2026: Looking beyond Government: the Role of Non-state Actors, Business and Civil Society

P9 transcript
Jean-Marie Guéhenno
It was very well that transformation of the world. And so I would want you to set the scene by telling us about a network world in which states compete with many other actors. They have no monopoly in international relations.

And what role do you see for these non-state actors? Over to you, Anne-Marie.

Anne-Marie Slaughter
Anne-Marie, it's a pleasure to be here and to be able to participate at least virtually. So I will start by saying that there are, I think you need to see the world in two ways at once. One is the globe or the map that we all look at of all the multicolored squares or other shapes that we think of as the world of nation states and is your world.

And the other is to imagine a picture of the world at night where all you see are the lights across multiple continents. And that vision where you can see no boundaries, no borders, you just see what is connected to what else through the mechanism of the electrical grid, that's a vision of the networked world. And I could show you many other visions.

I could show you a picture of a globe that is defined only by shipping lanes or energy flows or the connections between different actors. And that's the networked world. And since you're in New York, if you think about Rockefeller Center and Atlas holding up that sphere, he's holding up what's called an armillary sphere, but it is a sphere comprised only of intersecting circles.

That's again, the networked world. So I wanna break that down. I started writing about networks in 1994 and I was writing about judicial networks.

I was writing about the ways that Supreme Court judges in the wake of the fall of the wall and the end of apartheid, Supreme Court judges around the world were talking to one another. And as of course, as we became used to the internet, they did that digitally, not just in conferences. And then of course, central bankers.

And here, these are government networks. These are networks of government officials. And all of you know, as diplomats, they can make your life very difficult.

At least when I was in the State Department, the Treasury had its own diplomacy and we did not get much of a look in. But there you can start by thinking about the network, say of central bankers who started with the Basel Committee and then the securities regulators who were IOSCO, the International Organization of Securities Commissioners, the insurance supervisors, the finance ministers. All of that is the Financial Stability Board today, which is an international organization, but it's certainly not a formal one.

And yet it's a very powerful one. And indeed today, now you have the global network of central bankers and supervisors that is specifically aimed at how do you mobilize the power of central bankers for climate action. And so you start with thinking about a world not of states represented by foreign ministers and diplomats, but states that are represented by all their different government officials.

And then you have to add sub-national actors and cities. So states and cities, the C40 of climate mayors has been very important. At the state level, you have many American states, it's not just California, that are actually networking with Chinese provinces.

So Gavin Newsom actually cut a deal with a Chinese province on emissions. Similarly, states in the United States, the Board of the Mississippi have worked with their counterparts in Chinese provinces on water management. So government networks of national government officials, then mayors, then, and governors.

That's the official networked world. Then you move to the non-state actor world. And again, I wanna emphasize, as I describe all this, this is both and.

I would never argue that non-state actors are more important than states. I would argue they're equally important. And in some areas, in artificial intelligence, they are more important than states, at least for the moment.

But mostly, and I wrote this in my book in 2017, I called it the chessboard and the web. Yes, the traditional chessboard or game board diplomacy between states is still vitally important. And now you have to look at the non-state actors.

So start, obviously, with just networks of companies. And thinking about, we've actually seen this post-COVID, of course, companies. I wrote about Boeing back in the 1990s and the way in which Boeing had moved from a supply chain to what it called a value network, where many of its suppliers were co-designers of products.

Those were individual company networks. And Muttar can tell us a lot, I am certain, about how that works. But then, of course, companies connecting with one another in common political positions, we're seeing this with the tech companies today, but the fossil fuel companies, the pharmaceutical companies, you are not going to be able to solve a big global challenge without engaging those companies.

That's obvious when we talk about climate change or global health. It may have been less obvious when we were talking about traditional war and peace. But if you look at the war in Ukraine, you see Microsoft helping the Ukraine government get all of its operations into the cloud the day before the Russians invaded.

And, of course, you look at companies like Starlink that are absolutely essential to the operation of a military machine. So companies is a huge category of non-state actors. And then, of course, the civic actors.

And again, you couldn't manage a humanitarian crisis in the world without the big eight NGOs, the humanitarian NGOs, the Food for Food, for Medicine, for Refugees. Now, that often mixes with states. You have the UN High Commission on Refugees that works with all these civic organizations.

In climate, I don't think we would have ever gotten to the Paris Treaty without the big climate NGOs. And we see the big ones, but there, if you actually develop networked maps, you'd see that many of those are connected to many much smaller NGOs. Just as one example, and again, if you think about the delivery of vaccines, you need the pharmaceutical companies on board, you need the WHO, you need national governments.

You also need philanthropy and civic organizations, the big ones, but also the last mile deliverers in countries around the world. So companies, civic organizations, philanthropic networks, it's extraordinary if you look at something like CoDevelop, which is building, trying to build digital public infrastructure around the world. That is a real mix of philanthropic actors, government funding, individual investors of various different kinds, impact investors, all mixed together in basically creating private solutions.

And then of course, we have science and education. Again, remember that the scientific network, the network of scientists figured sequence, the gene sequence of COVID between US and China when the governments were not talking to one another. Those links have been weakened as we de-globalized, but they're still very much there.

And then finally, crime. The power of the criminal networks that are often part or just underneath the licit trade networks. In other words, the same companies can trade licit goods and illicit goods.

That was Moises Naim's book, Illicit, 20 years ago, and he tracks it very brilliantly. And now, of course, with the dark web, we are the criminal networks are more powerful than ever. So that is the networked world.

And what we are seeing today as power fragments, on the one hand, we're seeing a return of geopolitics. Yes, we are. And that looks, you could think you're back in the world to the concert of Europe.

And at the same time, for any issue that you all are working on, including war and peace, you're seeing governance, not government, that is migrating away from universal, formal international organizations toward a vast array of what you might call coalitions of the willing or catalytic coalitions that are a mix of state actors, again, sub-state often, mayors or governors or individual government departments, together with corporations, civic actors, philanthropy, universities, faith groups, and others.

So Jean-Marie, I think I'll stop there. I hope that gives you a picture of the complexity and really often overwhelming density of these networks. But again, that world of networks exists around, through, above, and below the world of nation states.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Very, very much, Anne-Marie, because that gives us really a sense of the multi-layered world. And it's not because at one level, things are not going right, that others cannot sustain the fabric of the world. And now I want to turn to Ken Ross.

