Flammable World: Who Will Help the World’s Most Vulnerable?

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

The title of this panel is Flammable World, but I think it could easily be called a World in Flames. If you look at the number of places where we are not just looking at risk but actually looking at crisis, there’s no shortage of there crisis spots that we could spend 40 minutes talking about, whether it’s Sudan or Ukraine or Gaza or Haiti or Myanmar or for that matter, probably Forests and Western Canada that are on fire right now. But I want to both get our panelists to address some of those specific crises and specific geographies, but also to step back and consider some of the structural causes and also some of the solutions to these. If we look at this from a policy perspective, what is working and what policy makers and decision makers and governments and business and the civil society and elsewhere should be doing that, we’re not doing as well as we could at this point.

David, I’m going to start with you. This is such a complicated global moment, the IRC, which you had works across I think almost all of these crisis spots as well as in developing countries that are fielding some of the consequences of crises elsewhere. If you look at migration in the US or Western Europe, before this, you were a foreign secretary of the uk. I don’t imagine when you were leaving that job a decade and a half ago, you imagined the world looking the way it does today as you try to make sense of this moment and make sense of this global picture. What do you see as the causes and contours of this?

David Miliband:

Thanks, Dan. So in the last 10 years, the number of refugees and internally displaced people has gone from more or less 40 million to 120 million. The number of people suffering food insecurity, which means they don’t have enough to eat and don’t know where their next meal is coming from, has gone from something like 80 million to 330 million. The number of people in humanitarian need is now over 300 million. So the world in flames I think is right. Those are symptoms in my view of a flammable world, and we have to ask and answer three questions. Why is there more dry tinder around metaphorically and literally what’s happened to the sprinkler systems and where’s the fire brigade? And very briefly, the flammable world is in flames because the tinder is getting drier and drier. It’s getting dry and drier because of civil conflict. Over 50 civil wars going on around the world at the moment.

Those civil wars are being exacerbated by the climate crisis because the overlap between conflict and the climate crisis is growing on the international rescue committee’s, top 20 humanitarian crises of 20 24, 14 of those countries are in the top quartile for climate vulnerability. So you’ve got the overlap between conflict and crisis. You’ve got the internationalization of civil conflict. So more and more civil wars are not just coming from bottom up, they’re being sponsored from abroad. Not just saying this because everyone has to mention AI and social media and every panel as either a source of greatness or ill, but there’s no question that ethnic cleansing is being powered. Hate is being powered by some of the darker sides of new technology so that the tinder is getting drier. Second, where’s the Sprinklr systems? I mean the sprinkler systems came from international laws and norms that were observed.

They’re in retreat. They came from international institutions led by the UN that held the ring in retreat. They came from international aid delivery that mitigated the worst aspects of poverty and inequality because what we know is that un unregulated undertreated humanitarian crisis leads to political instability. So the sprinkler systems are not working at all. Well, there’s been, if you like, a vacuums being created by the retreat of western countries from global engagement and that’s left a vacuum and that’s been exploited so that the norms that you don’t invade your neighbor were abused by a permanent member of the security council. You couldn’t have a more telling example of the breakdown of laws and norms. That leads to the question, where’s the fire brigade? I think this is where the international nature of this conference becomes very, very important. People say we’re living in a multipolar world.

I think that’s wrong. We’re living in a malaligned world that is more fluid, more transactional with many more players. Some of them states, some of them non-state actors, some of them businesses. And so the traditional fire brigade that either was the balance of power between cold war enemies or large swathes of the globe that were allied with one side or another 150 years ago as they were in empires, then they became part of alliances. Those are splintering, geopolitical fragmentation explains why the fire brigade’s not there. And so I think that sets the agenda for how we then have to think, well, how do we all become firefighters? Whether in the business world, whether you’re in government, whether you are in the NGO sector, we’ve both got to prevent more fires and we’ve got to douse the ones that exist.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

