Today we're going to be talking about, in this panel, which will be live streamed, about migration. I believe the official title is debunking the migration myth. And basically, migrants represent more than 3% of the world's population, but they present more than 10% of global GDP. And yet, public perception of migration is increasingly polarized. We're seeing it around the world. Policies in Europe and the US and Asia have, instead of aided, the integration and the reskilling of migrants seem to have gone in a opposite direction. So we're going to be talking about this theme with our distinguished panelists, who I'll introduce. We have Mohamed Al Jonde, who is a Syrian refugee, who's going to tell us about his tale now. And he's also a member of the board of Garza now in Sweden. Sara Pantullano, who is chief executive of the Overseas Development Institute in the UK. And Ahim Steiner, who is the administrator of the United Nations Development Program in New York. I would like to start with you, Mohamed, to launch us into this discussion, if you could tell us your story from 2013 when you left Syria. Yeah, so as you all know, in 2011, a revolution happened in Syria. After a while, it became a civil war. My mom took part of this revolution, and she was protesting. And because of that, she got arrested twice, and then she received death threats. So we had to flee the country to Lebanon. In the end of 2013, we arrived to Lebanon. For the first six months, I was volunteering with a group of Syrian people who lived in Lebanon before me in the Syrian refugee camps. And after a long time, I was only 12. So I was in the camps, but I was mainly hanging out with the children because I wanted friends. And after we were talking, and my parents usually ask me, like, hey, what do you guys talk about? We would mainly talk about that we want a space where we can sit, express ourselves and all that. So the idea developed for us to starting a school. And I was out of school. Actually, I wasn't in school for almost four years in Lebanon, so all the time that I've spent in Lebanon. So I decided to start my own school. So in the mid of 2014, we initiated a school called Gerset, which is as proud in English, so a little tree. And now the school became an actual building. It became a real building. We have around 740 beneficiaries every six months. We work with 500 women. We're more focusing on women and homelessness, more than children. And the children we work with are between the age of five to 12. We graduate the whole group of children every six months, and then we send them to Lebanese formal schools. So we've been running until today. The school is still running, so we almost graduated 7,000 people. But then I had to come to Sweden to migrate again because the situation in Lebanon became really hard. You know, the government regulations in Lebanon prohibit Syrians to work in any other field other than agriculture, construction, and house cleaning. So basically a lot of the work that we were doing is concerned under the law, not legal. But we were able to lobby behind and get like a public umbrella in Lebanon to protect us in a sense. So in Sweden, we started something called Garse Sweden, which is a sister organization for the organization we have in Lebanon that we're going to try to support our work in Lebanon. And mainly people ask me, is like, how did you start this when you were 12 years old? Well, anyone can really do it if you talk enough about what you're facing. I mean, as a refugee who fled the war, who experienced war, experienced certain traumas, you need an escape, you need something to distract you. And then for my four years in Lebanon, the school was distracting me from all my problems. But when I moved to Sweden, I realized that those problems are still with me and I have to deal with them. And the only way I've dealt with them is talking with people. So nowadays I still work in the school, I tell about it, I try to find fundings, I try to find donors and all that. But I mainly work as a storyteller. So I go around countries, hear people's story and talk about them. I was in Mexico a couple of months ago. I was in South Africa a couple of months ago. And I hear about the refugees there, about the indigenous people and what they face. And I make documentaries about them and tell stories. So that's basically what I do. I cope with my problems as a refugee by trying to understand the perspectives of other people on life mainly. And I think that's really important. And that's what we try to teach our children and the women in there. And when those refugees actually dealt with their problems in Lebanon, they were able to attend our courses and they were able to access those courses really quickly. We have training trainers courses. The first course we started, we trained only 12 women. Eight of them entered the workforce immediately after we finished. They worked as a gender equality teacher and as a civil rights teacher. Now we almost entered 100 women into the workforce. A small number, but it's growing. And that's basically my life as a refugee. It's been a crazy journey. Now I'm here in the World Economic Forum trying to also accelerate the development of my school and the development of refugees that I've met. So that's who I am. Mohammad, when you set up the school, the first school, which was about six months after you arrived in Lebanon from Syria, did you think it was going to be mainly about just getting people together as much a social aspect as something that would ensure that children would continue to learn and would not therefore lose just because they had to flee their country.  What was the main purpose and what did it end up being?  So it was mainly the social aspect of it. But of course, because as I said, I was out of education, I realized how important education is for the social aspect of education because schools are not only a place for you to learn how to read and how to write. You make friends there. Most of you remember your high school or your primary school for your friends the time you spend. And that's mainly what we started. But of course education plays a huge role in the lives of the children. Most of the children who are not studying now are either working. And child labor is big in Lebanon in most areas where there's refugees. And so education can be an alternative for them. Education can give them alternatives for the future. So it became more focused on education, but initially it was the social aspect of it. And it is needed for refugees because most refugees feel alienated when they moved in other countries. So in order for them to care about education, they need to feel certain level of comfort. And that's what we try to provide for them first and then we educate them. And here this week you're a group of the really younger generation that is here at the World Economic Forum in different fields. You represent different fields and you have different missions. What is your collective mission as a group here? What do you want to achieve here? Which this panel is one of the forums of the forum. After talking to all the other change makers that are here, we have different age from 17 to 19, the oldest problem 19. We all want to focus on what we can do today in order to ensure that we have it tomorrow. But the focus is on today. We've been talking about it a lot that nowadays the narrative is that what we can do in five years. I mean from government perspective that's understandable. From business perspective that's understandable. But from activists we don't focus on that. We focus on what we can do today because that's how time work. If we make today better, it's going to affect tomorrow. So tomorrow is going to be better. But the more we think about what's happening in five years, the more distracted we get. And that's what most of the young people are focusing on. And of course we've been discussing a lot of climate change. It's such a crucial issue nowadays and especially in the World Economic Forum. There's a lot of emphasis on it. And as a refugee, there's a really important issue when we work with climate change is that I can't demand refugees to care about climate change. Because they will have to receive education first. And considering that all the emphasis on climate change from business to government, people are forgetting that refugees in a sense, they're forgetting the struggles refugees face like finding