Ken Ross was for many years the executive director of Human Rights Watch, which is an NGO that really has a sort of global responsibility, is listened to all around the world. So you are in a very good position, Ken, to tell us about the role of NGOs on human rights, indeed, putting human rights on the international agenda, but also beyond. I mean, I'd be interested in your thinking on what is the role of NGOs like Human Rights Watch in this world, which is more and more fragmenting?

Kenneth Roth:
Okay, well, thanks, Anne-Marie, for arranging this conference. It's a pleasure to be here. All of you, as diplomats, know that you have a very full agenda.

And you're dealing with, obviously, political issues, but economic ones, cultural ones, consular issues. And the way I see civil society working with you is that civil society groups are really a bastion of information, expertise, strategy, and initiative. And all of these are things that you could do, but you're busy.

And the role of NGOs, particularly a group like Human Rights Watch, which does both investigative and advocacy work, is to work with you and to really be a supplementary repository of these things that I just mentioned. And in a sense, we raise money to develop that expertise, to develop that capacity. And Human Rights Watch, I left it three and a half years ago, but we had people in 100 countries.

We have people on the ground conducting investigations. And so, for example, if you wanna know what's happening today in Eastern Congo, it's far from Kinshasa. You probably have security constraints on your ability to go there.

Even if you go there, it'll be for a day or two. How are you gonna get out to the remote areas? And that's what Human Rights Watch does.

We are able to have people on the ground, issue periodic reports, talk to you in person, and say, this is what the Rwandan-backed M23 is doing. And here's a strategy to change that. And we do this kind of over and over.

And it's not just any one organization. I mean, Emery talks about the importance of networks. And NGOs are really good at networking globally and building global movements that facilitate and in many ways enable governments to act.

And let me give two examples. I mean, the first time that this really happened at a global level, I think, was with the treaty to ban landmines. And just before that treaty was adopted, the Geneva Conventions already existed.

There was already a norm against indiscriminate warfare, but everybody used landmines. And landmines use a classic, dumb, indiscriminate weapon. They have no idea who's gonna step on it.

And this norm coexisted with the contradictory practice and everybody accepted it. That changed because a handful of NGOs started investigating long-term consequences of landmines. And this was actually just as email was emerging.

If two years earlier, this would not have been possible because you'd have to use snail mail or expensive international phone calls at the time. But using email, we were able to build initially a global coalition of NGOs, and in turn, a global coalition of governments, about 60 governments that collectively had the moral and the political clout to stand up to the superpowers who had no interest in stopping the use of landmines. And they were able to push through this treaty banning landmines, which then created a very strong norm that radically reduced the numbers of deaths and injuries due to landmines.

We did something very similar with the International Criminal Court where not only Washington, but also Moscow, Beijing had no interest in a court that could ever reach their officials. And in our view, it's like, that's not international justice. And so again, initially there was a coalition of NGOs, a global coalition, a very similar coalition of about 60 governments came together.

This was very much at the initiative of NGOs. And then there was a big debate in Rome in 1998, where the US wanted a court, which in essence could never reach in America. And the big issue was, if your country ratifies the ICC treaty, can the court prosecute an offender on your territory who is the nationality of a state that did not ratify the treaty?

The US said, no. The coalition said, yes. And we won that battle in Rome, 120 to seven.

The coalition of governments completely had the moral authority to say no to the superpowers, which is why today, Putin has been prosecuted for alleged war crimes in Ukraine because Ukraine joined, Russia didn't. It's why Netanyahu has been prosecuted for war crimes in Gaza, because Palestine joined, Israel didn't. So this has been a very important principle.

This would not have been possible, but for that coalition between NGOs and governments. And so what we often find is that the NGOs, initially, if it's information, kind of global information from the ground of a specialized nature, that's not readily available to governments, we're able to produce that. And the strategies often require the real push from NGOs.

Governments get in the driver's seat at some point, but in the early days, it's almost always NGOs that start the process. Now, I wanna make one separate point, and this is, in a sense, picking up on the prior panel, but Jamar, you asked about it. Today, when we're asked, what is the power of international law?

Here again, I think civil society has a very important job, because, I mean, as was discussed in the prior panel, it is really a matter of what pressure can be put on governments to comply with the law. There is no global police force. There's no way to compel governments to abide by the law.

You have to change their cost-benefit analysis. You've got to increase the costs of noncompliance. Governments are very good at being able to impose economic consequences, but there often are economic costs to that.

The big tool that I still feel is very powerful is the ability to shame governments for acting unlawfully. Every government cares about this. If you look at even China, that seems to be above any capacity to pressure it, when we tried to put China's treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council in October 2022, Xi Jinping was personally on the phone calling heads of state to vote with China and not with us.

We lost by two votes. It was very close. He really cared about the prospect of condemnation by his peers, that delegitimization that would have come from that shame.

And it has actually made a difference in Xinjiang. I mean, it's not as if the problem is gone, but there has been a movement away from detention toward forced labor, which isn't great, but it's better. So Trump has been subject to shaming.

Why did he finally insist that Netanyahu accept a ceasefire in Gaza when Netanyahu preferred an endless war and continuing the genocide? It's because Trump was being shamed by the prospect that the U.S. was aiding and abetting the genocide as pictures of starving babies were showing up on TV screens. You know, even today you see the effect of Trump.

He's in trouble in Iran and he is being buffeted by public opinion. He's very sensitive to it. He doesn't know how to get out of it now.

It was a dumb war. He never should have started it. But the prospect of shaming is still powerful.

The power of international law with the absence of any formal enforcement mechanism is public opinion. And while governments can shape public opinion, governments are also constrained by various other interests. And civil society has a great capacity to speak, shall I say more clearly, you know, with less of a modulated voice and to build media attention of the sort that every government, whether it's a democratic, autocratic, dictatorial, you name it, they all care about because they all really depend on their people seeing them as legitimate leaders.

You know, even a dictatorship needs a degree of acquiescence by its people. And civil society is very good at getting media attention. And here again, it's an area where I think, you know, we work well in compliment, you know, in partnership with governments.

So I will stop there.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Thank you very much. Well, in the previous panel, we spoke about, we discussed some moral leadership. And in some ways, what you're saying is that indeed, civil society can sometimes fill that vacuum of moral leadership that we see at the state level.

