in history. You have, as mentioned, quite a distinct role in the international community, both from a faith-based perspective, but also your history within the UN, your role with the High-Level Advisory Board and on the Stockholm Plus 50. I mean, you have so many, your hands in so many different pots. I'm curious, what are some of your readings of the distinctive features of global governance or humanity as a whole, morally, politically, at this time? My distinctive readings? Yeah, what do you read? Like, what's the reality that you're seeing out there? Oh, gosh, right. Well, that's a brilliant question. First of all, thank you for identifying me as someone who would be of interest to the Baha'i community in any way, shape, or form. I think I don't take that lightly. I'm deeply grateful and honored with that recognition and the opportunity to share some ideas. If you ask me the way I see the world right now, I would say that there are two distinct tendencies. In terms of governance, geopolitics, and our normal lives, I think that we are in a moment where hatred, hate speech, the winner takes all the might-is-right exceptionalism to not exceptionalism in a good way, but exceptionalism to law, order, principles, values seems to be so normal, so normal, so that in a sense, when we talk about the rule of law, it sounds really naive in this context. But on the other hand, and that was sort of a glim-horror picture, but you can't avoid it given the fact that we're back at war in so many countries almost in every continent. There is an armed conflict, at least one, if not many, taking place. Something is very seriously wrong with our world today. And I was speaking to some of the other day, and they said, well, maybe it's always been like that, but we just seem to know more about it because of communications and technology and whatever. And that may be true, but that doesn't make one feel any better, because then it means that we've not changed one iota with everything that we are supposed to have advanced and developed and evolved and whatever. Well, guess if it's been the same always, but we just know more about it, then it's an even bigger indictment in the sense. But on the other hand, I think the exact opposite, I see remarkable resilience of communities, of people in very difficult, challenging times. I see a move to faith, which is not to instrumentalize it, but to find strength in it. And I see more willingness to come together based on our shared commonalities as humans and societies. I also see remarkable resilience in our cultures, art, poetry, film. There's such a bit. I mean, we can easily get so absorbed in the darkness, but we must also understand that right next to it is a remarkable form of human resilience. I see in the same way that I decry the fact that, for instance, religious institutions are not working together more. I also notice that religious communities, people of faith, are very much coming together more at the very grassroots communal level. There's so much happening. And I'm seeing something that's also given me even more hope, which is young people who have a lot to say and say it very well and do so much. And honestly, it just inspired me tremendously. Many of them, I mean, some of them are also doing things that you wish would never be done. But by and large, I'm seeing a remarkable breath of life in our young people. So I mean, there's so much more to say. But yeah, I think we're living, I think it was, who was it, Charles Dickens, who said they were the worst of times. They were the best of times. And I think that's where we're at. Yeah, I think there's so much to this sort of giant elephant of reality, and we all can hold on to different parts of it. And it could all be true at the same time, even though it's vastly different. So you're sitting now in Stockholm once again, after having been there a couple of weeks ago. And it seems that you're called upon time and again to speak in one way or another about the relationship either between faith and the international order or global governance in and of itself. And I'm wondering, what do you think at this particular time in history is the role of these global governance frameworks, the SDGs, the Paris Agreement, what are some of their strengths and some of their weaknesses, and how can they perhaps help us navigate through the challenges that you had described? You don't ask easy questions, do you? Well, I would if you weren't so brilliant. No, no, no, no. And I think my brilliance has got to do with yours, actually. A couple of things that I would say that I think one of the key challenges we're all facing as a planet is that we are so heavily reliant on nation-states. They are the essential institution, the essential foundation for our citizenship or lack thereof, for our social services or lack thereof, for peace and security or lack thereof, for food, water, shelter, health, et cetera. We are so completely reliant on governments as we know them today. And the very sad challenges that governments are not able to fulfill the basic social contracts with their citizens or with anybody, quite frankly. But I think all governments are facing a real inability to deliver on basic needs for their people, including rich governments. And if you live in the United States, you don't really have to look very far to see the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the very seriously poor communities that are absolutely not getting any decent health care or education or sanitation or nutrition or anything that are considered basic needs. So effectively, we are talking about a world in which the governments that we need and that we rely on have essentially and are essentially failing the needs of their people. And therefore, we're also looking at the largest number ever of refugees and displaced people in the entire world. I mean, we have enough refugees and displaced people to fill a country. They are more than the populations