The Skoll World Forum is a place to learn, connect, and take collective action while convening annually in Oxford. The conversations that take place at plenaries are highlights of the week, offering luminary perspectives from around the world—and across generations.
Watch the video and read the transcript below to learn from two 2024 Skoll World Forum plenarists and members of The Elders, an international non-governmental organization of public figures, peace activists, and human rights advocates brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007. At this year’s Forum, Mary Robinson and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein discussed the challenges of effective leadership in addressing complex global issues and emphasized the importance of connection and collective power in bringing about change.
Featuring Mary Robinson, Chair of The Elders
First woman President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Chair of The Elders; a passionate advocate for gender equality, women’s participation in peace-building, human dignity and climate justice.
Featuring Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, Member of The Elders
Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; champion of international justice and multilateralism; outspoken advocate for peace and human rights; veteran Jordanian diplomat and peacekeeping expert.
Moderated by Don Gips, CEO of the Skoll Foundation
Leads the Skoll Foundation’s work investing in, connecting, and championing social entrepreneurs to create transformational social change around the world. His experiences span public service, politics, business, finance, and technology.
Don Gips: It’s so great to be on this stage with both of you, friends and people I admire so much. But we have some serious topics to go through. The past two years have seen the highest number of violent conflicts since the end of World War II, from Gaza and Ukraine, to many other conflicts that don’t make the headlines, such as Sudan and Haiti. Why is peacemaking in crisis, and what is needed to rebuild trust and peace?
Mary Robinson: Well, Don, I promise I’ll come back to your question because I —
Don Gips: This is what politicians do, you know?
Mary Robinson: But I actually want to say how delighted I am to be back in Skoll. It’s been a few years and it’s just wonderful. I’ve met so many friends, I’ve met so many young people who are here for the first time, who are deeply impressive, and it brings back memories of coming in earlier years when Jeff Skoll himself was here, and I remember Jeff’s vision for Skoll. I remember he knew in detail what the various people that were invited were doing. He’d been there and he’d talk about it when he introduced them. Do you remember when I was with you and we —
Don Gips: In this.
Mary Robinson: Yes. And it was just this hands-on, wonderful sense of somebody. And he must be very proud; 1.300, you know…
Don Gips: We’re over 1,500 this year.
Mary Robinson: 1,500, oh my God. But just somehow it is a wonderful Forum and it’s great to see. We do need to meet from time to time and to recharge each other. Your question, very tough one, a tough one, but I was thinking, what is lacking in our world today, to be honest, is leadership. Leadership that actually will take on board the very difficult issues of the geopolitical shifts that are taking place and the need for a farer world all around the place. And I’m with another high commissioner, so let me just be a little bit personal in a way about that. When I served as High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, I had literally governments that were helpful. Quite a lot of them, fair enough, were Western governments: Canada, Australia at the time and/or other times, Nordic countries, of course, my own country, Ireland, a bit, but also small island states and various other countries would actually help in support of human rights, in support of what the high commissioner was trying to do.
I think the world has got progressively more difficult for every high commissioner. I’m sure Zeid would kind of agree with that. And it’s now at its most difficult for the UN generally and for anybody serving us as the UN High Commissioner. It’s because we don’t have fair, honest, consistent leadership. We have double standards all around the world, not just in the so-called North, but double standards generally. And we have inconsistency, and we have, you know, not living the values that I use the rhetoric about, but don’t implement and uphold. And it’s become tough because we also have the pressure of social media, which is making everything very short term, immediate, sugar to the brain flick, flick, flick. And that’s meaning that people want populist answers to everything, even though the problems are complex. And that includes peacemaking, peace building. These are complex, messy coalition building things and we need to remember that.
Don Gips: Absolutely. I’m going to build on that a little, and Zeid, maybe you’ll take the first shot at this one. The elders have been focusing on existential threats that put the future of humanity at risk. And you’re urging those in power to show the long view leadership that Mary talked about to face these threats. Can you first tell us what you see as the threats? And I know you’re working on a number of them. And also, how you see long-view leadership’s ability to provide ways to address those threats.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: Thank you, Don. It’s my first visit to Skoll. To all the Muslims in the crowd, a happy age for a successful fast. And I know those of you who know me have heard me say this before, when my son was about four years old and he asked my wife, “What is he doing?” And my wife explained to him that I was fasting. He looked at her and he said, “Ah, yes, he may be fasting, but I am still the fastest.” So, there was this wonderful author —
Mary Robinson: It’s all right, he will answer the question eventually.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: I will get to it. Wonderful author who lived a most adventurous life during the 20th century and fought in the First World War. And in 1936 published a lyrical account of his experiences in the war. And in one passage he makes reference to the invincibility of man’s stupidity. I think the choice of the word ‘man’ was appropriate.