Now, I want to turn to someone whose career is very interesting because he's been a major business leader. And in the second life, if I may say, Neville, you've also been a major civil society leader. Neville was the chairman and CEO of Coca-Cola and then moved on to activity, when he retired from Coca-Cola, moved on to civil society activities, leading the World Wildlife Fund, being active on climate, on a range of issues.

So I'd like to ask you, as you move from business to civil society, can you share the different perspectives of how business as well as civil society can impact our world in a positive way, help make it more orderly, more principled, just a better world?

Neville Isdell:
Well, thank you for that introduction. I certainly want to divide the two pieces that you've mentioned of my life into really two boxes, okay? Let me talk about the first box, which was 40-odd years with selling soft drinks.

And I think we've got it very clear about what the role of business is. First of all, in my view, it is looking after the shareholders. But that has to be done with a moral compass.

And I think that that is one of the things that can be pinned against business when they stray into areas where they have no right to voice their opinions. They have to look after the shareholders, they have to look after, in the Coca-Cola view, the consumers as well. But of course, it's not as easy as that.

One of the things that I had to deal with in my career was the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. And there you are very clearly a political player because you are answering to a government, an apartheid government who's in power, but also you are working in an environment which is totally unacceptable to your moral compass. And you are also reaching out, as we had to do, and I did some of this, to the emerging change.

In other words, the people of the ANC who were not imprisoned, who were still part of civil society, but then at the end of the day with Mandela. And that was certainly for me a real learning experience because I tried to divide selling soft drinks with my own private views about apartheid, which was negative. I was elected in the university against apartheid representing the Students' Council.

And realized that there is a very strong interlink between being involved in a country where there are dysfunctional politics that you have to deal with, politicians who will knock on your door suggesting you do things that are illegal, and following the moral compass that I talked about. I think that, I'm gonna make a very simple statement, but the first role of business is first to do no wrong because we are extracting very often from society, we're extracting from the planet, and that is where I linked through, if you talk about first do no wrong, was looking at being on the board initially of the World Wildlife Fund. And of course, I was able then to be free on my own when I retired.

And that is something with business can get involved in issues that are the pet businesses of the chairman and the CEO. I say the chairman and CEO has got no right to do that, no mandate to do that. They have a narrower mandate to look after the shareholders.

So that would be just an introductory. I can come back and say a few more words later. I know Muhtar is there.

He and I worked on these things together over many, many years. And certainly, I know there are issues that Muhtar will not want to cover with regard to things that evolved incorrectly with regard to coke. But clearly, first do no harm.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Before turning to Muhtar, I would want to ask Nathalie Delapalmeabout her take on NGOs. Because we have heard from Ken Ross, who led a major NGO, but an NGO based in the United States. You are leading an NGO who has been created by a prominent businessman from Africa, Mo Ibrahim, who made a huge business success in Africa and who thought he had to give back and created that foundation, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation that is very active in Africa, has a major event every year in Africa, publishes and does a lot of things.

And so we see there is a kind of imbalance, let's be honest, between the big NGOs that are based in the North and the NGOs that speak for the South. And so there's a real question of how can the NGOs that want to be the voice of the global South, how can they help set the agenda and orient the international debate? How can they contribute to international cooperation?

Nathalie Delapalme:
Thank you. Do you hear me? Yeah.

Thank you very much, Jean-Marie, first. Thank you very much for having me. I'm very honored to talk after all of you.

I can't talk, of course, on behalf of all the NGOs of the global South. They have specific identities, specific missions, specific focus. Some are more focused on advocacy, some are focused on humanitarian support.

And this is something specific, but she came for what governments, but to be frank also partners, be it multilateral or unable or unwilling to address. I also want to say that philanthropy, it's not just about giving financial resources. It's about sharing expertise and sharing networks.

And I think this is a key point and a key added value. But I would say that there is one common DNA in the philanthropies from the global South. And you use the word yourself, Jean-Marie, by saying voice, speaking on behalf of, and that is representing the global South and contributing to represent and articulate this very specific global South voice.

What people think in general, but more specifically, what the world's majority, which is now living in the global South, currently think. And I do, to do that in a very specific way, not just aiming at selling or, well, selling is not the right word, a specific policy, which is of course what states are supposed to do, but in a space that is characterized now by the growing complexity that Anne-Marie highlighted, that's dominated by constant, immediate information, often driven by reaction rather than anticipation. I'm not even talking about AI.

I think that articulating that voice is absolutely key. And if you allow me, I would take just two examples that are driven for what the Maury-Bohm Foundation has been doing. The first one is climate.

If you take the climate debate, up to now, it has been mainly led by already developed countries for whom their whole population have access to energy. In the global South generally, but let's talk about Africa, in Africa, half the population still doesn't have access to energy. So the conversation can't be the same and the policy that are being defined can't be the same.

It's not one size fits all. The fact that it has been dominated, this climate debate by developed countries, means that it has been focusing mainly on mitigation and not on adaptation. And not only it means that Africa's very small responsibility, if ever one, has been recognized, but Africa has only been seen as a vulnerable basket case who has to be helped.

So the second point that hasn't been seen in this climate debate is the ability of Africa to help. It's not how can the world help Africa, it's the other way round. Because without Africa's specific assets to build a green global economy, critical minerals, renewable energy sources, carbon sinking potential, biodiversity, there will be no green global economy.

The other example is migration. Migration is not a recent crisis. It has shaped the story of humanity and it's led by geography and demography and this is inescapable.

So we need, when we talk about migration, first to separate regular and irregular migrations because it's absolutely not the same thing and it needs very different policies. And we need to work on mobility. And then I would add maybe a few concepts because I'm jumping back on what Kenneth was saying.

Advocating on the definition, I think it's important. What's human rights of the global South? It's not necessarily the same definition or at least the same order of priority than it is in the Western already developed countries.

Same for democracy, same for multilateralism. The multilateral system cannot be resumed to Bretton Woods and United Nations. So basically, I would say that this advocacy made by the global South philanthropy is making sure that the world also sees the viewpoint of global South population.

Now, to conclude, I would say that this contribution that we are aiming to do to setting the agenda and orienting the international debates needs to be based on two elements. First, data, and this is what we are doing at the Moet-Briand Foundation is no analysis is how would I say valid if it's not based on data, on facts and figures. Let's give the right facts and figures on climate, on migration, so that the policy makers can indeed decide with a proper documented analysis.

