Now a a discussion on human rights and democracy around the world since the cold war. Foreign policy experts look at how americas leadership impacts the world. Florida International University and the making institute hosted this discussion in miami as part of an annual conference on the state of the world. Its just over one hour. Readings to those gathered at florida International University. I salute your efforts to address the days Foreign Policy challenges and the role of American Leadership in the world. It is important to remember that what happens abroad and how people live elsewhere affects us here at home. When america turns a blind eye, we invite the evils of oppression, poverty and extremism to take root around the globe. We must Work Together to safeguard the democratic order that is provided peace, prosperity, and human achievement at home and abroad. American leadership strong alliances with fellow democratic nations are vital to this cause. At the Bush Institute we are working diligently on these issues. Today our team is releasing a set of recommendations aimed at revitalizing our support for freedom, democracy, and human rights in our Foreign Policy. Thank you for contributing to this effort, and may god bless you all. [applause] its a little fact that were aye he does a video before i start speaking. A pretty cool perk of the chuck equip a great panel. We have really provocative title for this and think maybe we just start off with a question that is posed will talk about democracy and human rights around the world, how bad is . Michael, do at the kick us off . Thank you for having us. I think the short answer is its pretty bad. At Freedom House this is something we measure every year at our annual freedom of the world report, and for the last 13 years every year we that more countries experiencing the client in Political Rights and Civil Liberties than those having improvements. Our scores for an extra not ready to be announced its a pretty grim picture. I would just to open the conversation site a few just kind of data points that i think, number one, china is getting more repressive. A million uighurs in concentration camps trying to tighten the screws on hong kong, building kind of an orwellian surveillance state. I think china is, according to our scores, the worst violator of Internet Freedom in the world. Thats one big story. And then along with russia, another great power, they are not only content to crack down on human rights within their own countries but they are reaching beyond their borders going after dissidents. Both countries are holding themselves out as an alternative to liberal democracy. I think youve got, if you go around the globe, use all sorts of different problems. A big challenge is in india which has had a lot of problems cracking down on muslims, violence and now these new laws that are really raising questions about indian democracy. And thats a global phenomenon. So i think its not a great picture. I do think the one thing we have to remind ourselves is that there is a basic human thirst for freedom and democracy. So we are inspired by what happened this year in hong kong. 3 Million People out on the street insisting on the rights. I think theres an interesting story in africa, to mecca countries, sudan and ethiopia, which it had a lot of trouble, Popular Protest Movement in sudan overthrew the long entrenched dictator and in ethiopia theres also a political opening, a nobel prizewinning Prime Minister, so youve got to remind ourselves that just have optimism here at a try to look at the glass is halffull. But it do think if you look around the world its a pretty grim picture and its pretty ba bad. What are your people seeing in terms of efforts to promote democracy and better governance and human rights programs . How bad is it come in your view . I agree with michael. I think its very challenging right now and its probably over the last 20 years this is been of the most challenging years. At the same time im much more optimistic for some of the reasons that michael laid out. I had the opportunity to travel to 13 countries in 2019, and africa, the middle is, the balkans, former soviet union, and asia, to meet with our partners, the folks we work with in these countries to our civic activists, Political Party leaders, candidates, women who are running for office. They are all stupid optimistic about democracy. It was interesting to see the pew research this morning, or earlier, discussion. We do a lot of research. We are not pupil who try to get citizens attitudes about how this view things. Everywhere we work people still want to live in a democratic society. The watch of the right to vote. They want to eat as well. Victoria and i both worked with secretary albright. Shes the chairman of in the eye and she likes to say that people want to have the right to eat and vote. The challenge in most places is that democracies are not delivering to the expectations that citizens have, especially in new emerging democracies. Theres really this hope the people are going of jobs, better education for their children. They will have infrastructure, improved economies, and thats not happening. In addition to the authoritarian regimes having around the world. I see the people power of these citizens protest around the world as a real commitment and i think that something we have to be hanging onto and underscoring and supporting throughout the world. Whats your thought . How bad i think . First of all, great to be here with all of you at fiu. I would agree that obviously the numbers are terrible here the trains are terrible and not just recent trends over the past decade. And the authoritarians are feeling their power, that are not sufficiently challenge and that we have almost worse than that, we have a growing number of states that claim to be democracies but are using the mandate of democracy to take down the structures of democracy, whether it is free press or