Power to the People: Citizen Engagement and Social Transformation

Panel called Power to the People: Citizen Engagement and Social Transformation at the Skoll World Forum 2009. The moderator is Ray Suarez of The NewsHour on PBS and panelists are Kailash Satyarthi, chairman, global March Against Child Labour; Daniel Lubetzky, founder and president, PeaceWorks Group; The Honourable Mary Robinson, president, Realizing Rights

With: Ray Suarez, Kailash Satyarthi, Daniel Lubetzky, The Honourable Mary Robinson
pick up the pace here on the stage. For me, it is the highest praise to say of any task, it is interesting duty so when I was and on harnessing power, challenging power, on the problem solving, challenges and hard-won successes bringing social entreprise. All this time telling you of their many accomplishments, Kailash said the Arty is one of the best known leaders in the global movement.

by that and why is the difference important.

I'm still trying to...

Can you hear me?
I'm still trying figure that out for myself. For the moment my favourite realization was in the last two three trips that I have taken to the region where our news readers were complaining all the time and Bermuda was real source of them taking ownership so i actually really liked it and the last couple of occasions that I was talking to them they were always complaining because they were saying Several thousands deeply involved how you reached the decisions among the thousands and how do you try to get consensus and how do you try to get the movement to lead but also to represent.

very very tricky balance not the least of trying to engage the youth leaders in trying to forge those decisions which decisions have to be actually taken by the movement and which you are going to have hundred and one opinions what you are calling yourselves "one voice" and the point is that, in spite of the many differences that Israelis and Palestinians have among themselves and let alone between each other they tried to find those areas of consensus of how to move forward well...its a good question!

Some laws are made in India, we have also been successful in making new laws...worldwide...international conventions sight, the heart, and a clear vision, how are you going to use that weapon? And that is non-existing in many cases. Laws are there but the people are not prepared to use those laws.

So we have to prepare those people, and that is the empowerment of people, that is the powership whatever name you give. But the question is that how are you going to address the vital questions of the structural or institutional power, the individual power which is vested in your minds and bioces which are prevailing in many ways like the cast wires in India gender wires in many parts of the world apartide and many kind of things.

So that that is the basic question how we are going to address all these visible powers and invisible powers in favour of the people so that the law could work and law could be implemented so law is not enough.
I started freeing slave children without knowing whether the law exists or not, because some parents came to me and requested that their children had been trapped, kidnapped, put to work like slaves, sold and bought like animals, or even lesser price than animals, then I could not wait.

So I started work about, what, 30 years ago. But then I realised that much of the legal provisions are not in my favor. So, I had to fight for the law. Then the law was there, then I realised that it is not enough. We have to work for implementation of those laws, and that cannot work only through the judicial recourses, it will work only through people's movement.

So the mass participation, the coalition building with like-minded organizations, and the multi-stakeholder partnerships. All those strategies were discovered in the process, so that the laws can work. Which is not easy. So one has to disover new strategies, once you achieved the first.

But does everybody have to agree on what the goal is? If you're making these coalitions Do you have to have a set of ideas that everybody has to sign on to in order to participate?

Well, we have to find out some of the basic common the extreme rightist people and the extreme leftist people were marching hand in hand, because both wanted that child slavery has to be abolished from the world: so the minimum common understanding and minimum common agenda with some program instead of going through everything.

Now you've seen this from both sides, Madam President. As a politician, had petitions dropped on your desk with thousands of signatories, people who were strangers to you; but also now, in your second career, trying to unleash that same power. How does it look from those two different desks?

I think I've always been very both energized and somehow drawn on the resourcefulness of what happens in communities. I remember when I was actually, as politicians do, looking for votes to be elected president of Ireland. And that's when you really get to know a country. I was in the inner city, I was in small villages, I was on the islands and when I saw a lot of such development of communities and listen to me well you now when you are if you are if you are elected because was a big if what people are doing and yet when we talk about the shift in power i would say one of the shifts that's taking place in this... Severe and economic crisis which is the prosperity in the poorest is the recognition what Government matters and I think that's very important in the 21st century because.

we were in a new liberal phase when there was a reduction of the importance of government and the private sector was so efficient and we didn't need regulation. I'm hoping that we can now see a new era of more responsible government, more appropriate information society to be able to be very creative and to participate in their communities and their society in their movements.

And, which is one of the strengths of and both movements in countries that didn't have Mary Robinson as president. So, how do you create and childhood and future. They are perhaps the most powerless people but I strongly believed right from the day one that until and unless we unleash the tremendous Moral Power Which exist in those communities in those people we cannot bring about the sustainable change for instance I will give you an an example that when hundreds of children who are victims of slavery and trafficking and child prostitution and some of the former child soldiers knock the door and in the United Nations Plaza in Geneva at the time of ILO Convention, 180 Labour Ministers stood up and they were all shocked to see when a child stands up and goes to the dias and says that are you so poor that you cannot.

power was generated in that room and no government, no minister could say "no" to a child and the result was that, an agreement was made immediately within two or three days' time that an international convention would be signed in principle and in a year's time, next year, I mean in sorry in 1991 within a year a new international law came to an existence which has been signed by all the government of the world and it has become the fastest ever ratified UN convention on the worst forms of child labor, that's the peoples power.