of many countries, 80 million, almost. That's more than the population of a lot of countries around the world. And these are people who are disenfranchised, dispossessed, and don't have the basic right to be affiliated to any particular boundary of a nation, because our nations have failed us peoples. So I think that's the essential quandary. When we talk about multilateralism or global governance, how are we going to begin to deal with these situations when the very basic structure, which is required and is essentially de facto and de jure, serving people, governments, that very basic structure is, let's just say, struggling, if not outright failing. So then what do you do? Because you can't imagine a world without governments. Can we? I mean, what? Empires of all, what did we have before? We had tribes, communities, still do. Tribes, communities, but we didn't have nation states as in the Bretton Woods understanding. We had empires. They were almost all of them feudal in nature. They weren't democratic empires. Weather north or south, east or west, by the way. No empire was democratic. So what is then the imaginary that we need to conceive of if it is not the nation state? And I think that's essentially where we are. That's the quandary we happen to be in. And in spite of this quandary, we still are thinking and conceptualizing governance as the quintessential obligation of governments, what governments are supposed to do. So how do we get over that? Well, we have more reliance on civil society. The next best option, what? Civil society? Or is the next best option, global institutions like the United Nations and regional institutions like European Union, African Union, what's our recourse if it's not the government? What then would be our recourse? And I think it's hard to think of this in the context where the institutions of global governance, which are usually referred to as the multilateral institutions like the United Nations, are themselves mirroring the weakness of the nation states because they are where the nation states come together to form the global governance institution or mechanism. So the suggestion that seems to be on the table now is either civil society. We all have to ramp up our civil society activism, but look at our civil societies. They're handicapped instruments for a number of levels, for a number of reasons. One is that there's no such thing as a global civil society. There's no such thing as a global civil society. So then we're talking about national civil society. So the national civil societies have the same issues that the governments are facing. Because in many instances, a civil society in country X mirrors and responds to and has to live in and survive in the same challenges that the government itself is imposing on it. That's why we were talking before the COVID disaster. We were talking about what was it now threatened shrinking civil society space? Remember? Well, it was shrinking before COVID. Now COVID happened, and COVID was an opportunity for some authoritarian governments to become even more imposing. Then where's the civil society? How's that going for us? So relying on civil society, if we have to move into a civil society space and say, OK, this is where the hope is. For the world, it's going to be civil society. Then, oh my goodness, imagine the responsibilities that people like you and I and every average Joe Schmoll, it's going to have to confront. Because we don't even civil society in one country doesn't come together in a coherent format and work together systematically. Who holds civil society accountable? Right? And we don't even have a coexistence between the secular civil society and the religious civil society. Actually, we keep them apart. They're two separate realms. And they're two separate realms, not just because the secular civic space doesn't like the religious space and doesn't trust it for reasons that go back and certainly are still happening today. But also because religions, some religious leaders and some religious institutions have this claim to a moral superiority. They don't see themselves as just civil society. They see themselves as exceptional, which doesn't help because if you keep thinking that you're very exceptional because you have a link to something divine, you kind of don't exactly mesh and mingle with the rest of the mere mortals very easily. So OK, so civil society may not be the savior. Then what? Ah, perhaps we can improve the United Nations. But even those working in the United Nations are now trying to get ideas for how to improve the United Nations. And they're not even talking about UN reform anymore. They're talking about networked, global governance mechanisms. And I ask you, what is that? What is that going to look like? I wonder. I wonder. We have examples, you know, like, oh, there's this. There was this attempt at COVAX. There's this other attempt at GAVI, the Global Fund. And you think, yeah, but those are very issue-specific. Are we now breaking up into issue-specific global networked global governance mechanisms? And so where does that leave our governments? Where does that leave the intergovernmental entities? What's that going to look like? I mean, those mechanisms work because to some extent they're still working with governments. They still serve certain governments. They remove the governments out of the equation if that were even possible.  