(Day 1) SDG Media Zone – 81st Session of the UN General Assembly

looking to see if Martin's going to be. Hello? We're we're mic'd up here. We're going to bring everyone to order. Could everyone please grab seats or standing space? Excellent. That was really good. Thanks for the help in the back there to bring the room to order. But good morning from New York, and good afternoon, and good evening to those of you watching from various places around the world. We're live on UN Web TV, so we know there's all kinds of folks checking out the SDG Media Zone. And welcome to the SDG Media Zone. I would note that this is the 10th anniversary of the SDG Media Zone. So big thank you to the Public Foundation and all the support they provided over those 10 years. So let's give them a quick round of applause as well. Thank you, Public. My name is Rob Skinner. I'm the Chief of Partnerships and Global Engagement in the Department of Global Communications here at the United Nations. And we are live from UN headquarters in New York during the 81st session of the General Assembly. We're going to be here all week, Monday through Friday. So please, everyone, keep tuning in. We have a full program for the week. You can see that program on un.org/sdgmediazone. That's un.org/sdgmediazone. And tune in every day, again, for exciting discussions, fireside chats, and even some occasional entertainment. It's going to be a great week. And to kick off, I'm very pleased to introduce United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, Melissa Fleming. Please welcome to the podium, Melissa.

Thanks so much, Rob, for that introduction. And also thanks to you and the team for all the work that you've been doing to set up this amazing SDG Media Zone. Excellency, colleagues, partners, and friends, welcome from me too to the SDG Media Zone. And thank you for joining us in person and online during the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. So let me start with a word about why we're here. Policy conversations about the Sustainable Development Goals usually happen behind closed doors. So our job this week is to bring conversations out in the open and to demonstrate what the global goals mean for everyday life. So since 2016, this space has done exactly that. turning global commitments into stories the world can actually see. None of this happens without our partners. My deepest thanks go to the Public Foundation for their support over the years, and to Microsoft, who is joining us as our sponsor for this year's edition. And thank you to every media outlet here, especially our SDG Media Compact members, whose support ensures that the conversations reach a global audience. Also, a warm thanks to the journalists, the content creators, and also the UN system colleagues collaborating with us this week. Your commitment in spotlighting action, accountability, and solutions keeps us going. So we have a dynamic lineup of live programming. You're going to hear from UN principals, from leaders in tech, in business, from youth advocates and disability activists, and from every corner of the world. Their voices are proof of something we can't afford to forget, that we all have the power to change the world for the better if we come together. As the United Nations Secretary General said at the SDG moment on Friday, the Sustainable Development Goals were not handed out from above. They are a promise, one that governments made together and one that we're here to keep. So every action counts from every organization, from every individual. Every single one of us has a role. So let's begin to formally open the SDG Media Zone. And please direct your attention to the screens for a special welcome message from Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General.

Dear friends, welcome to the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly and to the opening of the SDG Media Zone. Sustainable Development Goals are our rescue plan for a fairer and more sustainable world. Yet progress is far off track. Peace is in retreat. Hunger and inequality persist. The climate crisis is accelerating. And the global financial system is failing developing countries. But around the world, communities, young people and innovators are doing the work. Journalists are exposing problems and bringing solutions into the story. This space exists to widen the conversation, share what works, and build the political and financial will to act. So use these days well. Spotlight the breakthroughs, ask the hard questions, amplify the voices too often unheard, and let us make this General Assembly a turning point for the goals and for the billions of people counting on them. Thank you.

I thank the Secretary-General for that message. Today is a special day. Today we commemorate the International Day of Peace. And this year, we mark it at a moment when peace feels further away than ever. Conflicts are growing in scale and also in complexity. Communities are shaken by violence and division. We see it in Gaza, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, Ukraine, or Yemen. Dialogue is stalling and solutions seem scarce. Global solidarity also seems in short supply. So on this International Day of Peace, we must remember that peace is not merely the absence of war. It is the active building of human dignity, justice, and hope. And when peace fails, this is its human cost. Families are torn from their homes, forced into the unknown, searching for safety. I would like to spotlight a young woman whose story, captured on film, shows exactly what this means. Directors Itab Assam and Jack McGinnis first met Isra when she was 11 years old. helping her father sell cigarettes on the streets of Turkey. Soon after, her family set out across the Aegean Sea by raft in search of safety in Greece. What the filmmakers found was a story that revealed in real time the long-term impact of displacement. And what started as a single production became a decade long portrait of one girl's journey across seven countries and into womanhood. The resulting documentary is titled "One in a Million." It's produced by Frontline PBS and begins its theatrical release this October alongside the hashtag #IamOneInAMillion impact campaign. So it is my distinct pleasure and privilege to introduce a special video message from Isra in her own words, followed by a glimpse into her journey, one in a million.

Hello, everyone. My name is Isra. I come from Syria and I am very happy to welcome you all this week at the General Assembly of the United Nations. When I was a girl, the war changed everything for me and my family. Wir haben Syrien auf der Suche nach Sicherheit verlassen und sind durch sieben Ländern gereist, bevor wir uns in Deutschland ein neues Leben aufgebaut haben. Ich musste erwachsen werden und dabei lernen, was es bedeutet, seine Heimat zu verlassen, an einem neuen und unbekannten Ort noch einmal von vorne anzufangen und nach einem Ort zu suchen, an dem ich das Gefühl haben konnte, dazuzugehören. Zehn Jahre lang haben die Filmemacher Itab und Jack mich und meine Familie begleitet. Der Dokumentarfilm One in a Million erzählt die Geschichte meiner Reise. Nicht nur dem, was wir verloren haben und den Problemen, denen wir uns stellen mussten, sondern auch die Hoffnung, der Liebe, dem Mut und der Entschlossenheit, die uns geholfen haben, weiterzumachen. Ich hoffe, Sie sehen ein Mädchen, das zu einem jungen Frau heranwächst, eine Familie, die versucht, ihren Weg zu finden, und die nach denselben Dingen sucht, die alle Menschen brauchen und verdienen: Sicherheit, Würde, Hoffnung und einem Ort, an dem sie sich zu Hause fühlen können. Bitte begleiten Sie meine Reise in One in a Million, und ich hoffe, dass ich Sie eines Tages persönlich treffen und diese wichtige Gespräch mit Ihnen fortsetzen kann.

Find Dankvist 2 here. Hello. We're talking from Syria, JD. What did you do? And I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. I can't remember. the.

Such a moving and timely story at a time when refugees are becoming statistics and numbers and being dehumanized. I think Isra is going to bring that dignity and humanity back into the refugee story. She represents the story of millions of forcibly displaced people worldwide. taking impossible journeys, and looking for the kind of dignity in exile that Isra has been able to achieve. So every person who flees carries more than the memory of what was lost, and they just, they bring the courage of what may yet to become. So I would like to thank Isra, and Isra, if you're watching, I really hope to welcome you. to the United Nations one day. And in the meantime, alles, alles Gute. And now I am happy to join the next session. It's a peace circle to mark the International Day of Peace, part of the UN's Youth Central campaign, Hear Us, Act Us, Act Now. And I'm so pleased that I'm going to be in the circle with two former refugee friends who I've met and encountered during my time serving at UNHCR. Thank you.

Hello. Hello. Hello.

Hi, everyone, and welcome. Thank you for joining us as we open our first session of the day, our International Day of Peace Peace Circle. On behalf of my colleagues at the UN Department of Global Communications, it's a real pleasure to welcome you. My name is Oishika Chakraborty, and I lead the Peace and Security section here in the department. One year ago, the United Nations launched Hear Us, Act Now for a Peaceful world campaign as part of the broader act now for the SDGs initiative. This youth centered campaign is feeding into the secretary general's independent report on youth's positive contribution to peace. Scheduled for later this year as mandated by the pact for the future. This campaign is based on a simple idea. Listen to young people. Hear their solutions. and turn their voices into action. Peace Circles are at the heart of this campaign. They create space for young people to share their solutions, their voices, and their ambitions for peace, and to show that young people are not just the leaders of tomorrow, they are leaders today. Since we launched the campaign exactly a year back today, nearly 350 intergenerational peace circles have taken place around the world. That is almost one per day across 60 countries and 150 locations on factory floors, in village health centers, in media houses, at UN offices, and on college campuses. And young people have told us what peace means to them. It means clean water, and food on the table. It means education and decent jobs, access to technology, but technology that is safe and equitable. They told us they're rejecting tokenism. They told us peace means confronting the climate emergency and ending the violence of poverty. And again and again, they told us something fundamental. They must have a seat at the table where decisions are made. That is the spirit of this campaign, and that's the spirit of today's peace circle. So now it's my great pleasure to hand over to your moderator for the next hour, Varsha Sharma, award-winning journalist and former editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue, as we kick off the session with our campaign video. Thank you.

Peace is acceptance. Peace is respecting the rights, the views, and aspirations of every human, regardless of where they come from. Peace is the most basic right we all deserve. not only I live with dignity and freedom, but that everyone around me, in every part of the world, can be free and can live a dignified life. We have a choice. We have to embrace each other.

We are the energy that can change this reality. Don't ask your country to do something for you. Ask what you can do for your country.

Get involved, participate, mobilize, organize in your communities, in your cities, in your neighborhoods.

This is your world. And it is your story. And it is your voice.

And it is your future. And you get to actively participate in it.

Let's continue to speak out. Let's continue until our voices will one day be heard. Don't get tired. If you're not heard today, keep speaking.

One day, you will be heard.

Hi, good morning, everyone. I'm Versha Sharma, a journalist and the former editor in chief of Teen Vogue. I'm your host today for the Peace Circle on this International Day of Peace at the UN General Assembly's 81st session. I am honored to be here and thank you all for being here with us on this Monday morning for a very important discussion. Peace is not something that is forged in conference rooms, but rather in our classrooms and in our communities. It's not just something that's done for young people, but something that should be built with them. True peace is more than the absence of conflict. It is the opportunity for every single person to have a life of dignity and justice. And as we've just heard, it is a daily commitment to empathy, understanding, acceptance, respect, and hope. As we observe the International Day of Peace under the theme, "Invest in Peace for Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day," we are gathering a powerful intergenerational circle of leaders to reflect on what this commitment requires of us today. So joining me today are young peace advocates as well as their allies. I have this a little bit out of order, so if you don't mind, Melissa, I'm actually gonna start with you. If everybody could just briefly introduce themselves and give their title, that would be great.

Hello, I'm Melissa Fleming. I'm under Secretary General for Global Communications at the United Nations.

Hello, everyone. I'm Nour El Msellem. I'm a youth representative in the World Organization of the Scout Movement and also a member of the Youth Council in the National Scout Organization.

Good morning, everyone. I'm Sanjana Sanghi, and I am UNDP Youth Champion in India, and I'm also an actor.

Good day, everyone. I'm Diene Keita, the executive director for United Nations Population Fund. Happy to be here.

Hi, everyone. My name is Jonathan Lam. I'm from Queens, New York, and I am the UN international representative of the Migration Youth and Children Platform, and I'm also part of the new cohort for the Youth for Disarmament Champion.

Hi, everyone. My name is Mary Meika. I am a refugee. I am also a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, the refugee agency. I'm a co-founder of Al-Amishakakuma and a sister.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Muzoon Almellehan. I am a education activist and the UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Maher Nasser. I'm an almost 40-year veteran of the United Nations. I'm also a refugee.

Hello, my name is Sophia Polishchuk. I'm the director of the Children of Ukraine Foundation, a UNODA.

Leader for Tomorrow, and also a global trade and national security lawyer in Washington, DC.

Thank you so much, and thank you again for being here with us today. So our conversation today is going to be led by nine prompts that's based on the collaborative design method, which is the how might we approach. starting with opportunities, particularly about young people living in crisis, living in conflict and crisis affected areas. We know that young people are disproportionately affected by conflict, often comprising the majority of those who are displaced from their homes and denied essential services. I'm on the board of the directors of the International Women's Media Foundation, which seeks to support women and non-binary journalists in their work telling all of these stories. And I also recently joined the board of Vow for Girls, which is dedicated to ending child marriage globally. Mary, I'm going to start with you. You are passionate about refugee education, having spent time in Kakuma camp, as you mentioned, as a young refugee from South Sudan, where you advocated for young people's right to education in particular. So can you tell us, based on your lived experience and as the UN refugee agency's goodwill ambassador, how might we build real opportunities and jobs for young people who are living in conflict zones and crisis affected places?

I did a research at college in Minnesota about how many opportunities are available in Kakuma refugee camp. 70 plus organizations were in the camp. I was so ashamed that I couldn't name 10. And I was like, I've lived in Kakuma refugee camp for two decades of my life since I was three years old. How can I not name all these other organizations that are in the camp? And for a minute, to be able to think of opportunities to bring to refugees and people in crisis is to first of all understand, can they name you? Can they know that you exist in this space? And for me, immediately it was, before you invest money on me, listen to me. These, we've talked about like including refugees at the table, but sometimes I'm like, I'm not just at the table to have dinner, you know, I really want the investment to be seen and to be heard. So from that research, I was like, for the best thing to ever happen to refugees is not just including them and tick that they were actually present in the room, but rather really involving them and listening to the solutions that they're already creating within the camps. For instance, with Elemisha Kakuma, which I co-founded, we understand where the shoe pinches the most in Kakuma. We were able to understand how to translate the camp context to universities. And that way, universities were able to open doors for refugees, for solutions to be made Refugees already have those solutions, and they're already doing the work. So funding those opportunities is the best way to achieve peace quicker.

Thank you so much for sharing that. Mazoon, you traveled as Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF, including recently to Syria, where you met many young people and heard from them. How might we invest in education for young people living in conflict and crisis-affected zones?

First of all, thank you so much. It is a great honor to join you today. And we are talking about something really integral in our life, which is education. Because once we invest in education, we are investing in the future of the next generation. And we are giving the children and young people the opportunity to thrive, not only to survive. Because education is not only a classroom or a lesson we attend, it is beyond that. It is a protection, it is a stability, and it is a given meaning and purpose for children to face the challenges and to thrive in their life, not only to struggle to survive. And it is really important to invest in education and give those children the opportunities they deserve. And they have been really lucky as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, traveling to so many countries, living in emergencies, I saw the resilience, children and young people have. They are not only waiting for a charity, they are really ready to make a difference. But I strongly believe resilience is not the only thing we need and expecting from the children. We need to change their lives on the ground and to give them the resources they need to invest in their education during the crisis. Because once they have those opportunities, they can build up on what they have learned during the crisis. And they are not only impacted by problems They are part of the solution, but they only can do that once they are given the opportunity. For example, recently, if you did ask me a few years ago if I will be able to return home and go and see the children of my country, that was a dream. But thankfully, I was able to return not only a child who fled war in 2013, but as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. That was really emotional to go and give back to my country, to to listen to their challenges and what they need. And I was lucky enough to listen to their stories. Yes, it is really hard because they have been through a lot. However, I saw how determined they are to build a better future for Syria. Every single child I met, they told me, we want to contribute in the rebuilding process for Syria. We need to be doctors, we need to be teachers, we need to be lawyers. For example, I met Fatima, who her education was disrupted by displacement during the war in Aleppo. However, luckily now she returned to her community in rural Damascus, and she was able to carry on in her education, and she told me, I want to be a doctor because Syria needs doctor and they want to be part of building my own country. So yeah, children, they are ready once we are there for them and they need those tools and platforms. Once we listen to their voices, we empower them rather than we just investing and supporting them.