And the second is indeed multi-stakeholder conversation, not just national governments or multilateral institutions, but as some of you said, local governments, private sector, financial sector, civil society, women's, young people, all of them have different agendas and somehow all of them are somehow conflicted when it comes to dealing with a specific issue. But it's only by putting all these conflicting agendas around the table and admitting that from start, it doesn't work or it's conflicted that I think we can make progress when it comes to trying to organize a little bit better this disorder. So thank you.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Thank you. And I want to have a follow-up question with you. And do you see at the moment when you look at the global debate, do you think that the voices, I mean, to come back to this expression of the global South are sufficiently heard or is there something to be done to have a really inclusive debate or is that already there or do you think more needs to be done?

Nathalie Delapalme:
I think that it's better, but to be very frank with you, I'm concerned that it's coming very late. Let me tell a personal story. When I was working as an advisor to a French foreign minister that was over 20 years ago, we were dealing with the Security Council participation.

And I remember an African delegation, high level foreign ministers that wanted to see their French homologue or even better, they wanted to be seen by the French president. Of course, nobody received me, received them and I was in charge of listening to them. They were coming with this request of an African voice at the Security Council.

10 years later, I met again in another capacity, these two foreign ministers that were leading this delegation. Both of them had become head of state. And I was saying, oh, maybe we are making progress.

I mean, we need to still work on that. It's very important. Both of them said, we are not interested anymore.

It's too late. And when BRICS, the BRICS group was composed some years ago already, I was still working for the French government. I remember making a note on that and saying, this is something we should look at.

And the answer was, no, it's not interesting. Never will India and China be able to get together on whatever topic. They will still always fight each other.

Look at BRICS now. It's really taking speed. So the multilateral system summarized in UN and Bretton Woods is still working, amending, whatever, but you have parallel conversations which are being led elsewhere and in which the global South or so-called global South feels much better represented and feels that their specific demands are being properly addressed.

The way the net bank, the BRICS net bank is talking about limiting dollar convertibility or dollar mastership, the emergency response fund they have set up, all these are addressing directly the specific demand of the global South in a way that Bretton Woods institution don't. So I do think we still have a very small window. I do think we still have a window to make sure that this voice is being not only currently heard, but listened to, but I think the window is small.

I think we need to do it because when somebody is part of the decision and all of you know that better than I do having been sharing boards, once the decision is taken at board level, those who have taken the responsibility own it and are responsible for the implementation and accountable for it. Up to now, in many cases, global South has said, look, you have decided at UN or at IMF or at World Bank to do this and that. You've never consulted us.

Doesn't work and it's not our fault. We are not responsible. So I really think it's a joint interest to make sure that this voice is once again, not only being heard, but listened to and we need to give them the floor to make them responsible of these decisions.

So I think it's better Africa G20, for example, but it's not optimum. And if democracy means something, which is one people, one voice somehow, I think that when it comes to global democracy, we are not there.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Thank you.

Neville Isdell:
Can I build on that for one second, Neville here?

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Please Neville.

Neville Isdell:
When I took over WWF, there was a major schism between the South and the North. And that was reflect, the power of foot source was reflected because the board of WWF, which was supposed to be a very broad number of voices was almost entirely representative of the North and not of the South. And I sat about then redoing the board to bring the voice of the South in equal to the voice of the North.

And I think this is where we do fall short. We tell people what to do and the power source is there in the North and we don't bring the voices in and we don't listen to the voices from the South.

Anne-Marie Slaughter
And Marie-Jane. Sorry, I was muted. Yes, I very much agree.

And I think the shift that you can see from the diplomatic point of view for what Nathalie is describing is Jai Shankar, the Indian foreign secretary's statement. First of all, the Indian refusal to follow the US when Russia invaded Ukraine and to continue buying oil from Russia. But his statement was, we are not choosing the United States or Russia, we are choosing India.

And he followed up with that, with we are multi-aligned, we will advance our interests and work with whomever we need to do that. And that is exactly the shift that Nathalie is describing. That it's, we are big enough, we are important enough and we will make our own choices rather than choose options that have been created for us by people in the global North.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Thank you. I want now to turn to Muhtar Kent. When you saw Muhtar, the opening of this program is the inspiration of the program.

Without him, the program would not exist. And so, and he has been very focused on this, on improving the interaction between what he calls the golden triangle, this triangle of public institutions, business and civil society. Can you talk more about this interaction between these three poles?

Because that's what really we are trying to tease out this morning. We don't hear you. We don't, no, we don't hear you.

No, there's an issue.

Anne-Marie Slaughter
It turned up.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
The mic is frozen. That's the internet connection. Maybe that's not good.

Oops. Okay, well, let's see if you, can you call him or check to restore the connection? But well, I want to, while we reconnect with Muhtar Kent, I'd like to have the reactions of the panelists on what each of you said.

Ken, maybe you have something to say.

Kenneth Roth:
Well, I mean, let me try to address this global North, global South issue a little bit, because it is a real issue, but I mean, for example, this idea that, you know, looking out for, oh, here's Muhtar, let's see if he can hear me now.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Yes, we can. Okay, so you will have your third. Muhtar, over to you.

Muhtar Kent:
Yeah, I'm very sorry. Technical glitch from Italy to New York. So a big gratitude goes to the panelists today.

Thank you. And this is the last panel, if you like, of this sixth program of the Kent Global Conflict and Leadership Program, the sixth year. And I want to thank all the participants also.

Our panel today effectively asks an important and timely question. What is the role of non-state actors, particularly business and civil society, in, say, conflict prevention and conflict resolution? And I'd like to start by saying that, really, for much of modern history, this subject was viewed primarily through the lens of governments, armies, treaties, international institutions, states went to war, states negotiated, states made peace, et cetera.

But, you know, it is clear today that the world has changed, and some of the most influential actors, in a way, shaping stability, or, in fact, instability, are not governments alone. They are companies, they are NGOs, faith-based organizations, universities, local community leaders, philanthropies, media platforms, and, increasingly, networks of citizens connected digitally across borders. So that's really the world that we are in today.