Who are we working with here exactly? Corporations? Are we to see how the corporations now are very vital in the survival of so-called networked global governance mechanisms? Is this just another word for how we now need to rely on those with money and corporate influence? So it all kind of is a little bit worrying, to be honest with you. And at the end of the day, I think we have no choice, really. But to try to hold governments accountable and to make our governments work. Honestly, I don't see how else we're going to get out of this particular rut because the end of the day, it's governments that have to work. They have to work. Because I would rather that my government, as challenged as it is, is held accountable or attempting to and improving in some way, shape, or form through with community work, with whatever, than that I would now have to figure out how my allegiance to corporations would look like. I would really rather not have it so focused on the money trail. Because to me, that's no matter how ethical every single corporation would be. Somehow that doesn't seem to be the right social contract. It's not a social contract with a corporation that I would want or even several corporations claiming to be morally right. I would much rather try to improve upon the social contract with my government. So perhaps, thank you for that. That was really quite an amazing whirlwind tour of many of the issues that we're facing in governance. What do you do when those in whom responsibility is entrusted are not living up to it? Do you turn to another source? Do you try to strengthen that source? And perhaps it's a little bit of a tired analogy. At least it's tired to me because I've been saying it for a couple months now. But it's this idea of a Copernican moment where when Copernicus recognized that the Earth was not the center of the universe, it actually changed more than just the models of the solar system. It actually changed how we engage with space. If it weren't for that moment, we wouldn't be able to go to the moon or to explore Mars. And so part of me is thinking about at the moment, the analogy for the Earth-centric model is the state sovereignty model. And once we move past the state sovereignty model, much like once we move past Earth-centrism, we are able to find new kinds of opportunities and new realities that we haven't been able to see before. We don't even know what they might be. And the first thing that you identified when I asked you about global governance was state sovereignty. And my- No, I didn't know. Wait, wait, wait. Just as we, but very important correction. I didn't identify state sovereignty. I identified governments as institutions as a necessary reality. So state sovereignty is another issue. Sovereignty is about inclusion, exclusion, power over resources versus dissemination of power. It's about sovereignty is another issue entirely. And governments so far, so far when we've looked at states and governance mechanisms, it's automatically translated into the ability to rule and to own and control resources, for sure. But does that automatically translate into excluding certain groups and communities? Does a nation state boundary have to be who stays in and who stays out? I think the way of governance, the way we understand governance is already fundamentally challenged by international human rights law, international humanitarian laws, and a whole bunch of conventions that actually obligate nation states to be of service not only to their own rounded citizens, but to be of service to humans. And I think this distinction is extraordinarily important. When I say I'd rather keep a social contract with my government, I'm not talking about keeping a social contract so that the government can continue to rule the way it does. I am saying I want to hold them accountable. And I would hold them accountable to the way that they exclude refugees and displaced people, to the way that they push for dispossession of people within their own boundaries, to the way that they abuse rights that they're meant to protect of all that they can have purview over. So it's not to assert their sovereignty to behave as they will, but perhaps to hold accountable their actions to international norms and values. That is the renegotiation of the social contract that I believe. And I believe it's much easier. That's the wrong choice of words. Let's just say I believe it's more necessary and more likely to be able to renegotiate the contract to hold accountable your government than it will be to try to hold accountable a corporate or a series or a global or conglomerate of corporations. Yeah, I agree. I think that what you're saying makes total sense. And it has to do with sort of where the lines in. And I'm going back to sovereignty just because of the sort of ease of ease of with which it can be used. But this idea of like, where do the bounds of sovereignty extend? At what point is there an infringement on sovereignty from the perspective of the civil society that's holding you accountable or from the perspective of an international governing body that is also holding you accountable. That's human rights law and the like. And I think that there are questions about the limits of sovereignty, which I think are new questions or perhaps newly applicable questions in light of sort of this moment in history with climate change and COVID and all of these. They're more urgent questions because they've been there ever since the UN Charter. These questions have very much been on the table. The whole idea behind the United Nations Charter and its first sentence is we the peoples. It doesn't say we the nations. It says we the peoples. Because the understanding that is undergirding this idea is that it's peoples of the world trying to come together how through the only institution we know, which is their government. And so this idea of shared responsibility of the common good and of shared responsibility for the common good is the basic foundation of human rights. We don't have to reinvent human rights. And by the way, we wouldn't have had human rights if we didn't have our faiths and traditions because it was essentially derived all these rights were derived on the basis of the shared common values shared from where from our religions from our traditions, our faith traditions. So the idea of common action for the common good and a common sense of responsibility for the common good is actually what the UN is supposed to be about. It isn't about governments