Thank you so much for sharing that. That's really beautiful. Yes, a round of applause for that. Absolutely. Thank you, Mazoon. So our next prompt is related to that on what the UN's role is in making sure that the world is fit for its youth. So Melissa, I'm going to turn to you now, as you have vast experience interacting with communities in these kinds of conflict zones and crisis contexts, including through your powerful book, A Hope More Powerful Than the Sea, excuse me, and through your UN roles, of course. So how might we, especially organizations like the United Nations here today, ensure that young people actually have opportunities to what Mazoon and Mary are talking about, the opportunities that they need to improve their lives.

Well, thank you. And I can't even tell you how moved I am to see Mary and Mazoon. These are two beautiful women who I met during my course of working at UNHCR when I was trying to make the case for investing in education. They come from two refugee camps that represented some of the most protracted refugee situations because it wasn't possible for them to return to their homes because there was no peace. And in the meantime, what was so frustrating was the lack of investment in the young people who were the future of their war-torn countries. So not investing in education of refugee children is actually, it's strategically dumb because we all are working towards peace and we are all working towards the day when, in the case of Mazoon, I'm so moved that you were able to return home to Syria and that you're seeing the chance and the opportunity for the refugees returning to contribute. Had there been more investment in all of those years, many of them would have already been doctors and engineers and architects, and they would already be instantly getting to the business of rebuilding Syria. So I just, I want to, I always think about this, this one story when I went to visit Syrian refugees in a Lebanese refugee settlement in the Becca Valley and going into a tent to listen to the stories of the family and there was a teenage boy named Hani and I always ask refugees what did you take when you the bomb started falling and you had to flee your homes and I'll never forget what Hani did then. He got up, he went to the back of the tent, and came back with a silk-covered document. And then he uncovered that document and held it up for us to see and said, I took my high school diploma. I took my high school diploma because my life depended on it. Without education, I am nothing. And I think we all need to keep in mind not just that the investment is important for peace building after the conflict ends, but it is for the aspiration of every human being wants to have that opportunity, those opportunities that have been ripped from them because of the war, let them let the children, the young people have a chance to grow. So, our plea is always to to think about educating and refugees just as much as you think about mediation and stopping the war and peace.

Thank you for that, Melissa. I'm going to ask Jonathan about our next prompt, which is focusing on community mobilization. So Jonathan started organizing and mobilizing support for immigrant rights at just 14 years old. And you are now the youngest member of-- you are now the youngest board member of Amnesty International USA. So how might we mobilize communities, especially young people, in your experience, to take action for peace?

Yeah, I thought a lot about this question because I think the way that you define peace is based on personal experience, your community, where you come from. For me, when I think about peace, I think a lot about my parents and my background. I grew up here in New York City. I grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, predominantly an immigrant community. And both of my parents were refugees from Vietnam. And so growing up, I learned a lot about their experience about fleeing from war and violence. hearing the bombs dropping very late at night. And they lived for two years in a refugee camp on an island called Bidong in Malaysia. And for them, when I think about organizing, when I think about activism, when it came to the United States, there weren't opportunities for them to engage in activism work, for their voices to be heard by local officials. Both of them at a young age did not have access in education. They didn't have an access in education back in Vietnam. They didn't have access to education back when they came to the US. And that barrier, those challenges, I think about the lack of advocacy and advocates at that time that included their voices, right? They're advocating for the end of the Vietnam War, the American war in Vietnam, but they did not advocate for when having proper refugee resettlement and what that looks like in the US. And so when I think about mobilizing for peace today, I think there's three critical ways that we need to be organizing for peace, or more like four. One of them is intergenerational. How can we connect the older generation to the younger generation and being able to share these stories? How has my parents been able to pass these stories down to me, but how would I pass those stories down to the next generation? Two, I think we need to think about inclusivity racially and thinking about how we can include different people from different ethnic backgrounds. I think especially with the immigration movement that we're seeing right now in the US, there seems to be a lack of inclusivity of including other marginalized voices to include a much more diverse movement in order to advocate for a broader goal of advocating for peace for immigrant communities. I think the last two focuses in terms of our priorities that we should think about when we're mobilizing for peace is how can engage with a diaspora, how can we engage with people around the world? I think especially for the Vietnamese community, the issue with immigration or just issues, you know, regarding after the Vietnam War is so complex, so many Vietnamese diasporas here in the US, they feel so separated from the issues that are happening back in Vietnam. And I think that's very similar to so many other diasporas, regardless if it's in the Southeast Asian community. But I think if we can focus on the issues that led to displacement, if we we can focus on issues that are happening today, whether that's family separation, whether that's unexploded ordinance from the Vietnam War that's still impacting communities like Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, if we can focus on those issues intergenerationally and connect that to a diaspora, I think that we're able to achieve peace or make progress towards peace.

Well said. Thank you so much, Jonathan. I see why you're on the board of Amnesty. Nor, you are representing one of the biggest youth organizations in the world today, World Scouting, which is a movement that deeply values public service and giving back to communities. As the world faces multiple crises, from extreme climate events to youth unemployment to wars, of course, how might we actually empower young people to give back and invest in their communities?

So before starting the conversation, I want to ask, are there any scouts in the audience? Wow, that's amazing. So I want to start off the conversation by saying that young people are already giving back to their communities and across different contexts, they are volunteering, they are responding to humanitarian needs, they are creating spaces for dialogue as well. And the question is, why do they continue doing this work? And I believe that the answer is really, really simple. It's basically that young people are connected to their communities and by mentioning communities I mean their families their friends their neighbors as well and across the Arab region young people are experiencing different realities some are dealing with conflicts and displacements while other are dealing with economic pressures wide social and economic challenges and unemployment as well so the question whether or not whether young people will continue this work or not, it's basically what do they need to continue? And there are practical things that make a huge difference, for example, funding. And when I talk about funding, I specifically mean it's funding in youth themed spending alongside youth controlled peacebuilding, as well as contribution to be recognized and more safe spaces for youth to contribute as well. So I believe that the gap is not between youth and skills. Youth has incredible skills. It's how to use those skills and to real impact. through my own experience, I've done scouting through volunteering. And through this experience, I had the opportunity to lead, I had the opportunity to discover more skills that I didn't know that I had. And today, I'm representing youth at the UNGA. And it all started by volunteering. So at the end of the day, when we're talking about empowering, we're not asking youth to do more. It's about asking this room to do more.

Thank you so much, Nora. I completely agree. I think young people are constantly misunderestimated. Deanne, I'm gonna bring you on a similar question here, which is through your work at UNFPA, you see the impact of young people every day as well. Given that equity and inclusion are the foundation of your youth strategy, what does that actually look like in practice? How might we continue to invest in youth as Noor spoke about and empower them as peace builders?

Thank you for that. You know, listening to Jonathan and Noor, You learn something very quickly. They don't need us to be empowered. They don't wait for us to lead. So for me, in this peace day, I think what is the most important, it's really security. Without security, nothing happen. So when you start with security, then you go to safety. And then you go to, how would I call, the capability to express yourself, to live simply and to act. And that's where community, the resilience and the funding comes after. And for young people, as well listening to them and the work we do at UNFPA, peace does not mean the same thing for every young people depending where they are. When you find a young people in Haiti after the earthquake and trying to live, you know, their life, because life happened when war is somewhere there or climate is happening there. It's not the same thing when you see a young people in Papua New Guinea trying to save his mother life because it's not about him there, it's about avoiding violence on his mother for her not to be burned, et cetera. So for us, the funding is important. Getting to the last mile of the community, those young people out there, it's absolutely critical. And believe me, because I've spent 25 years on the ground in places where I had to sleep on the top of cars in the green, if I say that, every time I gave money to young people, they never disappointed. They implemented everything the right way, from 5,000 US dollars to 300,000 US dollars. They implemented everything. And those who got the most money were audited according to all the UN rules existing. So for us, they are leaders already. We need to trust them. We need to give them the ability and the capability to do the job, and they need to report on it. I think the time is right now. The time is now. We need to make that happen. I am proud of every young people, women, men, because they make it happen every single day for their communities, for their people, and for themselves.

Thank you so much. Thank you. We're going to take a quick break from the conversation before we get to the rest of the circle to watch a short video that has been produced by the Department of Peace Operations. It's about what it means to actually invest in peace. It's called How do we measure the conflicts that didn't happen? It explores what it means to actively choose peace over conflict through the lens of peacekeepers, de-miners, and youth advocates. And I believe Melissa may have to step out. Thank you so much for joining us during a very busy week, Melissa. So we appreciate you. Thank you so much.

How do we measure the conflicts that didn't happen?

The lives of children allowed to be just children.

By the communities building trust together.

By the land saved to walk on.

Do we measure them by the algorithms on our phones? Or by the people working on the ground? By casting ballots and building economies? Do we measure them in the voices of youth or in the leadership of women? By the number of blue helmets and those who paid the ultimate price? Or do we measure the conflicts that didn't happen by how we invest in peace?

Over war? The true measure of peace is not only in the conflicts that ended.

But also in those that never began.

Invest in peace.

Invest in peace.

Invest in peace.

Invest in peace. Invest in peace. Invest in peace.

I love that because I think it asks a very important question, which is how do we qualitatively measure the conflicts that didn't happen? It's a very difficult challenge. But as we talk about the importance of investing in peace, including in tools such as diplomacy, disarmament, and peacekeeping, as we saw in the video, I do want to call out that global military spending continues year after year at record levels. In 2025, it reached $2.9 trillion. A tiny fraction of that could end world hunger, vaccinate children everywhere, and help vulnerable countries adapt to climate change. So with that in mind, Sanjana, I'm going to turn to you. In your role as the UN Development Program Youth Champion for India, you see firsthand how young people aren't just talking about issues, right? They're marching in the streets, they're speaking up, they're demanding change. They don't wait, as many people here have said. So how might we empower communities and youth to demand a rebalancing of these local and global military budgets to further support sustainable development instead?

Thank you for the question and good morning, everyone. It is an honor to be here. And you know, that question is almost as complex or more complex than the issue itself. When I was thinking about it and I, in my journey over the last 12 years since I was a teenager,

Believing that education was transforming my life when everything felt unclear and unsure. It was that that took me through some of my life's greatest challenges. And that's when I started volunteering as well and getting involved and didn't wait for anyone to tell me to lead or to tell me that education is the answer. I just felt it within. And I find such a big chasm and gap between the conversation around military expenditure and development needs coming from the country that I come from, right? In India, we have the largest youth demographic in the world. And we're constantly, at least as someone who has committed a large part of my life to youth-led development, I just think about are we preparing our generation in the way that they deserve to be prepared? And so for me, when I see those figures roaming around on news headlines, I'm like, just give me 0.001%. And I know that if I go back to my communities and if we decide that we want to build, like you said, medical centers, primary schools, vocational training centers, as an actor, maybe an art center, because I feel like art can truly solve for of the greatest problems in the world, we'll be able to do so much just within ourselves. We don't even need anyone. So the real thing, I think it comes down to the fact that we're dealing with an acute poverty of trust. You know, we speak about intergenerational trust. And that is important, but I see that more as a phrase. I don't see it pan out in reality because in all the spaces I've occupied, it very much has been us asking and us constantly trying to prove our worth. But I really think we've already proven our worth. Like you said, we've proven that when a little is given, we can do so much more with it. And we don't just want to be mere beneficiaries at the end of long policy pipelines and decisions that are being made by people that aren't going to inherit the consequences of those decisions as well. And so I feel that these are the things that we need to sit on a real table and tell our leaders about. I know back home in India, as you know, we've had one of the largest student protests in modern Indian history. But my real dream and hope is for it to not reach a place where we have to come to the streets, that we start much earlier, and that we solve for the fundamentals of education and health far, far sooner. And I believe in collective action, looking at this peace circle. So I'm hopeful on this day.

Thank you so much, Sanjana. Well said. Sophia, speaking of investing in children and starting at the beginning, you are a disarmament advocate and a humanitarian working to ensure that emergency relief reaches the most vulnerable children in Ukraine. The reality of that work is sobering. According to UNICEF, nearly 4,000 children have been killed or injured since the escalation of the war. So given this devastating impact, how might we truly invest in peace instead of continuing to fund wars?

Thank you for the question, Varsha. At the Children of Ukraine Foundation, we grapple with the human cost of this sobering number every day. Thousands of children killed and injured is not just a statistic. Behind every number is a child buried beneath rubble, a little boy who has lost his limb, or a little girl who's carrying the trauma of sexual violence. Emergency relief is essential, but it is not a solution. To truly invest in peace, we must shift our paradigm in three fundamental ways. First, we must redefine what national security actually means. For generations, we have equated security with military stockpile. But as military expenditures reach $2.9 trillion, the world is not any more secure. True and lasting peace requires building strong and resilient societies where institutions are fortified against democratic backsliding, where citizens have access to sustainable economic opportunity, and where governments deepen economic integration. Second, we must leverage targeted economic sanctions as a central pillar of peace enforcement and disarmament. To truly invest in peace, we must degrade war-making capacity by tightening strategic trade controls, by closing sanctions evasion loopholes, and by increasing the implementation of secondary sanctions, which target individuals who indirectly supply war. By doing so, We can disrupt military supply chains, and we can constrain the revenue that funds global conflict. And finally, we must direct our resources where they matter most. In the next generation of individuals and institutions reshaping how we build peace, investing in peace This means supporting local society, bridging critical funding gaps, and giving young people a seat at global security discussions around the world. Friends and colleagues, peace can be built by the decisions we make today. If we choose to invest in peace, we can shift our focus away from military expenditures, away from treating the wounds of war, and towards providing every child a chance to build a future. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that, Sophia. And I love the specifics of the policy that you got into. I think that's really important and really helpful to remember. Now, Maher, you have spent many years as an international civil servant. I believe you said 40 years of service in the UN almost, and you grew up in Palestine. You know firsthand the profound human cost of protracted conflict and the enduring resilience of communities affected by it. We talked about the awful cost of the war in Ukraine. Our thoughts are also with the people of Palestine and Gaza. The latest indicates that more than 74,000 people have reportedly been killed, including at least 21,000 children. So how might we truly invest in peace from your perspective, having done this work for many years, to heal divides and create a safer and more fair world for everyone?

