Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Juan Botero, Executive Director of the World Justice Project. I want to welcome all of you to this event, marking the public release of the 2016 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index. We appreciate you taking the time from your busy schedules to come and learn more about the importance of the rule of law. In addition to this room, we welcome our virtual audience around the world via webcast or following us on social media. Thank you to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace for partnering with us and hosting this launch of our report here today. Let me begin the program by inviting Robert Gifford to the podium. Robert is the Director of the Office of Criminal Justice Assistance and Partnership in the United States State Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Robert, the podium is yours. Thank you very much for inviting us here today. We are very proud of our partnership with the World Justice Project and Rule of Law Index. 2016, this rolls out to 2016 index. We're excited. I have a copy here, very small print. But we rely on this index doing our work around the world. And we very much appreciate you being here today. I'd like to congratulate a few people, especially today. Bill Nukum, I understand, could not make it. Juan Rotero and Alejandro Ponce, thank you very much. And we'd also like to thank the Carnegie Endowment for hosting this rollout today. And especially Rachel, thank you very much for moderating this session today. Producing an index in itself is a remarkable feat. Producing one every year is just unbelievable. And in the partnership with INL, we occasionally ask some very special sub-studies to be undertaken. And World Justice Project takes them on remarkably, has incredible methodology to proceed. And we always look forward to utilizing their products. My bureau, the Bureau for International Autocottics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the State Department, provides foreign assistance to some 90 countries around the world right now. We help further US foreign policy. And we do that by helping countries to develop criminal justice systems that are fair to all people that are effective and reduce crimes. In order to do this, however, we need a strong partner to help us along the way. Our programs are designed in collaboration with the host countries that we work with. We do this so that we ensure that we're not just doing things that we think are important. We are providing assistance that our host governments also think are important. And we rely on them for reality, for facts on the ground. One of the most important parts of our programming is effective monitoring and evaluation. And we have a team in the bureau that does this. This team helps us to identify measures that we can utilize and trust to measure our progress. And we have to answer a few basic questions along the way when we do this. Formal questions, basic questions. Do we meet our goals and objectives? Did we meet our intended goals? Are we realistic in our approach? Did we improve criminal justice system? What changed? And this means what changed negatively and what changed positively. And what adjustments can we make as we go forward? And as we do this, we rely on the index to help us in this process. We consider the programs within the context of the rule of law in a particular country. And we always look to the index to help us analyze and look at trends in our programming efforts. I'd like to mention just a couple of examples that just briefly, that we've used the index as we've gone along in Afghanistan, and a couple of state department folks who work on Afghanistan. We have been working on Afghanistan for, I think, probably 14 years. It's a long time. And we use the index as an essential part of our process for comparing and evaluating data that we gather on the ground. And we look at other surveys, both public surveys and private surveys. And for the last several years, we've been trying to help Afghan government build a fair and efficient and transparent justice system that addresses several issues for us. The primary reason that the United States is in the foreign assistance business, of course, the ultimate goal is to assist in preventing and reducing crime and drugs and other bad things from coming to US borders and coming to US markets. In Afghanistan, we are working to build a justice system. We're working to address the massive narcotics crop production, drug production, drug trafficking that reach world markets, including the US. We're working to develop a professional police force that protects all people. And we're seeking to create a secure prison system that meets international human rights standards. None of this is easy. None of this can be accomplished quickly. And we're always in a hurry. And none of this can be done unilaterally by the US or any other entity. This is a joint effort. It always has to be a joint effort. The index assists us to better understand the larger picture of how the Afghans are interacting with their own government and how the justice sector is seen to be operating by Afghans and is actually operating. And when we're doing this, we do this within a context that is not always quantifiable. We need to understand the social context of the countries we work in and traditional practices that may or may not be within what we would regard as effective rule of law. The index also helps us to refine our programming as we move forward. It helps us target our resources. While occasionally we have significant resources, our resources are not endless. And we are very conscious of that. For instance, the 2015 index showed that the Afghan judiciary was seen by the Afghan public as the most corrupt component of the justice sector. This helped us to identify and focus on anti-corruption as an area that needed additional attention as we continue to work with the judges. We asked the World Justice Project to conduct a criminal justice sub-study in each of the Afghan provinces to give us information and trend information about how we can utilize, we can better utilize our own information and to look at this in a comparative way. This is not easy. We understand it's not easy. And we are constantly looking for input and a variety of sources. But we always look at the index as a primary and important source for us. Beyond Afghanistan, we also have had index play a role and is playing a role in Mexico. In 2007, we began what is called the Merida Initiative, which addresses organized crime and associated violence in Mexico. And also for us to reduce an effort to reduce human rights violations and establish the rule of law. And as part of this in Mexico, we are helping the Mexican government transition from an inquisitorial trial system to an accusatory trial system. Given this fundamental shift in how criminal justice and trials are conducted, and we have been carefully observing this transformation and developing programmatic responses accordingly. And to support this effort, we have asked the World Justice Project to conduct its rule of law index annually in each of Mexico's 32 states for a period of four years. This data, we believe, will help us measure progress over time. We will also be able to look at this information comparatively among states and be able to measure our progress accordingly. And over the same period, the World Justice Project will also survey police officers and prison inmates to highlight differences in administration of justice under the old system and under the new accusatory system. We look forward to the results and we know that we'll be able to use them effectively in our programming efforts in the future. These examples demonstrate that the direct rule of law index impact on INL programs is something that we look very much forward to utilizing. We rely on it, we like the methodology, we like the timely delivery, we like the consultation and we expect to continue to do so. In a broader sense, the most innovative aspects of the index is the ability for practitioners, policymakers