education, like finding work. And you can't solve climate change if you don't solve those problems first because refugees, as you said, they make a huge part of the population around the world and we couldn't lift them up to a certain socioeconomic level so they can't start caring about climate change. We won't solve it. So what I would say that most of the change makers are trying to tell all businesses that don't get distracted. Yes, climate change is important, but don't forget that there's other sectors that still need investments and big investments as well in order for us to solve climate change because everything's interconnected. Great. Well, thank you. So, Sada, I think Mohammed has really set the scene for us nicely and Mohammed just now was saying, was talking about what we do now will bring fruit over the next five years, say. It seems, in fact, that in an age of polarized politics, there's increased populism that in fact both policy and public attitude have actually gone in the wrong direction over the last five years. Yes, I think there is a lot of discussion around where public attitudes are, but we know that the evidence is actually very different. We hear a lot from politicians about the fact that they are responding with their policies to what the public wants, what the public feels. There's been a lot of work done by us as many other organizations that actually has documented that public attitudes are not as polarized as we think. We've done a lot of surveys in the UK, in Germany, in Sweden, in a number of different countries, and so have other organizations that really demonstrate very clearly how you've got to extreme end of about 20-25% of the population, pretty much in every country that is the bracket, who are very supportive of migration and sort of human mobility, and another 20-25% is absolutely opposed to it, and it's not going to really change its mind very easily. But there is this, you know, an organization called More in Common as defined as a conflicted middle or anxious middle that actually changes its mind very easily and very rapidly. So these attitudes are not fixed in time. They really change, and a tiny incident, a tiny, you know, happening in the media or in an event can really swing them one way or the other. So the public is a lot more influenceable than we think. These positions are not so polarized. But, you know, of course, populist politicians are having a field day about stalking fears and really trying to manipulate what they say is public opinion, where we know that actually it's not the majority of public opinion. And I think there is a problem in terms of how we have gone as a community in trying to engage, you know, with this discourse. You know, the title of this session is, you know, sort of myth-busting or something like that, and I think there's been a lot of myth-busting that's been focused on evidence and providing data and, you know, sort of giving hard facts, and that doesn't work. And it really hasn't worked. And we know that populists are, you know, in a way winning the argument because they engage emotions. You know, they really sort of make their argument relatable, you know, to people's emotions, whereas we are not doing that. And for those who have actually done more work, in particularly in Europe around this, we see that what really works is where you make this experience relatable to people. And it's not as much the experience of, you know, the refugees or, you know, the migrants, but when you make it relatable to their own community, their own space, their own sphere, what they experience, you know, what others in that community have done or, you know, how that contribution and how that local integration has really worked. So that's a lot of the work that we need to do because I think actually, you know, we can shift opinions more in a more solid way so it is less volatile. So basically what you're saying is that the discourse ends up being almost a high-level one about, oh, all these people coming in and taking our jobs. In actual fact, if somehow experiences of local communities were able to emerge where in which you have, you know, migrants who have come to that community and perhaps we can come back and talk about Sweden later and, you know, have integrated well, are part of the community, are working, have filled jobs that exist because we were just saying yesterday, you know, we were on the U.S. economic panel, there was a lot of discussion about the fact that there are too many jobs that cannot be filled and yet we know what's happening in the border. So you're saying let's bear out kind of local reality might help. Can you tell us, can you give us some best practices around the world? Can you tell us where at the local or at the state or at the national level of any country there have been propositive policies to help with the reskilling, integration, reskilling and employment of migrants successfully? I will gladly do so but allow me just for a moment to preface my remarks because being from the United Nations, my colleague, Philippo Grandio, who is the High Commissioner for Refugees, would not forgive me if I slightly take one step back and just remind ourselves that the conflagration of a refugee and a migrant is something that may speak to the life story of an individual but it's very important that we remember that refugees are protected under international law in ways that migration is not covered and that migrants in a sense have a different background to it. Now what is interesting in Mohammed's story is that your journey began as a refugee and if I understand it correctly ended so far in being a migrant and I think that speaks to part of the challenge that we face today which is that what used to be in the past more a phenomenon of people moving because there was a demand for the labour market and there was a willing supply, it was demand that dominated so to speak in the receiving countries migration policies but also migration flows. Today in a much larger world population with many more crises but not just the crises that are defined in terms of wars and conflicts and refugees but also in a report that UNDP put out last year called Scaling the Fences. We interviewed 3,000 illegal migrants in Europe and who are these people? Why are they feeling compelled to leave and do they fit that category of these are the poorest, the most desperate people who are fleeing their countries so to speak and that clearly is not borne out by this and that's where you become very quickly conscious of the fact that there are many tears and layers to migration. I think the first thing is that Mohammed spoke to just now can you as a migrant find a more governed space in which your arrival is not one that begins with illegality because that already determines your entire scope for either being able to operate or not operate and I think one of the things that we are witnessing right now is that we live in a somewhat schizophrenic moment. On the one hand even a region like Europe desperately needs people in order to run its economies on the other hand it is because of the refugee phenomenon in recent years but also because of growing legal migration which is a product of not having good governance for migration ending up in a situation where people do indeed feel pressured and I don't mean those who have always disliked the foreign I mean these people exist in our societies they are thankfully a minority, they gain voice in those moments but to your point they then become in a sense more amplified in a sort of public debate about how much can we sort of take in one goal. Now you asked me for practical examples and I think the first thing that we have tried to understand better as part of also the UN looking at this phenomenon of migration which is growing which is why we also have a global compact on refugees and we have a global compact on migration. Interesting enough the countries that are most agitated about refugees and to some extent migration were the ones who were least willing to acknowledge the value of actually trying to work together as an international community to address the phenomenon of migration. So the first challenge we have to address is one where we deal with the fact that people operate in a space of illegality and if you want to start talking about livelihoods about the ability of migrants not to be as they are maybe in Europe beneficiaries of a social security welfare system