Aloha and welcome to Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I'm Kelea Akina, President of the Grassroot Institute and just delighted to be with you today and a couple of wonderful guests. Well, it's August of 2021 and we are still in the coronavirus pandemic era. And who would have thought that it would last this long? One of the major problems that we've seen is how to balance the role of government in taking care of public health against the preservation of our personal liberties and rights. As the 2021 legislative session here in Hawaii came to a close, there were many Hawaii residents who were disappointed because the legislature failed to approve a bill that would have placed limits on the governor's emergency powers. We saw during the year of pandemic management that there were emergency decrees that went on perpetually, but they were limited in terms of their expiration date, so to speak. They were renewed over and over. And that left us wondering who's really in charge? Are the people or a small number of individuals perhaps just the governor? Today we're going to talk to Melissa Nusham, a researcher at the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. She's going to share the results of her research into why a certain bill, the bill we're talking about, failed at the last minute to make it to the governor's desk. Although there was tremendous widespread support from individuals and public interest groups for the bill. And what that means in terms of our civil liberties and our accountable government. I'm also pleased to have with us today Malia Blomhill, the Institute Policy Director. She's going to discuss how that bill would have limited the unchecked power of the governor. So let's go straight to our guests. First of all, Melissa, I know you've been traveling. You just got off the plane from Japan. Thank you so much for joining us today. We're glad to have you on the Grassroot Institute team. Thank you for having me. And Malia, a regular guest here on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii together. Thanks for all the work that you do all the way from the East Coast as an ex-patriot of Hawaii on behalf of the Grassroot Institute, managing our policy directions. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here as always. Well, going back to Melissa, tell us a little bit about your research background. I know you're at Case Western right now. But in terms of the research work you do for your homeland, Hawaii, what have you been writing about at the Grassroot Institute? Sure. Well, over the last two years or so, I've had the pleasure of working at the Grassroot Institute, working on some government accountability as well as some tourism and travel related topics, like the Air Force Corporation, for example. Why is it important for us to look at different models of doing things at Hawaii? For example, look at a little more privatization in terms of the management of our airport operations. Well, I think from a personal level, I'm just one among many young people who really love Hawaii but are kind of concerned with the direction and just the same old that's been happening. So it's been exciting to work with an organization like the Grassroot Institute that's really pushing to change that by working together across the island. Melissa, I ask you to join us today because you've written a paper for us that we've published called Why Reform of Hawaii's Emergency Powers Law Failed? And that's available on our website at grassrootinstitute.org. Could you give us a quick summary of that piece? What were you writing about? Why did you write it and give us a little glimpse into that paper? Well, I think many of us were optimistic about HB103 passing and establishing some of the checks to the governor's executive emergency powers that we were looking for. I mean, it seemed to be making its way steadily through the legislative process, but it was killed at the 11th hour without much of an explanation as to what exactly happened. So we decided to look into that and I'll certainly go into more detail later on, but I guess the reason why the bill never made it through I think can be boiled down to disagreement over the ease with which the governor can extend an emergency, as well as I think a degree of political shenanigans, you could say. What were really the root causes you feel that the bill failed? I mean, there was a tremendous sentiment in the public that although we recognize the role of government in managing the health crisis, we're concerned about accountability. We're concerned about the continued extension of the emergency powers decrees, decree after decree. And there was a lot of sentiment even in the legislature itself for passing that bill. Why do you think it failed? The title of your paper is Why Reform of Hawaii's Emergency Powers Law Failed. Sure. Well, I think it can be explained by, I think, a disagreement between the House and the Senate with over how easy and how easily the governor can extend or renew. Some people in the House felt that the, I guess, the bill as it was was a bit too strict in terms of limiting in terms of his, the governor's ability to do that. And these, I guess, issues were never able to be resolved. And so the bill was informally killed by, in the end. Well, there certainly were political reasons at play. Leah, you've been watching almost all the legislature in the House and the Senate that has to deal with civil liberties and rights and so forth. You certainly watched HB 103. What was that bill about? You know, what was it trying to accomplish? And maybe that can give us deeper insight into how it was received and why it failed. Well, what HB 103 was trying to do was reform the emergency management law, the basically the Hawaii statute that gives the governor the ability to pass all the executive orders, declare a state of emergency. The entire situation under which the people of Hawaii have been living for the last year plus sort of governed by this emergency, the state of emergency, that's all defined by the Emergency Management Act. And when it was enacted, you know, I think it's enacted more with the idea of a hurricane, a temporary kind of emergency, and you can tell that was never really intended to deal with something that would go on for months and months and months. So it has a automatic termination of 60 days. And when that termination date came and passed and the governor just extended the emergency, extended the emergency, extended the emergency, things that are very much just like legislation, you know, which is not the