I know this fire metaphor is going to carry us through 40 minutes. We’ll try not to abuse it, but it is a useful one. Dei, let me go to you to focus on one of the strands of that, one of the strands that David alluded to. If we look at Sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan is really one of the worst humanitarian crises and one of the worst conflicts in the world right now. It’s not one that gets the attention of Ukraine or Gaza or risks of conflict in East Asia, but it is in some ways symptomatic of a breakdown of democratic progress and economic progress across a much broader swath of Sub-Saharan Africa. If you look at the series of cos over the last few years, debt crises, plenty of other signs of this as you look at both Sudan, but also the bigger crisis that it’s a part of. What do you see as those basic causes as you watch these playing out?

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli:

Thank you so much. I would say that just building on this metaphor, economic crisis and the debt crisis have fostered quite a bit of the instability and the sustained poverty indices that actually lead to more fires. And we see this in Sudan, and I believe that anywhere in the world where you have young people who are unemployed or underemployed, they become great tools in the hands of anyone who wants to use them. It’s not unique to Africa, it’s a phenomena and we have to create jobs. But African countries and the vast majority of them are burdened by debt. I think the last statistic showed that about $184 billion was paid out in debt, and this debt was expensive debt taken by many of our governments to do what we thought they were going to do with infrastructure investments, with health and education investments. But if a country is spending 184 billion and that’s leaving the country or leaving the continent, that’s huge.

Let me break that into numbers. I think Ethiopia for example, spends $26 per capita on debt repayment and only $8 per capita on health investments. Kenya spent 75% of its tax revenue on debt repayments, and that’s why we recently saw the riots in Kenya because young people are upset that the funding that’s supposed to go to healthcare education or even infrastructure investments is going to other nations. These nations in Europe or in Asia, some in the United States. Some lenders in the United States are taking this funding away from the critical issues. So we have to address that issue. I think David made this point, I want to reinforce it. Giving is at all time low. In fact, one campaign’s data showed that we’re at the 50 year low from the G seven countries, countries that committed to 0.7% of their GDP to give to other nations and now closer to 0.3 and retreating. And this is unacceptable at a time when we need the world to step up to support each other, to ensure that we avert crisis, we are seeing countries retreat into very insular focus and we believe that it’s time to rise up. It’s time for countries in the G seven, the G 20 to really step up to their commitments. They made these commitments because they recognized that when no one is equal until all of us are equal,

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

I want to pick up on both that question of development assistance and also I think the underlying debate about hypocrisy that you see in the debt conversation. So much of this stemmed from fiscal spending during the pandemic, which was fine for economies like United States is a different story in much of the developing world. But Eileen, I want to go to you to pick up on the climate dimension of this. This is something that Rockefeller has of course been extremely focused on. I think for probably the last couple of decades at conferences like this, you’d hear these chestnut conversations about the ways in which climate was going to become a driver of insecurity and conflict in the short term, not just a long-term challenge. I think in many ways we are seeing that now in ways that had you and others had been warning about for years, but we did not adequately prepare for.

Eileen O’Connor:

Yeah, I mean I think migration is a perfect example. This is the first year the IOM has basically declared climate as the biggest driver of migration. But I’d like to just build on what my two colleagues have said is that underlying all of this really and the problem of political paralysis is economic inequality within our own country, within the G seven countries and then of course between the global north and can I say the global low and middle income countries. And that is driving polarization in our country. We’ve literally moved percentages of GDP that existed in the balance of GDP going to workers and the financial sector that existed before the 1970s, and we’ve really shifted that. And so workers get less and they get in the United States for example, 40% of full-time workers in the United States have less than $200 in savings that no wonder they are looking for alternatives.