but the further south you go they actually have to survive there is no social security welfare system livelihoods become essential and here I think there are interesting new domains in which opportunities arise particularly in the kind of digital economy in the global marketplace the commerce platforms and I am always reminded of a very interesting moment when in Turkey which hosts the largest number of refugees but also increasing migration is a phenomenon Turkey has to deal with. A woman who had been trained in a program that we put together to essentially produce jewelry that she could sell and the question was asked by some world how many of you can be trained I mean there is only so much jewelry you can sell and she said you know I live in another age I have an Instagram account I sell worldwide and I think we need to begin to realize that there is with a number of migrants that we have an entire population that is often larger than most countries in the world and it is almost a migrant nation that is in need of being given opportunities with which to develop livelihoods in which maybe an e-commerce identity becomes let's say at least an intermediate step between having no identity, no rights no ability to earn legally your livelihood and ultimately becoming a legal migrant employed in you know the labour markets of the country you are going to and I think we have to explore these avenues to come more quickly because the more we push migration into illegality the more we actually produce the very situation that the receiving societies are essentially beginning to react to and that is a focus of what we would like to see the other part is obviously can migration also become a more circular phenomenon people largely are not happy to leave their country and they feel compelled to do so again scaling the fences report is a very interesting insight into what drives people to pick up, risk their lives and most of them say they would do it again which is the other extraordinary phenomenon we found but many of them also say if I succeed I would be the first one to envisage a future of going back and yet that story of going back largely does not work especially when migration is deemed illegal therefore you are bound not to succeed in the way that would allow you to then go back to your country of origin at your own choice you've said a lot and I'm going to try to unpack sort of a few of the concepts one is the illegality, legality and I think obviously I think we would all agree on that perhaps we could move beyond the illegality part because we're talking more about the realm of legality I think now in terms of the labour market and then you talked about the global marketplace so implying that maybe the laws of a country such as Mohammed said in Lebanon one of the reasons he left is that by law he and his cohorts were only going to be able to enter certain types of jobs so where does the responsibility lie is it a national responsibility so is it a sovereign responsibility is it an international responsibility some sign of international compact if that is ever possible because as you said countries that need it the most actually didn't want to collaborate does it lie squarely in the corporate sphere in the private sphere where does this responsibility lie and I think that's why I say let's move to the legality because I think illegality and getting to legality raises a whole other question that perhaps is beyond the scope of this panel not that it's not important and it's a part of it but where does the responsibility lie then moving the refugee or the legal migrant into the workplace Mohammed first I mean I would say for instance what's been happening in Lebanon on a really smaller scale on a really small scale but we're trying to expand it to other places as well such as Sweden for instance if we're going to talk there's a huge responsibility with the private sector the private sector when they are investing in the education of refugees they usually invest in as traditional education but they don't include technological education for example most in Lebanon there's a certain NGO including us what we do we invest on those women or the children in teaching them a certain if they reach the specific level of education where they know how to read and how to write we teach them English that's for sure and also sometimes coding we teach them coding so they can for example in Lebanon the law says nothing about coding the refugees the legal refugees there or if we're going to see them because the law in Lebanon see them as economic migrants it says nothing about working in coding online it says nothing about working online even their simpler job is there's tech companies like in Google for instance your job is basically going around and naming pictures and then you get paid for if you said this is an elephant or this is a square and the refugees are working that and getting paid for that so there's private we need to shift our investment in refugees in order for us to enroll those refugees in the modern economy because modern economy is hugely independent on online jobs nowadays and refugees will be able to do so other than that of course it's a national level but in certain countries the refugees lives national levels are hugely impacted by international pressure as well like in Lebanon if there is enough international pressure under Lebanese regulations on refugees there might be changes but that's not for me to talk about So Sarah you shook your head when we were talking about you know illegality or illegality perhaps you want to bring that Yeah and also in spite of your question because I think you do need the public and the private to really work together to address this first of all a national level and then that can become also a global response because I think part of the problem we have seen over the past I don't know five to six years when this has become such a polarized debate is that particularly in Europe we have projected a sense of unmanageability of numbers which is absolutely not the case but that's you know that's what is in a way permeated with the public it's perception that these numbers are not manageable and this is the same time where actually the numbers are needed the labour is needed in Europe for all sorts of different reasons so we see businesses actually asking to have more flows of labour into Europe because it's required and that's what worked in Germany quite frankly because it was needed to have more labour for German businesses and the German private sector has actually cooperated really well there's a network of 300 prominent businesses has really worked on facilitating some of this integration clearly there is an investment to be made when you have such large flows at the beginning but we know full well that in the space of five years and the projection is by 2021 Germany is actually going to see a benefit from this big investment that they have made in welcoming so many refugees so it's really reframing how we address the problem because if you actually look at the crude numbers we were just discussing at the beginning of the sessions Europe has invested a massive amount of money in trying to block the borders fortress Europe has spent a massive amount of money and all it has achieved has actually made journeys more dangerous for people migration is a fact of life since time immemorial people will always find a way they move for different reasons whether it's because of flame violence or because they're looking for a better job or better education all of us on this panel have an experience of mobility of working in another country because we pursue certain aspirations that is not going to change what has changed with the kind of policy responses we've seen so far has actually made it harder for the cyclical migration seasonal migration that many businesses have been relying on for those who were already migrants in those countries who have a better experience of integration and I think we really need to continue to work to reframing the narrative so that the policies can become more conducive we were going to leave the end for questions but go ahead jump in why not be fluent why do you say people didn't want it I mean from what we have seen from you know the analysis has been done by many I can you German maybe you have a more direct view of this but from the research that has been done on this actually the flaws have results