In a meeting at Beijing’s Diaoyutai state guest house, where China’s leaders have traditionally received senior foreign visitors, Xi said he was very happy to see the Microsoft MSFT.O co-founder and philanthropist after three years, and that Gates was the first American friend he had met this year.

“I often say the foundation of US-China relations lies with its people. I place my hopes on the American people,” a video published by state broadcaster CCTV showed Xi as saying.

“With the current global situation, we can carry out various activities beneficial to our two countries and people, activities that benefit humanity as a whole,” he said.

Gates, who arrived in Beijing on Wednesday, June 14, said he was “honored” to have the chance to meet. “We’ve always had great conversations and we’ll have lot of important topics to discuss today…. It’s very exciting to be back.”

In a post on his personal blog, Gates said he and Xi had discussed global health and development challenges such as health inequity and climate change.

Xi stopped traveling abroad for nearly three years as China shut its borders during the coronavirus pandemic and his international meetings since the reopening have mostly been with other state leaders.

A number of CEOs have visited China since it reopened early this year, but most have met with government ministers.

Gates stepped down from Microsoft’s board in 2020 to focus on philanthropy in the fields of global health, education and climate change.

The last reported meeting between Xi and Gates was in 2015, when they met on the sidelines of the Boao forum in Hainan province. In early 2020, Xi wrote to Gates thanking him and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for pledging assistance to China, including $5 million for its fight against COVID-19.

Xi also discussed the global rise of artificial intelligence(AI) with Bill Gates and said he welcomed US firms including Microsoft bringing their AI tech to China, two sources familiar with the talks said.

One of the sources said they also discussed Microsoft’s business development in China.

Not pursuing hegemony

The mood of the foreign business community towards China has turned more cautious as Sino-US tensions intensify and Xi increases China’s focus on national security.

Gates’ visit comes ahead of a long-delayed trip to China by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken aimed at stabilizing relations between the world’s two largest economies and strategic rivals.

Blinken had a tense call with China’s foreign minister Qin Gang on Wednesday, during which Qin urged the United States to stop meddling in its affairs and harming its security.

During his meeting with Gates, Xi said China would not follow the old path of a “strong country seeking hegemony” but would work with other countries to achieve common development, according to the People’s Daily newspaper. China often accuses the United States of pursuing hegemony.

Apart from meeting Xi, Gates gave a speech at the Global Health Drug Discovery Institute about the need to use technology to solve global health challenges during his visit.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Beijing municipal government, which founded the institute with Tsinghua University, also pledged to each provide $50 million to bolster the institute’s drug discovery capacity. – Rappler.com

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Thursday, June 15, that countries must start phasing out oil, coal and gas – not just emissions – and demanded that fossil fuel companies “cease and desist” measures that aim to hobble progress on the issue.

Some Western governments and climate-afflicted island nations agree, but the oil-producing United Arab Emirates, host of COP28, says the talks should focus on phasing out emissions. Nevertheless, the UAE’s incoming COP28 president said last week the phasedown of the fuels themselves was inevitable.

The United Nations climate change body said the Bonn talks closed on Thursday with progress on the issues of financing measures to mitigate climate change; the question of liability for the loss and damage it has caused; and funding for measures to adapt to its effects. But it did not specify what had been decided.

The meeting is seen as a mid-way check-in to prepare decisions for adoption at COP28, which begins on November 30.

The landmark 2015 Paris climate agreement set a 1.5ºC increase in the global surface temperature as a limit for averting the most catastrophic effects of global warming in the industrial era – a threshold already close to being crossed.

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said delegates in Bonn had laid the groundwork for more ambitious action.

“From what I have seen and heard, there are bridges that can be built to realize the common ground we know exists,” UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said late on Thursday.

But activists accused the US, Britain and the European Union of trying to divert discussions away from their legal accountability for climate change.

And they said rich industrialized countries were pushing developing countries to commit to measures such as expanding renewable sources of power without taking into account their inability to pay for them.

The UNFCCC said climate finance was among the topics heavily discussed in Bonn.

Environmentalists did, however, welcome new UNFCCC requirements for participants in the UN process to disclose their affiliation, a step aimed at curbing the influence of fossil fuel industry lobbyists. – Rappler.com

Earlier on Thursday the Vatican released the first pictures of the 86-year-old pontiff since his admission to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on June 7, showing him in a wheelchair visiting its cancer ward for children.

The Pope’s engagements have been cancelled until June 18.