and scholars to identify overarching rule of law trends and use this data for their own purposes. We all know the inherent difficulties of measuring rule of law in any circumstance. And there are many indicators and many methodologies out there that strive to prove that some of the quantitative measures are more effective in this regard. We know that the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index is one of the best available. And not only because it is comprehensive, but also because it is practical. And we look at it from a real world standpoint on the ground. Being here today is a great personal pleasure for me. I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to thank and discuss with a very significant partner of ours. We are continuing to work together. We'll continue to help refine our products together and we'll continue to work together as far as I'm concerned in the foreseeable future. Congratulations to the World Justice Project. And again, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Robert, for your welcoming remarks and for your insights about INL's practical use of the index. I'm Jim Silkinette and I serve as vice president of the World Justice Project. And on behalf of our board of directors and our entire team, I wanna reiterate Juan's welcome to all of you. And thank you for coming today to learn about the rule of law and our efforts to measure it. Thank you as well to the Carnegie Endowment and especially Rachel Kleinfeld, our moderator today and someone who is truly contributing to a greater understanding of the rule of law for their help in cosponsoring and hosting this event. Our program today will feature highlights from the latest rule of law index by our chief research officer Alejandro Ponce, a panel discussion on the rule of law will follow, moderated by Rachel. At the conclusion of our formal program, we look forward to fielding questions from all of you. You may submit written questions at any time to a World Justice Project staff member who will be available at the back of the room and in the aisles and who will bring your questions to the moderator. Index cards have been distributed on the chairs here for this purpose and we ask that on your written questions you include your name and affiliation so that we can recognize you personally and thank you. Some of you may be new to the World Justice Project and to the World Justice Project rule of law index so I'll give you a bit of background. First, the World Justice Project is an independent, multidisciplinary organization working to advance the rule of law around the world. Our work is founded on two principles. First, that the rule of law is the foundation of communities of peace, equity and opportunity and second, that the multidisciplinary collaboration involving not just lawyers and judges but all parts of society is the most effective way to advance the rule of law. Based on this, the World Justice Project work employs a multidisciplinary, multilayered approach through original research and data and active and global network and practical on-the-ground programs to advance the rule of law. So why the rule of law? We believe it is the foundation, really the foundation for communities of peace, opportunity and equity, underpinning development, accountable government and respect for fundamental rights. Effective rule of law reduces corruption, combats poverty and disease and protects people from injustices large and small. In fact, we see a strong relationship between the rule of law and economic development, the society's education levels, public health indicators, for example, infant mortality and other areas of human and political development. Now onto the rule of law index. WJP has worked for more than a decade now to produce a universal definition of the rule of law and rigorous technical indicators for measuring it. This has not been an easy process, but we think we have moved in the right direction. Today, the World Justice Project rule of law index is the world's leading source for original impartial data on the rule of law. The index relies on over 100,000 households around the world and expert surveys to measure how the rule of law is experienced and practical everyday situations by the general public and how it reflects the law on the streets, not just the law on the books. The rule of law index is the most comprehensive index of its kind, index findings have been referenced by heads of state, by chief justices, business leaders, public officials and the press, including media outlets in more than 125 countries worldwide. It's our hope that these index findings, at which you'll hear more about in a few minutes, are a powerful resource for researchers, for policymakers and others who are looking to improve the rule of law in their countries. I think it's important to note that the World Justice Project is not in the business of shaming and blaving governments, but rather of empowering change, change agents both inside and outside governments to shift the terms of the dialogue using credible, objective data. We strive to be an honest broker of information and I'm hoping that we have accomplished that. We also want to remind everyone that no society, anywhere, has ever attained, let alone sustained, a perfect realization of this rule of law. Every nation, including the United States, faces the perpetual challenge of building and renewing the structures and institutions and norms that can support and sustain a rule of law culture. Finally, we recognize that the World Justice Project Rule of Law Index is a work in progress. The 2016 index has grown to cover 113 countries, up from just 66 countries in 2011. With additional funding and support, we hope to expand to cover even more countries and even more detail in the future. Now let me invite your attention to the screen. Dear friends, the rule of law matches to all of us, to the entire human family. In the last decades, we've accomplished so much at reducing poverty and improving the human condition. But the most important thing we've learned during that time is that establishing, respecting, and enhancing the rule of law is the core element to continued progress. And that's very, very hard to do in practice. You gotta have real measures and real indices that allow you to know whether you're doing any better than you were just a few years ago. Because without having judicial reforms and rule of law, we'll never have a stable economic development, fair and well functioning civil society. It is very important for me that we continue to have measurement and the definition of the rule of law and how it is adhered to. And that when we do that, we should use internationally accepted norms and standards. I say so because in my view, the universality of the rule of law cannot be overemphasized. The rule of law can deliver powerful and lasting boosts to human and economic development of societies all over the world. The World Justice Project, through the development of these indices, does a wonderful job of helping governments and societies all over improve the rule of law in their own communities in a low key and non-confrontational way. If you want to improve the rule of law, you need a way to measure it. The World Justice Project's rule of law index helps the global community by doing just that. It offers independent comprehensive data that can be used to drive policy, set benchmarks and guide successful program development. That brings in change. That brings in progress, social, economic and political. The World Justice Project's rule of law index is a useful tool. It takes a very complicated but important concept or topic through rule of law and breaks it down in a rigorous but accessible way. There are a number of things I like about it. One is that it combines expert opinion with public opinion, which is unusual. Most indexes, it's a choice of one or the other. It covers many countries, almost 100 countries and maybe more soon. And it covers both the United States as well as countries on the developing world side. So it's not a one-sided index that's only looking