you know the businesses are benefiting from the labor that has arrived in Germany I think locally there are very different experiences but there are very positive experience of integration in different parts of Germany again I'm not an expert on you know the country per se but I've read and you know sort of overseen enough research that shows that you know the investment has been obviously heavy to start with but it started to bear fruit and yes it is in the immediate term it's very hard for you know people to see such large number arriving all at once but if you invest you see return so you're talking about sort of in popularity at the political level and you're talking about actual results at the business level I mean again I almost go back to my original question which is what has been a success how do we measure success you know what are the policy gaps that have been filled successfully what are the business needs that have been filled successfully again colleagues I have to appeal to you to not co-mingle refugees and migrants I really want to make that point because in Germany it's a country that for 50 years has practiced migration on a significant level it's an integral part of Germany's economy of Germany's society some of the largest Turkish cities are in Germany you know and I could go on in Bangladesh you know that Bangladesh earns 18 billion dollars in remittances every year the whole textile industry is 30 billion so more than half of that is again earned by migrants legally working in the world and you know the migrant economy is alive and well and that's why I was a bit intrigued earlier on when you said let's not focus about illegality or legality I mean not that I want to pursue at all a legal argument but frankly speaking legal migration is not a problem I'm a migrant I have a G4 visa in the United States I'm actually a migrant in the true sense of the word that's not our problem we have a great deal of migration and you know it is the moments where there is let's say a concentration that peaks when suddenly the society that is at the receiving end may react you just have to go to Ellis Island those who know the United States next to the Statue of Liberty is Ellis Island where you know essentially one wave after another of migrants arrived in the 19th century and were documented and you know either sent back or allowed to come in the story lines there of the migration waves the diaspora so to speak are fascinating to study but I go back to the Bangladesh example I mean the whole migrant economy and it's functioning legally it is a major economic boost to the region but also countries of origin so my worry first of all is not the legal migration end because you know that's functioning we don't have a problem there it is the people who have either to migrate illegally because they feel compelled to do so and we have to understand that better that's part of the global compact of migration also unless we look at the drivers of migration and how the numbers are going to grow because we're going to be 10 billion people soon 2 billion people on the African continent so if you think this problem is going to diminish wake up it's not we need to look at migration as a way of managing both population expansion but also economic divergence and here I think the solutions lie far more in a by designed and by default approach and I think Europe is learning a very painful lesson first of all it's kind of an assumption that collectively we can manage any kind of inflow be there now the short term refugee inflows but remember refugees arrive not on the premise of coming to be members of the labour market in the country they're arriving in they're there because they're fleeing looking for protection protections afforded them the theory was that they will return now I would love to hear Mohammed what your perspective is I mean you are now a global citizen right you are not the person you were at 11 years old in Syria when we have to deal with there are children being born to mothers who themselves were born in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya Somalian refugees this is triple life imprisonment and think about this for a moment to be the daughter of a mother who herself was born in that refugee camp that means three generations not being able to escape a maybe 20 square kilometres spot on the planet earth because you're deemed a refugee with nowhere to go now migration is a different conversation and I appeal to all of you to not commingle them because one we will undermine the regime we have created to protect and save lives of refugees on the other hand we have a far bigger phenomenon we have to deal with which is that people are mobile especially in the economy of the 21st century and that we need to create means by which both the opportunities in the digital economy the e-commerce platforms and new skills that are there how can we invest in them to make migration principally one that first of all does not you know essentially impoverish the migrant but also creates the stress that makes the migrant an unwanted person in the society that has received him or her and there I think we are not only looking at basic training programs we are looking at fundamental shifts in policy in the way we invest in migration and also in the way we enable people who migrate to not have to take a decision that if you migrate you've given up your home country forever what is it that would make a person return to the country of their origin because they actually believe that the next step in their life is a future there so I'm going to pass you for a second but if I could just press you one second because when I was saying before that we should that I didn't want to go into a legal discussion about that that was so I probably phased it badly however now that you raise it you know if we're looking for answers to making to legal migration from illegal migration lies with governments right I mean it cannot lie anywhere so we shouldn't we can't then talk about what business can do we cannot talk about e-commerce that decision as to whether somebody a human being is legal in a country or not by definition is is a national is a sovereign or international decision correct absolutely but business absolutely plays a role business can press business can influence well business is the labour market business shapes immigration policy business provides investment opportunities into that migrant economy and look at the voices in the united states right now look at them in Europe I think business has an actually central role to play legitimate as a stakeholder in creating in saying they're in creating the demand that will then press policy I just wanted to because again if we're looking for answers we have to distinguish what is legal sphere what is possible in the business sphere right and so just as we need to make the distinction between legal and illegal we have to say the solution it's useless if we say Microsoft has called for all these workers if then the legal if the jurisprudence in that particular country will not allow them to do it so sorry Sara and then Mohammed and then we have a brief just to say business are expressing a frustration you know in the U.S. in the U.S. because they don't see these safer legal routes for migrants to go and contribute to the economies where there is a demand for labour just yesterday the CEO of Microsoft said very clearly you know the countries that are failing to attract migrants will stand to lose basically economically in a long term I mean I think I'm too young to discuss I've been trying to follow but I think like from our experience at least of course business influence the policies that the government make but also the communities where the migrants both migrants and refugees but less specific on migrants for example the Palestinians the Palestinians refugees in Lebanon that we now we seeing third generation of the Palestinian refugees who still as you've said who still lives in the refugee camp and they haven't moved out but how were they they were able to integrate with the workforce is by integrating with the with the community they live in they were able to become in a sense of course that prevents them from going back to their home country other than that there is a conflict but mostly if we're going to focus on migrants like in Sweden for instance now there's a lot of discussion that Syria is going into a good place