Thank you. Just to state, I'm incredibly impressed by every single one of the young speakers here. You are what gives me and others hope, because it isn't enough that we talk about young people, it's important to listen. And I think what you have all contributed is something that I will take with me and others should as well. Many have spoken about the increased military spending to $2.9 trillion last year. What wasn't mentioned is that at the same time, we have seen a 23% drop in official development assistance in 2025, followed an 8% drop in 2024. So the money that has gone to military was taken away from investments in development. So it's ironic that we talk about we should not only focus on the increase in military spending because that takes away from investments in peace, in development, in human rights, in justice, in equality. As we speak in September, with all the numbers that you have mentioned in Gaza, which is where I start, I joined the United Nations as a local staff for UNRWA, half a million students have started school. in Gaza in three shifts. No school buildings, tents, yards, destroyed structures. And maybe one thing struck me this summer. A young girl, young woman, Saba Rabah, she was the top scorer in the high school examination in Gaza, 99.9%. Her father was killed in 2024, and he was an UNRWA teacher, one of the 400 UN staff killed in Gaza. And she got 99.9% in the high school examination. 37 students in Gaza, 37,000 students went and did the same exam, and the average was 74%. To think about what drives a young person surrounded by destruction and death pushed to one third of the already very small, most densely populated place on Earth to go to school, to aspire and go to school. That is the kind of hope because they also believe in education. You all spoke about education. The sad reality is that in Gaza, all universities were destroyed. Yet these people believe that one day they will be able to continue education, to come back and serve their community. So often I think the hope that we see, Melissa's book, hope, a hope more powerful than the sea. What we see in Gaza is a hope more powerful than destruction, a hope that is more powerful than bombs, a hope that should give the whole world an example to go back and support those people and meet the aspirations of young people for peace. And peace can only be built on solid grounds of justice, equality, respect for human rights, and a rule of law that applies to all, no matter who you are, how powerful, or how powerful your allies are. If without a rule of law, without justice, true peace is very hard to attain. Thank you.

Thank you so much for that. As we come to the end of our very inspiring peace circle, we have one final prompt for everyone. It's part of a lightning round that I hope we can spark hope that everyone's carrying forward, but I am also already inspired and I hope everybody here today is feeling the same way. Through the Hear Us, Act Now for a Peaceful World campaign, we've heard from over 1,000 young people about what peace means to them. We've received a tremendous diversity of answers from South Sudan to Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jordan, Honduras, India, Colombia, China, Syria, Japan, and beyond. People have talked about equality, about climate action, about economic security, about employment, and many other foundations for peace. So I'm going to ask all of you in a single sentence if you can manage it. What does peace mean to you? And I will start. This is informed by the fact that I have a three-year-old daughter and seeing her grow, learn, and thrive is my greatest joy. So peace to me means safety and freedom for children everywhere from New York City to Gaza and Palestine to South Sudan. Mary, I'm going to throw to you next.

Peace for me is the ability to fully self-actualize, to contribute to a community, and to be made human, to be included, to feel like you're a part of something bigger, and again, to be made human.

Go ahead. What does peace mean to you?

I strongly believe this is a big question and it might seem odd to many people in a world where we live because many people, unfortunately, they are deprived from peace. But the answer is really simple, like to have a world where it is free from conflict, from war, for people, especially children, to live in peace. Because peace is not like a privilege we give to humans. It is a basic human right and this is the minimum we give to people in the world. And investing in education, it is the first thing we do to invest in peace. So once we invest more in, given the opportunity for people to learn, we definitely contributing towards a world full of peace for all of us. And because of education, I am standing with you today. It has changed my own life and I believe it will change the life of the generations to come.

Thank you so much. Jonathan, what does peace mean to you?

Peace for me means keeping immigrant families together and keeping communities safe from unexploded ordinance.

Deanne, what does peace mean to you?

Peace mean to me safety and tolerance for the difference.

Maher, can I turn to you?

Peace is when we all have the ability to thrive in dignity, in justice, with the respect of our rights, no differences.

Sanjana, what does peace mean to you?

I think peace to me is the right to a dignified basic education without having to fight for it. That's peace.

Sophia.

To me, peace is a world in which children do not understand the difference between a Shahed drone and a missile, and instead worrying about which friends they're going to play with after school or whether they're going to win their next football match.

Nour.

I believe that peace is not simply the absence of conflict, it is having the safety, the opportunity, and dignity to build a future you believe in.

Thank you so much. Can we please have a round of applause for our fantastic participants here today in this peace circle? And thank you again, everyone, so much for joining us. I'm going to leave you with an inspiring quote from the UN Secretary General. On this International Day of Peace, let us all be inspired by the courage of those who champion peace in neighborhoods, classrooms, and communities. And let's call on world leaders to invest in a peaceful future for all people. I don't think we're going to be giving up hope for a better world anytime soon. Thank you so much for joining us today and truly, truly thank you for the work that all of you are doing in your communities and around the world. Thank you so much.

Hello and welcome to the SDG Media Zone. We are live from the United Nations 81st General Assembly. Our next session is about to start, so please take your seat. I'm going to hand it over to our moderator. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon. My name is Ese Ohe Aravaman Yamasaki, and I'm the head of communications for Springer Nature. Today, We're going to be talking about the UN System Data Commons, trusted data in the age of AI. AI is transforming how people find and use information. As access to knowledge expands, the ability to identify and verify trusted sources becomes increasingly important. The UN system holds a vast wealth of authoritative public data. And as part of the UN 80 reforms, the UN system data Commons will provide a single modern entry point for public data and statistics from across the UN system. It will reduce analysis time for policymakers, researchers, institutions. the general public, while making the UN system data AI ready so that digital tools can generate answers grounded in authoritative, traceable evidence. Thank you for joining us today to explore the opportunities of this new global information infrastructure. I have with me today Prem Ramaswamy, head of Data Commons at Google, Joao Pedro, Azevedo, the chief statistician at UNICEF, and Talea von Lupin, portfolio manager and strategy lead of the UN Global Pulse in the executive office of the Secretary General. I want to start with you, actually, Talea. Can you give us a bit more background on this initiative? How did it originate? Tell us some more about the birth.

More than happy to do that. The UN system sits on a whole wealth of publicly available data, statistics about development in topics that might range from child mortality over labor market indicators, all the way to health data. And the challenging thing in the past has been that those data sets have been sitting in dozens of different places. And if you've been a researcher, then the first thing you needed to do is understand where this data sits and how to access it and how indicators are very specifically named. And so under a much bigger reform that's called UN80, our senior leadership came together and said, in an age of AI and where data becomes so incredibly important, let's build something. Let's build something together where we pool this data and make it accessible to the world in a way that's much more intuitive, but also much more easy to use. And if you want to, we did bring something on the screen to show you around on how it looks like.

How exciting. Let's watch.

Okay. So you will see coming up in a second, the landing page that's available under data.un.org and available for all of you to come in, in case I'm not sitting in front of it. And not like in the past where you needed to know where to find data. Now I can just search a question. In this case, how has maternal mortality, and I'll just go to this side here, changed over time? And what I'm being shown is the immediate results of what's the most relevant indicator that matches my question. and already getting charts out that are a lot more or that are already pre-built. And not only that, I can see from across different data sets what are related indicators and things that might already answer other parts of my research question. There's also pages where I don't need to flip through indicators, which for some of us might be fun, but maybe not for all of us to understand and interpret the data that we are getting in. So we are very excited about this, not only because. It gives you data right away and in a way that cuts an enormous amount of time, but mainly because we bring it in here in a way that you can connect with your APIs and programming interfaces. with your AI agents in a way that just hasn't really been possible before. And not self-building this whole thing, but using an open source technology, the data commons, that allows us to do this at cutting edge and in a way that we hope will bring a lot of value to the global community.

Thanks so much for that demonstration, Talia. I think we can already imagine lots of applications for this across the scholarly ecosystem for policymakers, the general public and beyond. One topic that has been top of mind for those of us engaging with information and data has been around information integrity. And so this question is actually for you, JP. Why is it better or why rather is better access to authoritative, trusted public data essential for maintaining information integrity in an AI driven world in which we increasingly find ourselves?

Well, thank you. Well, I think we have to Always think that in official statistics, there is no partial credit. You don't have a more or less right question, right? If you ask about what is the under five mortality of Nigeria in 2006, right? That is a very specific and precise number. It's not good enough to provide the number that is the 2005 or the 2008 or give a number of the neighboring country. That doesn't work in official statistics. All these numbers are grounded and are understood by member states who see themselves in these numbers because there's an ample process of country consultation. So one of the challenges that we have observed in UNICEF and discussing with the other chief statisticians of the agencies, right, is really that when we ask a question to a lot of these chatbots, you often will get a number, right? The challenge is not getting a number. The challenge is how accurate this number actually is and how confident are the models regarding this number. Another element that we've also found out is that even when we ask about the same country, the same year, the same indicator twice, 50% of the times we don't get the same value. So you can imagine how confusing and how dangerous this can be for policymakers, for journalists, for civil society that is trying to understand the reality on the ground and are using this fantastic technology that is now available to all of us that drastically reduce the analytical time that it takes for one to extract insights and lower the barriers to entry because now you don't need to have a PhD or a masters to try to start interacting with the data and start extracting meaning. But the data needs to be accurate. right? The numbers need to be correct. And that I think is the value proposition of this infrastructure, that we are able to actually for the first time to do this with a very strong governance around it. Because what is also very important is that all these numbers have very clear provenance. We have 26 agencies that have already come together around this. And this data is not a snapshot. It's actually a movie because behind all of this, we have the updating process that each and every one of the agencies that have already joined this infrastructure will be taking care as we move forward.

Thanks so much for that answer, JP. I hear in what you've just said an additional question I'd like to ask and direct now actually to you, Prem, and it's around looking under the hood a bit of this system. You brought up integrity. I imagine the human in the loop is central to that. This is something we talk a great deal about at Springer Nature when it comes to research data and information integrity, and so I hope you can share with us, Prem, You know, I'm thinking APIs and so on. How is the new UN system data commons platform and the underlying data commons platform supporting the AI readiness of the UN system data?

That's a great question. The UN system data commons is built on data commons by Google, an open source platform that aims to make all the world's data universally accessible and useful. And when we say universally accessible and useful, we think that with this recent disruption that we've had technologically around generative AI and large language models, this new breed of artificial intelligence, what it does is it's not anymore about the APIs, it's how do we use our natural language to talk to the system, to ask the questions and be able to extract the data at the moment we want it. But to extract that data to what JP said earlier, we have to be able to trust it. So one of the the platform does is it gives all of the endpoints. There's, you know, model context protocol endpoints, API endpoints, SDMX endpoints, all of these open standards that allow you to input and output data as needed and allow the agent to have this data in a machine readable format. But not only the data, the metadata, the data about the data. So you have the context necessary so that if you are using one of these AI agents to make your decision making, you can now do so more confidently. So it's not just about human in the loop, it's about ensuring that human has agency and control in the decisions being made. But now that human is no longer rate limited by the number of statisticians or computer scientists your organization has, this is now democratizing the access to that data to not only policymakers at the UN, but also to NGOs, to private enterprises, to regular citizens who are interested in using this data in whatever way they may see fit. And I think we personally are very excited to see all of the different ways this data will be used moving forward now that it's been really unlocked and this tooling now gives the ability for the world to start playing around with it.

Thank you so much for that answer, Prem. I think that we can all kind of envision how it is that the general public, policymakers, students, researchers, everyone can engage with this information and the means through which this is possible no matter where one is located. It makes me want to ask you, Talea, We've been thinking a lot at Springer Nature about an open access, an open science future, where data in this manner becomes available to everyone all over the world for new advancements and developments and so on. Is this what the UN80 Reform Initiative set out to do with this platform as a key priority? And give us some sense of the results so far where this ambitious initiative concerned.

Yeah, so for sure the overall ambition is to make this wealth that the UN has in terms of the official statistics that it's producing in a collaboration with member states open to the world and to everyone. And For us on the user side, there's really two parts to it. On the one hand, it's about using the data as it comes, including through the endpoints that we have in all the modern ways. But then something else that we are super excited about and starting just now and are the very kind of have a big horizon ahead and what's possible is working with these 26 UN system entities on building what we call data products. on top of it. So understanding how can we now that we have this data available, for example, automate reporting or automate our understanding of if there's shifts in different things that are happening in a society. And we are starting to engage a big community from the open source community and with researchers and with the UN system and with member states on building out where and where next we can go, including when we are connecting this to other data sources. And I mean, just for us to remember on the platform now, we have official statistics, which doesn't mean that they might become even more interesting if I connect them with other data sources that are not the UNs. And by then unlocking with this new portal and with the like flexible ways in which we can work with it, a whole world of better understanding what's happening in the world.

This is an exciting future that you're spelling out right now. This question is for you, Prem. Kind of piggybacking off the vision that Talea has laid out there, where do you see the biggest potential in further developing the scope around this? And what partners do you think would be needed to achieve it?

Well, as Talea said, we have 26 UN agencies on board the UN System Data Commons today. There are over 50 UN agencies, so we are halfway there. We have more to do and more agencies to bring on board, and I think that'll be work in the future for Talea and the team to be able to do. From a global perspective, we're also talking to nonprofits, to academic institutions, to national statistical offices around the world on how those organizations do not need to become their own web app companies, right? For every national statistical organization to have to understand how to stand up API endpoints, MCP server endpoints. This is a burden that they should not have to do. So can open source platforms like Data Commons be easier for them to utilize to be able to get their data out there and more usable? You know, just to give you an example, this past weekend for fun, I decided to open up, you know, my coding agent. I use Anti-Gravity and Gemini and connected to the UNMCP server and quickly created two dashboards for myself. One was where are their shocks, as in where do the timeline of events change suddenly for different data sets. And it's able to immediately identify everything from wars and famines to things that I didn't expect, like hyperinflation happening in a country randomly. And then I was able to create a second dashboard that said, when the whole world is moving in one direction, show me where countries are moving in the wrong direction. And again, it's able to do that using the intelligence of the large model combined with being grounded in this authoritative data. So this is just a small example of what I am able to do in an hour over the weekend. And I'm very excited for what happens when that power is in the hands of every policymaker, every NGO that's out there trying to provide aid on the ground.

Wow, thanks so much for that answer, Prem. I think we're all equally excited by that vision. Going back to what you shared earlier, JP, around the project you ran or the test you ran where you asked different LLMs questions or I think this is what happened and you found that the information wasn't always the same. What steps will it take for the UN system data commons to fulfill this potential towards better information integrity in this AI driven world that Prem is envisioning.