at some parts of the world. That's why the World Justice Project's rule of law index is just so critical to all of our work. It helps policymakers make better decisions. I used the index regularly in preparing to go visit countries and speak with heads of state and try to encourage people to make the right decisions. But we cannot sit back on our laurels. Strengthening the rule of law is a never-ending process. No society has ever attained, let alone sustained, a perfect realization of the rule of law. That is the challenge that lies before us. Thank you for supporting the rule of law. Now I'd like to introduce Alejandro Ponce, WJP's chief research officer who will be walking us through some of the key findings from the 2016 rule of law index. So it's... Oh, now it's working. Okay, good. So as I was saying, it's a pleasure for me to present the results of the 2016 rule of law index. The report that you have in your hands and that you can access online on your phone, on your desktop, summarizes the views of 110,000 people around the world. Their experiences and perceptions on topics such as the interaction that they have with the state, with the courts, with the government, with the police. Their perceptions about accountability or the openness of the governments. The perceptions about corruptions and their experiences when they have to be victims of a bribe or the extent to which they are, the victims of violence or crime in their countries. So let me repeat that. 110,000 people, perceptions and experiences that our team has gathered and collected information, validated, checked, summarized into the scores that I'm going to present. Above all, this exercise is about showing or listening to those voices. It's not only about graphs. It's about the voices of all these people. It's not the World Justice Project. The World Justice Project is simply putting the voices of all these people together and showing them here. Now, to summarize the rule of law, all these experiences and perceptions, we put them together in eight factors that we call or outcomes of the rule of law. Constraints and government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, access to civil justice, criminal justice and informal justice. The basic notion of this is simply on one hand that the law effectively imposes checks on the power of the state. And on the other hand, that the state effectively limits the actions of its citizens, but also just fulfills its duties towards its citizens so that people are protected for violence. People have effective access to dispute resolution mechanisms and can redress grievances. Now, each one of these indicators are disaggregated into sub-indicators. When we compile the indicator, for example, of access to justice, what we are really measuring is whether people have access to and can afford civil justice, whether civil justice is free of discrimination, whether the civil justice system is free of corruption, whether the civil justice system is free of improper government influence. So, all these features just are aggregated into this course. You can actually check just each one of the dimensions that we cover in page 13 of the report to get more details of exactly the different indicators that we are capturing. This report, as was mentioned, as compared to the previous year, this report includes 11 new countries in the Caribbean. It interviews 110,000 people. In each country, we interview 1,000 people in the three largest cities and ask them about their experiences and perceptions on topics, as I was mentioning before, bribery, accountability, transparency. On top of that, we interview approximately 3,000 experts, so 25 on average in each one of the countries. These are practitioners of the law. So, these are lawyers in civil or commercial law, criminal law, labor law, or public health practitioners that we identify in each one of the countries. We invite them to participate pro bono and we receive their answers. So, their answers simply are, they act as agents of the people. So, these are not complicated questions, what we ask to them. It's just simply stuff that they know in the course of their daily work. These are the voices that we're going to see over here in this report. Administration of the survey in different countries, in Tanzania, Thailand, Peru, Afghanistan, Ghana, Pakistan, Albania, Myanmar. We summarize these results in country-specific profiles. I'm going to talk first about some of the results for a country without going into detail, but just, I know that you may be interested in a particular country so that you know how to read some of the results that we present and the way that we present it. So, all of the results are available either in the book or online. Just, I invite you just to check, whenever if you just Google what is this project, then you click and then you will be directed probably to this page, which is the opening page. You can see the status of the rule of law in the different countries. You can click in each one of the countries and see the status of each one of them. You can also compare countries either in bar formats or in the form of spiderwebs. And then you can go deeper into each one of the countries. So, let me just talk a little bit about just the information that we show here. We show first the aggregate score. So, that summarizes the rule of law information in the country together with the global ranking and more importantly, with the regional ranking and the income ranking. Sometimes it's unfair to certain countries compare them against richer countries, but it makes sense to compare, for example, Bolivia with Peru rather than Bolivia with Sweden. Number two, we're able to see the scores of the different factors that we measure. The factors that I show at the beginning on constraints on government power or on open government. If you're interested, for example, in the performance of the criminal justice system, you can look at that particular indicator and see how the country is performing the score as well as the global ranking, the regional ranking and the income ranking. Together with that, you can see a factor trend. What that means is how the country is performing relative to the previous year and you will be able to see in some countries there are arrows, either upward arrows or downward arrows. So, what that means is that if the country has an upward arrow, is that there is a statistically significant improvement in that country. So, since this is a statistical exercise at the end of the day, we don't want to highlight differences. There may be probably simply the result of noise, but in some cases there are significant differences and we show those. Finally, at the bottom, you will be able to go and see the scores for each one of the individual sub-factors. If you want to see, for example, just desegregate fundamental rights and look at discrimination in Europe, you will be able to see a score for discrimination in Europe and in a particular country in Europe and compare that with the regional and the income peers as well. So, you will be able to do that for each one of the four-year countries. So, I invite you to look at the particular country that you're interested in, just search online, tweet, Facebook, and use it as much as you can. I'm going to summarize some of the global trends. So, first, something that you're probably interested in, which are the top performance and the bottom performance. The top performance, 8 out of 10, are in the Western Europe and North America region. Denmark and Norway are at the top. The bottom performance, the lower, are Afghanistan, Cambodia, and Venezuela. Number two, some of the top performance by region sometimes is, again, it's important as well to compare some countries against their peers. Uruguay, in the case of Latin America. Denmark, which is the global leader. Georgia, in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region, 34th overall. Nepal is the leader in the South Asia region, 63 overall. The UAE is the leader among the few states that we are serving in the Middle East. 33 overall are 113. South