we can argue that it's not really yes but why people are not going back because they are integrating in those communities that they live in because yes if we want to focus on the workforce of course they might get in or not but if we want to focus on the social now if people moved for year two three four years to a different city they will become part of that city so the question is how we can push the also the local populations to in a sense push the businesses or the or the policies maker to make specific policies and from the ground and we've seen this in Lebanon now there's a the protests that are going in Lebanon started with refugees protesting against the the policies that are put on refugees or migrants in Lebanon and now they are almost a million person on the streets taking the streets and the government is changing its laws and it did change its law so also if we both private and us here we can tell the stories of those people and we can invest on the local population as well one of the things we do and actually in my school is we also hire Lebanese we don't only hire Syrians even though we need to hire Syrians because there isn't enough money to hire them but we understand that if we hired Lebanese we can integrate both communities and both communities can push the government to change their policies and the private sector as well so let me go ahead because I saw yes because I recognize so much what I saw in Beirut also and what Muhammad describes because you know depending on who you are in this drama that is playing out I mean first of all you know Libya Lebanon Turkey in a sense where the first point of refuge so to speak for Syrians and they bore an immense problem and I have seen schools in Beirut that now operate on three shifts in order to teach the Syrian refugee kids and also Lebanese kids health posts so your initiative is not only brilliant in terms of having taken initiative it also helps the host country to start spreading that challenge but I think I was very struck when Muhammad described this reality that you know if you are a Syrian refugee in Lebanon today and going back is you know either not happening now or unlike in the near future what do you then try to do you try to create some kind of livelihood and existence now in Turkey extraordinarily the generosity of Turkey allowed many of the refugees to become de facto migrants in a sense they were able to operate in the economy of Turkey they were allowed to undertake activities now in the country of Lebanon the space is much narrower the competition for jobs much higher and I think one domain in which we do need to look very carefully is can we address this issue that a country that is receiving a lot of refugees or migrants is under pressure it doesn't want to open its legal labor market immediately to that maybe because of the reactions you might get in a country like Germany could a digital identity be a new platform on which you can create the possibility of having found refuge here or having found a place in which to land as a migrant but not necessarily being able to work in that country as a German or a Brit or a Lebanese and therefore not be perceived as a burden on that country's labor market a digital identity suddenly gives you a key to trade to interact to receive money to be financially viable and this is a fascinating moment in time with the digital economy in fact hold not the Gordian knot that is suddenly cut but it is a significant illustration of what you are looking for are there ways in which we can deal with ever larger numbers of migrants who will land somewhere but may not be able to simply land into a labor market and I want to pass to the if we can get a mic to the lady in the fourth third row but and so can you give who has done this well well we are just beginning to experiment but I mean the lady who spoke about earlier on who trades on Instagram is a great example eBay as a platform but we are currently also working in Bangladesh with our colleagues in Bangladesh because you know the digital economy is a significant part of Bangladesh's sort of local infrastructure how could we develop such models for the Rohingya refugees at the moment close to a million people there and you know Bangladesh is not a country that needs more labor it actually is struggling with what it has so can one help the Rohingyas who are locked in a refugee camp to perhaps become economically viable in ways that we had not thought of before in ways that almost transcend national borders please a third row and then in the first yes hello thank you very much as a double migrant this is a topic of particular interest it would be great to hear the panel's thoughts with regard to the negative attitudes that surround migration what your views are on the largely failed economic policies of the last 30 years specifically austerity which has ravaged nations over the last 10 years coupled with the fact that globalization has reached tremendous rewards for a few at the expense of many specifically workers rights and what your views are more on that macro context which I think goes a long way towards explaining negative attitudes thank you I'm going to get the three questions together because then we have to wrap up right here in the front and then right here if you could keep your questions quite pithy so that then the panel can answer Mr. Steiner you underline we don't have to conflate the refugees and migrants but how about people a little bit in the middle and I'll give you an example people coming from Libya it is always often very difficult to tell apart which is which and especially according to the kind of experience that we had during the journey so how about the legal tools to organize the different layers many people have been abused and about the digital identity those people like 50% statistically it's K plus 5 K plus 5 ask the question sorry because we have 2 minutes and we have to finish so the realities sometimes aren't they a little bit too complex great thank you and here the last question if you could pass here and then you have sort of kind of a one minute each to wrap up thank you my name is Nadia I come from Yemen and I'm a researcher my question for Sarah is ODI is a think tank and what are you doing in terms of advocacy for the information that you have teaming with storytellers and so on and for Steiner it's about digital identity but what about flow of money so they cannot open a bank account where they can receive the money and so on great thank you so I'm going to start from the far end and this is your final remarks so if you could try to incorporate the questions a big question obviously on globalization and what is driving migration I think in that larger drama that is playing out now not just in terms of migrants but in many societies there is a fundamental questioning of what kind of economy defines what kind of society we want to be so I think without having time to respond to know the significant part of that that speaks to both in the countries that are debating migration at the receiving end but also the countries that are dealing with being on the periphery of a global economy and the scaling defenses report was very interesting because the people who actually are the illegal migrants to Europe are not the poorest they are young they are on average better educated than those we would associate with being the extremely poor they are people who essentially have lost confidence in their future and they think different from what they came from and that is what is often driving that lack of perspective and at the same time having the feeling that if only I can make it somewhere else my future will be different so it is a much more complex set of decisions that are playing out there to the issue of the conflagration as I said I mean first of all in the life of Mohammed you have the beginnings of being a refugee you become a migrant and then you are one day maybe actually just a global citizen who is able to work across the globe because you are an attractive person sorry there was one more question oh part of what is happening also with migration is this challenge that many of the illegal migrants who end up being illegal migrants in Europe try to come in as refugees because there is no legal way in which to actually say can I come here and work and so the default is you try and lie and cheat because it is the only avenue to get into Europe and this is