Fantastic. Yeah, so we did 133,000 queries to about six models of the three biggest labs. And this was very much a proof of concept of what we are calling a stats bench or a benchmark of official statistics. And our vision is really make this available broadly so we can start doing this with far greater intentionality. And the main element on this is As we are able to benchmark these different models, we can raise awareness among both users, producers, and the labs about the measures that need to be put in place for us to prevent this kind of hallucination. The good news is that this is a totally solvable problem. We have the solutions today. but it requires coordination and it requires this this shared understanding among these three critical groups right those that consume the data that use the data those that produce the data such as statistical offices or agencies and of course the labs themselves or companies the private sector such as Google and tropics open AI and others right that need to support and sign up on this shared vision of consuming data from good provenance, right? And we have that, and we have that. And at the end of the day, it's really about giving power and empowering the member states, right? Because we all here to actually promote change on the ground, improve the lives of those that are less well off. And for that, we need to make sure that their reality is properly reflected. And we, as I think all of us, share this vision that we can do it and it is at our reach.

I love that you brought up data provenance there. We recently did a study at Springer Nature where we asked researchers whether they would be interested in having their work used, cited by LLMs. And they were quite interested as long as they were recognized for it, as long as they were credited. This is something I remember learning in graduate school that that documentation, that provenance is important and it is key. And it's one way that we're able to avoid bad faith actors, hallucinations, paper mills, you know, when it comes to the underlying research. This is such an exciting initiative and I hope everyone will go out and take a look at it. Talea, so let's give those listening and watching today a call to action. How can users be part, engaged? How can users get involved with this?

First of all, go to data.un.org and try it out. We are very excited to hear from anyone on what do you think, the feedback that you have, what are things that should come next, what are things that we should fix. And there is such a fantastic team working behind the scenes on this across entities and with our partners. And there will be a lot more to come where we will be inviting the larger community in building the next generation of data products with us. So send us feedback and stay tuned for ways to build this out with us.

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the STG Media Zone. We are live. We are live from United Nations headquarters. This is the 81st session of the General Assembly. Happy to introduce the next session. I'm going to pass it over to the moderator, Katie Taylor from WIRED. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here and to see you all here. We have a very interesting and important topic today. We have Joseph Gordon-Levitt speaking with us today. He is an actor and filmmaker, but he is also the UN Global Advocate for Human-Centric Digital Governance. Joseph is known for films such as 500 Days of Summer, Inception, Third Rock from the Sun, and Super Pumped, the Battle for Uber. He has always been passionate about the intersection of media and tech, co-founding the two-time Emmy-winning online community for creative collaboration, HitRecord. He publishes Joe's Journal on Substack and is directing an upcoming thriller about AI for Netflix, starring Rachel McAdams, which I personally am extremely excited to see.

Me too.

So today he is here to talk about human agency in the age of AI. And specifically, we are going to get into how that applies to children, children's rights and children's development. So thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. So first of all, Something that is obviously a huge topic and you have talked about is AI chatbots and AI toys for kids. So I would love to start out with hearing about your concerns for these AI toys and how they could be impacting children's development.

Oh, boy. Well, You know, look, anytime an algorithm is put out by a business, it's optimizing for something. And if it's a business, it's got to optimize for the business goals. It's got to try to make as much money as possible. So you have to ask, well, how is the business that's putting out this algorithm making money? Could be selling toys, it could be selling subscriptions, it could be selling advertising, selling attention. But in any case, what it's not optimizing for is the well-being of the user. And that's especially true when it comes to kids. Kids are, you know, their brains are not developed when they're young. I'm a dad of an 11 year old, a nine year old, and a four year old. So I know firsthand, they're, you know, they're brilliant, beautiful, young little people, but their brains aren't done cooking yet. And they're very susceptible to manipulation hyper stimulation. And these are, frankly, weaknesses, human weaknesses that these algorithms are extremely good at figuring out how to exploit. And so if you're exposing a kid to these kinds of algorithms, especially for sustained periods of time, I think you can only expect to have some pretty damaging side effects. You can have kids that have trouble paying attention to things, especially if we're talking about, algorithmic recombination or we call it artificial intelligence, whatever, you know, these, these bots, they're going to try to form intimate relationships with kids and What will that do to a kid's ability to have real relationships with real human beings if they get used to an algorithm, a bot that's just always there to stimulate them, always there to make them feel good and not providing the kind of real pushback, push and pull and interaction that you get from real life human relationships. It's good for business, but it's probably not very good for the kid.

Yes, and I think that the idea of relationships is such a huge part of this, where kind of having a artificial intelligence tool that recreates that relationship is obviously very concerning. So as a parent, how do you personally think of this? And then we'll get to what the state and perhaps companies should be doing. But just, I would love to hear how, as a parent, what you think parents' responsibilities are.

Yeah, I mean, look, one thing I've learned I think from being a parent is that every family is different. And, you know, parenting advice needs to be taken with that caveat and that grain of salt. What works for one family is not necessarily going to work for another family. I could speak about what we do. We're not necessarily against digital technology. For example, one of my kids is really into making digital music, and we'll let him spend long periods of time making incredible compositions using MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface. But we're pretty strict about, OK, but yeah, you're not allowed to use the auto drummer. You're not allowed to use these preexisting loops. You're not allowed to use any of these shortcuts that will make you feel like you're being creative when really the thing is just doing it for you. And so we set up a bunch of rules and kind of custom rules for each kid and their use of different devices. You know, I hear some people say, we just don't let them use any digital devices at all. And I completely respect that. We're maybe somewhere in the middle. What we don't do is expose our kids to any algorithms, really. Anything like the feed. of a, I don't know, YouTube kids or a TikTok or anything, any kind of algorithm that's gathering data about a user and calculating the... the that data compared to data of billions of other users and then using that to optimize business goals, we really try to be pretty strict about no exposure to those kinds of algorithms.

Yeah. And I guess what do you think the responsibility is of these companies to protect kids and to kind of make sure children's development is not being interfered with?

Yeah, that's a really good question. I've been talking about this now for a little while, and one of the big questions people always ask is, shouldn't that just be the responsibility of the parents? Why is this the responsibility of companies? You should just parent your kids. If you think it's bad for your kids, then why don't you keep your kid off of it? But then you have a kid, and every other kid in their class is using this certain addictive, harmful product. So now you as a parent are left with a choice. Either my kid is sort of left out or I surrender and let them use something that I'm pretty confident is bad for their brain. So which do I do? And look, I was just telling you about the measures we take as parents to try to be very custom about how our kids use technology. But I think it's not an either or, it's got to be, yes, all of the above. We as parents, yeah, we have to take responsibility for our kids to the degree that we can. But also, this is why laws and governments exist. There's a reason why you have to be 21 years old to go into a casino. That's a law. Why? Well, because, you know, long ago, before I was born, and I'm pretty old, everyone in a democracy decided, you know, it's really, there's no good upside to kids spending time in casinos. They're gonna be tempted to do it, and the casino companies want it to happen, 'cause they'd be happy to take our money, but we're gonna make a law that helps parents keep their kids out of casinos. Because yeah, when your kid is like six years old, you have your eye on them all the time. What about when your kid's 16 years old and they're walking by that casino, or they're walking by a 7-Eleven and they wanna buy cigarettes, or they wanna buy alcohol? Why can't a kid buy cigarettes or alcohol or a lotto ticket at the corner store? Because there are laws, the government helps families in that way. And I know it can sound spooky to have, you know, I don't want the government involved in my family and, you know, my parenting, understandable, but like, do you really want your kid to be able to buy cigarettes at 7-Eleven? No, that's just a normal one. And there should be these things for addictive algorithms as well.

Yeah. And In your role with the UN, what does human-centric governance actually look like? What are you kind of pushing for conversations to be about when we talk about, we need governance as we do in many other things. What does it actually look like? What do you want those conversations to be?

Well, to me, the really exciting thing about being here at the UN is how global it is. I mean, looking around the room, I bet there's like as many countries represented in this room as there are people. It's gorgeous. I feel just inspired being here. And one of the things you often hear when you try to bring up laws that regulate technology, critics of said laws, people are sort of against regulation, will say, "Well, okay, one country could make a law, but all the countries aren't gonna make that law, and that'll just mean that the country that makes the law will lose in the competition to the countries who don't make the laws." And so what we need then is coordination between countries. And that's what this place is for. That's what the UN is all about. The UN came into existence right after World War II, when it became readily apparent that countries all over the world needed to coordinate, and in particular, around another very powerful technology that was new at the time. That's nuclear energy, nuclear weapons. We had just seen bombs drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In fact, the first resolution ever passed by the UN General Assembly was about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. And so, look, I know it sounds hard to globally coordinate rules and regulations around this powerful new technology, AI, but there is some historical precedent. This is where it happened, and we have to do it again. We have to.

Yes, and thinking about what an incredible opportunity we have for this international collaboration, what are aspects of the conversation you want to push forward, or what are things you think might be missing from the conversation about kids and AI? What should we be talking about while we have the chance?

So I think one thing that's often missing in conversations about AI is the money. You have to follow the money. Conversations about AI can get really distracted by these incredibly exciting and almost disturbing but intriguing ideas about kind of the creation of these new beings, artificial intelligence. It sounds like, oh, wow, we're like achieving the level of, of we're, we're, we're, we're gods, we're creating new, a new species. You know, there are AI enthusiasts in Silicon Valley who will use that exact terminology. We're creating new beings, new species. But really, It's maybe best to think about, are these companies gods creating new species? Are they businesses creating new products? And when you kind of decode it that way and say, let's just set aside whatever projections we might have onto these products, they're very convincing. And they're, by the way, only going to get more convincing. You spend some time typing with a chatbot. It seems like a person. Of course it does. It was trained on writing from people. And soon it won't just be outputting text. It already has pretty convincing voice. And very soon, it'll have completely convincing video. You will be interacting with a bot, and it'll feel just like you're interacting with a friend on FaceTime or something like that. It's going to be very convincing that these things are people of some kind. but we have to keep in mind they're not. They're products. And the more that we imbue them with personhood, really what we're doing is just handing power to some of the biggest and most powerful companies in the world.

Completely. And do you think that that takes on a different kind of sheen when we think about our children versus the workplace or other aspects that AI is kind of making headlines. How do you think about this for a human-centered approach to AI with kids specifically?

To me, it gets really clear once you start talking about it with kids. Because I think all of us parents have a certain instinct, like, do you want to leave your kid in the care of an algorithm that is optimized to extract as much economic value from your kid as possible? no, you don't want that, do you? We kind of...

just naturally can tell, that's probably not good. And then, frankly, I think from there you can extrapolate, well, if not for a kid, do we really want that for people in general? Maybe we should kind of recognize that it's not necessarily healthy to be interacting with these things as companions for anybody, no matter how old they are. And maybe we can actually get a lot of the upside, a lot of the fruits that AI has to offer, curing diseases, solving incredibly hard technical challenges, all the things that we're excited about for AI. We don't need to think of this technology as friends or people or entities or aliens or gods. We can just think of them as what they are, which is technology.

Completely, and I think we're coming close on time, but I guess any last words you wanna leave while we have all these people here thinking about international collaboration on this area, any last words that we wanna share and kind of leave people thinking about as we go into this week?

I just wanna say thank you. I think everyone here is probably so smart and so talented and so hardworking that you could probably be making a lot more money if you went and worked for one of these tech companies, and instead you're here. And I'm really just glad that you are. So thank you.

Thank you so much. And thank you all for being here.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the SDG Media Zone. We're about to start our next session. We're live from the UN headquarters here in New York, and I'm pleased to pass it to Kristen to kick off our next conversation.

Thank you so much. Welcome, everybody, and it's great to be here. on opening day of High Level Week, and nice to see the sun shining and not the rain. Our focus today is protecting human rights and preserving human dignity in conflict. And that's no easy task. We know right now that the world is engulfed in more conflicts than we've seen since World War II. And with every conflict comes human impact. particularly on civilians who are supposed to be protected in these situations. And, you know, I'd like to refer to a statement from Human Rights Watch that they put out today, noting that while there's so much focus here this week on issues of peace and security and the battlefield, what's happening there, that it's really just as important to ensure that the UN is properly staffed and funded in order to achieve its goals and its mandate of protecting human rights. So we are going to talk about that a little bit here. I'm joined by Mohamed Al-Asman from Save the Children and Gypsy Kiyan Kaiser from the Committee to Protect Journalists. Mohamed, if there's one thing people should be able to agree on, it is the innocence of children and the need to protect them in conflict. But there's so many conflicts happening and we're seeing the impact. If anybody has had a chance to go to the church center across the street for children who've been killed in the conflict in Gaza, there's a shroud on the wall and it has the names of the more than 20,000 children who've been killed, handwritten, interspersed with photos of them. So basically every number that we talk about here is a name. that we're trying to deal with, but with that as the backdrop, how is Save the Children adapting to this new reality of increasing conflicts and less support from the international community to deal with it?

Thanks, Kristin, and good to be here, and actually, it's great that you mentioned the shroud at the church center, that's where our office is, and that's the image we see every day and it forces us to reflect of what it means and the responsibility and the duty and the mission that we have towards those children. And I think let's cut to it. The member states across the board collectively decided to reduce funding that affected human rights, that affected the development progress, that definitely affects humanitarian contexts and fragile contexts like Gaza, like Sudan, like Ukraine. And this puts a bigger responsibility and a bigger burden on the system, be it the UN actors, the NGOs like Save the Children, partners on the ground who are critical to these responses to make difficult choices, which we should not be put in those situations. What that forces us is that while we have to adapt, we have to acknowledge that those decisions still mean that we have to speak out against the gaps that this will leave. It will leave millions of children and their families in more need.

You helped, your organization helped 38 million children in 107 countries last year. That's massive. It's huge. But it is a significant drop from what you were doing in years past, isn't it? Can you talk about how much funding you've lost in the last year and maybe some of the steps that you've taken to try to deal with that.

Absolutely. So I think us amongst our peer partners in the UN across the humanitarian system, we were forced to make those choices that I was mentioning in different contexts, which meant that in some context we had to reassess if our value add is relevant or stepping back is the right decision to make because we wanted to make sure that we are meeting the needs of children where we are meaningfully. All children that we meet across our context, from Nigeria to Mali to Ukraine to DRC, it's remarkably consistent what they tell us about their needs. Yes, they need the basics, food, protection from harm, safety, but they insist that they need education. And education is a fundamental right. What does education mean in those contexts? It means a safe classroom where a kid can be healthy, provided with a meal, feel that they have an opportunity not only to survive, but also to thrive. And I think for Save the Children, among other peer organizations and partners, we had to adjust not only our footprint, but our focus. But that focus does still mean, and we shouldn't just acknowledge it and not brush it aside, that we are leaving many who would have been able to support, not supported.

So it seems like you are in most of the same areas, but you're just then having to provide less. Are there other lessons that can be learned in terms of streamlining or cooperations? Are they changing, or is there just no way to get around that without the funding?