Africa in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, 43. And New Zealand in the East Asia and Pacific region, 8 out of 113. Now, the overall story here and when we have been conducting this exercise over the years is that the rule of law doesn't change as much from one year to the next. For most countries, the rule of law is something quite stable over the years. However, there are some noteworthy movers. And that's what we can see here. You can check page five on your report and you'll be able to see where the countries score as well as whether the countries have been moving up or down as compared to previous year. A methodological note here is that we compare only the set of countries that we pulled last year so that because we added new countries so that the change in rankings is not due to the fact that we included new countries, but it's really that it is due because of a change in performance. So one example, just if we go, just I'm not going to go over each one of the countries, but you will see that, let's say, for example, in Latin America, Argentina and Peru are improving in their rankings. In both cases, they improved more than eight places and just Belize, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador just showed a decrease in the rankings. Some of the most noteworthy improvements and declines. Just on the positive side, Iran improved 13 positions for a global ranking of 86. The main driver is positive improvements in the constraints of government power. Argentina moved 12 places and now it's in the 51 position. The main driving, again, just constraints on government power but as well a corruption improvements in absence of corruption and regulatory enforcement. In Nigeria, just moved 11 positions. Now it's placed in 96 position due to improvements in limited government powers and criminal justice. Now, the three top countries or the countries that show the most declines in rankings, Egypt went down 13 places. Now it's placed 110 out of 113, mainly due to security and so there are some other factors contributing to this. Lebanon that went down 10 places to a global ranking of 89, due to constraints, declines in constraints on government powers and Albania and the Philippines which are now at the 72 and 70 position that they declined nine rankings due to declines in open government and constraints on government power respectively. Now, there are also some interesting findings at the regional level. So when we analyze, for example, just which are the regions in which most countries improved? Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa is the region in which most countries improved. Nine countries improved, seven countries, five countries declined and three countries didn't change. You see that there are still a few countries that we don't cover in Africa but it's a positive development, the fact that countries are improving. On the other side, the region that saw the most declines is the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region where I think it's eight countries, decline and five countries improved. And with this, I'm going to give the floor to my friend and colleague, Rachel Kleinfield, who is going to moderate the panel on some of the challenges in rule of law. Thank you, Rachel. As the panel gets themselves assembled, I'll just have to say in monthly. Right there. That's awesome. I just have to say that it is a grand honor to be doing this with the World Justice Project because you've already seen, not only are they thorough and careful and cover a vast amount of the world, but they get better. And I think that's something that's very rare in organizational life in general, that for many organizations they hit a certain period of success and they rest on their laurels. And this index started out with real rigor and real seriousness, much more than frankly you had to to be the best index out there. You far surpassed what you needed to do. And then it got better and better and better and it continues to get better in its depth and in its breadth. And it's a huge honor and it's also a huge service to the community that's trying to figure out these difficult things. The next thing I'll say is that you've already heard that if you have a question, fill it out on your index card and just hold it up and one of the staff will come and get it from you. We have to do that because we're live streaming and so we want to be fair to everyone who's on the, I'm usually one of the people calling in on these things. So we wanna be very fair to those folks. But let me introduce our panel and then we'll have about 20 minutes for us to talk and 20 minutes for Q and A and we hope for really a solid discussion. So moving in this direction, we start with Juan Botero. He's the executive director of the World Justice Project. He used to run the rule of law index itself. So he knows from the nitty gritty on up what it is. Previously he consulted for the World Bank doing business on indices. So I'm not slagging the World Bank indices by saying that yours is excellent. They come from the same brain originally. He had directed Columbia's trade bureau and it serves as the chief international legal counsel for Columbia during what she negotiated the Colombian-American free trade agreement. So he crosses the worlds of scholarship and real practical work in the government and holds a doctorate, a master's and a JD. So also sort of taking care of the scholarly realm while doing the real practical work of running an organization and helping run a government. Mondley is one of the board members of the World Justice Project and he comes from the crucial fourth sector, the media. And we haven't talked a lot about the media. Hopefully we can get more into that here. He is the editor-large of the City Press newspaper in South Africa, writing a book on South African politics which I hear is going to be quite groundbreaking and perhaps rather controversial, but certainly very honest. Former editor-in-chief of the Times Media Group, which is one of South Africa's largest media companies and he served as a chair of the South African National Editors Forum that brings together the journalistic editors. He remains an officer there and he's really one of the shining stars of political commentating life in South Africa, which is a country which while it's looking very good on the index, clearly just because you're doing well in your region doesn't mean there's not a long ways to go. We in America could say that about ourselves right now and he's gonna have some very hard hitting things to say I'm sure. And then Marwan Moucher, who is our vice president studies here at Carnegie Endowment itself. Before that he was vice president of external affairs and he also is running our Middle East program both here, the thinking about the Middle East and then the thinking in the Middle East in our Beirut office, which as you might know about Carnegie, we have five different offices in Beirut, Beijing, Brussels, here in DC, Moscow and our newest one in New Delhi and each one employs a staff entirely located in that area based in the region to speak the language who are of the region who provide a much more global perspective on events than a lot of other DC based think tanks. We don't see ourselves as a DC think tank, we see ourselves as a global think tank. This is one of our many offices and Marwan not only runs that office but he has deep, deep roots in the region. He served as deputy prime minister of Jordan and foreign minister of Jordan. He began his career as a journalist for the Jordan times. He's sort of covering the whole gamut here, served multiple roles in the Jordanian government from opening Jordan's first embassy in Israel to serving as ambassador to Washington from Jordan and while there he negotiated Jordan's first free trade agreement with America, the first free trade agreement of any Arab country with America. So he and Juan can talk afterward about that experience and he just finished his most recent book on the second Arab awakening and the battle for pluralism in that region. And I wanna start out with one question with a whole panel that perhaps we can take in reverse order from Marwan back to you Juan and then we'll get into more individual questions. But when I was looking at the rule of law index, I was struck by the fact that each of the countries that you live in and know best is living in a very problematic neighborhood. So South Africa might be the shining star but of those countries around you, Zimbabwe is one of the worst five of the whole index. Jordan might be doing quite well but Syria is not even measured here. Egypt is one of the worst five and Lebanon has been dropping very quickly.  