Francis rested well during the night, his recovery is proceeding normally and his blood tests are in line with expected parameters, the Vatican statement said.

The Pope traditionally takes all of July off, with the Sunday blessings being his only public appearances, so he will have next month to rest before he is due to make a trip to Portugal from August 2 to August 6 for World Youth Day and to visit the Shrine of Fatima.

He also is still scheduled to visit Mongolia from August 31 to September 4, one of the most remote places he will have visited in his 10-year pontificate. – Rappler.com

The increase of around 19 million people to 108.4 million by the end of 2022 is the biggest annual jump on record, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a report released on Wednesday, June 14. That number has since risen further to 110 million, mostly due to Sudan’s eight-week-old conflict, UNHCR head Filippo Grandi told journalists.

“It’s quite an indictment on the state of our world to have to report that,” he said at a Geneva press conference.

“Solutions to these movements are increasingly difficult to even imagine, to even put on the table,” he said. “We are in a very polarized world, where international tensions play out all the way into humanitarian issues.”

For the two decades before the Syria conflict in 2011, the global level was roughly stable at about 40 million refugees and internally displaced people, the Forced Displacement report showed. But they have risen each year since and have now more than doubled. More than one in every 74 people is now displaced, the report said.

Grandi blamed “the usual package of causes” which he said were conflict, persecution, discrimination, violence and climate change. Of the total refugees and those needing international protection, about half of them came from just three countries: Syria, Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Grandi raised concerns about tougher rules on admitting refugees and push-backs, without naming countries.

“We see increasingly a reluctance on the part of states to fully adhere to the principles of the (1951 refugee) convention, even states that have signed it,” Grandi told Reuters on the sidelines of the briefing.

However, he was upbeat about some developments, namely a deal reached by EU ministers last week on sharing responsibility for migrants and refugees.

“There are issues of some concern. By and large however, I think it’s a positive step,” he said. “We’re so happy that the Europeans agree on something.”

He also praised Kenya which he said is looking for new solutions for the half million refugees it hosts, including many who have fled poverty and drought in the Horn of Africa. – Rappler.com

Generative AI technology that can spin authoritative prose from text prompts has captivated the public since ChatGPT launched six months ago and became the fastest growing app of all time. AI has also become a focus of concern over its ability to create deepfake pictures and other misinformation.

“Alarm bells over the latest form of artificial intelligence – generative AI – are deafening. And they are loudest from the developers who designed it,” Guterres told reporters. “We must take those warnings seriously.”

He has announced plans to start work by the end of the year on a high-level AI advisory body to regularly review AI governance arrangements and offer recommendations on how they can align with human rights, the rule of law, and the common good.

But on Monday he added: “I would be favorable to the idea that we could have an artificial intelligence agency … inspired by what the international agency of atomic energy is today.”

Guterres said such a model could be “very interesting” but noted that “only member states can create it, not the Secretariat of the United Nations”. The Vienna-based IAEA was created in 1957 and promotes the safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies while watching for possible violations of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It has 176 member states.

ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI said last month that a body like the IAEA could place restrictions on deployment, vet compliance with safety standards and track usage of computing power.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has also supported the idea and said he wants Britain to be home to global AI safety regulation. Britain is due to host a summit later this year on how coordinated international action can tackle the risks of AI.

Guterres said he supported the plan for a summit in Britain, but said it should be preceded by “serious work”. He said he plans to appoint in the coming days a scientific advisory board of AI experts and chief scientists from U.N. agencies. – Rappler.com

Informed sources indicated that the appeals chamber of the ICC may come out with a decision in the next two to three months on whether the Prosecutor’s investigation into the estimated 27,000 killings in former President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and the Davao Death Squad is valid.

If the appeals chamber decides in favor of the Philippine government, the prosecutor has to close its investigation. If the decision goes against the government, the prosecutor may start to request for an arrest warrant if it finds sufficient grounds to do so.

It was the Philippine government that filed an appeal, and whatever the decision is will be final, at least for this issue. “The appeals chamber is the highest chamber at the ICC, so there is no appeal of the decision of the appeals chamber,” ICC Spokesperson Fadi el Abdallah told Rappler in an interview at the court on June 8.

But if, for example, the government loses this round, “it would not preclude them from providing material in the future that could warrant [another] deferral,” Maria Elena Vignoli, senior counsel of the Human Rights Watch international justice program, told Rappler.