And this happens in country after country, sorry. And so I also think that that also makes these countries much more insular looking at domestic policies and less inclined to give aid. And so I think we have to really look at more inclusive capitalism and also look at humanitarian assistance as a methodology to also bolster development. For us, the climate crisis is an opportunity we can actually drive down inequality if we really address climate in a way that can actually use technology to, for example, actually electrify most of Africa. There’s 1.7 billion people that don’t have enough electricity to run anything that can give them any kind of economic value. We can fix that with out off grid technologies, but we have to see it as a rising tide lifting all boats. And we also have to see it if we really want to fix migration, fix the symptoms that people don’t want to leave their country. They really don’t want to leave their societies. And so the climate change crisis is going to affect the most vulnerable and is also though an opportunity for us to turbocharge development. If we do it right,

David Miliband:

There’s bit of a danger that we all agree with each other. So let me try and find a bit of disagreement. Look, I think it’s really important that we don’t conflate the political crises and the economic crises. They’re related to each other, but they’re different. 9 million people are on the move in Sudan, which he mentioned not for economic reasons. They’re on the move since April the 24th, 2023 because there’s a civil war there. They weren’t on the move before then despite the economic troubles that we’re having 120 million people on the move because of war and climate disaster, a wholly separate in numbers from those who are moving for a better life, moving for climate reasons from northwest Syria to cities in 2008 to 2011, there’s economic movement powered by the climate crisis. There’s conflict powered by the climate crisis. But when we talk about migration, let’s understand that there’s a phenomenon of conflict spurred by climate and the failure of diplomacy and the internationalization of conflict that needs to be understood in and of itself.

And you are absolutely right. Sudan is the prototypical case because not only are 9 million people on the move, not only are allies of the United States supporting both sides in the conflict to the malaligned world, there are 19 million people in that population who depend on humanitarian aid to survive. And so when we think about the relationship between humanitarian aid and development, let’s understand humanitarian aid is the first step on the road to development because it stops things getting worse. But in the end, an aid budget is not going to get you into the middle class. It’s going to be a stable society with an economy that’s able to power private sector development. And by the way, some of that is spurred more of that is spurred by remittances from around the world than by development aid from around the world.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

Eileen, do you want to respond to that? Just to

Eileen O’Connor:

Disagree? I mean I do agree with you that I do agree and then I also disagree though because I would say that the lack of good governance is also fundamentally for decades and political instability and political alignments of opposites have driven the crisis in Sudan. But I do think that the problem with this polarization that is turbocharged by social media as well is polarizing our economic and our ability to address these problems.

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli:

Just to push again, so before I took on this role at the one campaign I was an entrepreneur working in Nigeria and through my work in agriculture and food, what we’re able to show is that if you can provide jobs to the lowest income people, it quells violence and conflicts. So the question is it’s a chicken and egg which comes first, right? And many people say, let’s give them aid and then we can bring economic development. You need to do both at the same time because unfortunately what the aid industry has done is actually strip a lot of communities of their ability to rebuild. And we see that in the food ecosystem. And so through our work with dairy farmers and the private sector, we got these nomadic communities that actually were warring with farmers to settle because we could give them an option and we met them at their point of need. And it’s still an ongoing project in Nigeria that has scaled tremendously and had impact. So I think a new paradigm shift for, it’s a private public partnership that looks at governance, peace and security. The negotiations aid has a place, but it’s not an end in itself and we need to be very, very careful in a ecosystem that we build out together.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

I think we’ll try to get to some of the solutions towards the end of this conversation. But David, lemme go to you to address. Sudan is of course one of the most acute crises in the world. The other is Gaza, IRC does humanitarian work in Gaza and around Gaza. As you look at the situation on the ground in humanitarian terms, where do things stand and especially have you seen it getting better, especially in the month or two since the World Central kitchen strikes and some pressure on humanitarian access. And as you look at the policy and very complicated debates around this, what are the things that you think are essential now to really change things in fundamental ways? Ceasefire aside, I

David Miliband:

Mean I spoke to our team yesterday. We have a relatively small team, 2020 people in our team. We have an emergency medical team separate from that in the AXA hospital. And we have a range of partners around Gaza. Look, I think it’s mind numbingly bad for hostages and their families since October the seventh. And it’s mind numbingly bad for civilians in Gaza at the moment. I think that there are some ebbs and flows in the amount of aid getting into Gaza, but you all followed the farrago of the pier that was built as a substitute for using the most direct route, which was the land-based crossings.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