What do you think your countries can do to improve that regional dynamic if anything? And is there anything in external countries such as the United States can do to improve that regional dynamic? And Marwan we'll start with you and you have the difficult answer of trying to avoid just talking about the Syrian war but talking more about the rule of law. The Middle East has always been in a region of turmoil. So there's nothing new.  But I would not place regional considerations at the top of why the Middle East region is not doing well in my view in the rule of law. We just saw that some of the worst performers are from the region, Egypt, Lebanon, et cetera. And the reason for that is that the region has operated for the longest time under what I call an authoritarian bargain where states in the region have promised their citizens, you know, the delivery of basic services like health, education, jobs, subsidies, in return for citizens having little or no say in decision making. And that system has been, if you want, financed, fueled by oil. Oil has propagated rentier mentality in the Middle East where citizens did not have much of a say in decision making. But more than that, oil has also resulted in an inefficient political and economic system financed, financing these systems for the longest time. Such a system is not merit-based. It's not based on the rule of law. It is based on what I will call royalties versus loyalties. And that is how the system operates. You give favors to a particular constituency in return for that constituency being loyal to the system. The rule of law is nonexistent. And what we call WASTA in the Middle East is rampant. And WASTA is a way by which you, you know, get jobs, get services, get privileges, not through merit, but through tribal affiliation, through knowledge of officials, et cetera. That explains to a large extent, in my view, why some of the worst performers are from the region. Now, let me say one more thing. That regional rentier system, if you will, more than the violence and turbulence of the region. Is under severe strain now. The decline in oil prices means a lot of things. One, it means that governments can no longer depend on rent coming from oil the way they used to for their patronage systems. It also means that as governments understand that they have to slowly get out of the system and move to more productive economies, they will not be able to do so without the rule of law. They will not be able to ask their citizens to sacrifice, further sacrifice in terms of, you know, no more subsidies, no more jobs. The quality of health and education is declining. They cannot do this or continue to do this and still ask their citizen to keep their end of the bargain, which is no sane decision making. And that is going to be the challenge. So in a way, it's going to be a long and very difficult process. But in the way the rule of law might be actually better said by this recent development, I call it the end of rentierism in the Middle East than not. My people say from your mouth to God, we hope so. Manly, can you speak to the South African neighborhood? Yeah, I think the one way, I mean like I think the several ways in which we could greatly influence the rule of law in our region. And the one way is by example, when Saturga became a democracy, we built a very, very strong democracy. There is, we have strong institutions, there is a very strong civil society, and we have strong courts, it's a very strong judicial system, and we have a very disobedient population. I mean like it's one of the things that we wear as a page of honor. There have been times in the past 22 years, particularly in the past five to seven years or so in our democracy where the governing party and the government have tried to encroach on people's rights and tried to encroach on civil liberties, but trying to weaken the media, trying to weaken the courts and trying to weaken institutions of governance and institutions of democracy. And they've been very successfully resisted and they've been pushed back, not simply through outside voices, but by the society itself. So there's a very strong ownership of the democracy and of the freedom by the people of South Africa. So I think that the one thing that has been a very, very exemplary, a shining example in South Africa and something that countries in transition anywhere in the world, new democracies can actually learn from is that the building of strong institutions of governance. So it's one example that I think we can give to people in the region in South Africa and just be that beacon that continues to inspire our neighbors. But I think there is also a political role that South Africa should be playing, but which it has been very reluctant and resistant to play. And that is of being a regional hegemon that the rights and quality of the democracy that's enjoyed in South Africa should be enjoyed by neighbors as well. But South Africa has been very reluctant to do so for various reasons. And one of those is the fact that we were the last country on the continent to be liberated. So the last to join the organization of African Unity, which is now the African Union. So there was a reluctance on the part of the Mandela government right at the beginning to come in as the newcomer who's coming to teach the region how to behave. And there's a reluctance as well to basically to be seen as a kind of United States in Africa, the imperial power that's coming to bully other people. So unfortunately, the fact that we are the strongest country in the region, the fact that we are the strongest economy and that we do actually have an example of a functioning democracy that should be inspiring others. We have not been able to implement that we have not been able to use our foreign policy to actually influence other countries in the region. And I think that two decades down the line, we have matured enough to be able to play that role and not to fear the label of being an imperial power. I think that centering our foreign policies on the people rather than on governments, on offending other politicians in the country. I think it's a switch that South Africa, I think at this particular point should be able to make because what happens in the region, the downgrading of the region eventually does impact on the country itself in terms of basically people flocking into the country and causing instability in the country, whether it's social instability and basically. And burdening the resources of the country, but also just for the sake of neighborly sisterhood, of neighborliness. I think that it could be a lot stronger in institutions such as the African Union and institutions such as the Southern African development community. Juan, what about Columbia and its role as a regional hegemon or a shining light? Well, your question goes to the core, Rachel, to something that has been a source of deep personal reflection for me in the last two months. Because as you all probably know, the Colombian peace process referendum was surprisingly defeated by the population. And it has led me to wonder what is the role that the international community and the neighbors and friends play in other countries? And to what extent this role is positive and to what extent it may be harmful? Many in Colombia believe that the signing of the peace deal a week before with 12 regional presidents was a contributing factor to the defeat of the agreement. Because many in Colombia feel that the ownership of their own destinies