This ping-pong on legal processes may be the same complicated process as in the Philippines’ local system, except that the ICC has one fundamental limitation: it does not have police powers.

Even if arrest warrants are issued, the matter of who will make the arrest is a big problem. South Africa, an ICC member country, has now given immunity to Russian president Vladimir Putin when he goes there this August for the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) summit. The ICC issued an arrest warrant against Putin over child deportation in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ICC’s El Abdallah said immunity is a usual diplomatic custom for all visiting heads of state, and that “there is a clear framework in the ICC Rome Statute that allows for these types of matters to be dealt with.”

The ICC’s track record in enforcing warrants, however, is not cause for optimism. If a suspect is not arrested, no trial will happen.

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Prospects for the Philippines

Prospects for the Philippines are both good and bad. Good because former prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who opened the investigation, was bogged down by sanctions from Donald Trump before, and that was seen to have affected the pace of action in the Philippine case.

Karim Khan, the new prosecutor, has been moving quicker than his predecessor and has appointed deputy prosecutors to help speed up the process. In just one year, Khan has managed to both reopen the investigation into the Philippines and convince the appeals chamber not to suspend the process while waiting for its decision.

But the reality is that the Office of the Prosecutor has a limited budget, funded only by voluntary contributions from state parties. It also has its hands full on its special Ukraine investigation.

“We cannot put all the hope for justice in an international court that’s under-resourced and that’s right now preoccupied with what its principals and donors want it to be preoccupied with,” said Ruben Carranza, a Filipino international justice lawyer, at a forum by 1Sambayan on May 4.

“We were worried just slightly. But movement is better than no movement at all,” Kristina Conti, lawyer for a group of drug war widows and an ICC accredited assistant counsel, told Rappler in a Zoom interview from Manila on June 10.

The complicated treaty

A special feature of the ICC is complementarity. It means that it will not intervene if it is convinced that the Philippines’ own justice system is able and willing to do the investigation. 

Prosecutor Khan has been insisting that  the Philippine government has not given substantial proof of a working justice system. The other consideration for complementarity is “same person, same conduct” test, meaning, the national investigation must be looking at the same person and substantially the same conduct being investigated by the ICC. If the government passes the test, the ICC need not proceed as state investigations are given more primacy.

Colombia, for example, is a model of complementarity because its creation of its own peace tribunals convinced the ICC prosecutor to close the investigation.

Sarah Bafadhel, the British external counsel hired by the Philippine Office of the Solicitor General (OSG), has expertise on complementarity.

Among others, the appeal argues that the complementarity tests apply only to concrete cases, and not the Philippine situation at the investigation level. Beyond that, the appeal argues that the justice system is working.

That claim, however, is disputed heavily by the local human rights community. For one, the proof submitted to the ICC includes proceedings that are not directly related to the drug war. There is also little movement in the investigation of the Davao Death Squad.

“At least for the purposes of the appeal, the argument is that yes, they are not criminal proceedings, but they lead to, or allow for investigation and identification of potential perpetrators, potential victims and potential witnesses,” Bafadhel told Rappler in an interview from The Hague on June 9.

“For the victims, if you ask them, who do you want prosecuted? Common among the names is Rodrigo Duterte, and none of these proceedings, civil and criminal, lead up to the name of Duterte and even Bato,” Conti said. Bato is Senator Ronald “Bato” Dela Rosa, Duterte’s former police chief and the architect of the drug war.

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Philippines’ lawyer at ICC: ‘A good defense is part of justice’

In defense of the ICC

The ICC also suffers from a sustained disinformation campaign, mostly from its reputation of not being able to punish Western leaders. When Bensouda opened the investigation, a report on Dutch portal Justiceinfo.net on her role in the Gambian regime got traffic from the Philippines, and was distributed by Duterte bloggers to discredit the prosecution.

“You are certainly dealing with people that have some kind of power, and it means you are upsetting some people just by existing and conducting your job. It is totally unacceptable to put out fake news about an institution seeking justice, and at the same time, it seems to me it is unavoidable in our current work,” said El Abdallah.

The ICC is also seen as a potential political tool in the power play of the fragile alliance between Duterte and President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The Marcos government, after all, is engaging to an extent with the court in this appeal process. Marcos also sometimes gives interviews where he drops criticisms here and there on the abuses in Duterte’s drug war.

“The ICC is a politicized court and this is politics in the international level,” said Carranza in the 1Sambayan forum.