And in many fragile regions, but, effectively, in all regions, I'd say, businesses provide infrastructure faster than governments can. Civil society organizations often possess deeper trust within the communities than formal institutions. Technological companies, tech companies, influence information flows more powerfully than traditional broadcasters.

And humanitarian organizations, as we've heard from some of our panelists, are frequently the first responders when institutions actually fail. And this does not really diminish the importance of governments. Rather, it reflects, in a way, a new reality.

Sustainable peace, increasingly, requires coalitions that exist beyond the state, the traditional state. And businesses, in particular, occupy an interesting and, sometimes, misunderstood position in these conflict environments. At its best, business can be a stabilizing force.

Investment creates jobs, jobs creates dignity, hope, et cetera, economic inclusion, which then reduces appeal of extremism and violence. Supply chains create interdependence. Markets encourage collaboration.

And global companies often operate across ethnic, political, religious divides in ways that governments surely cannot. So, I think history offers many, many examples where economic engagement helped reinforce reconciliation. I'm not gonna go through that, but there are many examples.

But we should also be candid. Business is not automatically a force for peace. If poorly governed, corporations can deepen inequality, in fact, exploit weak institutions, fuel corruption, or become entangled in conflict economics.

The same globalization that actually connects societies can also widen fractures, social fractures. That is why, in my opinion, values matter so much. Leadership matters, accountability matters.

And the same applies to civil society. Civil society organizations often play indispensable roles in mediation, trauma healing, education, women's empowerment, and also refugee support, reconciliation at the grassroots level. They help preserve human dignity when political systems break down.

We've seen that so many times. And importantly, they also help societies listen to themselves, as we've heard from some of the panelists, that is so important. Because many conflicts endure not simply because of lack of negotiation, but from lack of trust, lack of recognition, and also lack of human connection.

So I believe one of the defining leadership challenges of the coming decades will be learning how governments, business, and civil society, which I call the golden triangle, can work together more effectively, not competitively, to build resilient and successful societies. And this challenge becomes even more complex in this era we're entering now, an era shaped by AI, misinformation, cyber insecurity, climate stress, migration pressures, and also fragmentation, geopolitical fragmentation. So we will need to convene unlikely partners, and perhaps most importantly, we will need the ability to build trust in a world increasingly defined by polarization.

So that's really where I want to stop. I can give you more examples of how the golden triangle, great examples of how the golden triangle worked in the Coca-Cola Company. Two big projects, global projects, was water neutrality and women empowerment, the 5 by 20 empowerment program to empower 5 million women across the world.

And this happened over the decade between 2010 and 2020. But I don't want to go into details, but those were great examples where governments, subnational governments in many cases, partnered with Coca-Cola and partnered with civil society organizations like the World Wildlife Fund in the case of water neutrality to make that project come to life and reach the goal of water neutrality by 2015. And women empowerment, again, different NGOs in different countries providing the candidates for the women entrepreneurs, and then Coca-Cola putting together training modules.

And then IFC, which was the other partner giving microcredit, two tranches of $100 million microcredit to make that all work. So that's where I want to stop. And I want to, again, thank all the panelists once more.

Great, great comments. And hopefully there'll be some good questions too. Thank you.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Thank you. So before coming to the questions, any comments from the panelists on what they heard from the other panelists? Ken, you were going to say something.

Kenneth Roth:
Let me address, I mean, two points. One is just the role of corporations and second, the voice of the global South. With respect to corporations, there's been a big evolution in the way that most CEOs look at the human rights responsibilities of business in the course of my career.

When I started this work, you talk to a CEO and you'd ask them about their company's human rights record and they would look at you like you were somewhat crazy. And they would say, you know, my job is to make a profit for my shareholders, period, the end. And nobody says that today because they've come to understand that if they are complicit in serious human rights violations, it can be a disaster for their company.

And I say complicit, this is not a matter of companies making nice statements. Anybody can put something in their annual report. This is a matter of actually looking at their supply chain and ensuring that they are not party to serious abuses.

And the reason this matters is because if companies avoid this duty, they face a reputational disaster. If the media focuses on them, not only do they risk shareholder resolutions, consumer boycotts, but most important, they risk demoralizing their staff. They risk undermining their ability to recruit top-notch employees.

And so for very practical, self-interested economic reasons, businesses have come to understand that they have to pay attention to these issues. Now, they still do that often in a minimalist way. So if you ask them, well, how far down to your supply chain do you look?

They push for legislation that doesn't require them to look very far down or they look for exemptions for companies that are not very big. A good example of this is the big problem of Uyghur forced labor that I mentioned earlier. Here, this is actually an area where the U.S. is playing a positive leadership role, rare these days. But in the U.S., there's something called the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act, which creates a presumption against any import from Xinjiang unless you can prove that it was not the product of Uyghur forced labor, which you can never prove because there's no transparency. So it essentially is a bar on any imports from Xinjiang. No other government has this.

What every other government has is a broad statement against forced labor, which sounds great. But when suddenly you are importing polysilicon or cotton from Xinjiang and you ask, well, what about all the forced labor in this industry? They say, well, we don't have any evidence of that.

So they let the goods in. The presumption works in the opposite direction. Ignorance, lack of transparency becomes a reason to ignore the problem.

And this is in response to the pressure of businesses that don't want to have a limitation on their importations. 20% of the world's cotton comes from Xinjiang. A huge amount of the solar panels come via polysilicon made in Xinjiang.

So this is an area where the business community is falling short despite nice statements of concern. Now, on the question of the voice of the global South, I want to put this a bit in perspective. I mean, Human Rights Watch is as guilty as others in the sense that our funding is mainly Northern.

We have offices around the world, the headquarters are here in New York. Our staff is actually very diverse, more than 80 nationalities based all over the world. So if we're reporting on a particular country, it's often done by a resident of that country in the local language, et cetera.

So there is a good degree of local input, but there nonetheless is still a problem. And I want to just address two dimensions here. One is BRICS is not the answer.

BRICS is basically a networking opportunity. The members of BRICS are so diverse that they actually never agree on anything. They usually don't bother with a joint statement because there's nothing worth saying that they can all agree on.

So it looks like a counterbalance, but it doesn't really function the same way as say the G7, which tends to be able to at least come up with a communique. When we talk about a country like India, prioritizing its national interest, sure, you can do that, but I feel that that falls short of leadership. So at a moment when there really is this attack on international law, India says, oh, Russia invaded Ukraine, we're not gonna take sides.