coming together and humming and hawing and talking and then everyone going and expressing their the importance of the sovereignty to kill their own citizens or to abuse people, left, right and center, including other people's citizens. I mean, that's not it. That is absolutely not it. So I think that COVID, the public health disasters and pandemics that we are likely to confront, God forbid, the very real climate disaster that is impacting our oxygen, our water, our food. All of these have, I think, not I think, have obviously made more urgent what the common good is and how it should because our air is common good. We can negotiate the terminology of common good and common from here until kingdom come. Essentially the air we breathe, the water we drink is our common good. We won't have this planet if we don't protect it and it belongs to all of us and all of us have a stake in surviving this planet because not all of us can afford $50 million to get on a flight and go to Mars or whatever it is or the moon. And frankly, many of us don't want to do that even if we would have had this access to the money. We want this earth. This is our common responsibility. This is our common heritage. This is our common good, a healthy living planet. So all of these things have actually moved fast forward the urgency to implement what was originally on the table.  And I think you're right about the Copernicus moment, but I am personally really not interested in the rest of the universe. I really, really, really, I'm interested in this earth and it really in so many ways is the original heaven that we still are in. We still have this heaven. We haven't been kicked out of it yet. We're still in this heaven, in the Arabic language, this is it. This is it as appalling as it is for so many, as challenging as it is for so many, this is our heaven. And there is a common responsibility towards it. We have states, let the states work by making them accountable to working. Let us figure out ways and quite frankly, of course we can talk about how challenging it is when it's police states and then there's more and more police states, militarized governments around the world, more and more. And it makes it very difficult to stand up to them, but it makes it very difficult to stand up to them within the one boundary of a nation. But imagine if we were to be able to come together as peoples, which is what the original idea of the United Nations was. We, the peoples actually can come together as peoples and hold account when at one point there was this dream or a member of responsibility to protect. There was this ethos of the responsibility to protect, which everybody's now hoeing and hawing and laughing. But it's actually the essence of what the United Nations system should be doing. And what it essentially argues is that, okay, we'll all do respect to nation states, but if a nation is butchering its citizens and depriving them of their very basic rights, then it is the responsibility of the rest of the peoples of the world to try to hold that nation accountable, that government. And why is that such a bad idea? It's such a bad idea because we haven't done it. It's such a bad idea. Look what happens when we don't do it. Then it's absolutely legitimate to be at war, to take what you need for your own peoples' good or your understanding of your own peoples' good. It's legitimate to be at war because it's not about the common good. It's about the national good and the national good will not save this planet. Yeah, absolutely. I think this notion of collective security is central to what's necessary. If I could just quickly offer a clarification and then another question. The clarification is the Copernican moment is meant as an analogy, not that I think we should be going to space, but that we need to have that fundamental rethinking of the relationships of the different levels of governance just as there was a fundamental rethinking of the center of the heliocentric solar system. But that's all by the by. You started to reference it a little bit in a couple of your answers about the role of faith and faith communities at this moment in history. And I'm also curious, not only their role as you understand it, but also what are some of the contributions they have made and you referenced this with the University of Declaration of Human Rights and others, but what are some of the contributions that they've made that you find to be significant in a positive way? I know that there are some that would identify some of the sources of division that they can sometimes foment, but in a positive way, what do you identify? Thanks. I think it's important for us to bear in mind actually that the religious institutions, religious non-governmental actors, including communities, but they are the original providers of care to their communities, right? So the very first hospitals that we've ever known are actually housed within religious institutions, right? Very first schools were housed in religious institutions. So there's a very strong connection between the basic needs that human beings have, food, water, shelter, education, health, but these very basic needs were actually always provided through religious institutions when, and hence we also have had empires which grew out of these and hence the original feudal lords were also the churches and mosques and mosque-related entities. So that long-term perspective is valuable for us to understand that that role, that the religious worlds, for lack of a better word, have always provided that that role still stands today. So we know for a fact that it doesn't matter what the percentage is, but there's a significant healthy percentage of hospitals and schools around the world today that are owned and operated by religious institutions and their affiliates. So when we think about human development, sustainable human development, which is all about health, education, nutrition, sanitation, water, the