executive being passed, you know, serious changes to when things are due, the eviction moratorium, you know, pretty significant changes in our law, they happen through this executive order process. So, you know, the powers during an emergency are really significant, which is why we say wasn't really intended to go for so long. So this bill was an attempt to correct that. You could argue that perhaps it was trying to correct the problem that we have, and yet also trying to still be addressed, you know, the what it was originally intended for and that might be where the problem was because it attended attempted to put limits on the governor's ability to extend and extend and extend an emergency it created a way for the legislature to stop a state of emergency, it required justification for suspension of laws, it created a way to emphasize the importance of any executive actions executive orders having to align with the way constitutional a lot of these things that you know people were talking about during this state of emergency, how do we protect people's rights, how do we get people to do that. So it attempted to address those by putting in a check on how the state of emergency, how long a state of emergency can last and, you know, trying to create some just, you know, trying to force justification for suspending laws and put limits on how long a law could be suspended for. Melissa, as you were watching the bill you noted that there were many groups in the public that came to its defense as well as many legislators. Tell us a little bit about that. Sure. Well, the grassroot Institute certainly supported the bill, as well as Common Cause Hawaii, or the civil law center and even the Hawaii Government Employees Association and I think it's pretty rare to see this group of people all agree on the same bill so I think that just speaks to the importance of what the bill was trying to do. And for the lawmakers it did appear that most people supported it, it had been passed, I think, unanimously in the House and approved 23 to 2 in the Senate, so at least on the surface it seemed like this was something that was being supported by lawmakers. I think that the fact that it got so much support, public support from lawmakers as well as many organizations and groups and then yet failed at the last minute shows us that this is an issue that may come back. I think that the tension between the government's role in taking care of us and the government's duty to give us our liberties is one that continues. So what do you see, Malia? I definitely hope that it is something that comes back. You know, there's a lot of ways to address the issue, but if we've learned anything, it's that the emergency management statute as it is right now is just not capable of dealing with a health emergency. Maybe the answer is to amend this, you know, is a resurrection of HB103. Maybe the answer is to reform that law so that health emergencies are dealt with differently so that you can take that out of the same rubric and maybe that would address the problems of some of the degree, but it's definitely crying out for some kind of response. Where does Hawaii stand? And maybe Malia, you've looked at this across the nation in terms of where we are on this matter compared to other states. And are there reforms being instituted around the country? There have been other states that took much more aggressive action. Some of them early on, there was states where the legislature would just stepped in and basically stopped the state of emergency. One of the odd things is that the reforms that are advocated for, that we advocated for that are in HB103, they do exist in dozens of states. The ability to end the state of emergency by a concurrent resolution of the legislature, that's something that is not uncommon. And so there were places where that happened. There were places where the legislature challenged the way that the executive orders happen themselves. There were states where there were lawsuits. So Hawaii, we're not alone in having an emergency management act like this, but there are a lot of states that have already, you know, already have it there to address the problem differently to have these reforms that we've been pushing for. You know, one of the things that we noticed early on with this bill and this very issue, the state's use of emergency management powers, in particular the governor's use of emergency management powers, was a difficulty in getting information. It didn't seem to be a topic that many officials were really very open to talking about. And I'm wondering what kind of reception, Melissa, you received as you reached out and tried to talk to people about this. Sure. I think one of the things that I was surprised by was just how difficult it was to get those answers from the people who supposedly supported it. I reached out to the offices of, or the office of the representative who introduced the bill to never hear back. And even when you get the answers, it's, you know, can be a bit big and can be difficult to put the pieces together. But I was able to speak to Senator Donna Mercado Kim, who actually opposed the bill, and she was very candid and expressing her reasons as to why she couldn't support it. But I was, but it was a different story for those who at least voted and support for the bill. Leah, is it strange to see, is the way HB 103 died, strange or far for the course area? If I may, it did gripe a little bit. It is strange. But one of the problems, I will say, in having a heavily one party legislature is that the debate doesn't happen as publicly. You might have somewhere where, you know, there's a lot more interaction and discussion and debate through the process. So a bill like HB 103, and there's a lot of them, they just seem like they're just, they just speed through, they motor right through and you think, okay, that's going to be fine. And when the rug gets pulled out from under them, you're left wondering, you know, was it ever intended for it to pass? Was there a lot of debate behind closed doors that we don't know about? And you don't really get your answers unless you have up to the length of listen to go dig into it. So this was strange. It wasn't completely unheard of, but most of the time when a bill kind of just speeds through every committee like that, with so much support, you just expect it to, you know, if it's going, when we were watching it, we thought the problem was going to come to the governor. We expected, you know, maybe it'll get vetoed, it will have to advocate for a veto override. But we didn't think it