If you ask me what the major threat is, we are releasing ourselves from the protection of the law and marching ourselves into a state of terminal stupidity. We have basically constructed for ourself a set of rules. And the rules are based on traditions. We are now prepared to violate the rules with ever greater frequency, and the leading nations are at the forefront of doing this. And those who are supposed to be the guardians of the rules are not strong enough to maintain them. So it would be like having a Premier League football match where the star players are fouling each other, and fouling others, and no one is paying any attention to the referee or the lines persons. And when you look at where raw power is, it lies with the clubs, it lies with the star players. They command huge salaries, they have huge followings. No one knows who the referee is often. And the referee is just like the rest of us, takes the bus, takes the tube home, but is essential for the conduct of the game. And if there are normative rules, those charged with upholding them, they also have to do their job. So it’s a combination.
We see the spread of these conflicts, as you said. And there’s a very strange thing, I don’t know if any of you have noticed this. Yes, you have a terrible situation in Haiti, and we have a terrible situation in Myanmar, and Afghanistan, and beyond the immediate Middle East. But if you look at longitude 35 east, this one meridian, and how many conflicts exist on it, it is startling; because you have Ukraine, Gaza, you have Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, it’s just to the east of the DRC, and we are very fearful of that. And of course, Mozambique as well. One line of Meridian. Now this, I don’t want to spawn conspiracy theories, but Jordan is close to that one line, and I might be moving out of that. No, I mean, it’s a strange quirk, really.
Mary Robinson: He didn’t answer anything about long-view leadership.
Don Gips: Yeah, are you going to do that one?
Mary Robinson: Not a thing, not a word.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: No. So no.
Don Gips: Anybody who wants to join the Elders Advisory Council, this is what you get to experience.
Mary Robinson: Would you like me to jump in?
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: No. I don’t know if any of you noticed, there was a very famous discussion that Mary conducted during COP28, where she interrupted someone and it had like 500 million views, right? So I don’t mind if she interrupts me if it leads to something like that. It’s difficult, because you require those to climb ladders and look beyond the horizon, have a deep knowledge of history, of law, of economics. And quite frankly, I tried this experiment with university students the world over, and I always get the same response: We just don’t have enough talent, as Mary said, at that top tier where people are fully understanding of the consequences of their decisions.
There was a time when after the Second World War, the Adenauer generation, it skewed populist politics because it saw what happened. A combination of the Nazis, the fascists in Italy, and then where Stalin brought the Soviet Union created a condition for the world, which was almost brought to the point of collapse. And Jörg Haider, when he first emerged in Klagenfurt, in Austria, provoked an enormous reaction from the European continent. Europe did not want to go back there, did not want to go back to populist politics. And then Berlusconi comes along and starts to sort of mainstream the feeling, and now it’s everywhere. And people can’t seem to distinguish between a lie or falsehood and the truth.
But we ourselves are part to blame here that we are so gullible that we believe, and are so desperate for fantasy and so concerned about boredom, that anything fantastic is more likely to grab attention. So we are also partly to blame. And I think long-term leadership is something that can cut across that. We have an enormous climate challenge, we all know that, it’s barreling down on us with enormous speed. We have a pandemic challenge. We’re desperately trying to put a treaty together and it may not work. What does it say about humanity if we can’t prevent the next pandemic from happening? So the challenges are great and it requires leadership of the sort that Mary can provide and does provide to the elders. And that’s where I think that’s what’s needed. But we also have to solve the problems of today.
Don Gips: You want to add to that long view?
Mary Robinson: Just the third one. He forgot nuclear weapons. And across those three, artificial intelligence. So what we’re saying is long-view leadership means not just trying to manage these hugely complex problems, but actually trying to solve them. Trying to build the coalitions of effort, really get to where we need to be on the climate nature crisis, the pandemic crisis, the nuclear crisis, nuclear weapons. Secondly, use science and reason as our guide. And thirdly, listen to everyone, listen to those most affected, be inclusive in the approach, et cetera.
Don Gips: So profound.
Mary Robinson: That’s it, isn’t it?
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: That’s it.
Don Gips: Okay. They agree, they’ve solved that one. You’ve both held multiple roles within the UN system, which is really sort of our global referee or the closest we have to one, including probably one of the toughest jobs, High Commissioner for Human Rights. You both know the institution inside out, so what would you do if you were Secretary General today?
Mary Robinson: Oh, come on. I think it’s a really, really difficult position. I hope when she takes over… but no, quite seriously, the UN is a complex thing, but unless there are a significant number of member states who are supportively helping the Secretary General to be general, not secretary, if you know what I mean, it’s very difficult. And the UN is kind of squeeze now between these two wars and other wars that we’re paying much less attention to and has lost many, many — I mean, look at the 200 now, I think it is, lost in Gaza, and it’s really a very painful time. And there is little enough kind of political cop on, that the UN does fulfill the Churchill thing about democracy. It is the worst system except for all the others. We don’t have any other, so we’ve always needed to reform, we’ve always needed to renew.