independent judiciaries or the right of Political Parties to form, et cetera. I think though as colleagues have said here, that what is interesting is that people on every single continent are fighting back. And weve not seen a diminution of street protester on the contrary, we have seen more of it. When you talk about sedan or hong kong or in iraq or still in russia, et cetera. One of the increasing drivers of protests now its also interesting, which is citizens fighting back against perceived corruption of their leaders and their governments. And this is a real vulnerability for autocrats and for the many threats if you will, the erdogan of this world you know, citizens may be unwilling to stand up for a free press, but when they think their government is ripping them off are the think their quality of life is going down whether leaders are enriching themselves, that is something that is dangerous for autocrats and can be exploited by those who want to support democracy by exposing how these folks who claim to be leading their countries are actually enriching themselves. Now you have the United States itself not living up to its own Democratic Values when you have from the white house you know, criticism of the press and criticism of the independent judicial system, etc. Its very hard for those standing up around the world for oldest Democratic Institutions to have the champion that they used a half so i think its incumbent on us to get back to the role that weve traditionally played as we care about these issues whats your take. You left the optimist for last. A year ago, several of us were here. If you had told us 2 million citizens in hong kong would be leading technoauthoritarians topower , we would have said no way. If you had told us a year ago that one of the one third of lebanons populations would be in the straight of beirut across partisan sectarian religious lines demanding change. If you had told us algerians would have been protesting in the streets for 40 weeks straight against their military leadership. If you had told us that a war criminal in sudan named Omar Albashir would have fallenin a straight revolution, a year ago a lot of us would have said no way but that doesnt mean democracy is doing fine. But i will cite jackson deal who wrote in the Washington Post at the end of last year there was no other twelvemonth period in history when so many people have not been in the streets in so many places across regions, across geographies, across cultures demanding their governance. Demanding accountability, standing up to entrenched and corrupt political elites and craving the very rightsthat we are fighting for. Its trendy to sit around in the west and say gosh, democracy is not working so well. There are people risking their lives for some of the very basic things that many of us take for granted living in a wonderful country like this but the answer is not its okay but we have so much to work with the Chinese Communist party currently since xi jinping took power has run a mobile addition to say that foundational threat to the Chinese Communist party and their view of the world is the aspiration to democracyand human rights among chinese and more broadly. You are an al sisi in egypt or Vladimir Putin in russia youre not afraid of armed forces or other security threats, youre fundamentally afraid of your own citizens. Look at maduro in venezuela and the lengths to which he has gone so democrats need to work harder, we need to make democracy work, a new technologies that i think have turned on their head our assumptions about how technology can empower human freedom. Its empowered autocracy in many respects but gosh, there is so much to work with out there so many people all over the world who want to support and help. You got a panel of optimists here but it is a tough moment, its a dark moment area id like to get into a little bit of why democracy has been having if we can agree to this, there have been setbacks and sherry, you mentioned the failure of democracy to consistently deliver on citizens expectations. We heard about an absence of us leadership, we are to push back from authoritarians and in your mind ill start with you again, whats driving the difficulty fordemocracy. There are about 200 different books about this in the last three years that have opined about this so what im going to say is not particularly original but i would just focus on one issue that we have freedom to look at and i think that sometimes doesnt get listed as the number one thing its certainly up there is the changing relationship of technology indemocracy. 10 years ago, when the internet and social media was justgaining steam , activist around the world were using it to mobilize inventory or scale square another places and i think what we see over the last couple of years is that the bad guys kind of caught up with this and theyre able to use technology to undermine elections, theyre able to survey all their people on kind of an unprecedentedscale that i think was imagined by orwell years ago. So i think technology has accelerated some of the larger trends and we can talk about the economy and populism and so forth but i think Going Forward i think thats going to be an issue going to have to grapple with if were going to try to arrest this democratic decline. Sherry, what do you think . I like that is the top reason, my number two would be corruption and and then it corruption in so much of the world. That has only grown as a result of the economies that have been developing over the past 20 years of democracy. And its that level now that are just completely unacceptable. I think china has a role in that and their predatory lending and the fact that deals are made in back rooms and citizens dont even have a voice or an insight into the kind of lending practices that china is making. I think countries are becoming indebted to china through those lending practices. And, but i think corruption is uncontrolled