That was a nice term for it,

David Miliband:

But now even it’s easier for us to get people in than it was a month ago. And they’re doing some extraordinary work on this is our seventh emergency medical team and we’ve got child nutrition team and some child protection work going on. But although the scale of the fighting has reduced, the intensity of the fighting that does take place is very, very heavy. And the blockages on aid moving inside Gaza, including with looting problems are very, very severe. And I can’t you, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I set anything other than a desperate need for the UN Security Council resolution that mandated not just a ceasefire but a three stage process. It is wrong to say you can’t do anything without a ceasefire, but you’re never going to be able to protect civilians and protect aid workers and deliver aid and get civilians to come to receive aid, nevermind begin reconstruction until you can get the ceasefire in place. And it’s now four weeks since that that President Biden’s plan went through the security council and that is a very long time to be left waiting.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

There’ll be a discussion tomorrow morning with almost yadlin and swamp and others that will pick this up, but I wanted to make sure we address that. Let me get to some of the global dynamics and dynamics in the US and other economies that I think are making the response more difficult. And you’ve alluded to some of these de let me start with you. As you’ve noted, this is a moment when the thrust of US economic policy of European economic policies to true in most wealthy economies is more inward looking, whether it’s by America or tariffs industrial policy. All of this presents challenges to the kind of growth that you’ve been stressing is so essential in the developing world. There’s a kind of strange irony when you watch developing countries suddenly being the champions of free trade after years of the dynamic playing in the other way, how much of impediment is leaving aside the development assistance question is just the economic policy and the trends in economic policy across parties in the US and other wealthy economies.

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli:

So what we see, and one campaign fights for investments that drive economic growth and healthy lives in Africa. What we see with the US in particular is that the US has had more of a friend of Africa relationship but not really seen the continent. And we’re talking about 54 very diverse countries as an economic engine of growth and really seeing the potential of real trade. And yesterday we started talking about the Belgian Road initiative in the first panel about China and sometimes it’s a debate like, oh, let’s get in before China. Let’s see what China and Russia are doing. And I think President Russo put it very well when he came to the US and he said, I’m not looking east or west, I’m looking forward. African presidents and African leaders are looking forward to drive growth for their people. And what we would love to see is more economic and bilateral relationships, not with a continent while we have the Africa continent, but with pivotal countries.

I would like to see in Nigeria US session next year at the Aspen security section, not Africa and the US we understand or South Africa, let’s get our countries talking about competitive and competitive advantages beyond green minerals and agriculture. The entertainment industry has blown up. We have so much that we can be doing together as nations and I think if we can see that relationship as one of equality and one of growth mutually beneficial, it changes the mindset we want to change the face of Africa from a hungry childhood to a successful female entrepreneur. And I think that helps us with security. It helps us with long-term growth and it helps us with really the piece that we see in this world is predicated on seeing human beings for who they are and as equals

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

Is the fear in Washington and other allied capitals over Chinese and Russian influence in Sub-Saharan Africa fundamentally constructive in that it motivates attention that’s going to go to good ends? Or is it ultimately leading to problematic time kinds of partnership? I’m sure it’s a bit of both, but how do you

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli:

See those? It’s a both, and it depends on the context that I would prefer to stay away from that topic. I like what RU said, we’re not looking east or west, we’re looking

Eileen O’Connor:

Forward.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

Alright, Eileen, go ahead.