would just kind of crash and burn as it came out of conference committee. That is strange. Well, we'll come back and talk a little bit more about this subject and broaden it a bit after we take a short break. Thank you so much, both of you, for being here with us. I'm Kaili Ikeena on Think Tech Hawaii's Hawaii Together. And after a short break, we'll be right back with you. Don't go away. Hi, I'm Rusty Kamori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. I was the head coach for the Punahou Boys varsity tennis team for 22 years, and we were fortunate to win 22 consecutive state championships. My show is based on my book, also titled Beyond the Lines, and it's about leadership, creating a superior culture of excellence and finding greatness. I feature a wide range of amazing guests who share valuable insights about how going beyond the lines leads to success in everything you do in life. I'm looking forward to you joining me every Monday at 11am. Aloha. Well, thanks for staying around. We're on Hawaii Together on the Think Tech Hawaii Broadcast Network. I've got Melissa Nushim with us and Malia Blomhill, who are researchers at the Grass Room Institute of Hawaii. Melissa, as we've been talking about the HB103 bill that didn't pass, although we wanted it to pass, we would have loved to have seen the reforms it could bring to the Emergency Powers Act. You saw quite a bit that kind of piqued your interest and your curiosity as to how bills do pass and do fail and so forth, and there were some things that you actually wanted to make note of. What were they? Sure. Well, as Malia mentioned, it's not entirely unheard of for these kinds of bills that have widespread support to die at the last minute. But I think one of the problems was that the explanations that were given by the legislature was insufficient. The Speaker of the House expressed that the reason why the bill failed was because after the bill came out of conference committee, they just realized that the bill didn't include a pathway for the governor to extend or renew an emergency. And I spoke to Representative Linda Ichiyama, who was one of the co-chairs of the conference committee on the outside as well. And she echoed that similar sentiment about the need for the governor to be able to extend or renew an emergency and the final version of the bill lacking that. But the interesting part is that if you look at the earlier versions of the bill before conference committee, they actually all included a pathway for the governor to extend an emergency. It required that he request a legislature at least 12 days in advance to extend the emergency. And then the legislature then had the ability to approve the request via concurrent resolution or deny it. And according to Senator Sharon Moriwaki, who I spoke to was one of the chairs of the conference committee as well. She expressed that it was actually the House side who had a problem with this, this, the provision requiring the 12 days advance notice to request an extension. And the House just felt that this was too much to ask for the governor. And so they just, they felt the need to delete it, which led to some disagreements and that we're not able to be resolved. So ultimately, we have coming out of conference committee. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but what I hear you say is it was a bill that no longer had a pathway for the governor to extend the emergency. Is that right? Right. And why do you think that was beyond some of the political machinations that surrounded that? What rationale would there be for that? Well, I mean, you know, based on what I was told, the pathway that did exist required the concurrent, again, the 12 days advance notice and a concurrent resolution to approve it. And perhaps some people felt that that was just too, too strict, too much to ask. And so it was just removed at the last minute, which led to, despite the fact that these concerns were not raised prior to entering conference committee. So I think that kind of disagreement probably led to the bill failing. Well, let's pull out a little bit from this one bill and this one issue and look overall at the landscape in terms of the conflict between management of public health crisis and our liberties. Malia, you put together for us an excellent white paper called Lockdowns versus Liberty. And that's available at grassrootsinstitute.org. Could you summarize what you were trying to say in that paper? Yeah, that came out during the heart of the emergency. We started opening up again and it was, we started on it in part because we had a lot of people asking, you know, why can't we just sue? You know, we've had these really heavy lockdowns. Why can't we just sue and get our rights back? And so we wanted to explain why that's not possible. Well, how a court looks at these issues. And then we wanted to, you know, having done that say, okay, but there is a problem here in the way that the emergency is conducted. The fact that it can go on indefinitely, the fact that we are missing some guarantees of our constitutional rights. So how can we improve this? How can we make our emergency statute better? How can we make it so that we don't have things happen this way again, that in the future people have more of a voice in the conduct of an emergency, especially a health emergency. And so we looked at what reforms we would suggest when it came to addressing the failures that we had witnessed over the course of the COVID emergency. And we especially thought about, you know, how can we respect the need to protect public health and public safety because you know that is still an issue. And yet also rebalance, restore the balance of powers because, you know, over the over the last year, the governor has become sort of a super legislator. And that's not how our system was set up. The people really have no true voice. And so one of the most important things is getting the people's voice back into the system through restoring the balance of power and creating a legislative check on the governor's or the mayor's as a case may be powers during the emergency. So the idea of being able to end an emergency via concurrent resolution, which was an HB 103 was a big part of it. And yes, the need of the governor to basically get permission, so to speak, to extend an emergency, which, by the way, as a gripe, when HB 103 went through the legislature for almost all of it, there was a reduction that just allowed for automatic renewal of an emergency if the governor proposed it, and the legislature failed to stop it. So to hear that that's the, you