a contradiction that we have to deal with otherwise we undermine both the refugee policies the viability in our own receiving end of societies and ultimately we are not dealing with something that actually Europe needs which is migration Sara very quickly to the inequality question I think that is an incredibly important question because you know the fears of that conflicted middle I talked about cannot be easily dismissed you know inequality absolute place of the people who are at the bottom of the pyramid they see the competition of others competing particularly for less skilled jobs or areas where there is more competition in the labour market so that is an issue for governments to address in the context of their economies and absolutely we see in the results of austerity there is influencing public perception towards labour migrants as well and on that we do do a lot of work including on this issue not just all the research and the evidence we do but the way in which we use it and we do that at two levels first globally you know the eye engages a lot in a lot of the global processes we have seconded people to pretty much work with the co-chairs for the global combative migration we have been contributed to the global combative refugees but we are trying to take these conversations a lot more at the country level because we see that what really works is the specificity of the conversations and actually you know bringing together actors for direct way around the issues specific to their consistency Mohammad the last word to you I mean really quickly I think the best way for us as we're going to talk locally because that's what I work with I mean you can't mix oil with water what you have to do if you want to integrate refugees to the workforce or to the local communities you need to also integrate the local communities to live with the refugees or with the migrants what we do in Sweden is we try to work with the Swedish people who lived there the whole life so the citizens we only work with them we don't have any integration courses for the refugees we only work with them so we can reshape the local communities to be able to host refugees and don't have this backlash about them when they came or the migrants so we need to work on both ends in order for both communities to be able to live together and both migrants and refugees so that would be perfect and on that note I think that certainly what this panel has shown is that there is no policy international or national there is no business national or international that can ever be a match for the power of the human spirit so thank you very much


Yesterday a British court concluded that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, should not be extradited to the United States on charges of espionage and of hacking government computers. If he had been and found guilty, he faced a maximum of 175 years in prison. But for now, Assange remains in Bellemarsh prison, with lawyers representing US authorities appealing against the ruling. Despite seemingly on the cusp of freedom, the judge presiding over the case rejected arguments that the WikiLeaks co-founder would not get a fair trial in the US, but instead chose to block his extradition on the basis that certain aspects of his prison experience across the Atlantic could lead to him successfully taking his own life. In response to that surprising conclusion, the US Justice Department seemed happy at winning the key points of the argument, saying, While we are extremely disappointed in the court's ultimate decision, we are gratified that the United States prevailed on every point of law raised. In particular, the court rejected all of Mr Assange's arguments regarding political motivation, political offence, fair trial, and freedom of speech. So is this good news or not? Even if Assange does walk free, has a terrible precedent now been set for freedom of the press? With me to discuss that and more is Yanis Varoufakis, former Greek finance minister, economist, author, present Greek MP and a very public advocate for Julian Assange in recent years. Yanis Varoufakis, welcome to Downstream. Thank you. Yanis, were you surprised at the decision, particularly with regards to Mr Assange's mental health being the reason that he wasn't extradited to the United States? I was expecting an even worse verdict. I was expecting that the judge would order his extradition to the United States.  I'm quite happy that the decision went the way it went. And as a Democrat, I consider the judge's right to ridicule herself with ridiculous arguments and with a verdict that is going to go down in history as abysmal.  What matters to me more than anything is that Julian is released, that he should not end up in a supermax prison for 107 years, that press freedom is not dealt that kind of a blow along with the sacrifice of his life. You've spoken to him a few times in the last 12 months. You wrote on your personal blog twice last year how you'd spoken to him in prison. You probably know as well as almost anybody what his personal mental state is. Was that an accurate depiction of how he's feeling? Is he really on the cusp of not quite wanting to be with us anymore? Look, Aaron, if I had been incarcerated for such a long time, especially the last months and years in Belmarsh for 23 hours a day on my own in solitary, most of the time without access to news, without the capacity to read and write freely, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that I would have flipped. I would have tried to kill myself already and I do not know any sane person that wouldn't under the circumstances. So the language that the judge used was an affront to civilized values, but it was accurate in the sense that, yes, there is no doubt that his life is in danger, either from COVID-19 or from malnutrition or from a heart attack or suicide, but whose life wouldn't be under those circumstances? Those circumstances were designed to take his life.  Yeah, it did seem quite a strange sort of in the judgment, which I would recommend all of our viewers go and read it online. It did seem a strange judgment because obviously that's how a great deal of the U.S. prison system seems to work. But focusing briefly on the political content of the charges, there was the 17 charges of espionage from the Espionage Act, I believe, in 1917, is it, Yannis? 1917 Espionage Act, one of computer hacking. And the reason why this set of charges hadn't been brought previously under the Obama administration is that it was just for you to be too politically regressive to mobilize a piece of legislation from a century ago. Trump didn't have those misgivings. When Trump went on with the Espionage Act charges, initially it was the computer hacking one that the espionage ones came later, the sort of liberal press in the United States, the New York Times, the Washington Post said that this was overstepping the mark that it was a liberal, that it was an attack on the freedom of the press, and yet you could have a British judge basically saying that all of them were wrong, that Donald Trump was right. Is that a correct assessment of how the judgment played out yesterday? Yes, it disgraced herself. This is, if there is any extradition request anywhere in the world which is political, it's this one. Now the extradition treaty between the United Kingdom and the United States does not permit for extradition on the basis of political crimes. So the judge genuinely, genuinely threw herself under a moral bus with the phrasing that she used. But as I said, history is going to forget her. She's eminently forgettable. What I do hope is going to happen, to unfold in the next days and weeks, is that Julian will be released and that's the only thing that we need to focus on, his release. Look, if you want me to give her the judge the benefit of the doubt, which I'm not inclined to do, but let's say that I am. What I would say is that given that in the past, the high court, the higher courts have reversed lower court judgment in the cases of criminals whose extradition was requested by the United States authorities on the basis that the prison system in the United States is not fit for purpose in civilized societies. Effectively now the higher courts are going to have an even harder time sending him over to the United States because they will have to reverse an opinion by the lower courts. And they will have to do it only on the basis of not the