Eileen O’Connor:

Can I just add that 75 year anniversary this month of the Bretton Woods agreement and we really need to modernize it. And there’s been a lot of research out there and there are ways that even the private sector and the public finance can actually create some innovative financial solutions like guarantees that could boost a lot of money going into and actually pull in private investment capital. There’s a lot of private investment that is sitting on the sidelines because they say it’s too risky and we work with them all the time to come into our climate infrastructure projects in Africa and they all say, oh, you haven’t mitigated the risk enough. The problem is I also think their risk equation is still based in history and they’re not thinking of the risk of doing nothing. If we don’t do anything, climate the warming of the climate and the earth is still going to rise higher and that’s just going to create more of these disasters.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

Did you respond to that David Nom? Let me stick with climate and again, attempt to get at one of the fissures here. I think it’s easy to sit on stages at conferences and talk about the way all good things are going to come together when it comes to climate solutions and it’s purely going to be an economic opportunity for Africa and South Asia and other parts of the developing world. I think when you get into conversations with policymakers in many of countries, you tend to see a degree of resentment that makes a lot of sense when you look at historic emissions and you’ll hear people say a Nigerian official wrote for foreign affairs a couple of years ago about the hypocrisy of us constantly imploring Nigeria to leave its fossil fuels in the ground or in the water when we have of course done so much and continue to do so much to exploit ours. How much is that dynamic a problem in motivating global action or do you think that’s the wrong way of looking at it?

Eileen O’Connor:

I mean, it has been a motivating factor in terms of pushing for things like a loss and damage fund, but I think as indeed said, there’s so many more people and African leaders like in Kenya and Nigeria who are really pushing for green infrastructure investment because they know that instead of loss and damages, which is trying to just put a bandaid on it, on a problem that’s just going to get worse, they need to address the problem at its core, and it’s not just lowering emissions, which again, they did not build their economies as we did on fossil fuel, but if we don’t help them lower their emissions or at least address future emissions, we’re kind of locked into coal and diesel and others. But that said, there is a lot of initiatives around the Africa Green infrastructure investment project, but they need capital and they need debt relief. And there are innovative ways. For instance, the German government has been using debt swaps in Kenya to invest in regenerative agriculture. There’s way to do this. I would argue that the African countries, yes, they have resentment. They’d rather turn that resentment into a force for economic development versus just a loss in damage. Bandaid,

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

Let me, let’s stick with the debt question for one second and Didi, because this is, I think such a, for the reasons you laid out such a kind of overarching problem. When we look at any of these issues, part of the challenging dynamic here is around the Chinese role in the US China tensions right now, which make it harder to do anything global. I think you could apply versions of that concern across almost any issue when it comes to motivating real global action. When you look at formulas for debt relief, do you see anything that the world should be building on that leads you to think there are going to be better solutions, will be embracing a couple of years from now?

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli:

Definitely. And just like Eileen said, we are starting to see creative measures, debt swaps linked to climate, debt swaps linked to nutrition and school feeding. And I think that fits very nicely into the work that David and his team do, but we also starting to see very creative work by the World Bank and others. And IDA 21 has been one that we have been working very closely on. IDA is the International Development Association. It’s a concessional financing and countries contribute to it, but it’s not a grant, right? It’s a zero interest or 1% or 2%. And guess what? African countries have started contributing to IDA as a way to also invest their money. And so we would like to see a lot more creative financial instruments that pull in private sector, public sector money and even innovative ways for domestic capital resource mobilization in countries so that countries take ownership of their own development. And accountability is key. Accountability is key from the donors, from the funders and from how the funds are used on the ground. And one works very closely with CSOs, civil society organizations and activists because we have to hold governments accountable across the world to make sure that funds are being utilized for exactly what they’re being allocated for and that they deliver impact to the people, especially the most vulnerable.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

My sense is that we’re being nicer to the Bretton Woods institutions than is totally warranted, that we’ve been having conversations about reform of the IMF and World Bank for years and years and knock on a lot of traction. Eileen, you work on this quite a bit. Where does that stand and what are the priorities?

Eileen O’Connor:

You look ahead. Well, it’s not necessarily the institutions, it’s also the donor countries. They’ve got to step up more. I mean, so the institutions can only do as much as they can. So I do think that that’s a big question and we’re constantly trying to push for that. But I mean I think that we really have to be focused in on preventing the next disasters and as David has said, even the next political conflicts and other things as well as these climate disaster.