whole Tamasha, when we think about those, we have to understand that these institutions and their affiliated entities remain very critical providers of those services. Now we can disagree about the quality of the services. We can be very upset about the kinds of things that get said or taught, of course, but the point is they still provide those social services in almost all communities everywhere in the world. So in Geneva the other day, I realized that the churches are coming together to carry out a very big campaign to help feed the hungry in Geneva, Switzerland because there are hungry people in Geneva, Switzerland. And who's looking after them? A lot of these are church-based actors. And this is such a simple truth. So we think sustainable human development, we have to think of how these institutions and social service providers continue to be very important actors. But what about? What about? Which institutions own land? Land through which rivers run? Which institutions are actually owners of a great deal of resources that are environment, that is about our environment? We have to realize that these institutions are also what we think only corporations own land? Religious institutions own land, religious actors own plenty land at a minimum. They own the land on which they built their particular Moscow synagogue or temple or whatever it is. And invariably these are connected to other things. I am here in Stockholm, Sweden. This hotel I'm staying in is actually owned by the church next door. It's owned by the church next door. It's a hotel to which anybody can come. So we don't seem to equate the idea that you have, that these religious institutions, religious actors are actually also having a stake in the very management of the natural resources that are here, that are there. How many own forests? How many own deserts? They own plenty of natural resources which are called environment, part of our environment. Then if we are not convinced by that, even that is not convincing, then let's look at the fact that these are also, some of the most, some of them, not all, are actually quite wealthy, really relatively doing okay. They can keep their basic institutions humming and running to provide services. So there's quite a few financial resources in those spaces as well, that we haven't quite looked at. But I mean, we understand that the Vatican has a bank. We've heard of Islamic finance. We know that UNICEF, one of the largest United Nations system entities gets a significant amount of resources from religious organizations. They contribute their donors and they're not just donors to UNICEF, they're donors to UNHCR, they're donating to UNDP. So we're talking money, right? Access to resources, financial. And if none of all of that is convincing enough about the role of the religions in our space, then let's remember that for so many people around the world, what the religious leaders say or don't say matters a great deal to how we think, what we believe, and therefore how we behave. Attitudes, these religious leaders still remain very powerful influencers on the average person. We're not talking about, of course we can look at cultural icons and actors and actresses, but let's face it, at the end of the day, a lot for a lot, not the elite obviously, but for a lot of normal, average human being struggling. Religious leaders matter a lot. Sometimes so much that the law doesn't count as much, right? So these are powerful influencers of human behavior, of beliefs that humans hold very dear. And finally, how can we possibly ignore what we're seeing today, which is the role, the intersection between religious and political interests, concerns. There's a war that is being, I mean, for the longest time, we were as a Muslim, I still wear this veil of fear and concern about being seen as a terrorist or being particularly, you know, a sidelined as mean or nasty or aggressive or a million and one things because of what Islamists, radical Islamists have done and continue to do, right? There's at least every day a bomb exploding somewhere that has killed somebody that is being, the action of which is attributed by someone in the name of what they believe is Islam. So we for a long time lived under that. So it's become so normal now. Oh yeah, this bomb went off in Pakistan today. The other thing went off in Mosque in Afghanistan. Yeah, it's these Muslims again, you know? I mean, of course it's not like that, but it's in the minds of so many, this is what religion can do. And on the other hand, you now have a war in Ukraine that is being completely sanctioned by a major church and it's being touted as a just war, which in case you forget was what we heard about the war in Iraq and in Palestine in the United States when it was still being, when it was brewing, it was a just war and who was saying it was a just war religious leaders, some religious leaders were saying this is a just war, i.e. it's religiously sanctioned. So it's not the first time that we begin to see a plethora of validations of political actions, but they are validated on the basis of religious, so-called religious beliefs or assumed religious understanding. So for all these reasons, and the last cherry on top is the fact that at the end of the day, Dan, we don't do communism anymore, we don't do socialism anymore, we don't do liberalism anymore, we're kind of actually searching for an ism, right? So what is it that's gonna, because apparently justice doesn't cut it enough, right? Social justice is just not as attractive or as mobilizing as all these mega philosophies used to be, not so long ago, at least certainly in my lifetime. And I realized that many of us, many of us may be searching for what is it that mobilizes us so much that will make us want to sacrifice our comfort, our money, whatever it is. And for many faith is that mobilizing, great mobilizer. So for all these reasons, religions meant a lot. Fantastic. I'm reminded of this idea that