The other way to look at that is to say there's a norm here against aggression. We believe that's important. We don't want Pakistan invading us.

We don't want Rwanda invading Eastern Congo. We don't want Ethiopia deciding they want a port in the Red Sea and they're gonna just like create that. We don't want Azerbaijan taking Armenia.

You can come up with a lot of examples. We don't want Trump taking Greenland. This norm matters.

And I would like to see kind of greater concern with norms. Now you see this sometimes. I mean, South Africa brought the genocide case against Israel.

Gambia brought a genocide case against Myanmar. There are moments, but then if you ask, for example, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, well, what about the Uyghurs? They just died.

They don't wanna talk about that because China's too powerful. And the West is as guilty. I mean, Mark Carney got all this positive press for the speech he gave in Davos, but it turned out that when he was talking about the importance of collectivity, he was talking about standing up to Trump.

He was talking about economic issues. He wasn't talking about reasserting moral leadership. In fact, he ran off to China.

The next day and cut a trade deal. So there is this need for moral leadership. It could come from the global South.

I mean, as was noted in the last panel, and a majority of the world's population, certainly majority of the world's countries, there is an opportunity there, but I fear that today there's this fallback on just pursuing national interest, which of course every government does, but there are very few that are really champions of the global order, which is what we need right now.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Marie, you want to react?

Anne-Marie Slaughter
Well, I will start by just affirming my enormous respect for Ken and all the work he has done. And we've known each other for many, many years. And I watched him take human rights watch from a relatively small group to a powerful global force.

I will also say, when it comes to moral leadership, the United States has no qualifications whatsoever right now. We destroyed USAID, we killed millions of people, you know all this. And I think a large part of what is happening in what Nathalie described is we're getting called on our hypocrisy.

And that is also what Mark Carney said. He said, they finally put the sign in the window, but global South nations have known for decades that this system is not working and that it is deeply hypocritical. Basically, part of what India and other countries said was not that it wasn't important that Russia violated the UN Charter so fundamentally when it invaded Ukraine.

I remember the Kenyan ambassador gave a very powerful speech about what that meant and what that meant when you were a former colony and you had seen this happen over and over and over again. The response was, yeah, and now you care. When Europe is menaced, now you care.

When Sudan is falling apart, when any of the many wars you just mentioned are happening, yeah, you sort of care. But we're done with that. This is not our war.

Obviously, you know that I'm an international lawyer and I want to see those norms enforced. But what I am seeing is that the global majority of the world is saying, yeah, and what about when it happens here? So that to me is actually, unless you address that hypocrisy, you will not get back to or forward to, I think I really have to say, a global order that the global majority of the world recognizes as something they created and that they are willing to enforce.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Neville, any reaction on that? I see you. Neville, any reaction on what Anne-Marie said?

Neville Isdell:
My reaction is I couldn't agree with her more. There's a hypocrisy about the positions the world are taking right now. And I'm talking about not my country, because I'm not an American, but certainly the United States.

I see the beacon of light of the Statue of Liberty dimming.

Kenneth Roth:
Thank you, Chairman. There are things that could be done to rein in Trump. It's worth talking about that.

You know, for example, what Trump has done with the International Criminal Court to outrageously impose sanctions on three prosecutors and six judges, basically for investigating US torture in Afghanistan and permitting charges to go forward. Against Netanyahu and Gallant. That's obstruction of justice.

They should be pressing for his indictment by the ICC, which is fully within the power to do. Why is Trump concerned? I mean, Trump isn't so concerned, but why is the West concerned about Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but not Israel's invasion of Lebanon or Trump's invasion of Iran?

Why is nobody talking about the role of the United Arab Emirates in arming and staffing a genocide in Sudan? You know, there are certain kind of Western interests that are not pursued. And I think that this could be brought up more consistently.

You know, the Council of Europe is in the process of setting up a tribunal that will be able to prosecute Putin for the act of aggression against Ukraine. Why is there not a similar effort to create a tribunal that could prosecute Trump and Netanyahu for their aggression against Iran? Now, these are not easy things to do, but these are entirely feasible things to do.

And I think that, you know, to try to really assert the law, which, you know, any group of governments can do. I mean, yes, there will be pushback, but there is safety in number. And we've seen this in a number of circumstances.

You know, everybody was afraid to stand up to China, but when 50 governments stood up to China, China couldn't retaliate against all of them. So, you know, I think we have to think creatively about how to reassert the rule of law, you know, even over the superpowers, even over so long as the president is Trump.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
I agree that we are coming to a situation where there's real challenge to fundamental principles, but thinking about one of the themes of this panel, I mean, the responsibility of business, I find I'm not a business person myself, but I find that any global business is now facing quite difficult questions, because as Neville said, when the primary responsibility of a business is to be profitable, to return, to satisfy its shareholders, at the same time, Neville reminded us that the business has to have a moral compass, but as states, which matter to business, because a big state can do a lot of harm to a business, as states violate fundamental principles, I would assume that for a business leader to navigate that environment where you have to think of the success of your business, and at the same time, keep your moral compass is becoming more difficult.

Muhtar Kent:
Yeah, Jean-Marie, let me just make a couple of comments on what was just said. First, I think, no question, the first thing that business seeks in a country when investing is the rule of law. If there is no rule of law, businesses will not come forward with investments, with creating jobs and creating a better society in that country.

So rule of law is essential. And in most of the world, there is a rule of law that continues to work on a local basis. There are countries where there is no rule of law, and you will see that there's no foreign investment going into those countries.

But on business, I also think that, Ken mentioned this, that businesses have changed over his career, and business leadership has changed, and the way that we used to look at, during my tenure as CEO at the Coca-Cola company, we didn't only say we have to create shareholder value. We said, we created a concept called stakeholder value creation. Stakeholder value creation is you've got to start with, there's a host of stakeholders that you have to create a value, create constant sustainable value for, starting with your employees, your consumers, your customers, your partners, NGOs around you, even governments.

And when you create sustainable value for that host of all of those host of stakeholders, you then optimize value creation for your shareholders. That's the model. And I think that model is really more or less what most modern in the Western world, large corporation leadership has espoused today.