I think definitely there's always space for efficiencies and improvements, both in the field level, as in where the response is at the frontline, across the humanitarian coordination teams. We work very, very well with everyone who's on the ground, but that does mean that within that ecosystem and environment and architecture, there are choices that are being made across the board that forces us not necessarily to maximize that support because there is less across. Lessons learned of how we can coordinate better is mapping out where there's some duplication of the same mandates of the same agencies, and Save the Children took the intentional decision and I believe the right one, first to center local partners who are closer to the ground, who understand the communities better, who can serve it much faster. And then we build off of that and where we can augment and support, we'll continue to do so as much as we can.

Gypsy, let's talk a little bit about journalists now. I think in this day and age, maybe people don't consider journalists innocent civilians in some places, but Under international law, we're civilians and we're entitled to protections. As we've seen conflicts increase, we've seen the deaths of journalists and media workers increase, spiked in the last couple of years, I understand, right? More than 200 killed in Gaza alone, including 24 of my Al Jazeera colleagues, which of course, I would be remiss if I didn't say, pay tribute to them and their sacrifice. to inform the world. So I guess my question is, well, this is just the tip of the iceberg, isn't it? I mean, we're seeing journalists killed in conflicts, but so many other threats with access to high level officials is being questioned. Their communications are being surveilled. Their visas are being denied. Maybe you can talk about the state of affairs for journalism right now.

Thank you so much. Journalists in conflict zones essentially provide a lifeline. The information that they are reporting on a daily basis for local populations can mean the decision between going out or staying in or where to seek shelter, where things are headed to understand the possibility of survival. They also help to inform the political and humanitarian decisions. They help people to be seen. And in that process, they are acting as civilians. We believe that it is important for people to understand that the killings are the most extreme form of censorship. But there are many, as you stated, many other things that are happening. And in conflict zones specifically, that includes sexual violence. It includes torture and imprisonment, unlawful imprisonment. even without charges. It includes the denial of access, not just to high-level officials, but to simply the place where the conflict is taking place. Gaza is the ultimate example of that. But I should say that in Sudan, the same playbook is taking hold. Denial of the facts, blaming of the messenger, weaponizing information, surveillance, And one thing that we have seen also as a large increase over the last few years is journalists killed by drones. And so the discussions about the new technologies in weaponry that are currently taking place also at the UN are very important because we forget that the efficiencies of the war machinery are not necessarily going Or meant to spare civilians; that is, these are all of the things that journalists are getting at, and I also wanted to say that it's particularly important for the humanitarian response. we, um, there's a recent report that shows that a 2021 study found that journalistic reporting triggers a chain of responses when people are in need and conflicts subject to extensive media coverage actually receive significantly higher levels of international aid because people feel responsible and that responsibility can be denied. Studies also that media freedom dramatically reduces the likelihood of conflict, repression, and human rights violations, because there is someone there who is independently bearing witness. And that makes a big difference.

Absolutely. And that's fascinating about the drone killings. I hadn't thought about that. Are there any numbers on how many journalists have been killed by drone?

There are, but again, the numbers pale in comparison to the broad civilian population. It's a very small segment, but this information is available on our website, cpj.org, actually.

Yeah, and the international community pays lip service to protecting journalists. There have been Security Council resolutions. This is enshrined in international law, correct? How How spelled out are the rules of engagement when it comes to journalists?

So I do want to take a moment to say something else about access. As you have seen, perhaps, today in the news, the White House press pool that covers the US president and travels with him here to the UN is in pause because the administration decided to kick three news outlets out of the White House. And this is emblematic of something that's been going on with the Pentagon. The reporters who report from within the Pentagon building, who know the ins and outs of the budget, the allocations, the operations of the arguably most powerful military in the world with the largest global budget in the world have been forced to leave their desks at the Pentagon because they refused to sign restrictive rules and be subjected to them. This is also the administration that has not given very many official press briefings regarding the war in Iran. and has actually hidden information, and thus it has caused leaks and so on. So all this to say, you know, we see the killings and the repression of journalists in the field of conflict, but that's not where it ends. And I think it's really important when the United States sends this kind of signal about the Pentagon reporters, about the White House, a center of global power, frankly, not just American power, then we have to pay attention to that and we have to be alive to it. Now, to your question very quickly, there is broad consensus among member states that journalists must be protected and that their attacks cannot be met with impunity, which is the rule, by the way. Even before the conflict in Gaza, the majority of journalists killed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories were Palestinians who were reporting. And Those investigations never happened. We're talking 20 years ago. My organization published a report before the war called Deadly Pattern, looking at 20 years of journalist killings. by the Israeli military. And the fact of the matter is, none of those things were investigated. So it is our priority to look specifically at targeted killings and ensure that there is no impunity, not just in Gaza, but everywhere in the world. So the civilian status of journalists has been enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 2222, 1738. Both SDG 16 and SDG 5 emphasize the importance of ending violence against women journalists, for example, specifically. This is all reflected in the UN Plan of Action. The infrastructure and the tools are there, but the rules have to matter, and so we have to implement them. And I'm just going to end with a very quick call to action on very specific things that can be done. We want member states to support the establishment of a standing independent international investigative task force focused on violent crimes against journalists. A crime against a journalist has knock-on effects on saving children, on elderly people, on civilians writ large, on the humanitarian sector's ability to operate. on UN workers and so on and so forth. It all has a knock on effect and we think it needs to be seen that way. We would like to see an incorporation of media freedom and journalist safety provisions into ceasefire and peace agreements. Media and communications provisions are routinely part of these. There have been 487 such provisions from 1990 to 2020, including in the Colombian peace process, which is falling apart. But coverage by a pluralistic independent media helps people to be seen, even your adversaries. It helps to humanize those who live with you, even if you have differences. We'd also like to see UN member states work with civil society and others with credible evidence to implement targeted sanctions against those who perpetrate crimes against journalists. There is no reason not to do this. And last but not least, there must be access to conflict zones, starting with Gaza. There is no reason. There is a ceasefire in place. Let the international press in. Palestinian journalists are just trying to survive. and they welcome their international colleagues. Billions of dollars are being spent on the recovery plans that are already in Who's watching over that? There's an accountability element, a public accountability element that needs to take place.

It's a great point, and as a journalist, I certainly support those points, and an investigative international committee sounds great. At the same time, we're seeing an attempt to undermine the International Criminal Court. Are you getting any support for this? Are you talking that up this week?

An issue that affects many, many processes, many groups. And we firmly believe in the international system. We think that when evidence is put forth, it must be looked at. And you do need an international system that is able to do that. You need an international court that is able to function without fear or favor. And the retaliatory nature of those attacks are just breathtaking. Member states are standing up and we're happy to see that.

Mohammed, any final thoughts on, you know, we're talking about children their humanitarian needs. We always think about children in terms of humanitarian, but we're talking about human rights here. Is there something that we gain by having this conversation in the frame of human rights or anything more that you can ask of member states to support those rights?

Yeah, absolutely. So just to add to my colleague's point on access, access affects humanitarian workers as much as journalists. And sometimes we talked at the beginning about the humanitarian funding, but let's talk about the political will and lack of. In Gaza, we and others have supplies just a few kilometers away, and we're not able to get them in. That's not for lack of funding. That is a lack of political will. When we talk about recovery, you cannot start recovery without being able to start to address the immediate needs. We spoke to kids from Gaza just last week. Their hopes is a clean classroom, clean water. So we just need to emphasize that the political will calling for accountability, having member states supporting the accountability mechanisms to ensure that people in need, particularly children who have unique priorities, are not dropped or on the sidelines. And I would like to say that we cannot have or risk to accept a hierarchy of needs when lifesaving becomes a game of choices for which kids and which context you need to support or respond to.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for bringing these important topics to the forefront and sharing the latest developments with us.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the SDG Media Zone. We're live from the UN headquarters here in New York. I'm pleased to pass it to our moderator, Ephraim, to kick off our next conversation.

Thank you so much. Education transforms lives. It provides the skills, credentials, and networks that underpin economic participation, social cohesion, and long-term self-reliance. Expanding access to higher education is one of the most powerful investments that we can make collectively, not only for refugees, but also for the communities and for the countries that host them. Today, millions of refugee children remain out of school, with participation falling sharply after primary education. And we're going to talk about that today. My name is Efrim Kosaifi. I'm the Arab News UN correspondent. And I'm very honored to be joined today by UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Mary McAleer. Did I do that right? who is a Mary is a global advocate for refugee education and founder of Elimisham Kakuma, an organization connecting refugees to education opportunities. And with us also is UNHCR High Commissioner, Barham Saleh, who will be engaging in a timely discussion about how the world must bolster access to education for refugees and achieve SDG 4 for all to reduce dependency and support refugee self-reliance. Mary, I'm going to start with you. What would you say are the barriers for refugees to access education, including high education and employment opportunities, and what must be done to overcome those obstacles?

The barriers to education generally, I think, begin from elementary school. I grew up in Kakuma refugee camp, and I was one of 200 children squeezed in a tiny classroom. My teachers were refugees that taught us in all kinds of accents that came with us at the border. And from the get-go, the dead end was very prevalent, right? We had seven textbooks in a classroom of 200. How are you able to learn as a child of war? From elementary school, you typically are supposed to go to high school. Right. And the barriers continue. It is the lack of movement as refugees to be able to attend scholarships that have been offered to you. Right. So it was almost impossible to leave the camp borders as a high achieving student in Kakuma refugee camp. The barriers continue. Like you get accepted, let's say, to UC Berkeley. Right. As a refugee kid. The first thing is, how do you even get a conventional traveling document to be able to leave the camp to get to that university that has accepted you on full financial, on a full ride scholarship, which is really hard to come by. And the barriers come in when you as the refugee don't even know what processes you need to do to be able to make it to higher education. There's the SATs, there's the, there's the hidden cost of a flight to even be able to make it to university. So from the get go, it's almost impossible for you to ever get out of the barriers. And as a refugee, it's almost impossible for you to get loans to even cover the little hidden cost for you to attend tertiary education. So the biggest thing that could be done is, first of all, recognizing what are those barriers and what are those restraints for refugees. We on the ground already know this hidden costs. We already know the dead end. And in some way, it almost prevent people to want to go to high school. It prevents you from wanting to go to university because what's the point? In the camp, we have refugees that have degrees, right? And they will never be able to get employment. That's another added barrier. So for us to be able to get out of the refugee camp, to access higher education, is recognizing those little barriers that we never think about. And they're enormous, and yet, many a times, we don't sit down to actually look at them.

Wow. I'm going to ask you about more on that a little later. High Commissioner Saleh, what are some of the initiatives that UNHCR is undertaking to support and empower young refugee learners.

Well, before I answer that question, let me reflect on my own personal experience. In 1974, we became refugees in Iranian Kurdistan, 1974. I was 13, 14 years of age. I went to this refugee school in a small township called Ashno, Shnoa, near the border with Iraq at the time. And that was quite empowering and so vital. It basically allowed me not to lose one year of my life when we were refugees. The first week that I assumed my job as High Commissioner for Refugees, I went to Kenya and I went to Kakuma. where you were. I was truly, truly impressed and inspired by these young spirits that I saw attending the Digital Communication Center, learning online, trying to make it. Education is truly transformative and it is genuinely a protection tool because it's not enough to say that we are offering international protection if you don't offer opportunities to people. So education is key. Look at the reality of the world we live in today. Nearly 6 million refugees are unable to go to school. Only one third of refugee adolescents are able to access secondary education. Only 10 to 11% are able to access tertiary education. Every refugee kid that is unable to access education is an opportunity lost, is a contribution lost, not just to himself and his family, but to the societies in which they live in. That's why truly we have to focus on this area because it's part of development, it's also a way of getting people out of dependency. And also these kids, these young people who are in these camps, either becoming prone to human traffickers or radicalization and you name it all the kind of troubles so in every sense of the word it is something that we need to do in UNHCR we have a number of programs that are already going on together in collaboration with other organizations like UNICEF and other agencies education cannot wait are really doing some fantastic program I just come actually last week I was in Mali and in Burkina Faso. In Timbuktu, I inaugurated a school, a primary school that was built, I think, with UNICEF or education for now, I mean, or both. And you know, you see these young kids being taught by refugees, teachers. You can sense the energy, the vibrance, and the commitment. And every family I spoke to, by the way, the only thing that they were saying, please make sure that our school is maintained, goes on, because they care about the future for the kids. But one thing I have to say with that, the classrooms, like any other classroom in terms of size, but each had nearly 100 to 120 kids crammed into this classes. But the energy was amazing. So this is in terms of some of these community settlements that we do. Of course, we do have other programs like the DAFI program, which basically offers scholarships for refugees in the countries that host them. This was originally launched by the German government, and it has been remarkably successful to a point where I believe now the DAFI program needs to be expanded. Since I assumed office, I've been working with our teams and our partners to develop a much more comprehensive education program that will see to a global network of universities, partners, philanthropies, national context by which they would offer scholarships to talented kids. So you will tell people. You study hard, you commit yourself, there is a pathway for you to get the scholarships. And every kid that gets a scholarship is not his life transformed, it's his family, it's potentially a major, major contribution to the society they live in. I just saw a statistics by the way, every dollar invested in refugee education means $20 return for GDP of the host nations. So this is not only just doing the right thing, but it is also a win-win situation for the host nations, for the donors, for the refugees, and for our shared humanity.

Thank you, High Commissioner. Mary, we are here at the High-Level Week. World leaders are converging on New York. What do you think these world leaders can do here at UNGA to bolster access to education and livelihoods?

I think the first thing to do is the barriers that I just mentioned for all these leaders to really acknowledge them. For things to start moving in refugee camps and places where we have people of displacement, it starts with the leaders really recognizing the barriers that that people are having on the ground. There's a lot that can be documented in books, but there's the reality on the ground too. So the first one is, how do you ensure that there are laws that refugees do know right, that gets to protect their education. How can movement of refugees be made as efficient as possible so that when a refugee has been given a scholarship, they can easily fast move to that school and be able to continue with their education? Is there employment opportunities where refugees are also included that they can apply for these jobs? Because at the end of the day, we get to contribute to the country that gets to host us. The other biggest thing to do is streamlining communication. For refugees, most of the time, we don't know what rights belong to us. I don't know how to put it. There's always the imposter syndrome of being the ungrateful refugee. And so even in places where your human rights are there for you, it's almost impossible to ask for them. So that is the first thing, like, can even the top leaders acknowledge that refugees are humans, they need to be included in our education system, they need to, when an application opens, can refugees also be included? We don't have leaders that will come to anger and fight for us. Many a times, like, we are not able to get even the visas to come to places and be in rooms like this one. So for those leaders to also think and consider us in every talking point, how can we be included as much as possible. The reality on the ground is we do know the dead end. We know that nothing is going to change and it's demoralizing and many a times you find young refugees with so much capability not being able to fully become a self-express themselves and fully contribute to a community while that potential could be tapped. So again, urging leaders to really recognize what is in their country and how can they, I don't want to say take advantage, but how can they really open doors for refugees not only to become their full self, but this is going to also help their country, seeing it as an opportunity rather than I need to think about this. To add on that, as they are thinking of how to include us, urgency. For me, that will be 10 years of my life as they continue to think, how are we going to implement this thing that we've put into law? And for refugees, we don't have that luxury of having to wait. Two years, that's I'm already aging out of education. So as much as they're putting laws to be able to engage refugees and employers, it needs to be now. Otherwise, if it's 10 years from now, I am old. I will be old by then, right? I am generation now and I need to be included in anything that is being done for youth today.