know, the lack of that but that had it it had it for almost the entirety of the legislative session, and only lost it at the very end. Anyway, the process legislative process is a frustrating and interesting thing. But anyway, we wanted to basically create restore the balance of power by having the legislature have a check because that's how the people kind of get their voice in. We were a lot more responsive that's that way. So we wanted to make sure that that was there we wanted to create more accountability. We talked a lot about more transparency guarantees, the governor very famously suspended transparency laws, transparency laws at the beginning of the emergency and while he did restore them to some degree, we're still not all the way back. There's still a lot of foot driving there's still a lot of excuse making they don't quite have to get the same transparency benchmarks that they had to before the pandemic. So we wanted to see some kind of guarantee that sunshine laws and transparency laws would be respected. We wanted justification for suspension of laws, which did make it into HB 103 we wanted to see a requirement that there any emergency order was narrowly tailored to address the emergency. Because some things can be very broad and that's when you start to wait into issues of rights. So a lot these these these basic principles that we put forth in terms of how to reform the emergency management law with respect to constitutional principles balance of power transparency and accountability. You know there is often a rush to the courtroom in responding to infringements upon civil liberties. And yet in your paper you make reference to the fact that you did take a look around at the scene nationally at many cases that we're going to to court and and found that that that is not a very fast solution nor nor pragmatic one in the short run that in the long run what we really have to do is change the laws. Exactly. Yes, you know that we rely very heavily on the idea that the courts will defend our rights and you know they're there as a safeguard but the way that courts deal with emergencies makes it a very slow process and not necessarily successful. It's fundamentally a legislative problem. The way that the emergency is conducted is being according to a statute so legislative problem has a legislative solution the court is remedial, you know, after after your rights have been restricted then you go to the court but ideally, you have a situation set up where that never happens to begin with and that requires performing the law. And that's why the reasons why our recommendation was we need to look at the emergency management statute, emergency powers law, not just hope that the courts will will sweep in and help us. The court decisions you've seen don't really show us that even in the best case scenario, we're just going to be litigating for months and months and months or even years. Very good. Well, Malia, thank you very much. I want to give the closing thought to over to Melissa. What would you like to see happen in this next legislative session or next legislative season with respect to the emergency powers bill or act? I think many of us have just been frustrated over the last year and a half or so, with the consequences of the governor's unchecked emergency powers but it's important to remember that the legislature has the ability and the responsibility to rain it in and so far they've kind of put us down but again, like the silver lining is that the bill in the upcoming legislative session, our proposals can be refined to better reflect what it is that we're looking for. And it should really be one of the priorities for the legislators and the legislators who I had the chance to speak with all indicated that they were willing to revisit this issue. And hopefully conversations like these and just providing some clarity on what exactly happened this past legislative session can kind of pave the path for resolving some of the issues that led to the bill filling. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to both of you. My guests today, Melissa Nusham and Malia Blomhill of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii have given us some wonderful insights. Things to think about as we try to balance the role of government in managing public health and also defending our civil liberties. There's a lot of work ahead. I'm Kelea Iakena on ThinkTek Hawaii's Hawaii Together. Until next time, aloha.


Increasing reports of invasive streptococcus pyogenes infections mandate surveillance for toxogenic lineage M1UK. An allyl-specific PCR was developed to distinguish M1UK from other M1 strains. The M1UK lineage represented 91% of invasive M1 isolates in England in 2020. Allyl-specific PCR will permit surveillance for M1UK without need for genome sequencing. This article was authored by Sean Yun Ji, Ho Kwon Lee, Han Chi Lee, and others.


So who are you? I am Ovener Lester. So today I am showing you the Ovener A83 based on two devices. So this is a special tablet? Yes, two devices based by Ovener A83. As you can see, it has two big USB interface. It is like, look, it comes here, two devices. Cool, yes. You have a special UI? Yes. So this is a giant remix running on it? Yeah, it's called remix. So it's a combination of OS, both Android for work. And you can have Windows inside, right? Yes, yes. So different Android for work? Yes. A special UI. And this is an Ovener A83. So this platform is stable mass production shipping? Yes, already. It's stable and it's ready for mass production here. So people can just start selling these with nice keyboard? Yes. With all functions Windows have. This could be easily for some office work. Nice. And we can see in here the brightness can go up. Yes. And the version of Android? We have, uh... Shooter in the office? Yeah. So what's the version of Android? On the 5.1. Yeah, 0.1. We have all these different things in here? Shooter. Shooter in there? Shooter here. Office? Yes. Yes. Sorry. Yes. Such as? Yes. So this is Ovener getting into productivity? Yes. Yes, already mass production. I show you how it works in the office. You can see. It's just an Android application. Yes. It's compatible to both Excel and download PS. Yes. So for you? Yes. How are you doing? For light. Yeah, for light. Light work. Nice. So, and then you pack it back. Yes. Like this. And you take it away. So you have your Ovener 2-in-1 right here. Yes. And affordable. Yes. Very affordable price, right? Yes. So it's also for entertainment. Cool. It's gaming? Video? Video. Then you need internet access. Yes.