we all, many in secular society sort of make these claims about keeping religion out of it. This first amendment of the United States, which basically says, now we shouldn't prefer one religion over another, which has made a difference to keeping religion totally outside of it. But then, you know, many, many, many, many of us then read prayers with our kids before bed. And it's this weird dichotomy where you say, no religion, no religion, no religion. Oh, but these young minds, we better give them some religious lessons because otherwise they won't have it true enough. And it's that- Yeah, you're right. It's that dichotomy, the same time remember that the point was to keep religion out of public life, i.e. not make our laws based on religious laws, but keep, have a secular basis of law, which would apply to all those with one religion, two religions, all religions, plus those with no religions. And I think we've forgotten a little bit that that was part of what we needed. We needed to deemphasize the power and hegemony of religion over law, laws that regulated human behavior. Religion will always impact on human behaviors and attitudes. There's no question. Faith will always be a primary inspirer of all human behavior. But inspiring human behavior need not translate into therefore the means of adjudicating law should be religious. There's a world of difference between these things. We need laws that are secular that apply to everybody, everybody. Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhists, no religion anywhere, doesn't matter. We need laws that apply across the board equally to everyone. That's the whole point of law, right? We need secular laws. And we forgot that. In our zealousness to protect the secular laws that have to apply to everyone equally, we thought that we must therefore marginalize our faiths, our belief systems. Why? Because remember, this understanding emerged out of a hundred year war in Europe. They fought each other for a hundred years. Catholics and Protestants. So there was this legacy of trauma, of just what belief, if taken to its end-fix stream, if it becomes the guiding principle of public life and the layering of responsibility and the holding of responsibility, what religions can do. And religions can do harm if people work in the name of religions at the expense of working in the name of equality in the eyes of the law of everyone. If we make religion the adjudicator, we are going to get into trouble. Same trouble that our ancestors got into, not so long ago. So there is a need to distance the religious legal system, if you will, from the secular legal system. Because otherwise we would be, I would be treated as a Muslim, you would be treated as a Baha'i in the same country, which is unimaginable, right? In front of the law, maybe you as a Baha'i will have a different way of getting things sorted out. And I as a Muslim will have a different way of getting things sorted out. And by the way, this still remains the case for some women in India. If you're a Muslim woman in India, there's a certain law that applies to you, there's not the same as the law that applies to a Christian woman or a Hindu woman. And it can be very, very unnecessarily bizarre, right? If there's one law that applies to everyone, then so be it, thank you. And actually thank you God. There's one law that applies to all of us, thank you. But because we don't make that distinction, we've ended up thinking we can marginalize religion out of public life completely. But we have to distinguish between religion as the mechanism of law and religions as the service providers and the impactors and influencers in our lives. One, they can actually coexist. A secular legal system can coexist with a very vibrant, multi-religious reality for people. They can and they must coexist. And that's what we have to aim for. And that's how we have to hold accountable those particular political regimes or political parties that try to align with certain religions and certain religious groups. We have to hold them accountable by the same standard, which is international, humanitarian, international human rights law. I'm sorry, this is not right. Just because you are country X with a Y church behind you does not make it okay to go and wage war against another country and its peoples who happen to be of the same religion, by the way, a very similar religion. That ain't right, that is just not right. And that's what we must hold accountable our political institutions to. It's not to say get religion out of the way completely because it's really bad, that wouldn't work. That wouldn't work. It's what everybody holds on to. It's part of our fabric of our lives. But we can't say, you know what? This is the law, you've contravened that law and that's not okay. There are two different arguments. Totally. So I'm conscious of your time. I'm gonna ask us one more question. That was amazing. I'm really grateful to you for sharing. Final question, you have worked for, I won't date any of us, but you've worked for some time with the BIC, with Bonnie, with myself, you know, the behind the national community and you know our contributions, you know our way of working and I'm just curious, what are some to you, what are some of the distinctive features of our engagement and what do you think that we should do? Like if you were our bosses and you said, you know what, you have this voice, here's what I would love to hear or see you doing. It would be lovely just to get your thoughts on that. I have to say that I've been a very long admirer of Baha'ullah, his thoughts, the way the concepts behind Baha'i faith are very, very dear to my heart. And by the way, as a Muslim, they make a lot of sense to me because they are to me a very natural progression from what I believe. It's actually very much aligned with, and I believe it's not just as Muslims that we think that, but anyone who reads the writings of Baha'ullah and learns a little