Yes, amazing. High Commissioner, you have a vision.

It's a bold vision to reduce the number of refugees by half in protracted displacement, those who are in protracted displacement and who are dependent on humanitarian assistance. Can you tell us please more about that? And how does enhancing refugee access to education support your vision and reduce dependency and support self-reliance?

The numbers of refugees today are painful. Far too many people are forcibly displaced from their homes. Those who cross international borders and legally considered as refugees, number around 14 million, 41 million people as we speak. This is unprecedented in history. Number of internally displaced people are also quite, quite significant, nearly around 75 to 80 million people. And this is happening at a time of diminishing resources. So one has to understand and contrast that reality to understand the kind of challenge we have to deal with. But what is more disconcerting about this reality, two-thirds of the refugee population in the world are stuck in camps for five years and beyond, sometimes a decade, two decades, and even more in the case of Rohingyas, for example, or the case of the West Saharans in Tindouf. This is an unacceptable reality. Being a refugee is meant to be a temporary condition, not a permanent fate. It should be a chapter in one's life, not the whole book. not the whole life. That's why we have decided to launch this ambitious aim, and it is ambitious, reducing people who are in long-term displacement and dependent on humanitarian assistance by half within 10 years. I know this is ambitious. It is beyond the means of UNHCR, but we have to challenge the international system, our partners, development actors, international financial institutions, private sector. donors, host nations to really move beyond that model where people are kept in dependency on humanitarian assistance. We have to show a pathway for inclusion, becoming self-reliant, access to jobs, and of course, with peace, people returning to their homes. Most refugees want to return home, by the way. Now, for example, in Syria, with the change of regime, within the last two to three years, We had nearly 1.9 million internally displaced people went back to their original homes. 1.8 million refugees from neighboring states have gone back to their homes. We need to be there to help them integrate and develop a self-reliant, productive lives emerging from those years of trauma and displacement and so on. In a country like Kenya, they have launched the Shrika Plan. that they are willing to give refugees documentation, access to the legal system, and access to the job market. But we need to be there as international community. Development actors, the World Bank, the IFC, the IMF, the African Development Bank, and others to really, with the private sector, to create the economic dynamics, not just for the refugees, but for the host nation that will allow to absorb the refugees into that situation. In Gambella, I was just telling you, the Ethiopian government is offering land as part of their plan to the refugees to cultivate. So moving out of the state of dependency. So we need to work a case by case, country by country operation to make sure that refugees are not just there waiting for humanitarian assistance. Where education comes in is absolutely central. In Burkina Faso, Just three, four days ago, I met with a group of DAFI scholars. Unbelievably inspiring story. These are young kids who have been displaced, God knows for how many years, with their families. They were given these scholarships by DAFI, the help of the German government, as I said, and other partners, to be fair. One of them studied business studies and now is an entrepreneur. and has a range of products that he is marketing, not just in Burkina Faso, but across the region. One was in her last year of medical school. She was keen on getting specialization in surgery. Another was doing AI and IT. The reason I'm mentioning these for you Refugees are not abstract notions. They are not mere file numbers in UNHCR files on the statistics. These are people with agency, with ambition, and they want to make it happen. Education is absolutely key to be part of this agenda of inclusion and self-reliance and being a contributor instead of being a mere recipient of international aid and a footnote of the statistics books that we publish every now and then about.

Beautiful we have maybe one minute left and both of you are a huge inspiration for people in general and for refugees in particular High Commissioner hardly anyone mentions your name without adding he was a refugee to same for you Mary so if I asked you from this If you were to talk directly to a refugee child or a young woman or a young man about your journey and the most important lesson that you've learned and that brought you here, in less than a minute each, what would you say, please? Please.

I would tell them that they can start creating the solutions themselves, too. I will show them of the organization that you mentioned earlier, Elemis Shakakuma. We started as refugees. I'm like, they're going to catch us moving, you know, universities and world leaders and all of that. We are not going to wait around and wait for the laws to be made. We are going to implement them and we are going to open doors for ourselves. And I hope that the world gets to catch us moving. That's what I'd say.

This year is the 75th anniversary of the Convention on Refugees. This convention has delivered for humanity over the past 75 years and remains as relevant as ever. But I have to acknowledge the scale of the challenge before us is really very, very serious, and we really need to think beyond the conventional humanitarian model. We really need to move to enact the nexus of humanitarian development and peace. Protection matters, but opportunity matters. My message to the refugees, your story, possibly mine, and so many others, by the way. Look at the all, many of the companies and startups around the world. Many of them are led by former refugees or sons or daughters of refugees. The opportunities are out there. Make it. We as the NSCR, we, the community, will do our best to be there to make sure that opportunity becomes a reality for so many amazing, amazing human talent, these young people who deserve better.

UNHCR High Commissioner, Bahram Saleh, UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, Mary Macker, thank you so much and good luck to both of you this week. Thank you so much.

Hello, everybody. I'd like to welcome you to the SDG Media Zone. Those of you who are here in person and those who will be watching online. I'd also like to welcome you or give you a happy International Day of Peace. As you may know, peacekeeping is one of the flagship enterprises of the United Nations. Since 1948, more than 2 million men and women have served in over 70 missions around the world. Today, we have 11 missions with more than 50,000 men and women. And our peacekeeping missions, maybe many people know that we have military and police, but we also have a large civilian component. And today, we are here to celebrate the great work that women do in all of those roles. So first, I'd like to introduce Yoshita Singh, who is the Press Trust of India Bureau Chief here at the United Nations. Yoshita not only covers the work of the UN here in New York, but also our peacekeepers, India's role in peacekeeping, and Indian women's role in peacekeeping for more than a decade here. So over to you, Yoshita.

Thank you, Doug. Hello and good afternoon to everyone watching, everyone here in the room. As Doug mentioned, I'm Yoshita Singh and I work with Press Trust of India. I warmly welcome everyone today to today's timely discussion on women in peacekeeping. I'm very pleased that we are having this discussion today on the International Day of Peace, which is being commemorated this year under the theme of invest in peace for everyone, everywhere, every day. And of course, we know how relevant and significant women, peace and security is in this landscape. As Doug mentioned, today more than 50,000 military, police, and civilian peacekeepers are deployed across 11 peacekeeping operations around the world. Out of the 45,000 uniformed peacekeepers serving now, nearly 10% are women. There are also 6,500 peacekeepers who serve in civilian capacities, human rights experts, judicial officers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, logistics providers, and much more, and many of them are women. So for the discussion today, I'm delighted to be joined by three women peacekeepers who now serve in the UN headquarters and have years of on-the-ground experience of having previously been deployed in UN or regional peacekeeping operations. Colonel Giselle Sosa from the UN Department of Peace Operations Police Division, Lieutenant Colonel Glory Athumani Mkwizu from the UN Department of Peace Operations, Office of Military Affairs, and McCall Carter, a judicial affairs officer with the Justice and Correction Service of the newly established Peacebuilding and Peace Support Office. Welcome to all of you to this discussion. And before we begin our discussion today, we would like to hear a little bit more from our distinguished panelists about their work and experience. So, ladies, if you can briefly please tell us about your work and your experience before we just begin this discussion today.

Thank you. As I was introduced, Lieutenant Colonel Gloria Thumani Mukwizu, working at the Department of Peace Operations of Somali Affairs as a special military assistant to the Chief of Staff. I have worked in peacekeeping training and peacekeeping operation at the SADC as a civil and military cooperation officer. In training, I managed to prepare troops which has been deployed from different countries and especially on the women peace and security agenda in preparation for women, empowering them, equip them with skill, knowledge, and understanding of their key role in peacekeeping mission. And also in the mission, I've managed to support humanitarian relief, access to humanitarian agents in delivering of relief, food and shelter to the internally displaced personnel in Mozambique, with which we managed to support them and make sure that they are safe and secure. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hello. I'm from Uruguay. So having 29 years of experience, specifically in the national service and in the international service, working for the UN in peacekeeping operations, I think that my love and what I like really for the different cultures, it pushed me to be part of this beautiful world that is United Nations, specifically working for the police. So my international experience together with my national experience and the right academic preparation that I had helped me for today being the chief of mission management and support section for the police division. And can I say that, of course, our activities in the field really are important for the future of the world, the anti-war, and are not only part of the police service. If not, I think that are part of a whole of all the communities that we serve and are part of all the countries that they are supporting our service. So thank you.

Thank you. As you mentioned, my name is McCall Carter and I'm a judicial affairs officer. Before coming to UN headquarters, I was one of the 6,500 civilian peacekeepers. I worked for four and a half years in South Sudan and one and a half years in Liberia before that. These two deployments or two assignments were some of the most professionally rewarding experiences of my career, and in no small part due to the fact that I got to work alongside amazing women like my two co-panelists.

Thank you so much for that and for setting the stage for our discussion now. I would like to begin with Lieutenant Colonel Mukwazu. Protection of civilians is a key element of UN peacekeeping. What specific roles do women military peacekeepers play in achieving this goal, your thoughts?

Thank you. Military female peacekeepers play a unique and crucial role in peacekeeping, especially in the protection of civilians. First and foremost, through our female engagement team, we identify female who has got security challenges, be able to access them to the support they required. Also in relation to the sexual exploitation in the conflict, we are able to help them. They are easily comfortable to access the female, especially those security issues, with which through that we acquire information, identify every kind of support they want. Also, our presence in the peacekeeping mission bridge the gap in the cultural and social barriers. We are able now to make even the host nation female and girls to know that they themselves, they can participate in peace process by seeing us. Also, another key role we play when we are performing the duties like patrols also in the establishment of road we also be able to search our female female civilians with that one they are comfortable and we cannot escalate issue to do with cultural barriers so our presence are very crucial because most of the victim of conflict are women and children and girls with which now they are more comfortable when they see us able to access us tell the whatever security concern they feel mostly important our presence also we are able to know identify what kind of economic difficulty they're facing due to the conflict. Through that, we are able to train them in the small business, equip them with skills, and sometimes also we refer them to international organization like labor organization, which offer them vocational training like baking, small business. And also within our mission, we are able also to support, find some grants, and able to secure small business for them. So our presence is very comfortable in their helping them to settle again after the conflict. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. And of course, that covers a lot of issues that you help the women and communities on the ground. Colonel Sosa, I wanted to come to you now. In your experience, how do you see women peacekeepers carrying out their task as compared to their male peacekeepers? How similar or different are the ways in which female peacekeepers carry out their duties vis-a-vis the male counterparts?

Thank you. At the outset, I wish to underline that in the United Nations Police, we don't have roles that are specifically for men and women. Really, all of us, women from the police services or the men also, we have the same training and we achieve the same tools in the police academy. We graduated from the same police academies and also we experience the same strict and hard tasks. So this gave us the same tools to be deployed in United Nations missions. In this context, I have to say that we need to talk about the difference when we are deployed in the field. Really, the difference, it is not what we do, if not, is how we do our policing activities. Women, when we are deployed in policing activities, they do the same tasks as men. So we can do the same activities like community policing, like in operations, like in command or in capacity building and development. But the difference, it is in how the community trust us. Women is very important in the field. The visibility of police women, of course, that has a different perspective on communities. Because, for example, when I was part of the gender mobile team in Haiti, I had the opportunity to work directly with the community and with the women. And one success that we had, it was individualizing women from the local context as focal points. So we did with them sensitizations. exposing our job and of course trying to explain them their rights and trying to explain them how they can access to justice system. In that kind of context, the access of the justice system really is not so easy. So we build with them very easy access and this I think that was possible thus the confidence that women, local women had with us and they took with the police women that we were deployed there. So I think that we cannot say that we work differently, we work all in the same way, but of course that women, we put that specific condiment in the things when we work.

Thank you. Very well said. And I will come back to the impact that women peacekeepers have on the local communities. But Ms. McCarter, your question to you-- sorry, Ms. McCarter, a question to you is, you've served as a judicial and legal expert in UN peacekeeping operations in South Sudan and Liberia, as you mentioned. Can you talk about the kind of work you did there to keep and build peace? Thank you.

Certainly. Thank you. In Liberia, I worked as a legal officer and what that meant was that I provided advice to the mission leadership to make sure that the peacekeeping mission itself could operate in compliance with national and international law. In South Sudan, I worked as a rule of law officer. which was much more outward facing. And in that context, I supported national counterparts to build up the legal system of South Sudan. One way we did this was through mobile courts. These mobile courts deployed police, prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys to remote places often affected by conflict that didn't have a permanent judicial presence. And Sometimes they would set up in a building, but if there wasn't a building available, they would set up under a tree in the shade. And there they would hear cases that if they hadn't been resolved, would lead to further violence. The hearings were open to the public so everyone could see justice being done, which was very important. And in some of these cases, we would have hundreds of people showing up to the opening day of the mobile court. And we're regularly hearing that by enabling the local population to seek justice, we were helping to break cycles of violence.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing your insights. I want to come back to Lieutenant Colonel Makwazu. In your experience, how do local communities react to engaging with women peacekeepers, as Colonel Soysa had also mentioned, but given that there are such diverse challenges in the areas and regions where peacekeeping operations are based?

Thank you. Our presence in the mission area, The community are very positively engaged with us. They are comfortable to share with us. Our presence, they know that we can understand their needs because, as I said before, most of the victims are women and children. And through that, we are able now to give us information required to assist and identify the security concern, identify the kind of support required. They feel more comfortable, they feel more free to talk to us, and they see women as easy communicator, understanding them, and less threatening in relation to the conflict situation. Because most of them, they see that they know us, they understand our situation. So they are very comfortable and positively, that's why we are really encouraging the presence of female in peacekeeping operation. Thank you.

Thank you. Colonel Sosa, similarly to you, can you talk about how women peacekeepers serve as role models, not just to the women and girls where you're deployed, but also to the young men and women, young men and boys who see women peacekeepers taking the charge, leading from the front?