We do need a Security Council that reflects the world. And the Security Council is the most important institution because it’s about peace and security, and it’s the weakest and most double standard, devious, awful at the moment, and it’s doing down the UN. It’s time. And maybe with the G20 in the hands of Brazil, and then South Africa, and it’s been India, you have three in succession, we can kind of have more move towards serious UN reform, serious monetary reform, taking on because of the very fact that we have these problems that we have to solve.
At the end of the day, the only way in which we will make progress is by multilateral coalition building. It needn’t be everybody in the tent, but if there enough people are in the tent in the right direction, things can move. And I think we need to be more creative and we need to bring all of you, people, much more into a UN doing. I was very pleased to hear today – we were at this lunch for Brazil – that Brazil has built a coalition to help them with the G20. That’s smart.
Don Gips: That’s what we need.
Mary Robinson: That’s really smart. And we need to get smarter and smarter at the moment because the problems are getting worse, especially with this fake news, the role of social media, the role of algorithms dragging young people to the dark side. It’s a very difficult world to navigate and we need to have the UN recentered, if possible. So if I was Secretary General, I’d be awfully bossy. That’s the only thing I could say.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: So what would I do if I was Secretary General? The first thing is I’d hire everyone who’s here, basically. I disagree with Mary. I don’t think it’s that difficult a job. I don’t think it’s more difficult than the job we had. We, as high commissioners, covered all fields, except for nuclear weapons, perhaps. We came under intense pressure. We were disliked by every government, practically, and we were constantly having to battle inside the UN as well because they didn’t like it that you had an outspoken Mary Robinson, or you had an outspoken Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein. So, I think we already experienced the most difficult of UN jobs. You just have to be prepared to do it. And it’s not about being liked by governments, it’s about being respected by governments.
Mary Robinson: Yeah, absolutely.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: And that you have to stand up, and where they default in the treatment of their own people, you have to be clear, not merely mouthed and sort of playing around with terms. And Mary’s point about moral consistency is clear too. You have to be morally consistent. The Security Council is not; neither is the, by the way, the Human Rights Council because they’re basically the member states and the member states pay fast and loose with these issues. But you try, as a UN leader, to be as consistent and non-selective. And I think that’s really what’s required.
If the Secretary General feels they’re unable to do it, then they have to appoint people who can do it. And if the appointments are weak and we are all wringing our hands wondering why the world is in such a bad state, well, there’s a reason for it. Again, it’s on both sides. You have those national leaders who are willing to break the rules, and then you have the international leaders who are allowing them to do it, and both have to be adjusted for. So, I actually am not overly pessimistic because I know with a few changes, few changes in government, if you elect the right people and you have a —
Mary Robinson: That’s happening. Look at Turkey, look at Poland, yes.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: Suddenly, we go from deep pessimism to sort of a mild optimism and things can happen. And so we seesaw between these feelings and we frighten ourselves to death, and then we can’t recover. So the human ability to recover is — I mean, there’s no doubting that challenges are enormous as well.
Don Gips: It’s a perfect setup for what I wanted to ask you both about. In case the audience hasn’t figured it out, you’re both known for speaking truth to power and for making change happen against inertia and opposition of major powers. Zeid mentioned it before, but Mary, you challenged the President of COP28 to commit to the phasing out of fossil fuels. He questioned you and the science behind that urgent need. And as Al Gore, my old boss, said, “Don’t ever try to mansplain Mary Robinson. It doesn’t work.” And it didn’t, by the way. For the first time in history of the COP process, governments agreed to transition away from fossil fuels.
Mary Robinson: Thank you.
Don Gips: We have all these change makers in this audience. What’s your advice to them about fighting the good fight on the front lines? And as you both have done throughout your careers, how do you make change happen?
Mary Robinson: I don’t know how to give advice to the people here who have such incredible wisdom in themselves and such incredible determination and endeavor. I do think one thing that we all could benefit from is not just doing our piece of making a better future. And all of you are engaged in so many different ways and we don’t connect enough. We have to learn because we have to know our power in this world of ours. And we have to connect in order to understand that we are on the cusp of a clean energy, better, safer, fairer world. We’re moving, we’re actually moving faster, but we’re not moving nearly fast enough for the science. And this is very serious. So we need to know our power through connection. Indigenous peoples, the young people, entrepreneurs, women at grassroots, business, philanthropy, filmmakers, artists, everybody. And some of us here, including Pat Mitchell, who will be dialoguing with Jacinda Ardern next, I understand, connective women leader. We came together with our dandelion. I do see quite a few Dandelions around the room.