political arguments, but on the argument on whether his mental health is in jeopardy. And I don't believe that there is anyone, even Donald Trump himself, who would challenge that taking a man like Julian Assange who suffered the way he has over the last decade and shove him in a supermax solitary confinement cell for 107 years, that it's not going to have a negative effect on his mental health. So implicitly what you're saying there is that actually this this conclusion, although it's politically problematic actually, this is possibly the best case scenario for Julian Assange personally, because it's going to be very difficult for the US State Department to win an appeal. Yes, very much so. I think that it is good for Julian, it's good for Stella, his partner for John Shipton, his wonderful father, for press freedom more generally. But I think it's a terrible indictment on the British judiciary. If there was a case for standing up against a campaign to destroy the soul and body of a man who simply did that which any journalist had an obligation to do, this was it and they missed it. It's a great defeat for the British judiciary. You mentioned just a moment ago about the extradition treaty between the US and the UK and effectively forbids people who are charged with political crimes being extradited. And this was an inconsistency that I found really interesting and I want to know your opinion on it. Because in the judgment, I think the judge makes, I don't agree with it, but it's a persuasive argument that Mr. Assange isn't a journalist. Now, for our viewers, I don't think the government or judges should determine who and who is not a journalist. It's a very dark path to go down, but I can see that interpretation. But then of course, like you say, if he's not a journalist, he would be a political activist. I don't agree with that, but that's the only other conclusion you can have. And therefore, he's furnished with these rights and he wouldn't be extradited. Again, I just want to know the sort of the grey space that Assange has been put in here. He's neither a journalist nor a political activist. He's basically conferred with no rights whatsoever. I mean, that does seem genuinely terrifying. And I am surprised it's not caused more consternation in the press. Yes, the Guardian came out with a bit of a good editorial recently and Owen Jones wrote a column. But broadly speaking, that's a really new precedent, isn't it? It has been so for many, many years now. While some of us were campaigning in the very bleak years when Julian was being effectively abandoned by the very journalists who benefited enormously from the journalistic work that WikiLeaks and Julian himself did during those bleak years, the Guardian, the BBC and many other people who are now reluctantly coming to see the light had abandoned him and had actually thrown him to the dogs, so to speak. I have memories of those years. But look, as you say, they are damned whatever they say, whether they claim that he's a journalist or not. The extradition request is simply an attempt to ensure that the public does not know what the United States government and other Western governments have been doing in our name behind our backs and what they have been doing were crimes against humanity. But let me challenge you on one premise. You said that you thought it was quite persuasive the argument by the judge as to why he's not a journalist. I am not at all persuaded by her argument and I would caution against accepting that this was a persuasive argument because if it is a persuasive argument and if a judge can make such an argument then maybe tomorrow your journalistic credentials are going to be questioned. The credentials of anyone who is working for any news organization, the purpose of which is to bring to the public facts, incontrovertible facts about how power has been abused by governments. We wouldn't want that, would we now? Allow me to correct myself, Yanis. So persuasive is perhaps the wrong word, sort of internally coherent and that doesn't apply to the 17 charges from the SBNRJ Act, but from the one charge of computer hacking, which I believe only has a maximum sentence of five years anyway. So we're not in a completely different ballpark, but there was this communication between obviously the source, Chelsea Manning and Assange, which one could argue overstepped the boundaries of sort of journalistic permissibility. Why would one argue that? Because a journalist has sources with whom he discusses and even tries to elicit more information. That's what the journal is about. Yeah, I don't think that, but I think it's a coherent argument. I don't think so. I think it's a grossly incoherent and unpersuasive argument to say that you're not a journalist because you had a source and you've tried to elicit more information from your source is to say that you're a journalist, not that you're not a journalist. So you disagree outright with that. So let's take a separate, yeah, good. Obviously, I don't think that you just have to be extradited to the United States. It's important to say that. So on the second point of kind of the argument that would come from the State Department, that this huge tranche of data, which was made public a decade ago, that this endangered the lives of hundreds of people. And this is, of course, where they try to pull on the heartstrings. We're not talking about CIA operatives. We're not talking about senior officials and homeland security, but translators, sources, political figures in places like Iraq, Afghanistan was not redacting their names a mistake, do you think? Because again, that could be another criticism that this wasn't really living up to the kinds of journalistic standards we need when we're exposing power in this way. Look, I'm not an expert on these matters. But what I do know, because I did follow the proceedings, the court very meticulously and very carefully, when this argument was put to the court, the defense, Julian's defense, Julian's lawyers asked the prosecuting side to come up with a single case where a single person named was imperiled in any way by this process. And the solicitors, the baristas, representing the United States government didn't come up with a single example and failed to produce even additional evidence or associative evidence that anyone's life was put to risk by any of the publications by WikiLeaks. But Aaron, more generally speaking, as I said, I'm not an expert. I have to make a political statement here in response to this pertinent question of yours. Who has actually put these people's lives in danger? WikiLeaks, Julian, or the war crimes perpetrated by the United States Army in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in all those places? I think the answer is obvious. No, I'd have to agree with that. You spoke a moment ago about how a number of outlets, which actually had cooperated with WikiLeaks 10 years ago, in the Anglo-American world, I'm thinking the New York Times, The Guardian, kind of turned their back on him. Washington Post used WikiLeaks stories in their various editorials, although they weren't involved in initial reporting. Do you think that they turned their back on him because there was this interpretation of events where, for a long time, people in the United States, particularly within the liberal intelligentsia, were saying WikiLeaks had helped Trump to win, and that actually that was a major reason why people who previously had somewhat been on his side turned their back on him, do you think? No, definitely not. And the reason why I'm so abrupt on this is that they had turned their back on them well before Donald Trump appeared on the horizon. You remember the Swedish case against Julian? They had turned against him about that, and I found that absolutely disgraceful because I had extensive conversations with Julian in Ecuador's embassy in London, during which, as a feminist, I was putting into him that he should go to Stockholm and answer whatever charges are laid against him by women, because we men, we are the defective sex, and we have an obligation to be answerable to any woman that accuses us and to face them in a court of law. And he was absolutely adamant that he would very much like to do this, except that he was absolutely convinced that he wouldn't even get the chance to do this. The moment he ended up in Stockholm, they would extradite him to the United States. And I remember how people from the Guardian, friends of mine working in the Guardian, working in American liberal newspapers and so on, were saying to me, but this is all baloney.  