Well, women are part of the society, but not only that. I think that women, they build societies. Women help children to grow up. Women help also young communities to teach them how to behave in the community and how to behave in the societies. for the future, for the men or women in a good way to say and to behave in our world. So I think that really it is not a matter exclusively for women because all of us, we are part of the society. But talking specifically for what we did with them in the field, I think that I had the opportunity to work directly and deeply in the internal displays, person cams, also in Haiti. And that show gave us the opportunity to work together with the National Police Women's from Haiti. and work closely with them, helping them to know how to manage or how to solve critical situations, and also helping them in how to command men. That in some countries it is not so easy, command men when you are women. But we have the opportunity to work on that. And this help the entire community, I think, and teach also men and boys to understand that really women can be leaders equally as men. So in this context, I think that it's very important the presence of police women in those fields. And of course, that the visibility of women in the context is one thing, one important tool that we can give to our missions when we are deployed.

Thank you so much for sharing that. Mr. Carter, I want to come to you. We also have to look at the clock. Can you elaborate for our audience what other roles and responsibilities do women civilian peacekeepers undertake?

Certainly. They undertake much of the same roles that men civilian peacekeepers undertake. This can include investigating, monitoring, documenting human rights violations, making sure that the public understands the work of the mission as a public information officer, supporting communities to resolve conflict, helping to build the capacity of national election systems. And beyond those substantive aspects, they also in the administration, including logistics officers, medical services, etc. So I think, as I do want to mention though, and reiterate as my colleagues have, about the importance of the visibility and the visible presence of women peacekeepers. And even as civilians, this is just as powerful and perhaps more powerful than the specific work that they do. In recent mobile court deployments, my my colleagues have been told repeatedly by local women that seeing the female peacekeepers and the national justice personnel working alongside the men really helped make them believe that they had the ability to pursue the professional roles and leadership positions and independent futures themselves.

Thank you. Thank you so much. And I think it's time to wrap up, but I want to ask this question to all of you all before we end the session that we know there's a lot of ground still to cover. There has to be more women in peacekeeping operations. So what is your message to women around the world who are watching this? Why should they join or serve in UN peacekeeping operations? Quickly from all of you all.

Well, what I would say that women should not be taken as a beneficiary of peace, but rather are partners in peace process and peacebuilding. So they should work hand in hand with men to make sure that the mandate and peacebuilding is taken into consideration.

Specifically for those police women that they want to join United Nations Police Service, that if they want to have a career with leadership and using that leadership for building global stability, and of course, to inspire next generations, just apply. United Nations Police Service, I think that needs your expertise in the field. And having this visibility of women police officers is really important, and we have many proofs of that.

Thank you. Peace cannot come from military or police force alone, and the work that civilian peacekeepers and women civilian peacekeepers do is really crucial to ending conflict and helping countries transition from conflict to peace.

Thank you so much. I think we have to wrap up the session now. We can always go on. There's so much to cover and talk about, but thank you for your time. Thank you for your service. And I hope the session, everybody takes away that how important women peacekeepers are in maintaining peace around the world. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, all right, SDG Media Zone. We are ready for our next conversation. It's been a great day so far. And it's my pleasure to introduce the next session, which is Technology Acceleration, a New Era of UN System Impact. And everyone's had a chance to look at that great installation over there. And thanks to Microsoft for that. And we're going to hear quite a bit about that and more in this session. And it's my pleasure now to announce the moderator for this session, Julians Mboko, who is the business editor of the Nation Media Group. Over to you, Julians.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much. That sounds more like it. Are we excited to be here? Yeah, so we want to talk about tech and the interventions of the United Nations and all the developments in the recent past. And I'm pleased to have on set a distinguished panel. Guy Ryder is the Undersecretary General for Policy Executive Office of the Secretary General. We have Doreen Bogdan, who is a Secretary General, International Telecommunications Union. Welcome on set. And finally, Justin, President, Microsoft Elevate. Glad to have you, lady and gentlemen. To help us set the scene, let me just go straight to Guy Ryder, right here next to me. So the UN has undergone a large-scale reform over the course of the last year. What opportunity do you see in accelerating technology?

Yeah, thanks, Julian. One thing that we've learned, if we needed to learn it, is that technology is absolutely fundamental to any process of reform in the UN, and that plays out in several different ways. Firstly, We've had to learn and we are learning to manage our own use of technology better, how we procure technology, how we manage it, how we use it, and then we have to be much more intentional about the services that we use technology to provide to our member states and to other partners. And we've seen a number of really important developments in that regard from work that we've done on mandate registries, helping our member states find their way around this place. They find it difficult. 40,000 mandates, where are they? What are they? Now we've helped them to find that out. if they didn't know already. We're doing work on transcription of meetings. We're doing better handling of our data. So we've got to do that. And I think the last point, I don't want it to be left out of this discussion. Technology is becoming an object of multilateral discussions. You'll hear a lot about the management of technologies this week. And I think all of this creates a dynamic which can actually support different parts of what we're trying to do. But I would say in the last 18 months, technology has come center stage in the UN in several ways, and it's actually creating momentum for change and improvement in a way which can only serve our cause better in the future.

And absolutely, technology is becoming center when it comes to conversations at a multilateral level. Let me cross over to Doreen, and you call it the UN80 technology work package. What is the key opportunity when UN system entities develop technology collectively rather than in silos, as was the case?

Well, thank you so much and great to be here. I think just to pick up on what Guy was saying, this is really an exciting moment for all things tech, especially here at UNGA this week, but also for the UN system. And as part of this UN80 reform process, member states want to of trust, right? And I think the whole trust piece is actually very relevant to everything we're doing in technology. What we have seen through this work package is that we can work together and we can actually deliver more for the people that count. Tech is a very practical place to prove it. And I think what we have seen throughout our work package experience is that we actually don't lack digital capacity. We have 9,000 IT people across the UN system. So we don't lack that capacity, but we are kind of spending and using our digital capacities in fragmented ways. What we saw again in this work package is that we spend about 2.5 billion every year doing a survey across the systems, we saw that less than 10% were actually using shared services. And the opportunities that we have seen throughout this process is that we can work together. We can also advance innovation and accelerate things. We're active on the AI and AI translation and conference management piece. We're also active on the ID piece. We have three use cases that are ongoing. We have three more use cases in the pipeline. But I think it's an exciting moment where across the system, we're coming together to understand how we can share, how we can procure, and how we can make sure that we actually put in place the digital building blocks and then use them together as opposed to each agency creating their own building block each time.

Sure we're all curious about the use cases, but story for another day. Let me, before I come to Justin, I'm sure you also have some comments on the UN80 tech work package, very briefly.

Yeah, it's been a real central part of UN80 and Doreen's been in the lead of it. You know, the way I see it is there is a pure efficiencies improvements aspect to the technology package. Doreen's giving you the figure, we spend, I think 2.5 billion is a conservative estimate and going up. across the system. Now, here's the problem, Julian. I mean, that might be a sensible number, but people in different parts of the system are spending money doing exactly the same thing in their silos. If we did it collectively, if we procure collectively, if we manage technology collectively, this is going to be extraordinarily important in pure efficiency terms. That's one piece. But I think even more important than that is the fact that we are learning to harness technology to do our jobs better, to be more impactful, and to bring the system together and to connect it as well. So there are different threads to this technology transformation. And what I've seen, and it's been 18 months, and don't think I'm a technology specialist, I'd love you to think that, people are actually moving from saying Technology could actually not be good for me in the system to technology, I need this. This is going to help me get the job done. And we talk about cultural change in reform. You can't legislate cultural change in reform. It's when people see the opportunities and somehow get over their reticence and their nervousness that cultural change does happen.

He says he's not a tech specialist, but certainly, Justin, you are one. Speak to us about the role of partnerships in delivering all that we are covering now.

Well, I think it's really important for the private sector to understand what's really at stake here. There are 250 million people, at least, Guy, that need humanitarian assistance around the world. The UN is facing a funding shortfall like they haven't seen at least in a decade. And so the question becomes, how many beneficiary ID systems can you afford? How many translation systems do you want to build? How many supply chain systems do you want to build? And what the TAP provides for one of the, it's an incredible capability, is the ability to collaborate cross agency to figure out how we build one capability one time that's used in multiple ways. But the private sector, frankly, has to organize ourselves better. And that's why, as part of the UN80 pledge, getting companies like Microsoft, like NTT, like EY, who have all stepped up and said, hey, we want to combine our resources. We want to provide some services in kind to the TAP so that we can advance progress in a more predictable, effective fashion, I think, is a key component of that equation. And since we started working together, we are getting translation services online and consolidated. We are getting an identity system and the bones of that built. We are looking at common data systems across the UN. That should be able to create a pretty massive level of efficiency and make that $250 million go a heck of a lot further.

And So, Irene, you're doing some work with UNDP and developed a pilot solution for expertise on demand as well as a prototype for a toolbox to share AI solutions in translation and conferencing space. Let's take a look, first of all, at what it looks like and the impact it's having, and then we shall come back to this. So, guys, take a look at the screen. Wonderful, some good work there. Speak to us about what we've just seen and the impact it's having.

Well, it's Really exciting. And this has been something, as you said, ITU and UNDP have had the pleasure of co-leading this work package. It actually stems from recommendations of the specialized agency group that existed before, with the premise that there's lots of expertise, there's lots of knowledge across the system, and we need to leverage what we have. So through this process, which has been kind of an iterative process, we have identified, as you saw in the video, about 4,000 different kinds of expertise that exist across the system. Guy mentioned 40,000 mandates. So we do have 4,000 kinds of expertise across the system. We surveyed that across 1,000 teams. We now have, I think, upping more than 30 organizations that are part of this. And what this means is that if you're leading a country team and you need a certain kind of expertise, you go to that platform And there it is. So it simplifies the process and it actually leverages the breadth and depth of knowledge that the UN system actually possesses. So it's really exciting. We hope it It reduces cost, and we hope that countries can then get better services. We have actually started. We have, I think, 14 pilots that are running. We had funding from the Joint SDG Fund as well. And I think also another important lesson is that we view this as an iterative process. So we didn't wait to say, "Okay, it's perfect, now we start." We've already started, and we're excited to continue to perfect the model and then scale it.

The data involved here must be of a colossal scale. How do we go around putting, stitching all this together and the impact it's having?

Yeah, I just want to build on what Dorian has just said. This expertise on demand mechanism is a potential game changer. It truly is because as Dorian has just said, if you're in country, the tendency in the UN now is to be, to keep fairly large standing teams in a given country. because that is the pool of expertise available to meet the expectations of a government. Now we can have a smaller standing capacity in country, and often they are frankly underoccupied because they do not have the resources. You do not have to have people like a standing army in country if you can use the platform and pick up expertise from across the whole system. It is just a much better way of doing our work, and it is great. The other thing is data. You've mentioned data in particular. There's a lot of information that's had to go into creating this expertise on demand platform. The other thing we've done is create a data commons. Previously, if you wanted to have access to the wealth of data and information that exists in the system, and we're a very data and information rich system, you'd have to go to 26 individual websites, each entity presented its data and information separately. As of last week, we have a data commons bringing together the data and statistics of 26 entities. It's a searchable platform. the first 24 hours we got 120,000 uh hits on that platform and 1.1 million specific requests for data and information so we're actually making big progress and there's more to be done one of the uh use cases um of the technology accelerator platform we will be for beneficiary ID, digital beneficiary IDs for humanitarian, receivers of humanitarian aid. Just imagine if you're in the deep field in a tough situation. if you're able to be able to identify each potential recipient family and individual without having to go back and start all over again from zero, there is a central digital repository of information. This is going to facilitate the provision of assistance where it needs to get to, and it's also going to also prevent situations where People have to be asked again and again the same basic information by UN colleagues, all in a good cause, but I suspect it could be dispensed with.

Thank you. Justin, um, how can strategic partnerships accelerate innovation while…

Ensuring a UN system retains ownership and leadership of solutions.

I think the last point is the first point for me, which is all of these projects need to be led, owned, guided, and implemented by the UN. The expertise on demand system that allows a child abuse investigator in Sudan to connect with another one in Ethiopia and compare notes within UNICEF is only something that the UN is equipped to drive. Only the UN is equipped to define what the standard beneficiary ID system should be for refugees and humanitarian alike. What the private sector can do is bring our capacity in. What is encouraging me with the TAP is the rate at which we're able to build solutions. What was taking months, sometimes years, we can now get done in weeks. A recent project we did with OCHA to build a grant management system and an improved reporting capability took three weeks and helped unlock a billion dollars or more for to deploy for humanitarian assistance. So I'm encouraged by that. I think we've got a good start. We've got a lot more work to do collectively, but we're moving.

Friends, our time is out, so let me get to the closing thoughts. And looking ahead, what do you see as the next stage, the next frontier for doing this and pushing the impact even further, given the humanitarian needs we have across the globe? Let me start at the center here, then come in and close with Justin.

Well, I think the next step is definitely about scaling we need to continue to perfect our models and and move move forward and I think also to Justin's point to have strong Partnerships within the UN system but also with uh with the private sector I think that's key um but also when it comes to TAP specifically we do have these three next use cases that we're quite excited about um one case is linked to cyber security that's big one, obviously, for the world, but of course, for the UN system. And we've seen even in the case of UNICC, we had five clients, now we have 40. And by coming together, the cost is being reduced, but the ability to be more cyber ready is also enhanced. The other thing that we're looking at, and this is also linked to Guy's point about data commons, is this predictive analysis capability. So using technology, using the data, and I think it helps us to be better prepared should emergency situations and crises be coming.

Guy, please.

I agree with Doreen. The first two words that I would come up with are scaling. We've started a lot of things at a pilot level, this has to become the norm, the default. Partnerships, I think we've come a long way with our partnerships. You have to learn about these partnerships. You have to learn how you work, how we work, and I think we're getting better at that. And I think one good thing about these partnerships, it's actually bringing about a greater openness on our side of the system. People are much more ready, and I hope our member states are much more ready as well to understand and to invest in these types of partnerships. We'll have a new Secretary General in a few weeks, a few months. I think it's really important that that person continues to push on the, I think, foundational work that we've done so far.

Beautiful.

Yeah, I think Dorian and Guy have built the right strategy. Now it's about executing on that strategy. If we could come back a year from now and have a common beneficiary system, identity system, a data commons that would revolutionize the way humanitarian aid is looked at, detected, and distributed, we could make a huge, huge impact together. So it's about executing on what we have, and for our part, we're going to try to bring more private sector partners to the table to help.

Thank you very much. Let's appreciate the panel, please. And I'll ask you to rise for a quick photo opportunity here.