In the same forum, Filipino judge Raul Pangalangan, who retired as an ICC judge in May 2021, said: “We don’t have a police to carry out our orders, but historically, we have found ways to carry out our jurisdiction even without that.”

Drug war victims are always cautioned against high hopes on a process as convoluted as the ICC, but Conti said: “At the moment, it is the most viable option; in fact, it seems it is the only viable option.” – Rappler.com

This reporting was supported by the Journalists For Justice

Despite a surge in women’s rights groups and social movements like Time’s Up and MeToo in the United States, biased social norms and a broader human-development crisis heightened by COVID-19, when many women lost their income, have stalled progress on inequality.

In its latest report, the United Nations Development Programme tracked the issue through its Gender Social Norms Index, which uses data from the international research programme World Values Survey (WVS).

The survey draws from data sets spanning 2010-2014 and 2017–2022 from countries and territories covering 85% of the global population.

The latest analysis showed almost nine out of 10 men and women hold fundamental biases against women and that the share of people with at least one bias has barely changed over the decade. In 38 of the surveyed countries the share of people with at least one bias decreased to just 84.6% from 86.9%.

The degree of improvement over time has been “disappointing,” said Heriberto Tapia, research and strategic partnership adviser at UNDP and co-author of the report.

The survey also noted that nearly half of the world’s people think that men make better political leaders, while 43% think men are better business executives.

“We need to change the gender biases, the social norms, but the ultimate goal is to change the power relations between women and men, between people,” Aroa Santiago, gender specialist in inclusive economies at UNDP, told Reuters.

Though education has always been hailed as key for improving economic outcomes for women, the survey revealed the broken link between the education gap and income, with the average income gap at 39% even in the 57 countries where adult women are more educated than men.

More direct harm to women’s wellbeing could be seen in views on violence, with more than one out of every four people believing it was justified for a man to beat his wife, the UNDP said. – Rappler.com

As previously announced, the 86-year-old pope did not say his Sunday traditional noon Angelus prayer in public and watched Mass on television, the statement said.

Doctors had recommended he avoid putting strain on his abdomen after a three-hour operation at Rome’s Gemelli hospital to repair a hernia on Wednesday, June 7.

The pope will stay in hospital for at least all of this week and all audiences have been canceled until June 18.

Sunday’s statement added that the pope showed no signs of fever and that blood levels were normal.

He also received communion, it said. – Rappler.com

The Pope, who was supposed to physically join the Nobel laureates but was still confined in the hospital after undergoing surgery, sent a message calling for human fraternity – one of his most frequent appeals and also a key to understanding his decade-old pontificate.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureates gathered at Saint Peter’s Square on Saturday, June 10, for the first World Meeting on Human Fraternity. During the ceremony, the Nobel winners presented the landmark Declaration on Human Fraternity, which they drafted earlier that day. The declaration was then signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican secretary of state.

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“We want to shout to the world in the name of fraternity: Never again war! It is peace, justice, equality that guide the fate of all mankind. No to fear, no to sexual and domestic violence! All armed conflicts must come to an end. We say no more nuclear weapons, no more land mines. No more forced migrations, ethnic cleansing, dictatorships, corruption, and slavery,” the Declaration on Human Fraternity read.

“Let us stop the manipulation of technology and AI. Let us put fraternity before technological development, so that it may permeate it,” it added.

The Nobel laureates then called on “all women and men of goodwill” – a phrased commonly used in the Catholic Church to refer to believers and nonbelievers alike – “to embrace our appeal to fraternity.”

“Our children, our future can only thrive in a world of peace, justice, and equality, to the benefit of the single human family: only fraternity can generate humanity,” they said. (Read the full declaration below.)

FULL TEXT: ‘Declaration on Human Fraternity’ drafted by Nobel laureates at the Vatican

In his own message for the event, Francis said, “The question to ask ourselves is not what society and the world can give me, but what can I give to my brothers and sisters.” The Pope called for an end to war and stressed that “brothers and sisters are the anchor of truth in the stormy sea of conflicts that spread falsehood.”

“When people and societies choose fraternity, policies also change: The person once again takes precedence over profit and the home we all inhabit over the environment to be exploited for one’s own interests. A just wage is paid for work, welcome becomes wealth, life becomes hope, justice opens up to reparation, and the memory of evil done is healed in the encounter between victims and perpetrators,” he said.