David Miliband:

I think we’ve got to really understand that the humanitarian development community that I’m part of and the climate community have done a terrible job at working together. We’ve done a terrible job at risk mapping of humanitarian crisis and climate crisis. We’ve done a very poor job at cooperating on innovation, especially for adaptation because the 40 countries that we work, they haven’t got much mitigation to do. If you’re in the Central African Republic, you need help with adaptation to a problem that other countries have created for you, and we’ve done a very poor job about thinking of financing together. Now I really want people to hold onto this. $50 billion or so is the total global humanitarian aid budget 50 billion. The international development budget is probably 150 billion. That goes to richer countries, actually, middle income and richer countries. Here’s the thing to understand about the climate capital and the way in which the multilateral institutions work in the fragile and conflict states.

The risk aversion is so great that only 50% of the committed funds actually get dispersed. And the reason that only 50% of the funds get dispersed is that the traditional model of delivery is through governments. But the whole point about a fragile and conflict state where there’s a conflict going on is that a quarter half 10% of the population don’t get on with the government and you can’t rely on the governments to do the immunization. You can’t rely on the governments to do the climate adaptation. You’ve got to break the monopoly of state institutions on the delivery of World Bank funds. If you do that, you’re unlocking huge energy in civil society. You are taking more risk. But frankly, the greatest risk is that these people get no help at all. So if you’re in the north of Cameroon or the west of Cameroon or the east of Cameroon, it’s got three different crises in Cameroon.

You need help from the multilateral system, not just bilateral help from donors. And I think that we need a real mind shift change. The NGOs like us, we have a bias to action and we have a strategic embrace of risk. Both of those things are missing. I would argue from the culture and structures of the international financial organizations. And the excitement that exists at the moment is because you have in Ajay Banga, someone nominated by the US coming in as a new leader of the World Bank. He gets risk. I mean he really does, and he wants to follow the numbers about where the poor are. Last point, sorry to go on. For too long, 50% of the extreme poor in the world live in those fragile and conflict states, but only a quarter of the total 200 billion of aid that I was talking about goes to those fragile and conflict states. That’s the mismatch that has to be overcome because in five years time in 2030, it’ll be two thirds of the world’s extreme poor who live in the fragile and conflict stays.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

I have a final question for each of you and then we’ll go get a few questions from people in the audience. Eileen and Andi, I’ve heard the two of you disagree about the ways in which the private sector is and is not stepping up. I lean, I think you’re a bit more critical and indeed you have I think higher hopes here very quickly. Eileen, what are your concerns or what are your criticisms of business and the private sector as you see it, and where do you see, if you could make a call to action, what would that be in indeed you can, based on some of what you’ve seen and done, perhaps take issue with some of that.

Eileen O’Connor:

I think there’s two things. It’s both intellectual property or thinking. We hear this a lot. Technology is going to fix this, don’t worry, technology will come. But we know that technology often does not actually get down and the intellectual property is not, and it’s not inexpensive enough for the low and middle income countries to utilize effectively. And so I actually was at a conference that we held last week with frontier technology companies and venture capitalists where we’re trying to bring them together, introduce them to entrepreneurs, and there’s many in Africa who have some really incredible climate solutions, but also for them to bring in corporates and do business in Africa, as Ernest ese was talking about demand aggregation maybe around the energy sucking data centers that AI is going to need and sort of get technology and investment that would normally happen in the global north, get it into these low and mine income countries. That’s one way the private sector could do that as well as, so it’s a creative way and as well as really thinking about their risk portfolio and what the risk is of not doing anything.

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli:

Yeah, no, I agree with her. I think in this case we agree that there’s a role for big business. There’s a role for small business and where we see a lots of innovation on the ground in many of our emerging economies is the small businesses who agile, who can adapt. And I want to build on David’s point in terms of delivery on the ground. It’s the local organizations closest to the ground who know how to meet the needs of the most vulnerable. And we have to figure out even during times of crisis how to empower them to act.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

David, just one minute. There’s a thread that we haven’t gotten to that you’ve written and spoken about for a long time that I think underlies a lot of that and that is impunity. So much of the system that was constructed after World War II was supposed to be about addressing impunity, and it seems to be going in the wrong direction year after year by all sorts of measures.