And that model really works well. And the last thing I want to just say is, all of these conflicts that have been mentioned today, the Ukrainian conflict, the conflicts in Africa, the conflict in the Middle East, et cetera, et cetera, they will come to an end one day. And businesses will play a very, very critical role in bringing those countries back to a form of economic sanity.

The societies and those kind, a huge rebuilding effort. And the governments will no way be able to do that all by themselves. There will be NGOs, there will be businesses, there will be governments, local governments, state governments, all together, hand in hand, the Golden Triangle will have to bring together those countries back to reality, back to the world from this terrible state that these wars have left them in.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
I'll open it for questions and collect a few questions. So let's start on the right there.

[Speaker 8]
Thanks. Yeah, I would like to sort of go back to what Jean-Marie just mentioned, the question that you posited that companies have an interest in maintaining certain norms, right? Because otherwise there would be a backlash from their consumers, et cetera.

But then if we're looking at governments who are not themselves complying with certain norms, I would like to sort of see how do you expect companies to behave in that situation? Do you actually think that there is, they have the moral compass to actually maintain those values or is there not more of an incentive to just go with whatever the government says and focus on profit, which is ultimately what is driving it? I'm really interested in understanding what you're sort of expecting.

And I was sort of thinking of the repeal of the endangerment finding that was passed in February and how that for instance would have an impact on carbon targets on the market. And whether you think that certain companies that have had to comply would in the future no longer comply or is that, is that that's an example where we would potentially see how companies behave or not. And I'd be interested in your take in looking towards the future.

Thanks.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Yeah, the question, yes.

Amalia Pufulescu:
Good afternoon and thank you so much for these insightful briefings and presentation. It's really great to step out a bit of the UN bubble and get a chance to hear from such established persons as you in different domains of activity. I'm a Romanian diplomat here at the permanent mission to the UN.

And actually I wanted to start from the last panel's discussion with this assumption that the world we live in today is actually a disorderly world. And part of it, it's because yes, there is this return to real politic and bigger actor power play. But part of it is also because as some of you said in this panel right now is the fact that we are actually being disobedient to the norms and rules that we have created collectively and are not abiding by them anymore.

So in a way we are responsible for eroding the system as well as parts of the international community. Now, with that being said, I still do believe that we are a bit fast into transitioning from a rules-based international order to a completely disorderly world. I think the set of norms and rules that we established eight decades ago still are very valid and could work very well if we just got back to actually implementing and applying them in a more uniform manner.

And with that being said, I also see this transition from values and principles to interests, which is part of the situation. And now as we are transitioning to this new reality where you don't only have state actors holding an important say in the equation and you have these emerging actors, some of them, of course, NGOs and civil society. And I would say they have a sort of regulated behavior because we know what they stand for and they stand for on the right side of things.

But then you also have these big enterprises, companies, and I would say some of them are more of an unregulated behavior. So my question is, how do we navigate these new realities where you have many actors in this ecosystem, which is the international arena? And how do you navigate it without a set of norms and rules with the dismantling of the rules-based international order?

How can you ensure that we're actually headed in the right direction? Thank you so much.

Surprise Malehase:
No, no, thanks, thanks, thanks, Prof. My name is Surprise Malehase from South Africa. I want to direct my question to Neville. It seems to be more familiar with the South African politics and I want to build from the statement of the moral compass that you have really emphasized, and which in many ways, we have seen collaboration of business and civil society dismantling apartheid.

But just to shift it a little bit, as you know that we negotiated government and reached a settlement in 1994. And immediately after that, when the governing party adopted a program of reconstruction and development, we started to see business shifting, playing wait and see game. And later on, when there was a free market system, which was adopted, then business at least came back.

Would you say that government should seek consensus before they adopt any program, so that at least there's confidence where you can invest? Government, of course, it would have its own position depending on the national interest that would have been adopted. But would you say that government should seek consensus every time when they adopt a program?

Thanks a lot.

Neville Isdell:
I'm going to give you a slightly different answer to a different question in a way. I think we've got to look at what a responsible business should be doing. So I did say the first is to be a profitable enterprise.

It is also absolutely paramount that they look at the long-term survival of that business. And for the long-term survival of the business in South Africa that we were talking about, business had to move and had to shift away from the horrors of apartheid into a new structure, which was driven largely by a new government that came in, but also by a very significant movement and attitude of business, because if they didn't do that, the long-term future of the business was imperiled. Now, there were conflicts, I won't go into black economic empowerment and some of the issues over that, but I've got a home in Cape Town and I'm very optimistic today with regard to what is the change that's taken place.

Part of that has been something we haven't talked about, which is education. And I'm involved with the University of Cape Town and dealing with young chairman of the rugby club and mixing with the guys who are getting their degrees. This is the post-apartheid cohort that is coming through.

And when you sit with them, they say, apartheid is history, we're building a whole new South Africa. And I see that taking place, it's flawed, there's corruption, there's everything. But I think that that struggle and the recognition of the key players in business, that it was a new day and therefore reformulating their actions and their opinions has been very important in that.

I don't know if you want to react to that, but I am optimistic about South Africa.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Any other reactions to the questions or should we go see we are on?

Muhtar Kent:
Yeah, I mean, I'll just do one quick reaction, Jean-Marie, to the question that, today governments are not acting properly. So therefore, how does business go? Does it go with the flow?

And I would say today, if I was running a company and I think many of the people that are business leaders that I know today, especially if you run a brand, if you own a brand or if you're in a brand business, you've got to live up to the promise of the brand. A brand is a promise kept and a good brand is a promise kept. You've got to live up to the promise.

That means you can't go with the flow. You've got to essentially ensure that you stay within your value. Because today consumers are not just buying products because they're good or they taste good or because they like the look of the product.

They're buying it because they also feel comfortable with the character of the companies that produce those brands. So therefore, it is critically important that they don't just go with the flow if the flow is such that they're not really adhering to the law or following the moral compass governments. And so it is critical for the company's long-term success that they stay within their value-based systems and live up to the promise of their brands.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Anne-Marie, Natalie first.

Nathalie Delapalme:
Thank you very much. I just wanted to jump back on two things that have been said previously by the room. The first question was saying we should be able to strengthen the rules that we established and the second expression was government should seek consensus.

I think, I wonder whether that's not an issue in the rules that we established. It's precisely because they were established by a set of factors, but not by consensus with the rest of factors that doesn't work. It's bound not to work.