Thank you very much. Can you hear me all right? Yeah. Okay, good. Let me share my screen. I have a few slides. Okay, let's see. Can you see my slide deck? Yes. Okay, great. So, thanks very much for inviting me. Indeed, I'm going to focus as I come from UNHCR on the policy elements, and I'll speak about two pieces of work. And let me put on my time here so I can be seven minutes. I'm supposed to be so. Yes, so thanks again for this opportunity. I'll speak about the first two papers, both Christopher Blair and Austin Wright's work on Afghanistan and then Graham Blair and colleagues piece that he spoke about on the Boko Haram situation and the reintegration evaluation attitudes and social norms.  This is a critical point. I think it's just, it's very useful to see this graph in the paper on, you know, the collapse of what you call collapse of durable solution, something at UNHCR we're very, you know, aware of where you can see, I mean, and I was, I asked colleagues about this repatriation here, you know, where we see some 15% of solutions that just, you know, you have to think about are we going to be seeing that again in the future with the current crises. So, you know, and, and then I think it's also valuable for you to think about centering this a little bit more in some of the refugee policy specific pieces like, you know, the global compact does recognize, you know, that more needs to be done by all to sort of help the uneven, you know, global burden of responsibility and has these four tenants here, you know, especially around easing pressure on host countries. So I think it would strengthen your paper to, you know, center and this is ratified by the UN General Assembly back in late 2018.  So, yes.  You know, one thing I do think is also, you know, important to note from a, just also on the, you know, in the policy space is just that Pakistan, you know, is not a party to the 1951 convention, which is the, you know, the founding convention that UNHCR was starting by and, you know, underlines the principles of refugees and so therefore they don't recognize refugees officially, right? So the refugees are governed under this Foreigners Act. And I think it would be useful to, you know, highlight that a little bit in the paper.  I think that, you know, and therefore this policy of doubling the cash instead of, I think this is something that happens in other places and it's useful to maybe cite that.  So, yeah, so, right, so 500 plus thousand return, you know, you know, 60% are assisted by this cash grant. This is just what the, what you've described. I did think also it's quite interesting that the correlation work you did on how 2013 returns predict 2016 I think that that's a really strong point in the paper I'd like to learn more about like, I think you should, from policy makers perspective that's really valuable because if we can help to predict movements and just more about, you know, you know, what, what were some of the key variables you used in that prediction, you know, what, yeah, more on that would be good. Right. Yeah, so this is the main results. So I think that also you do a really novel thing with introducing this, this data set on communal violence which I think it's really exciting and something, you know, we haven't, you know, seen really before so I think this is a really not novel aspect of the paper. I know that you note the challenges with the indigeneity of that data and it's just something I want to recognize. You know, I think also another piece is that you know providing cash for repatriation is not new. Actually, it's something that HR has been doing for a long, long time. And I think it would be useful to also highlight sort of the, the really difficult situation that the Afghans return to like just having a summary statistics table on the mean number of the different types of violence that you define I think is really useful, even if it's an annex just so people understand, you know, the context I think you do a good job of describing it but it's also the papers a bit long so you may wish to sharpen and limit and also you may wish on doing some more prioritization of results and or and definitely for both papers just even putting together some short, you know, two pages for policymakers or even videos or short sort of dissemination pieces so let me turn to Yeah, so I have this other piece but I feel like I'm running out of time so let me turn to the piece on Boko Haram which also was quite, you know, important for policymakers to work so you know I think, you know, your main message that this, you know, by, you know, in, you know, this experiment where you have this religious leaders who have this, you know, message around acceptance and forgiveness that this impacts, you know, perceptions of social norms and, you know, self reported change, like, acceptance of these of these X, X Boko Haram fighters obviously very important for for policymakers, and these are just some of the findings that you've already outlined so the I'm definitely under research area that we need more and also the exciting piece about it being it's really this low cost, you know, information campaign which, you know, makes it very replicable for policymakers so that's also quite exciting. I do think that there's something you may, you know, want to highlight I know you do highlight this one piece about Burkina Faso that you know that finds the opposite results of what you found. But I do think it's worth the highlight for the difference between stated and observed behavior because that's an underpinning point and I do think you should, you should nuance your, you know, your, it would be useful to nuance your main message because as I highlighted here, I'm happy to share these slides with colleagues afterwards just about just citing that it stated, you know, sorry, it's yeah versus actual. And then just other notes, you know, you make this correlation that, you know, not only Northwestern or Eastern sorry Nigeria where the Boko Haram conflict this has this high influence of religion that there's many, you know, hundreds of millions of people who billions you say, you know, could be influenced by messages from religious leaders, you