I would never suggest under... government was indifferent. Parents themselves who needed the income produced by those children often weren't sure that they were on your side. And the factory owner were all too happy to use the cheapest workers in the world to continue to make the things they made.

So you had to harness the power in a way that would make some very not just work on emotions. You have to build strong arguments and strong rationales behind your work. So, passion and rationale argument, what argument is It is a big number but hundred and eighty five million adults are totally jobless and unfortunately the number has increased in last three four months time in this recession.

So it is more or less shame two hundred million child laborers two hundred million adults jobless. The stronger view on is that who are the jobless adults? Most of the jobless adults are of the varying parents and the family members of this childrens who don't find the jobs. Children are preferred because they are the cheapest source of labor, they are free labor in many cases, they can work long hours a day, they could be exploited easily and they are denied education and everything.

So argument was there very simple that if from India, for instance, where we have sixty million child laborers and 60 million adults jobless. My argument was that if you remove those sixty million childrens from jobs you are going to create at least 60 million jobs in the country. And these 60 million jobs will not be given to the Americans or the neighbouring country Pakistan so don't be afraid of it these jobs will go to able bodies .

Known this may be seven or eight years ago would have download a more experiences and would have probably Palestinian and Israeli people are expecting a great messianic figure to come from the top and just resolve the conflict and that is not going to happen. I am talking about the power shifts. It is get seriousness to understand that nobody is going do at through them there are but there ten million living with the consequence needs to have that and so you need to get people to understand that they have the power and the responsibility to play that role and then to to recruit people and he was going out into far a way villages on his donkey and i thought it was a very powerful story of personal sacrifice you know hosted us and then started supporting us and somehow we hadn't even allowed that it had leaked into the media and for like three days nonstop we keep getting phone calls.

Black peace is going to make peace in the middle east and he was with the killers and quiet dangerous also because suddenly people saw all this is a celebrity movement with blackpeace which is going to make peace ofcourse was not we thought many his role is but celebrities and media have a very important role to play having put the spot light on the people as you adjust the power of dignitaries we troubled to press them XX coach an event we have to find ways to get dignitaries, luminaries, celebities, to try to put the spot light on those causes, on the children, on the young Israels and the Palestinians because whether you like it or not there is not that many of race wars out there and the media normally wants the, there was the woman you said was that was not to talk the topic of the news i n the life of Congo, no wonder in the last week or so, and in all three countries climate change isn't something of the future.

east, but those chosen life styles are dramatically worsening the vulnerable life chances of the women and children and citizens of the poorest countries and it is happening on a cause and effect way. How do we address the challenge of that and some of us have been Very strongly that social entrepreneurs are a kind of bridge between the facts that its a rich world and the big corporations.

demand a funding so that the billions can benefit. I mean the, the technology that gives me that sense of what is possible is the mobile phone. In the the poor camps and i can see it i can see a village in Africa the Kind of village that i am in from time to time where the woman in village they are selling electricity to the village next door because the committee of women have been able to take better care Kailash found a way to reach from rural India, Town India to the department stores of the western world about who puts the knots in those roads.

Journalists found a way when someone who was walking into a jewelry store and buying something with diamond chips in it instead of diamonds to explain but know some kid whose ankle is chained to the ground in a jewellery subcontractor. accountability of what is happening at the national or international level, whether it is for child labor, whether it is for the diamonds that have required this can believe process them to I mean one of the tragedies of the democratic public of Congo its one of the richest countries in the world but its resources.

entrepreneurial, to use the possibilities. The climate justice, climate equity issue is how do we transfer the technologies and have the adaption funds greatly increased, to support indigenous knowledge, to cope with climate shots? And that's where, the kind of entrepreneurial spirits of social entrepreneurs can come in, but some of those social entrepreneurs are those who are holding government to account, holding corporations to account and we, we need more of that.

How do you stay focused over the long haul? How do you keep pressure in the pipe, keep moving in the direction that you've set for your organization, that you've set for your origination, if, as it gains more adherence and more supporters, you almost inevitably water down that purity of purpose, that focus climb the first hill, but I'm not going to stop here, I'm going to climb up the second one and third one and the fourth one, until and unless harder here in this part of the world, if somebody decide to become a society bomber or something like that.

So we have to see that the things are so interconnected then we have to see the inter connectivity and solutions also. Normally when we think of inter-connectivity of solutions we make it very complex I believe in simplicity. I want to find simple answers to any complex problem and that works. Because you have to go with a very simple measures to the people, only then they are with you Otherwise they will leave you after sometime after you when you keep on making charitacle and academic analysis of the problem.

go with the solutions, not with the problems to the people and that focus of solution has to be there. If you make a small solution Knowing about whether to climb it or not, Thank you. You know, I have the easy part. haven't given up, when I come here, when I hear Jeff and others with their determination, it helps me feel that I'm not giving up and it's really important for your Its our goal Sometimes when you have the break down of leadership it don't come to us and fact that doesn't have a credible government for the.

Palestinians to break the taboos and to deal with their own demons. I was talking earlier about how all our members if the Israelis two state solution and the Palestinians two state solution many not coincide and so we're trying this year too, with a program breaking the taboos to
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