bit about Baha'i faith will realize that this is actually an evolution of the best of all faiths, all faiths. And as someone who sees that and as someone who also has worked with the Baha'i international community, I can in a way personally vouch for the fact that the Baha'is are very much true to their faith in the way that they see the world, in the way that you deal with people. And that's a big deal. It's kind of hard to say that about everyone else. So you talk about the good Christian and the good Muslim. I think Baha'is, so when we talk about the good Christian, it's almost as if we're implying that there are good Christians and not so good Christians or good Muslims and not so good Muslims. I mean, let's face it, that's often when we say, and I am guilty of that myself when I say my good Rabbi and it was pointed out to me that I was saying if my good Rabbi does that mean there's other bad rabbis out there? That wasn't what I meant. But of course it's the sort of a similar thing and you say good, this then means that there's others that are not good. But the fact of the matter is that one can't, I can't speak about good Baha'is because all Baha'is are awesome in the way that they live their faith and use the faith to actually be, they live the faith principles, which is not terribly common, but it's actually lovely to see. And I think that we're all believers often, often trip, if you will, or become human every now and then because all believers are human. I mean, that's all point is that we begin to see that it's our truths as the best truth not just the only, but the best. And I think that's a slightly dangerous slope that almost all faiths, if not all faiths actually go into because this understanding it's the best. It comes, it can come across unintentionally and sometimes it comes across in speeches and ways and like, you need milk no further, this is it. And I think the whole point of what I read in some of the writings of the Baha'i writings is that it's this almost this challenge to be open, the challenge to be questioned, that it's that that is part of being faithful. And by the way, I think that that actually stands in all faith traditions. So if you read the Quran or the Old Testament or the New Testament or even the Mahabharatna, there's this challenge to accept that you will be challenged, that your very faith will be challenged. Everything you believe will be challenged. And it's part of being alive together in a world that is so incredibly diverse because of what we believe and how we look that we are constantly being challenged about what we believe so firmly. So it isn't that we can possibly come to a moment where we're not going to be challenged like that. No, I think it's how we deal with that persistent systematic challenge of what challenge to precisely what we believe. And dealing with that by trying to imply, I'm not saying the Baha'is are doing that, but I'm saying this is a path that so many faiths or religions in particular seem to slip into but it's my faith. This is my faith and it really is the best. Now it's not obviously said like that but honestly that's like the undertone. I got this, my faith has this and it's great. There's nothing better than this surely. And I think that is tricky. And I think all faiths have to be very sensitive to appearing, to go down that route. And what I love about the Baha'i International Community is that I think, I don't know how, but I think you guys actually really seem to hold yourselves to hold that mirror in front of yourselves all the time. How can I draw the common good that we both share, that we all share? How can I draw that? What will it look like with you? Right? And so I've just had the pleasure of reading this one that you kindly shared with me, one planet, one habitation.  And the rest is about how can we find this together? What is good for all of us? It's not what is good for us as Baha'is, but it's what is good for all of us. And it's actually something that I hold my own communities around the world very accountable to. Is it about being good Muslims? About what's good for Islam? Is it really? Is it really? Is it really what's good for Christians? Is it really about what would Christ do? Well, I'd love to know what Christ would do, but what would we do for all of each other? And I think that nuance is huge. It's a difference between saying, how can I matter versus how can we matter together? And I think your writings systematically, Dan, what I've read of them, and I've had the privilege of reading them, some of them that you've shared over the years, and the way that you engage and interact with different communities within the UN, with other NGOs, and the way that Bani certainly lives her life, I think you guys have taught me that it's that the diligence, the deliberation, the intentionality of seeing what is good for all of us that we can get there together. So even as you argue for the Baha'is who are so, so horribly treated in different countries, even as you argue for their right, and even as you seek to protect them, you don't ever make it an us and them. That your attempt to safeguard and to protect your own community of believers is fundamentally rooted in your attempt to safeguard and protect all believers. And that's why you've been very active, for instance, in the freedom of religion and belief space, but you've not been very active in the freedom of religion and belief space in the way other religions have to say, it's all about Baha'is, Baha'is, Baha'is, Baha'is, it isn't like that. Whereas the others often have their own, it's their, our community is suffering, our community is suffering, my fellow believers suffering in my same faith is suffering. And it's a very different argument. And that's why within religions for peace, we say it isn't about freedom of religion and belief. It's about the article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that freedom of thought, conscience and