know, it'd be very useful for if you have any commentary of anything from the data on, you know, further description of like the level of trust in these religious leaders or any other characteristics that define what makes you know within religion because not all populations are the same right I mean there's this. There may be some elements that are worth understanding, particularly primarily so if we were to replicate this, that this could be, you know, this could be taken into consideration. Right, so yeah, let me stop there I think. I think I'm out of time. Teresa, and we will take as was the comments as well, and have the Q&A in the road. Thank you. I'm going to comment on Michele's paper first. Very interesting study and it's very commendable that the study is on Libya. We don't have much work on Libya, so it's a very good contribution to the literature in that sense. Well, I have a couple concerns that and some suggestions about how to address those concerns. Two major concerns to begin with, selection bias and reporting bias. And error clustering, no, that's not it. No, selection bias and reporting bias. Who, I mean, this is a telephone survey. Who responds to telephone surveys is a major question here. And who doesn't respond to telephone surveys. I'm not informed, I'm quite ignorant about the coverage or the usage rates of telephones in Libya to begin with. So it's very difficult to talk about a random selection here or representativeness at all. And another thing is that it seems a large portion of the internally displaced people in Libya had already returned home. So who are these people who are still IDPs and why are they still IDPs when at least two thirds had already gone back? And also all measures are self-assessed, which brings in the probability of a response bias. These people, obviously they're not living in very good conditions, they have complaints. How is that affecting the way they perceive their situation, the way they answer the questions? And also I'm kind of curious, how do they know they had COVID? So was it just a simple question? Have you had COVID? And they knew who diagnosed them. And also it's interesting that they also report higher chronic diseases. It can be a sign of, again, a reporting bias and overreporting. Or it can be a reason to remain as internally displaced. Or it can be a reason to suffer more from COVID economically. And also one thing I strongly recommend, I mean if you can find a way to look into it, lack of social support can explain a lot of things here. How many of these people are living with relatives or with friends or with, you know, how many of them have any kind of social network? It can because impact both the level of their suffering as well as their perceptions about their suffering. So if you can, I mean all the analysis in the paper are conducted with this one survey with all with self-assessed measures. So if you can maybe complement the analysis with some outside data that gives us some information about, I don't know, any of these points like availability of a social network, you know, something that comes from outside rather than from the assessments of the self-assessments of these people. So that'll be my suggestion here. But again, I mean very interesting and very commendable because it's on Libya and Libya is a major conflict that has so far remained almost completely silent in terms of scientific analysis. Thank you, Anas. It's great work. Coming to your paper. Again, very important discussion. I mean the main discussion about whether refugees carry conflict with them or not is extremely important, sensitive, and it's an unresolved discussion. It's an unresolved academic discussion. We have answers in both ways. So this paper argues that the effect of refugees on the likelihood of conflict in recipient countries depends on the ethnic composition on both sides and how that ethnic composition changes with the arrival of the refugees and they test their hypotheses with data from the Afrobarometer. My first question or kind of the first thing that comes to my mind is about the conceptualization of ethnic polarization and ethnic fractionalization. Yes, we can count the number of identities or we can look at the linguistic distance between them so we can devise quantitative measures. But unless those measures have incorporated the salience of those identities I think we are not doing a very good job. If these ethnic identities that we count are not salient for both sides then why are we counting them at all? Why are we concerned about whether the number of ethnic groups increase or not or the linguistic distance between them? So it all depends on how being a member of a group is defined and in societies with a dominant ethnic identity being a member is most probably defined in terms of that ethnicity, that ethnic identity but in ethnic heterogeneous societies the definition is most probably something else. Then it becomes important if refugees share those other salient characteristics or not. So we should maybe find a way to think about fractionalization and polarization in a more broader way. And also the second thing that comes to my mind again I guess this is a very common comment when you're studying conflict. Endogeneity, the endogeneity problem is always there. Migration, yesterday a presenter said this and I really like the way she phrased it. Ana Maria Ibales I think she said it. Migration is neither completely forced nor completely voluntary. And there is a lot of agency in migration and in the choice of destination. People sort themselves, they do sort themselves into different locations, into different refugee camps and one sorting criterion might be ethnicity. Several ways to deal with this problem and they do deal with this problem not saying that you're not dealing with this problem, don't get me wrong. They do deal with this problem or at least address it. There are several ways to deal with the problem of endogeneity. We have all been through those ways. One thing is to not insist on a causal argument and just acknowledge that you're talking about associations, there's nothing wrong with that. Or you can go looking for a really good instrumental