There's no way that anybody's going to ask for his extradition in the United States. And I would say to them, you know what, this is the real fear. And he had been abandoned. Look, in 2015, I had a personal experience of character assassination, and I know how the whole system works, how in order not to discuss the issues at hand, in my case it was, you know, this bankruptcy and the fact that they wanted to push down the throats of the Greek people, and now the huge loan in exchange for public property. In the case of Julian, the revelations regarding war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere, what the powers that they tried to do is to assassinate your character, to make sure that nobody wants to listen to whatever you may have to say that is pertinent to them, because you have been portrayed as a monster on the basis of utter fake news. This is what they've been doing with Julian. Now, I'm not saying that Julian is a saint. I mean, personally, I have to tell you, and I'm saying this because he knows that, we're very strong, very strong friends. But you know, like with many of my friends, he infuriates me at times. So, you know, I remember when he came out supporting Brexit, I was leading a campaign against Brexit. So, you know, we've had a falling out on this. His position regarding Donald Trump, I didn't like it. I told him in no uncertain terms. So what? This is not the reason why they are trying to kill him. And let's be clear, they're not trying to extradite him. They're trying to kill him.   Do you think that's a sort of ancillary point? Or do you think the State Department would have liked to end the life of Julian Assange as quickly as possible? Just to clarify your point there. You don't have to take it from me. Remember Hillary Clinton actually asked her staff whether they could use a drone to take him out? Do you remember that a chap called Joe Biden referred to him as a high-tech terrorist? There is no doubt they want him dead. Both parties, by the way. Obama was a bit cleverer than Donald Trump in the sense that he felt that the case wouldn't go smoothly for them. It's not that they were more liberal or more humane. And Aaron, let me ask you this. Julian has not been convicted of anything. And yet he spent the last year, more than that, in solitary confinement. You don't do that even to a serial killer. And they did it to Julian when I was speaking to him because I visited him in Britain's Guantanamo, otherwise known as Belmarsh. And I asked him how he was. In fact, I commented that because when he started speaking to me, it was a torrent of information, of viewpoints and so on. And I said to him, I'm glad to see that you are so lucid. And he said to me, well, you don't understand. I spend most of the time locked up trying not to lose it, not to lose my mind. And all my energy, all my mental capacities, focused on the moment when I can speak to somebody like you now, or on the phone, or whatever. And I have a moment where I try to bring everything out. But you've got to understand that 23 hours a day, I'm struggling to keep it together. Now, what crime has he committed? What crime has he been convicted for? None. And this is how they are treating him. I have no doubt that he has been treated more harshly than any convicted terrorist or convicted criminal in the United Kingdom. That says it all. And your point about Biden and Hillary Clinton, that particular wing of the Democratic party being quite candid about what they think about Assange, given that Biden is obviously going to enter the Oval Office pretty soon in the next couple of weeks, do you think there's any possibility that his case will now be treated differently? Do you think there's the possibility of Trump pardoning Julian Assange? How do you think this will now play out in the next couple of months from the US side? Look, I'm one of those people who thinks that when it comes to foreign policy, to things that happen outside the United States, there is almost zero difference between the two political parties. When Biden was elected, I had colleagues of yours here in Greece interviewing me saying, so what do you think that will mean for Greece now that Joe Biden is going to be President and all for the European Union? I said, nothing. American policy, foreign policies does not change when the occupant of the White House changes. Now, is there a chance that Donald Trump will pardon him? Yes. Is there a chance that Joe Biden is going to pardon him? Yes. It will all depend on their calculus concerning their cost minimization policy. That's all there is to it. I don't think there's any ideological difference. I don't think that one is more humane than the other when it comes to bombing people or treating Julian Assange with a modicum of civilized virtues. My final question really, what next for Julian Assange? Obviously, there's this appeal that's forthcoming from the US State Department. If that's rejected and he's free to go, have you spoken to him or people familiar with what he'd like to do with his case regarding where he would like to live, what he might do, or has that not even ended the conversation yet? No, I have not spoken to him recently. Since the last time he called me from prison, I think he lost his privileges, so I have not spoken to him. Look, number one, let's take it step by step. First things first, he needs to be released. He needs to be reunited with Stella and his two young sons and his father and all of us. He needs to have a moment, a long moment of recuperation. Secondly, he needs to find the place where he can live without the threat of a renewed extradition demand, because if he goes to France, if he goes to Germany, nothing stops the United States from starting the process all over again. Even in Australia, from what I hear, which is his own country, he's an Australian citizen, he's not immune from another court case that centers on some future extradition requests by the United States. So let's get him out of there and then find somewhere where he can be safe and secure, where he can actually live. That's I think our number one priority at the moment. And so there's no sort of tentative thoughts about next steps politically. He's obviously, he's had to confront and fight through a great deal over the last 10 years. Has he never sort of spoken about what he'd like to do when he's free, if he would continue with WikiLeaks and so on? Oh, there's no doubt he will continue. Nothing will stop him except for an early grave. This is one of the great merits of Julian. His mind is racing away all the time. I've learned so much even while talking to him in prison, even on the phone for the 10, 12 minutes that we got to speak, his perspective on the world, his analysis of what's going on in Germany, in Russia, in China. It doesn't mean that I agree with his analysis every single time, but I can tell you that it is an education and it's always thought-provoking stuff that comes out of his mind. So I have no doubt that this kind of intellect is not going to just go away and retire. He will continue and he will continue to write and he will continue to do his journalism the way he does it and he will continue to pursue his anarchist views regarding information and about knowledge. He believes that nobody should have a monopoly of it and on that I agree with him. Yanis Varoufakis, thank you for taking the time to talk to us here today. Always great to speak to Yanis Varoufakis, not only a hugely intelligent person with, I think, great insights on the big challenges of the century, but also very politically committed. He's never afraid to say what he thinks. And if you want to see more interviews like that over the course of 2021, hit the subscribe button. Navarro Media, thanks to your support, did incredibly well last year. We managed to find new audiences, break, I think, really incredible stories. We want to do more of that in the year ahead. And we've always been consistent. We can't have a different politics without building that different media too. And if you want to help us on that journey, go to navarromedia.com forward slash support. You can become a supporter and help our work reach even more people. My name is Aaron Bustani. You've been watching downstream. Thanks for joining us. Good night.