David Miliband:

So there’s a British radio program called Just a Minute where you have to speak for one minute without hesitation, repetition, or deviation in the course of that one minute. So thank you very much for that test. Look, I believe we’re living in, and by the way, you’re allowed to use the title of the question as many times as you like. That doesn’t count as repetition. I believe we are living in an age of growing impunity, an age of impunity, and it is the collapse of some of the most fundamental norms that pertain to conflict because the right of civilians not to be targeted in conflict. The majority of people who die in conflict now are civilians, not soldiers, the right of civilians to receive aid in conflict and the right of aid workers to go about their business without threat to life or limb. The burden of proof seems to have been reversed.

Instead of them having those rights to life and livelihood, it’s now conflict actors who have almost the ability to decide whether that’s observed or that is not observed. And that weakening of the global system is demonstrated in conflict zones, but also in a range of other areas. And when people talk about the rise of autocracy, what I always say to ’em is, look, think about impunity versus accountability as the dividing line, not democracy versus autocracy and the rise of illiberal. Democracy is a big part of that. And in the international domain, what you see is not just democratic recession, but the recession of the hardest of one rights that were established after 1945, never properly and fully observed, but nonetheless enunciated for the first time in international law that civilian, that people had rights, not just states. And just a final piece of advertising in my spare time, I chair the advisory board is something called the Atlas of Impunity, which ranks every country in the world on five dimensions of impunity on conflict, governance, human rights, and then economic exploitation, which can be of workers or the grabbing of property rights by over strong states.

And then fifthly, the environment, because actually the climate crisis viewed through the lens of what previous generations are doing to other generations, what humans are doing to the planet. It’s actually an example of impunity, which to finish the definition of impunity is the exercise of power without responsibility, which as Stanley Baldwin said in 1923, is the refuge of the har throughout the ages.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

You nailed it, except you in a little longer for a minute, and for that reason, I’m not going to take questions up here, but you can buttonhole each of them. But I want to go to Elina and Dei to close looking at policy change as you look at, and we’re going to have the summit, the future in New York in September. While there be a lot of high-minded discussion among global leaders on this set of issues, if there’s one near term policy change that you would have people advocate for and stress, what would that be? Indeed, you start and then Eileen, you can close.

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli:

Okay, so I’ll start with something controversial. I’m new in Washington and in one of my early meetings someone said, if you want to get bipartisan support, get people, Americans to sell more guns in Africa. And I said, what? I said, guns. I don’t want guns in Africa. I want economic trade. Maybe we’ll take some of your AI technology we’ll take, we will bring some of our music, right? And Hollywood, Hollywood partnerships, agriculture seeds and fertilizers. Yeah, we can talk about that innovation, that mindset shift has to happen. We have to change our narrative about a continent like Africa. So that’s one. The second is we need a commitment from our countries, G seven countries more broadly, to be the commitment they made to give to international development assistance, meet that commitment with IDA 21, meet that commitment with Gavi global Fund, which are critical for security because we need our countries to rise up to recognize that economic relationships and investing in long-term growth is ultimately what will keep all of us secure.

Eileen O’Connor:

I think we have to know that trickle down economics doesn’t work and finally declare it as a dead and unworkable policy. That would be one great change. And also, I think the other great change would be to try to address economically this inequality, the economic inequality, which is growing in countries and it’s growing among countries, and that means really more inclusive capitalism, more working with a bunch of companies who also say, look, the hollowing out of the middle class ultimately destroys our economy and it destroys our economic growth, and we have to really focus on that.

Daniel Kurtz-Phelan:

We covered a ton of ground. David, Eileen, and Didi, thank you so much. Thank you.