right now. In most of the world and i think thats in large part why citizens are reacting and going to the streets because the resources that are coming into the country are not being used to deal with the basics of education and welfare so i would put corruption as my number two. I think weve had a person perfect storm over the last three or four years of drivers of populism and drivers of autocracy. We talked about technology, the autocrats Getting Better at it and the democrats not being able to defend the space and he the internet as a force for freedom as it once again, but i think income inequality is another issue and as you see those numbers and the spread rolling on almost every continent , it provides fodder for populists who want to turn back the clock to some wished for previous period of peace, security and stability when the strongman took care of you that people yearn for, the migration crisis as well cause all kinds of fears. Bizarrely its countries with the least migration in europe for example are most reacting to the fear but again, rich fodder for populists and autocrats to exploit that somehow you are losing your native culture and your native history to the other which has gone unchecked and unexplained by democrats. There have been, and the last piece which plays into this is the lack of leadership pushing back onthe other side. We havent had the great champions of democracy reminding those in democratic societies how we got as strong and rich and prosperous and had as much opportunity as we had over the last 70 years as these institutions and its tolerance and it is independent judiciaries and free press and all those things that hold governments that allow us to live the way we do so the autocratic forces have been louder, the drivers of populism have been stronger and the democrats havent been fighting back properly. I think part of where you sit in this equation depends onwhat you are benchmarking against. For you is on the board of the board of democracy, the net was founded in 1983. Id like to take 30 seconds to describe to some of you not born in 1983 what the state of democracy was in 1983. It was quite grim. Most of latin america were military or personalistic dictatorships. They countries in asia like south korea and taiwan and indonesia were dictatorships, these are notsome of the most vibrant democracies in the world. The world was messy. Half of europe wasoccupied by the soviet army. Germany was divided. I looked at these Freedom House state of the world report and im sorry, this is state of the world. Your report is called freedom in the world but theres a map in there of africa showing that there were two democracies in africa in 1983, one of them being nigeria which is generous of your editors. So africa is a transformed landscape today in terms of what young people want, what they aspire to in leaders in terms of the turnover of the old colonial era strongmen. Its not perfect, but part of our perspective on democracy i think needs to be anchored in reality. The soviet union collapsed, half the world suddenly reemerged from totalitarian occupation and there was a huge surge and democratic advancement. That was not a normal situation, that was a once in a century war situation. The reality across all of Human History and its always been a struggle between freedom and autocracy and guess what, its back. That period of the late 80s and early 90s we saw this explosion of Democratic Forces around the world. Weve also seen setbacks since then. You take a country like egypt that looked like it was on the verge of becoming more democratic and suddenly it goes back. We see this tide, it isnt always one way but what is new is seeing setbacks and established democracies, in the United States and elsewhere. You comment a little bit aboutthat because he reported on it in freedom of the world last year. First of all, i love dans optimism and i share your optimism but i also do think that like in the big picture we are far away from the end of world war ii. At the end of world war ii there were a couple dozen democracies in the world, now we have hundred 30 depending on how you count for them. The recession if you will over the last 12 or 13 years has been, has set us back but the question really is are the worlds democracies, are the worlds Democratic Leaders going to push back against these trends because theyre not going to go away unless people forcefully fight them, unless we forcefully fight the authoritarian tactics of places all over the world and just going to the question you asked lindsay i think one of the interesting themes of the Freedom House report over the last couple of years is that there has been a weakening in established democracies, our own included but in western europe, really i think the figure is of the 40 strongest democracies in the world i think at least half of them in the last five years have experienced setbacks in Civil Liberties and i think thats not good for the global cause of democracy. I would never compare this country to whats happening in turkeyor russia or china. Im a former journalist. Still a very robust journalistic situation here, theyre not throwing journalists out and being murdered but people do look to the United States for their cues and i think right now, where not sending out the right cues about where we want to stand for democracy. Theres a sense in terms of the cues, theres our own behavior if you will and theres also what policies are weadvocating, what policies are we supporting. Its also something thats being willing to call out and really to recognize the dictators for what they are. Its unfortunate when people like erdogan or orban get a warm welcome in washington. That sends, i recognize you have to do business with these people but its the messaging here and i think it emboldens people like that. Sherry, what youre seeing in terms of that, does the embrace of autocrats by this administration, how does that