belongs to them. And when you extrapolate that to the work of the World Justice Project, we have always tried to be humble in insisting that it is not the Anglo-American rule of law. It is not the Western civilization rule of law. It goes back to Hammurabi code and I invite you to go to the last page of the index, one that I have defended always, start with the code Hammurabi, so 3,700 years ago, the same principles. Because at the end of the day, this is a homegrown culture. Artur Chazkas, from South Africa, Chief Justice and the architect of the judicial independence in South Africa under Mandela, sent Mandela to hell, essentially. When he tried to intervene and Mandela was delighted about it, he said, it's not about laws. It's not about institutions. It's about the homegrown culture of the rule of law. And I think that the international community and in the neighbors, inasmuch as they can contribute to build up by example and by help, this homegrown culture, they are useful. When foreign presidents come and say that Colombians would be schizophrenically, they voted agreement no. That's an invitation to vote agreement no. Thank you. That is a really interesting and rather provocative point and I want to jump back into South Africa, although all of you are welcome to answer this, which is that you're getting at an issue that we're facing all around the world, this problem of what's known as closing space, that more authoritarian governments in 100 countries now, everywhere from the repressive governments like Zimbabwe that we would expect, but also India and Israel and countries that are deeper democracies have been passing laws to restrict foreign funding of civil society, to restrict foreign funding of journalists, to make it harder to organize, to make it harder for citizens to speak when Alex was talking about there's 110,000 voices here to repress those 110,000 voices. And one of the ways those authoritarian governments are doing this quite successfully is to say, well, these things are foreign. You wouldn't want foreigners interfering in your election. You wouldn't want foreigners interfering in your cultural processes. You wouldn't want foreigners telling you what to do. And it's been an incredibly potent argument around the world. And so I'd like to start with South Africa, but again, feel free to jump in on the question afterward. Journalists are under pressure in so many countries. Mongolia, how do you see countries being able to respond to this in South Africa, but also just as a journalist elsewhere? What can be done? Look, fortunately, and I mustn't make South Africa sound like this nirvana in the region, but fortunately in South Africa, media freedom is almost total. I mean, like we actually have a very, very strong culture of media freedom. We can say anything we want to say about the government, about the president, about anyone. Nobody has ever gone to jail. They have, however, been attempts by the government to impose new restrictions on the media. But those have been fought back by the media and very importantly by the society itself. And when those attempts were made, it was the society across the board that actually stood up and said, do not restrict our media. We want to have the right to know. So, but we're an island in our region. And all the countries around us, whether it's Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Mozambique, and so on and further into sub-Saharan Africa, media freedom, journalists and newspapers and various forms of media are always under pressure. You hear people going to jail, newspapers being bombed, newspapers being closed down and being squeezed. And I belong to an organization called the African Editors Forum, which is a continental body of editors. And we have been over the past 10, 15, 20 years been moving to create a paradigm of basically kind of like, these are the norms of how, of freedom of expression throughout the region and actually getting the African Union to sign up to those. And the African Union has signed up to those, but they do that on paper at the international summits. When it comes to them ratifying it in their own parliaments, that doesn't happen. Now, that can only come about whether it's in Africa or elsewhere in the world. And there are many regions around the world which are actually worse than Africa. The only way I think that that can happen is that basically by using multilateral institutions such as the United Nations to force governments to actually to abide by international protocols around freedom of expression and freedom of the press, by naming and shaming. And that goes now beyond multilateral bodies. That is now the broader society, the broader intellectual community, the broader civil society around the world, making sure that for those governments to do to jail a journalist to suppress media, that it becomes a shameful act that you do not think about. And that freedom of expression becomes as much of a right as the freedom to vote. And that it becomes that fundamental and as fundamental as a freedom to eat and as a right to shelter. And I think that it really needs to move up in the, as low hierarchy of means. So I'm sensing actually, and I'd like Marwan to break this tension here. I mean, we have one saying actually when the international shake their finger and say, do this, do that, this is our norm, it actually can cause harm and backfire within a country. We have Monsoli saying, you need the international order to hold up certain norms as universal and self-evident like the Zimbabwean and the early in the show that you showed us at the beginning. Marwan clearly closing space is a huge issue in the region. Oh, can you break the tie? Which side do you come down on? Well, it depends on what you mean by the international order. I mean, the interference of the United States in the region, for example, has not been particularly positive. Whether it is in Iraq or, and this is an understatement. So in the end, the reform has to be homegrown. I mean, it cannot come from the outside. What the outside can do is one do no harm thing. It's just not, and I'm afraid that we are in this region, at least in the Middle East, we are in this phase where the international order is back to thinking that stability is important at all costs. It's the same mindset that led to the Arab uprisings and it is the same mindset that the international community is looking at the region now is let's support stability at all costs without paying much attention to issues like the rule of law and others. I mean, look at Egypt today. It has some of the worst rule of law sort of indices and yet, you know, the international community talks to Egypt as if nothing is there. And so that's one Rachel, but I wanna also say that I'm not sure that the Middle East is witnessing a closing of space. As far as civil society is concerned, it is witnessing a counter revolution for sure. It is witnessing an attempt by status go governments to check this wave of uprisings that came because of the absence of rule of law among other things. But you look at a country like Syria today in the middle of an existential battle, civil society has never been more vibrant than in a place like Syria. You look at Tunisia, which was a police state until 2011. Civil society has never been more vibrant in Tunisia. You look at a place like Jordan, which has not undergone transition, but which has clamped down and still clamping down on civil society. You now have a lot of advocacy groups that are emerging against the wish of the government and pushing for issues like the rule of laws. I am not, even in Egypt, where there is a lot of clamp down on civil society, the number of bloggers and organizations sometimes operating from outside the country is also mushrooming. So yes, we are in a bad phase. We are in a phase where governments are trying to clamp down. But I think the trend is towards actually opening up the space rather than the opposite, despite what governments are trying to do. Thank you, that's a very hopeful note. We're going to move to questions from the audience in just a