Don Gips: Yay, Dandelions.
Mary Robinson: And just to explain very briefly, because I’m passionate about this anyway, but it is relevant. The dandelion — first of all, I learned the power of symbols when I was elected the first woman President of Ireland in 1990. I said I would put a light in the window of my official residence for all of those who had to leave Ireland over the centuries because of conflict, because of poverty, because of sexual orientation with the Catholic church clamping down and everything, and so on. And that light took on a life of its own. It was unbelievable. It shaped an Irish diaspora, which wasn’t there before. It shaped that sense of connection, of family. It built, it just did. And then the government responded with completely different policies because we had a diaspora, and we belonged to each other, and somehow the light had made this happen.
I think this dandelion symbol – because it’s nature, so we’re using nature to guide us – it’s also very resilient in my culture. And in many cultures, it’s a weed. And if you try to get rid of it, you don’t, because it keeps coming back. So it’s resilient and then it’s regenerative of the soil with its deep roots. You could eat or drink every part of the dandelion, and how do you spread it? So it’s a perfect way of saying it’s not enough now that each of us is trying our best to do what we’re doing on girls’ education and all sorts of things. I can’t tell you how impressed I’ve been, especially with the new fellows here. Hands up the new fellows. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I’ve met quite a lot of you and you’re very impressive.
But it’s not enough to be doing alone anymore and thinking, “I’m making my contribution.” No, we’ve got to connect, and we’ve got to know our power, and then we’ve got to shift the money, get the governments to stop subsidizing. And I’ll just give you the figure of the B team of business leaders that I belong to, that we spend, the world spends $1.8 trillion every year, $1.8 trillion every year on what is harming us, primarily fossil fuel. So transitioning out of fossil fuel is not a slow business. We’ve got to do it really fast and we’ve got to shift the money. And if we shift the money, we will have the trillions that are needed for what needs to be done, especially in developing countries. It’s so exciting this world that we can and must get to, but we have to know our power, and we have to connect to know our power, and we need nature to guide us. And I think the dandelion is perfect.
Don Gips: That’s a beautiful answer. Zeid, do you want to jump in on that?
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: Yeah, so…
Don Gips: You’re brave to go after her.
Mary Robinson: If he disagrees with me again, we’ll fight.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: So, two points. When I think of the fossils fuel industry, or the pharmaceutical industry, or any industry that’s deemed to be standing in the way of making the world a safer place for us — and I speak of the pharmaceuticals not in terms of the products that they produce. We know the position of Oxford University and the way that they suspended IP rights when it came to the use of a vaccine and should be lauded for it.
But it reminds me of the two brothers in New York in the 1830s and ’40s, the Tappan brothers, who were very successful merchants and very much a presence in New York high society. And they decided to join the ranks of humanists, of religious figures by becoming abolitionists. And they were deemed as having betrayed their own class, and their homes were attacked and torched. But it was pivotal because someone from within decided to become against. And where in the pharmaceutical industry or in the fossil fuel industry is the Tappan brother of tomorrow, or the Tappan brothers of tomorrow? And we have to encourage them. Once that changes, then the world changes quickly.
The other person I think about when I think about the way you framed the question and how we should answer it, is I think of Hannibal, and I think of the Second Punic wars. And right away, you’re going to think, “This man is completely insane. He’s a former human rights fellow talking about Hannibal.” But in what sense am I speaking about this? So, when Hannibal had to get his elephants across the pass into Italy, there was only one pass he could cross, the Col de la Traversette. It was wide enough. Elephants did sadly fall to their death, but he could get most of his army up and across. And I think all of us work for organizations where we know that we do good, but ultimately, it’s a big world out there. And sadly, we have to also recognize that much of what we do is pinprick. It’s not having the effect we think it will have. And we can go across organization to organization, and we know this. We can still feel good about it, but you have to put it in perspective.
So the thing to do is recognizing you can’t get the elephants up to the pass. It’s just too difficult. You can anticipate where the elephants are going to cross in and you position yourself at the pass with a better set of data, better knowledge and advice on where they should go after that. It doesn’t mean that they all attack the Romans. I mean, basically, you help direct them down. And I think if all our organizations were doing that, the compound effect of it would be enormous. And that’s my advice.
Don Gips: Wonderful, thank you. I could stay in conversation with the two of you forever, but I — getting this little time clock up there telling me we have to end this.
Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein: First we have to exit.
Don Gips: Yeah, we’ll go off, one second. When I first joined Skoll and I was asking Jeff about, what is this elders thing? He said, “It’s the most important investment we could make.” And to you both, I proved him right again. Thank you.
Mary Robinson: Thank you very much.