belief, religion and belief. Why? Because the understanding is that my belief will not be protected if yours isn't. And you and I live in the same planet. It's the understanding that your sense of consciousness is integral to mine, which is the quintessential Baha'i teaching, right? It is that understanding of how incredibly interdependent on each other we are, that every faith tradition tries to tell us is the truth that we are completely connected. It's not that if the Jews survive, the rest of the world will survive alone. It's not that if every Christian were saved then the world will be, no, because we all have to be saved together. We all have to survive together. And we won't at the rate we're going because we're getting so incredibly insular in our own spaces. And so it's freedom of thought, it's freedom of conscience and it's freedom of religion and belief. And they are together and they are inseparable. And I think what the Baha'i is, quite frankly, from what I've seen, at least the Baha'i international community over the years, and it's been a long time. I've been working with you all since 2000. In those 22 years, I have learned so much about what it means from you, about what it means to seek the common good to God together. And if there's anything I would say, gee, maybe it would be really nice if you could, I think you guys have actually already done that. When Religions for Peace in 2020 at the height of the lockdown said, you know, we have so many humanitarian funds going on right now, we have so many humanitarian actions, but there isn't a single one that actually tries to deliberately get us to work together as different religious communities. There isn't a single fund that is given to those whose inspiration and whose intention is to bring people of different faiths together to serve everyone. There isn't a single fund for that. So we set it up and we set it up not because it's Religions for Peace, we never intended it to be a Religions for Peace fund. We invited all the religious communities and the secular communities to contribute to this fund, which has one purpose, not to add to the burden of other humanitarian funds or to take away from other humanitarian funds, but to say, can we contribute a little bit to the deliberate intentional support to those who want to work together from different religious beliefs and inclinations. They want to serve this humanitarian space as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, whatever the composition of that particular community or nation is. And it was deeply, it is a very, how should I put this? It's still very painful to realize that many religions didn't want to be part of this space and that some of the secular actors copied the idea, but for themselves. Yes, how about you give us? All the different religions give us more. Let's create a multi-religious giving to us. And that wasn't the point. It's not about us getting the money from different religions to do the same old, same old work we've always done. It's about us giving, but sharing a little bit of the resources together to give to those who want to continue to pass it forward by working together. And it's a fundamentally different concept. And it still pains me that really actually the ones who have come forward with this are the, no, I am pained that the large religions didn't do this, that the ones who have plenty at their disposal didn't still don't want to do this, but I am incredibly grateful and very inspired by those who do want to contribute. And guess what? There's only two religions to date who have dared to contribute. Because it's not about how much, it's about the fact that you are wanting to contribute. This is a matter of principle. It's the Buddhists, the Vishakusika and the Baha'i international community. You are the only two religions or religious institutions that have actually contributed to the multi-religious humanitarian, to the idea that we put our money where our mouth is and we believe it's important to work together because the good of one is the good of all and the good of all will mean that everyone is looked after, but we actively work towards this together. So that's that, I would just say more of that, more of that insistence on being the exemplars of what it is that it's literally the safety of one depends on the safety of all and that the contribution and the commitment to save all is the point. And I would say please, please do give to those things which the causes, the purposes, the initiatives that are deliberately multi-religious in nature because it's fundamentally what your faith in fact, actually all faiths are trying to say. It is give to all together. Thank you so much, Azza. I hope, I really do hope that that fund is just going through the alphabetical order. So you've got the Baha'is, the Buddhists and then maybe the Christians will come next. Well, I guess Catholic, let's hope. Amen. And we missed out on the agnostics in the eight years but they'll come along one day. Oh, they have in the sense that those who did contribute in the beginning were foundations that are not politically religiously aligned in any way shape or form. So I think there we go. Proving the point. But Azza, this has been as ever delightful and illuminating and I'm really grateful to you for taking the time. I hope you rest well, though it's bright and sunny for the next, I think seven more hours in Stockholm, even though it's 9.30 PM there. Yes, mid-summer. Yes, enjoy the Maypole coming out next week, I believe. Really, this is, yes, I hope it'll be back here in our neck of the woods. But thank you so much for taking the time. It's been really illuminating, really a joy as ever. And thank you for the brilliant questions and thank you for the work you do and thank you for every single member of the Pai community. Honestly, I give gratitude to God for that. Thank you. Thank you. Have a lovely evening, Agha. Thanks so much. Thank you, you too. Bye bye.