minute. So if you haven't got a question, you've got one in your, if you haven't written your question, you've got one in your hands, hold it up, take it, and I'm going to ask one more question up here and then we'll move to the audience there. But the question actually, and I had sent you all some questions ahead of time and now I'm going to throw a curve ball at you, but I can't help it because of last night. Sorry. But it's this, that I remember when the Bush v. Gore election took place and I was overseas and one thing I was remarking to my friends in the States was, boy, it's amazing that in probably the most powerful country in the world, certainly the biggest economy, we have an election for power that's this close and no one imagines that the military is going to come on the street. It's unthinkable in the United States. And it was unthinkable then, people thought I was funny to even think of it to ask the question, but we're now facing a very different sort of an election in the United States. So it's a two part question. Do you see what's going on right now with the discussion last night of perhaps not accepting election results? Do you think that as being a serious challenge to the rule of law or is this just partisan politics and it'll blow over after November 8th? And if it is a challenge that you think to the rule of law here in America, how will that reverberate on America's ability to ideas overseas? Juan? Because you didn't speak to the last question. I'm sorry, he's calling me over there. That is very easy to answer. No, let's see. Well, first we, at the World Justice Project, we collect data. We are the voice of 110,000 people, as Alex mentioned earlier. We try to collect, rigorously collect the experiences and perceptions of ordinary cities that are representative of the population. So we have no, so we do not provide any opinions on specific policies or specific candidates or specific government officers or any of that. So from that perspective, I have nothing to say. Now, more generally, I do have something to say, which is I believe that the world today is very different than it was five years ago. It is very different in two fundamental ways. One is there is a resurgence of cultural self-assertiveness. This you can see from the Middle East to a million people marching the streets of Buenos Aires to Mexico City to South Korea to everywhere. You see a resurgence of the cultural self-assertiveness. And then you see clearly that in the Brexit vote, you clearly see that in my opinion, in the Colombian referendum vote, you clearly see that in my opinion, my personal opinion, in France or in the United States. So from that point of view, this is part of a broader picture. And I believe that that global challenge, regardless of what one politician say, because the rule of the United States is very strong. I mean, the independence of the judiciary is very high. The free media is very, very protected. The power is distributed in the regions, is not concentrated anywhere. I mean, even if the president wanted to do something, the checks and balances of the power in the United States are very strong. So I don't think that a specific challenge here, but I see a global challenge. Like, is a global phenomenon that is growing and has been growing for the last three, four, five years, which we'll see manifestations, which I just mentioned. Well, I mean, suppose that the election in the States is decided in the favor of Hillary Clinton. And suppose Mr. Trump goes on TV and says, I'm not going to accept this result. There's not much he can do. The system, as you just said, has checks and balances that are just way too strong. And the American public is not going to accept him saying that. So I don't see this as a challenge to the rule of law. I frankly see it as a challenge to the maybe American election system that has brought somebody like Mr. Trump so far. If I can say this as a non-American. And I think that after the election, I think both the Democrats and the Republicans probably have some homework to do to look at where they got, why are they where they are? And I don't know if they will introduce changes to their electoral system, but we have seen the two parties undergo radical changes that we have not seen before to think that somebody like Bernie Sanders would win all that support from out of nowhere. Suggests a problem with both electoral, with both parties. But I don't really see it as a challenge to the rule of law. Okay, well I want to take a few questions in the audience and from our global audience who are watching the streaming. And so we got fantastic questions here and they're very long. So some of them I'm just gonna hand to Alex later on because some of them are quite specific to the index and he'll need to answer in depth. But one of them is very general. So I thought I would start with that one which is from the Department of State and it's what role do youth play in promoting rule of law and democracy? Is there anything generalizable that you can say about the role of youth? And I'll add to her question positive and negative. We often look at youth as a positive force but they're not always. I mean. I can start off if you need to. No, I'm just being, I have two hats. I mean, I do run the Middle East program at Carnegie but I do it in less than a sort of full time capacity because I have an agreement with Carnegie that I can do domestic work as well. And my domestic work is really focused on the elements of a secular state in my country including the rule of law. And I'm very active in working with civil society which as I said is emerging in a positive way in the country. I write about this on a weekly basis. And it is, you know, the king has just published what he calls a discussion paper saying that the rule of law is the basis of any modern state. So he has come also on the side of the rule of law. And that's because of the very real problem that we face in the country which is we cannot hope for any kind of economic survival. I mean, if we do not pay enough attention to this issue and move away from the rentier system. So this is a very important issue that is central. There is a reason that the United Arab Emirates has felt so, you know, highly. The United Arab Emirates do not have a political sort of open system. It does not have a parliament elected or even appointed. People are not allowed to voice their political views but they do have rule of law. And the rule of law applies equally to citizens and non-citizens. And citizens are only 10% of the population. So to give 90% of people the same treatment at least in terms of the rule of law has done very well for the United Arab Emirates. Did you say, what role do you play or do the youth play? Do the youth play? Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you said the youth play. Oh, I'm so sorry. Younger individuals. And I should say that in this entire room the most qualified person to answer that question is Rachel Plankiel, of course. I'd be happy to give my opinion but as moderator I'll defer first. Yeah, if I can use my time on the mic just to go back to the previous question about, yeah. I think there was a, initially when the Trump phenomenon started it was very funny and I think all of us around the world found it very amusing. But I think the more it became a reality I think the world has become worried about what sort of world we'll have in the United States as the most powerful party, either the most powerful partner. I think I come from a continent where it's quite routine for losers to challenge their election results. Often it's the governing party that says that they refuse to move from power because the results were fraudulent and kind of like that. And it's often when they haven't been able to manipulate them properly. And often it's the opposition party that is trying to get into power that challenges the results. And in many cases it has resulted in bloodshed and instability and it has led to civil wars. Now when a country that is recognized as the world's greatest democracy, whether you agree with it or not, and