I mean, we do need to seek that consensus, that board approval to establish probably new rules that once they have been established by everybody or at least by a majority, they are to be respected. We can't say, let's make sure that the rules we have established are being implemented by everybody. Especially if, I mean, you were talking about hypocrisy but what we heard from most of our African partners when it came for example, to the incomprehension about the vote on the second Ukraine resolution is double standards.

And it's exactly the same with the approach to Ukrainian refugees in Europe, as opposed to European approach to African migrants. It's double standards. So we need to have universal standards and we need to define rules.

If we talk about international rules, they must be international. They can't just be defined by a closed set of people who don't represent the global majority anymore. And don't even represent the majority of GDP anymore if you think about it, so.

Anne-Marie Slaughter
I will strongly agree there. I mean, the question is, who's the we? And that is the question that keeps getting asked.

I will, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to depart shortly. I would just wanted to address the question of, well, in this world of disorder, what do we look to? And it's a very good question because whether you're in a government or in a business or civil society there, we are in a time of great disorder and great complexity.

And just the news itself, as was pointed out, that comes at us, it's almost impossible to consume or to know where in fact you need to stand. I would say, I think all of our institutions need a moral compass. A moral compass, we know what basic morality is.

We know what human dignity is. We know what truth-telling is to the best of our abilities. And I think the rule Neville said, it's do no harm.

I think you have to go further now. I think you have to adopt do no harm and you have to adopt intend to do good. Within your framework, I understand that a CEO of a corporation is different than a CEO of a civic group, but I think we actually have to have purposeful intention to not only not to hurt, but to do as much good as we can within our own purview.

And I think the second thing is we have to intend to get it done. I am the CEO of New America. I'm the incoming Dean of the School of Public Policy at the London School of Economics.

And the goal that Larry Kramer, the Vice Chancellor and I have for that school is to make it the school of getting things done. Words are easy and there are so many declarations and there's not an actual measurement of what then happens. Business is better in this regard because you do have the profit measure and you have lots of scrutiny.

But even there, as Ken was saying, you can say one thing and do another, or you can simply not speak up as much most American business is doing right now with respect to what the president is doing. But I think you have to commit to something. You have to get it done.

It has to be measurable and you have to be transparent about what you've done and what you haven't done. That's the foundation on which we have some chance of rebuilding trust and it won't be global. It can start locally or regionally, or again, with a particular configuration of the golden triangle.

But I think we all have the capacity to know the difference between at least intending good, there are always unintended consequences, doing no harm and actually seeking outcomes by which we can be judged.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
Thank you so much. I think we should probably get, Ken, you want to have some- If I could just, because I wanted to answer to the two questions. And then we'll close.

Kenneth Roth:
I'll be quick.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
We are over time. And Mary, thank you for your participation. If you have to leave, just leave.

Kenneth Roth:
What I just want to do is the consensus issue because you're all diplomats. Consensus in the UN tends to mean unanimity and that's a disaster. Okay, if consensus means a critical mass, of course, that's good.

It's a way of ensuring broad buy-in. But if it means unanimity, it means giving a veto to any significant power. If it were unanimity, we would have no International Criminal Court today, as we know.

Today, the proposed Crimes Against Humanity Treaty is only moving forward because Mexico threatened to hold the vote. Okay, so consensus should have its limits. It's not the panacea.

And the two questions that were directed to me, one, the relationship between business and regulations it's a bit complicated. Let me note two things. One is that traditionally, businesses were allergic to regulations.

That has changed because some of the bigger brand name companies have come to recognize that no name companies with no reputation can engage in, should we say, profitable abusive conduct. And so the brand name companies see the virtue of regulating across the board because it's a way of ensuring that everybody abides by the same rules. The problem is that they often want minimalist regulation.

So they don't necessarily, you know, they know they have to avoid complicity, but they look to regulation almost as a defense, like, oh, I comply to the regulation, so don't blame me for this complicity that's further down the supply chain than I legally have to look. The limit to that dodge is public opinion because if public opinion gets ahead of the regulation and if companies see that they will have a tarnished image, even if they abide by the regulation because they didn't take that extra step, they are in trouble. So, you know, I think over time, companies come to recognize that weak regulation doesn't help them that much.

Finally, our Armenian friend, I apologize for singling you out here, but on the one hand, you're completely right that the standards are still very, do you say, where'd you say you're from? Romania, okay, then. Okay, fine, I just misheard you.

Then I'm gonna make an Armenian point though. Your question was, do you, you know, the standards. The standards are fine.

You know, if you look at basic humanized standards, I mean, I've traveled around the world. I've never met somebody who wants to be summarily executed. You know, somebody wants to be tortured.

Somebody wants to be detained for their political views or denied housing or healthcare or education. So these are really universal values. The problem does come in the hypocrisy, the inconsistency of enforcement.

And here I'm gonna take an Armenian example. Armenia has elections on Sunday. There is a Western fear of Russian interference.

The Russians have been using all kinds of economic pressure to try to get a pro-Kremlin candidate to win. And so the European Union, US government are all coming in there, and they're opposing this Russian effort to undermine Armenia's democracy. At the same time, the incumbent prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, is completely undermining that democracy by imprisoning opponents, by letting them and limiting the ability of the opposition to fairly wage a campaign.

Are any of these Western governments complaining about Pashinyan's attacks on democracy? No. So it is a completely geopolitical view of the problem, not a principled view.

And that kind of hypocrisy undermines these standards. You know, from the people who portray themselves as the guardians of those standards, but they're not guardians when it's inconvenient. And that's something we have to address.

Jean-Marie Guéhenno
We're way over time, which is a reflection of the importance of the topic that we were discussing. And I want to thank the panelists. My own conclusion is that with this connected world and with the tension between principles and implementation, I think that the job of a CEO is becoming even more difficult.

And so it's the job of a civic leader, how to navigate that world. And for you diplomats, how to navigate it, how to stand for your country, and at the same time, keep a moral compass. It's also not easy in a very brutal world, but that's the purpose of this seminar, to try to get new ideas with leaders who have the moral leadership that we need.

So thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nathalie Delapalme, who had to leave.

Thank you, Neville and Muhtar. Thank you, Ken, for your participation and for what was a very animated discussion.

Muhtar Kent:
Thanks all.