variable or you can try to identify the mechanisms behind the causal association you are claiming. I personally favor this last one because I think that's the best way to go. So that is my main kind of comment for your paper. Maybe look into the mechanisms, conduct a mechanism discussion. So why? I mean, yes, your data indicates a positive association between ethnic polarization and conflict likelihood and a negative association between fractionalization and conflict likelihood, but why? So at some point you mentioned competition over resources, for example. But competition requires organizational capacity and capability. And I think that gives you a clue about a very important mechanism that might be in play here which is the unifying effect of salient ethnic identities in a way to enable groups to overcome the collective action problem. So if you can find a way to look for evidence for this, that might be great. That might just give you what you need. Okay. I guess I can give you my other comments later on. So I'll just cut it here. Sorry, I tend to talk a lot. I know. Thank you very much, Azul. Who would have questions? So I see many questions. But I would like to offer the opportunity of the speakers to respond briefly to the comments maybe in 30 seconds if you can. So Christopher, do you want to address comments of Teresa? In the interest of getting audience questions, I'll just say thank you very much, Teresa. I really appreciate the feedback. I think a lot of the points are well taken and I'd love to follow up with you offline. Exactly the same. Everybody is the same or no? Okay. I was short for the presentation so I can't speak forever. No, no, but thank you very much for the comments. So I just want to say that I agree about the salience. We need to think to improve that to some extent it's possible that for example or we measure polarization where actually it does not matter. I still don't know it will affect the result whether it just imposed some noise or whether, but I don't know. So I agree with the mechanism. So what we have in mind is the work by Esteban and Ray which is a contest model where the price of public nature, so you have public resources and groups may compete over these resources. So it's really theory driven. But I agree that we need to do more on the mechanism. I just want to say something about underginating. Because I agree with you that refugee camps are never randomly located and with Philip and others we have discussed that at length. But I think here we should acknowledge that the nature of the selection should be if it's related to ethnic composition. Because that's why we have this instrument that address precisely the ethnic composition. And to some extent that's true. The refugee variable is likely to be the presence of refugees. It's likely to be undergins. So we control or not for it because it might be also a bad control. But I think really the endogenous issue is about changing ethnic composition. Thank you. Michele, do you want to answer or are we picking? Very quickly. I also want to thank for the great comments.  But unfortunately, as I said, we have big difficulties in having a comparison in terms of official data. We can try to check for some of the variables probably. Maybe some marginal variables we can find some... That's on transfer for instance. So just to have an idea. Some external validity might go a long way there. Yeah. Thanks. Okay. So now we are playing to the floor. So I see four questions. So I will take four of them. Okay. And we don't have any online or... No. Okay. Yeah. Sorry. You can pass the lady first. Thank you for all the presentations. I really enjoyed listening to them. So my question is for Jean-François. I was also thinking about this mechanism issue. And maybe your data is really not enabling you to do this kind of an analysis. But I just wondered at least maybe you could show us. I know you are looking at Sub-Saharan African countries, but maybe for specific regions, for specific countries, you might have different effects. We are now doing a similar project. We'll talk after with you, with Patricia, where we are trying to find the impact of refugees in Turkey on the ethnic polarizations. And we were checking also mechanisms. Then we see that although like polarization overall, for example, do not have any negative impact, but there are different ethnic groups it might have. So maybe you will find also something interesting in that aspect. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Eva Maria. Thank you very much. So I have one question for Chris regarding selection of the returnees, right? So your IV is built on exploiting the quantity of past returnees, but not the composition of these returning refugees. And what do you think is happening there? How can that contribute to more or less conflict? And also related to the previous question to the ethnic polarization. So are we finding that there is a conflict just transferred from one location to the next from existing ethnic tensions between specific groups, or is it a new type of conflict because there is this contestant, that they are contesting over land and resources like your theory suggested. Thank you. Krzysztof Krakowski, Collegio Carlanderto. Thanks a lot. Wonderful stuff, all of it. Let me tell you two things to offer. Jean-François, I have a very similar paper drawing on evidence from tribal Pakistan and the mechanism that we find is contact. You know, polarized means probably segregated, means that you don't engage on an everyday basis so you're a bit more afraid and that which can escalate into conflict. If you see people around you might be less likely to cooperate but at least, you know, you realize that they are not as hostile as you might think. I'll be happy to share the paper. And Graham, great stuff. I was just wondering whether there might be some problem of social desirability in a way that you essentially tell people, look, this cleric endorses reintegration, which makes it a bit harder to disagree with that because this becomes a default option. And the second thing is that how common it is that you have such a nice cleric that it should be, you know, pro reconciliation. What I found in very different contexts is that a lot of these local leaders, they tend to be pretty, you know, antagonist and confrontational. So you have an information on a larger scale how many of guys like you collaborated with other in Boko Haram affected areas. Thanks. Thank you. Yes, my first question is for the Pakistan paper. By the way, I want to congratulate the four presenters for their very interesting paper. So as you said, there are high amounts that they get, $400 per individual, $3,600 on average per household. So can you make sure that after a few days they cash the money to go over the border? Maybe they return to Pakistan very soon. Is there any evidence of that?  