actually where you actually have that phenomenon emerging now where there is a perception that I can reject the results if it is not the way I wanted it to go. And I mean like it feeds into, that it becomes infectious throughout the world. And I think that is the most dangerous thing that can actually come out of a Trump, a Trump rejection of the results. I don't know whether as Maronis just said, I mean like there are checks and balances in the population that can actually reject it. But just coming back to the youth now, I think the role of the youth in enforcing and basically encouraging the rule of law is basically by becoming, by continuing to be engaged and not disengaging from politics and not disengaging from societal activism. And I think we did go through a period post-Cold War where the youth did around the world kind of like disengage and think that no, it's not for us. But I think it is changing now. There's a huge distrust of politicians among youth. There was a study recently done, a global study about, I think it was called the millennial projects about how the millennial see politicians. There's a huge distrust. But I think the youth is becoming more and more active now. And in quite destructive ways in my country, the youth as a huge student protest going on and there's a burning university institutions and university facilities. But at least you know that they are engaged. They are demanding something. And I think that it is important for adults to encourage youth to be involved, to be engaged in societal matters rather than just simply listening to hip-hop and dancing to be on scene. In Colombia? Well, in Colombia, both the 1991 constitution which was the first peace deal, it came out of the M19 peace deal, that constitution came about thanks to a very massive movement by the youth, by the students. It was one of them. And then in the referendum a month ago, also the vote, if you discriminate the voters, the vote between older than 40 and younger than 40, the vote was fundamentally different. And my sense is that the next two years, What's the direction? Youth in favor. And my sense is that in the next two years the youth will play a critical role in bringing this, everybody says they want peace, bringing them to account. And if there is a hope, it's go through the youth involved. So usually I'm the optimistic one on panels, but in this case I might play a downer role on this question and that the way I see youth is that they tend to be purists and they want things to be more honest, less corrupt, more true, there's a deep desire for fairness and equality and purity among youth. And there's also less to lose. Those are the features of sort of moral clarity and they don't have families, they don't have mortgages, they don't have as much to lose. And so they're easier to get out on the street. Those can be extraordinarily positive characteristics as in the 91 constitutional reform, as in Tiananmen Square, as in all sorts of protests where the youth are willing to put their lives on the line, to put their selves on the line, their time on the line to fight corruption, repression, autocracy and so on. But it can also be twisted to other ends if those ends are made to look pure. And here I speak of some of the more political Islamic movements, Boko Haram, which is in many ways a fight against corruption and the corrupt religious political order in Northern Nigeria, Weimar Germany, where the brown shirts were largely youth. You can take that same desire for purity and honesty and twist it if you're a nefarious leader. And so I think generally speaking, those desires play to the good of human nature and play to the good of holding us to account and keeping our government honest. But we shouldn't pretend that all youth play that role. The campus cults in Nigeria, a lot of the violent electoral groups and a number of countries also spring from youth. There is a, when anytime you take one isolated variable, you miss the full picture. And that is the, the fundamental element that we've been trying to build with the rule of law index is looking at it from 50 different perspectives. And when you take into account all the elements, it's a combination of factors. The question is, the youth won't change. Are there political avenues for civil participation? Are there avenues for open government? Are freedom of the press guaranteed? Is judicial independence guaranteed and are effective access to those systems? If all of these elements are in place, the emotions of the Bernie Sanders or the, in the other side, supporters can be channeled when those elements are failing, what I call the rule of law fundamentals. When those elements are failing, then you get into the type of situation that you're describing my opinion. Beautiful, beautiful summation. We have about two more minutes. So I think what I'm going to do is actually read a number of these questions rather than try to answer them. I just wanna give you a flavor of them because really these are ones that Alex and Juan, you're gonna have to go back and answer. But there's a woman who's interested in whether there's correlations between the open government partnership and improvements in the rule of law. Is that civil society mechanism working to improve the rule of law? Very interesting question. On the flip side, China, there's a nod. Is that, is that a yes? No, there is one. Your answer is yes. There is one, not with the rule of law, but with the open government discourse. There is one which it could be a selection criteria. You simply that the countries that are already open tend to use the open government partnership as a mechanism to signal that they are open or that the partnership itself is working so that it engages countries to actually be more open. So we have done the analysis, it's published in the open government index that we published last year and there is a positive correlation. Terrific, so to the end, positive correlation, not necessarily causation. There's a whole open government index that you can look at for this one. This one is from the VOA Mandarin Service and they're interested in the fact that China moved up to two points in your index despite the crackdown on human rights lawyers and can you get into that a little bit more? I'm not gonna make you get into that right now, but just to give you a sense of some of these, there's a desire to understand whether there's connections, so I'm trying to group these together a little bit, whether there are lessons from the countries that have trended up in general. Can you say anything about what's causing that upward trend? Another question about what's causing non-response rates. Is there any correlation between non-response and more repressive countries to get higher non-response rates in countries with greater repression and how do you deal with non-response rates in trying to come up with your index? That's from someone at George Washington University. We can stay here and when it's over, we can answer these questions. You can come up and answer that. I just know that we have to move on. And then another such methodological question, did you consider the developments in the Middle East, things like civil wars and revolutions and their impacts? And I would say not just the Middle East. Dev, you consider major political changes like that and how that might have impact on your score and how do you consider those? I think those are sort of the deep methodological ones, but I wanna thank our panel for a really engaging, despite quick, a very engaging discussion of this issue. Thank you very much. Thank you. You're welcome.


And still news inside Africa as South African court has granted former President Jacob Zuma's request for a delay in his Amps deal corruption trial. The case has now been adjourned until August of then. Zuma is accused of receiving kickbacks of our $2 billion Amps deal from the 1990s. He pleaded not guilty in May to charges including corruption, fraud and money laundering. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel. And don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.