All right, good afternoon again. Welcome, everyone, back to the SDG Media Zone, broadcasting here live from the 81st session of the UN General Assembly. Again, my name is Robert Skinner, the Deputy Director and Chief of Partnerships and Global Engagement in the Department of Global Communications. I said earlier, we do some fun stuff and some cool stuff, entertainment stuff, alongside these amazing conversations we are having. And we have something on a very important subject now, but it's also a pretty cool video. So we are thrilled to premiere a special transmission from Terrestrials United, an independent creative initiative supporting UN human rights and the global movement against hate, both online and offline. For this campaign, visual genius and Gorillaz co-creator Jamie Hewlett, I trust everyone knows who Gorillaz is, they're performing at Madison Square Garden next week. But the co-creator, Jamie Hewlett, has created exclusive original artwork, transforming wearable art into a powerful global movement. His message, Terrestrials United, one planet, one human team, whatever divides us on Earth, we all look up to the same stars. So please direct your attention to the screen for this amazing product. Thank you. It's great for us at the United Nations to have creators like Jamie Hulett as part of our network of friends and family. And you can all get a t-shirt just like our High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk was wearing in that video. And speaking of which, Volker Turk will be on stage here later in the week, so keep tuning in for that. And we will be showing this video on and off throughout the course of the week when we have space like this for it, but it really is a great, great product and a great partnership we have there. So to get more involved, follow @UNHumanRights and @TerrestrialsUnited online for more information on that. And just a reminder, we have a bit of a networking break right now, so you all have an opportunity to chat, catch up. maybe spend some time outside since the rain has held off and it feels great out there. 00 with another very important conversation, the Strait of Hormuz, navigating disruption through multilateral cooperation. Obviously an important topic for us all. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome back to the final conversation of the first day of the SDG Media Zone at the 81st UN General Assembly. I think this is a topic upcoming that all of us are very interested in as we watch the news of the world these days. The conversation is on the Strait of Hormuz, navigating disruption through multilateral cooperation, and we've all been feeling that disruption in one way or another. I'd like to now throw the conversation over to our moderator, Mr. Hashem Ahebbah, the Washington, D.C. bureau chief from Al Jazeera. Hashem, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Sorry for being late. I was trying to do another interview wearing my first hat as a journalist. So basically today we're going to talk about the impact of the crisis, which has been going on for quite some time and its impact on global trade, access to commodities and also the global anxiety over access to fertilizers, fluctuating energy prices and the and the way ahead. And I'm glad to have Mr. Jorge Moniera da Silva, who is the Under-Secretary-General and UNOPS Executive Director, Coordinator of the UN Task Force on the Strait of Hormuz, and Mr. Arsenio Dominguez, Secretary-General of the International Maritime Organization. Mr. Jorge, could you give us a sense of the situation over there at the Strait, and what is it that we should exactly try to do to try to mitigate the impact of the crisis?

Well, The two of us, myself, Arsenio, but also John Denton from the International Chamber of Commerce, and Anna Kuo from UNCTAD, we've been working together on this task force. And basically what we have been trying is find a time-bound, limited, and exceptional solution that wouldn't put at stake freedom of navigation, which is the topic that Arsenio ensures that always happens. But while we wait for everything to be fixed, we need a solution that would be important for developing countries, particularly to prevent a massive humanitarian crisis. Speaking numbers, which will be very easy to understand, one third of all seaborne fertilizers are coming out of the Persian Gulf, 40% of crude. High dependence of those fertilizers in the most vulnerable countries, such as Sudan, Somalia, Mozambique, Sri Lanka. When this crisis started, we thought at the beginning that impact would be in those countries that were highly dependent from those fertilizers coming from the Gulf. But suddenly there was a global disruption of the fertilizer. So today we are dealing with a global shock. And if we bring the Black Sea and the Red Sea disruption, you clearly see that we are dealing with an emergency. That's why the Secretary-General asked us to put in place a mechanism that would build trust and confidence, something that would allow the fertilizers to flow, but never putting at stake the freedom of navigation. So I insist on the motto is exceptional, time-limited, and obviously to prevent the massive humanitarian crisis.

Arsenio, at the International Maritime Organization, you have on one hand freedom of navigation, but there is this whole political issue about jurisdiction over the Strait of Hormuz. How are you trying to navigate this very complex landscape to ensure that there is a free movement of goods through the Strait?

I just want to start by highlighting something because the impact of this crisis, it's not only on the global economy and the food security. And it is important that everybody also recognizes the innocent seafarers that, of course, are putting their life at risk at no fault in order to make sure that over 80% of global trade continues to sail around the world for the benefit of everybody that is probably watching this at home. And we still have 6,000 seafarers that have been trapped in the Persian Gulf since the beginning of the conflict that have not been able to actually leave the region. Now, for us, the freedom of navigation is not questionable. That was reiterated by the International Maritime Organization Council decision last July, a resolution that highlighted that there should not be the trade or trade in on international straits for international navigation should not be impeded, challenged, restricted, etc. Not a single member state of IMO objected to that resolution. The reality is that we need to address the root causes. We have the rules in place. The traffic separation scheme was established by IMO since 1966 and ever since was operating fine. If we go back just the day before the conflict, 135 vessels were transiting the Strait of Hormuz in and out, operated jointly by the Islamic Republic of Iran and Oman. And we can go back to that. And if there is any assistance and is the reason why the UN is being proactive in putting in place mechanisms that can bring the confidence, the trust, and the security for trade, we're ready to do all that. What we need is for countries to address the root causes, to bring the conflict to an end, and then for us to start activating mechanisms that exist already for several decades and the mechanisms that we are developing that would allow to bring back that trust and confidence for trade to resume.

Jorge, you spoke about the countries affected, the poor countries which rely on fertilizers, but at the same time you have the shipping of energy across the Strait. There is no indication that we are likely going to see a political way out of this crisis anytime soon. So are you contemplating any contingency plans for the upcoming months if this drives on?

Well, if we look into the trends, indeed, we have a significant increase of the prices on the Brent, 40% since the beginning of the war, 20% more or less on urea sulfur and ammonia and almost 200% increase on phosphate. So clearly there is a massive increase of the price of fertilizers. Then the farmers, they have also the impact of the energy and the transportation. So clearly what the World Food Program is telling us is very likely, unfortunately, if this is not fixed, we'll have 45 million people forced into acute food insecurity. So it's written on the wall. If we don't fix this, it's written on the wall, we'll be dealing with a massive humanitarian crisis. That's why when you talk about contingency plans, we have a plan and it's absolutely feasible. We just need a political will. And let me bring a bit of optimism to the conversation. In the last seven months, we have been talking with member states. There is a growing, overwhelming support from member states about our mechanism. It's a mechanism that is about registration, deconfliction, monitoring, verification, tracking, reporting. This is the kind of thing that we know how to do it. So from a technical point of view, this is not rocket science. It's possible to put in place. There is a growing support in this House from member states about this, but we still miss the key protagonists to agree. So the point that we have been making to both Iran and the US is, look, we know that you are discussing the big picture. You are trying to find a deal about everything. But in the meantime, because diplomacy and the planting season don't have the same cycles, let's find a short-term, time-bound, limited solution to let the fertilizers go. And if we let the fertilizers flow, while we wait until we get the big solution, maybe the trust will rise and maybe then we can bring energy and maybe other commodities. But at the end, what Arsenio said is the most important is what we really need is to go back to freedom of navigation. But in the meantime, let's at least have this mechanism in place. So when you ask me about the contingency plan, there is no better plan than this one.

Arshin, in the case of a failure of a deal between the Omanis and the Iranians about the shipping lanes, what would be the most practical option ahead?

We're working on multimodal transportation. That's something that has increased some trade in the region. But of course, it doesn't match the percentages that we actually of the cargo, the volume of cargo that we transfer by ships. Then you have to add the additional conflicts that are taking place. And with the closure and the limitations now on the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, that also creates an additional burden for us to even use multimodal transportation. Now, the cooperation between Oman and Iran is something embedded not only on the IMO conventions, but international customary law on how the strait could be managed. And this is where we have also used the experience of other mechanisms in accordance with international law, like the Strait of Malacca in Singapore, that provide us trust and confidence and engagement through others. The reality is that none of these mechanisms will actually be able to have an effect. until there are guarantees that ships and innocent seafarers are not going to be targeted. And that's the main bottom line of why the root causes are so required. Even in the conversations, and I've been part of negotiations with both Oman and Iran, everything that we're working on is for when we have those safe guarantees. And that's what is actually holding us back. That's why it is important that the level of the United Nations General Assembly, those topics are addressed. 'Cause we can find the ways to be resilient in shipping, find new ways of operating. But the reality is that all those cargoes, all those goods that are required from the fertilizers, and it's a third of the global fertilizers. But you add to that, we're also talking about the 20% of global oil, 19% of LNG, natural liquefied gas. 9% of automobiles and 12% of container freight comes from that region. We cannot replace that. And we will move and operate in other regions until everybody that is being affected, which is the whole world, actually plays their part, makes sure that it is safe for seafarers and for shipping to operate. And we as the UN, not only IMO, but the rest of the UN, we're ready with several mechanisms in order to go in, bring back the trust, the confidence, but what we need It's basically the negotiations at the table on bringing this conflict to a close.

So we're talking about the two key parties, the United States of America and Iran, but it's also a lifeline for the GCC countries. If the crisis continues, basically their economies are going to be crippled. Are you in touch with them? Are you listening to their own concerns? What are they basically saying about it?

We are meeting everyone, and particularly Iran, US, and the GCC countries, probably Every week I've been in contact with these countries and obviously it's important to understand that the mechanism that we are designing can't be perceived as a replacement of freedom of navigation and this point is being made very

vocally by GCC countries. They don't want any solution that could be perceived as a limited approach to freedom of navigation. But that's exactly why our mechanism is being developed in a way that is time bound, limited and exceptional. Look, let me give you two examples. In Gaza, UNOPS is managing the 2720 mechanism in the middle of the war. So the trucks that are entering Gaza and the aid that is distributed inside Gaza is being done with our platform for the approvals of aid and for the monitoring and verification of aid. All vessels that go from Djibouti to Yemen in the last decade, more than 3,000 vessels, have been inspected, monitored, and verified by us. So in the middle of the conflict, it's still possible to find solutions that allow the transit for commercial and humanitarian purposes. And that's exactly what we are trying in this case is while we wait for the reestablishment of the freedom of navigation, that is the most important, at least let some commodities flow to prevent a humanitarian crisis. And that's why the engagement with GCC countries has been so important, so that they have the guarantees from our side that the mechanism is not a replacement of freedom of navigation, it's a way to address a short term emergency, but always keep in mind that what we want is freedom of navigation.

From the talks you're having with the Americans and with the Iranians about the situation, what would it take both parties to break the impasse? What are their particular concerns on the modalities of any agreement? Anything that you can share with us?

It's important to highlight that my remit stops when it comes to anything beyond shipping. and I'm talking about commercial shipping. There are some other parts of this crisis, the root causes, particularly when we looked into the nuclear aspects as well as some assets between the two countries that have to be negotiated that are beyond us. And it is very clear that, not for the first time, unfortunately, shipping is being used as leverage and as collateral in this situation. A double blockade doesn't help the situation. coming back to the table to actually address the root causes would allow us to immediately just go back to the way that we were working before. Because once we can reiterate that it is safe for ships and crews to actually transit, mechanisms can be put in place, the countries will respect freedom of navigation, and at the same time, which is what the GCC countries are asking us to do, which is they want everything to go back to the status quo as it was before. We said that's not a problem. Anything that the UN will do, it's always in line with the international law. What we want is for countries to go onto the table. Right now, we're working on practical mechanisms and operational mechanisms. We can do that without going into all the specific details. And that's where the countries continue to sit on the table, and that's where we take part. but it's the high political conversations, the high political discussions that are beyond the remit of the international maritime organizations, but we're expecting to resume, come back onto the table and take the necessary steps for them to move in.

Jorge, I can see that you've been talking about some optimism about a potential way out, but as you can see on the ground, this is further expanding to different places, the Houthis taking over coastal areas on Bab al-Mandab, they raising questions about that strategic area, the Red Sea and all that stuff. What would be the worst case scenario if the war continues or if the crisis continues at the Strait of Hormuz?

As my colleague Arsenio already mentioned, the fact that vessels are being targeted, infrastructure is being targeted, blockades are being used as a weapon is obviously unprecedented. We are seeing unprecedented context and that's why the diplomacy must prevail and that's why the UN is so important. When I mention my optimism is about the technical dimension. So imagine that we'll be facing technical difficulties that design a mechanism like this would be extremely difficult would cost immensely. That's not the case. So my optimism is coming from the fact that UN can do it. I've been mentioning this in other occasions. My team at UNOPS, the monitors, can be put on the ground in seven to 10 days. We have the platform already designed to the approval of the vessel. So the point is just political and that's why I've been mentioning publicly, and that's why I can, I've been mentioning this to the parties in the conflict and also saying this publicly so I can mention this in this occasion as well. I think that if the two parties in the conflict and the parties in the region agree in letting the fertilizers flow, and we are talking probably about five to seven vessels a day, it's just five to seven vessels a day, this could be the trigger to raise trust and confidence and maybe after this first step, other good steps could be taken in the negotiation for the other topics. So I see this mechanism as a stepping stone because trust takes time to be restored. And I think that letting five or seven vessels go safely every day could be the trigger to higher trust in the negotiations for the most difficult topics, which is not this one.

Arseny, could we figure out a way where the flow of fertilizers, commodities, and oil and gas could continue while this crisis is still there.

It's very difficult for me to say that. And that's why my message has been very clear and very, and I will continue to reiterate it. For as long as the conflict is ongoing, and we don't have at IMO guarantees from the countries involved in the conflict that no ship is going to be affected, I will ask all ships to stay away from the region. That's a reality. We're not going to put the lives of innocent seafarers anymore at risk. We have already lost too many. Too many vessels have been attacked. Over 80 vessels have been attacked trying to cross the Strait of Hormuz for whatever reason. So what we need is a political will. People talk about the multilateralism, it's not working. I don't agree with that. Because Jorge was just saying the number of engagements that we constantly have, how the countries keep bringing that into our respective organizations because of the importance to find a solution, how everybody is being affected around the world. These are three conflicts right now around the Strait of Hormuz, the Black Sea and the Red Sea that have global consequences. So we all have to play a part. But I will reiterate that until we have guarantees that the ships are not going to be hit, I will not change my message. And no commercial vessel should even try to risk, regardless of the fact that everybody else is being affected as well. Shipping has already been too affected and normally doesn't get the recognition that it deserves.

Senior Dominguez and Jorge Manuel da Silva, I really appreciate your time and your insight. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

And that's a wrap for day one of the SDG Media Zone. Thank you to our speakers here and all of our speakers that we've had all day. It's been a great day, full day of excellent conversations, meaningful conversations. And just a reminder, we will be starting here at 10:30 a.m. New York time. For those of you watching around the world, that's at 10:30 a.m. New York time tomorrow with an appropriate conversation for the SDG Media Zone. The first one is delivering the promise of the SDGs together tomorrow at 1030. Have a good evening, everyone.