Is there a strong registration system? Is there controls upon arrival? Are you sure that the same household an individual does not collect the money twice? All these, I think, logistical questions are also essential for your paper. And then for the, for Michela's paper, I think it's very commendable that you do the Libya research because we, very few papers on Libya, but I share Asrush's comments and suggested very much. And maybe if you ask COVID questions, one question could be to be more precise about it is have you been tested to get COVID? And yes or no? Have you been diagnosed of having COVID? Not just do you have COVID? Because many people even in well-informed Western populations don't know if they have COVID. They have coughing, they maybe have fever, they maybe have other things. But how can you really be sure that you have COVID is only when you are tested? Otherwise it's self-assessed, self-reported with all the biases that you have. Thank you very much. We are three minutes left. So Christopher, I will give you the floor briefly. And for the people here, I will ask to answer very briefly we will be able to continue at the coffee break. So Christopher. Yes, thank you. So first to Anna Maria's question. Yes, I should clarify the instrument is combining the kind of time series national level inflow with the historical resettlement pattern. So I think we pick up some of the kind of geography of resettlement there, of repatriation there. But in the appendix we also show a result that leverages distance to the encashment centers in Afghanistan. And that also is like a kind of a different geographical measure for exposure to return. So do more in the paper than I could present today. But you might find that of interest if you take a look at the draft. And thank you for that question. And to Philip's question quickly. Yes, there was a biometric process involved here. So everyone was fingerprinted as a way of preventing duplicate access to the encashment. And so follow-up surveys suggest that the vast majority of people stayed in Afghanistan at least for 2016. Thank you very much. Thanks so much, Chris, for the question first about social desirability. I guess I think there are two things we might be worried about. One is that you're asking kind of about a sensitive behavior. And so people might not want to answer honestly after hearing that the religious leader shares a different view. I guess I've become increasingly skeptical of the existence of that. We have a meta-analysis that we did last year that shows that in most areas except for attitudes towards authoritarian regimes, towards the leaders of authoritarian regimes, there's very little detectable social desirability bias. But I think you could also be worried about kind of demand effects that you've learned what the purpose of the experiment is from the perspective of this leader and then you might want to follow him. We don't find effects on all outcomes, so it doesn't move your anger towards these groups, which is something that was directly targeted in the message. He shared ideas about forgiveness from these religious texts. And so I guess I take that as some small evidence about the fact that it's not just that we're moving in all of the directions that are suggested and it's really just in these norms and behavioral intentions. And I guess lastly, the way that you put it, I liked which was the leader told you to do something and so you're saying that you would do it. But I think I almost think that that's kind of the part of the mechanism that is going on here. So certainly we would want to collect behavioral evidence that demonstrates that this shows up in actual behaviors, but I think that if you saw that there that the desirability is almost what this leader cue mechanism is partly about. So thanks for that. Do you want to address some answers or comments? No, I just want to thank you for giving me some task. We will try to fill the gap as much as possible. Thanks. Jean-François. Yes, so I think many of the comments are actually related to your comments. You can try to make a problem. About ethnic heterogeneity ethnic group heterogeneity, I think it's a good idea. Maybe it can stress the issue of science. Sorry for my English. Yes, so I think that's a good idea. I need to check for the data. I didn't know about your work for Pakistan, so it's very interesting. I think the way to go that may join your comments about mechanism is actually to exploit much more heterogeneity. So we don't have much information about the refugees but at least for the local population. That's a bit what we got with the unemployed when you use individual data, but maybe we can do much more to try indirectly to highlight some mechanism. And the transfer of conflict is a very good point. So we control for conflicts but this is another issue. For the fact that you have conflict next door. But I think for transfer of conflict by refugees it's almost like if we were doing the reduced form for estimation. The IV is actually capturing those ethnic groups that are coming from areas with a high level of conflict. So there might be something to do but I need to think about this. But thank you very much. This is a great suggestion. Thank you. We are running out of time. If you have an extra question I propose we continue the discussion at the coffee break. I would like to thank all the speakers for their original work and all the commentator for their constructive comments and thank you for this interesting discussion.