#NotAlone World Meeting on Human Fraternity pic.twitter.com/G45xbSOvOw

— Maria Ressa (@mariaressa) June 10, 2023

With the theme “Not Alone,” the World Meeting on Human Fraternity was convened by the Fratelli Tutti Foundation, established by Francis in December 2021 and inspired by his landmark encyclical on human fraternity, Fratelli Tutti.

‘Fraternity’: Key to understanding Francis

The call for a human fraternity, or a deeper sense of brotherhood and sisterhood among the world’s peoples, is one of the distinguishing features of the Francis papacy.

The Pope’s core ideas on human fraternity are enshrined in the encyclical or papal letter Fratelli Tutti, published on October 3, 2020. The Pope said “fratelli tutti,” an Italian phrase that literally means “brothers all,” was the way Saint Francis of Assisi “addressed his brothers and sisters and proposed to them a way of life marked by the flavor of the Gospel.”

The life of Francis of Assisi, a saint known for abandoning his riches for a life of poverty, is an important window into the mind of Pope Francis. The first Latin American pope, who was once Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, was the first pontiff to choose the name “Francis” as inspired by the saint from Assisi.

In Fratelli Tutti, Francis criticized populism, rejected the death penalty by overturning a centuries-old teaching, and condemned “globalization and progress without a shared roadmap” as well as “digital campaigns of hatred and destruction.”

“How important it is to dream together…. By ourselves, we risk seeing mirages, things that are not there. Dreams, on the other hand, are built together,” the Pope said in Fratelli Tutti, quoting from his 2019 speech in Macedonia.

“Let us dream, then, as a single human family, as fellow travelers sharing the same flesh, as children of the same earth which is our common home, each of us bringing the richness of his or her beliefs and convictions, each of us with his or her own voice, brothers and sisters all,” the Pope said. 

Five years before issuing Fratelli Tutti, the Pope released the encyclical Laudato Si’, an unprecedented papal document that addressed climate change. 

The encyclical drew its name from the Italian phrase “Laudato si’, mi’ Signore,” or “praise be to you, my Lord,” which Francis of Assisi used in his Canticle of the Creatures, a prayer to thank God for the gifts of creation. Francis of Assisi is also known for his love for the environment.

The Pope said in Laudato Si’, “The urgent challenge to protect our common home includes a concern to bring the whole human family together to seek a sustainable and integral development, for we know that things can change.” – Rappler.com

“We are diverse, we are different, we have different cultures and religions, but we are brothers and sisters and we want to live in peace.” – Pope Francis

Every man is our brother, every woman is our sister, always. We want all to live together, as brothers and sisters in the Garden that is the Earth. The Garden of fraternity is the condition for all life.

We are witnesses of how, in every corner of the world, lost harmony blooms again when dignity is respected, tears are wiped away, work is fairly remunerated, education is guaranteed, health is cared for, diversity is appreciated, nature is restored, justice is honored, and communities face their loneliness and their fears.

Together, we choose to live our relationships based on fraternity, fueled by dialogue and by forgiveness that “does not mean forgetting” (FT, n. 250), but renounces and does not “yield to the same destructive force” (FT, n. 251) whose consequences we all suffer from.

United with Pope Francis, we want to reaffirm that “authentic reconciliation does not flee from conflict, but is achieved in conflict, resolving it through dialogue and open, honest and patient negotiation.” (FT, n. 244) All this within the context of the human rights framework.

We want to shout to the world in the name of fraternity: Never again war! It is peace, justice, equality that guide the fate of all mankind. No to fear, no to sexual and domestic violence! All armed conflicts must come to an end. We say no more nuclear weapons, no more land mines. No more forced migrations, ethnic cleansing, dictatorships, corruption and slavery. Let us stop the manipulation of technology and AI, let us put fraternity before technological development, so that it may permeate it.

We encourage countries to promote joint efforts in order to create a society of peace, for example by instituting Ministries of Peace.

We commit ourselves to healing the land stained by the blood of violence and hatred, by social inequalities and corruption of the heart. Let us counter hatred with love.

Compassion, sharing, generosity, sobriety, and responsibility are for us the choices that nurture personal fraternity, the fraternity of the heart.

Growing the seed of spiritual fraternity begins with us. It is enough to plant a small seed each day in our relationships: our homes, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, public squares, and within decision-making institutions.

We also believe in social fraternity that recognizes equal dignity for all, fosters friendship and belonging, promotes education, equal opportunities, decent work and social justice, hospitality, solidarity and cooperation, social solidarity, economy and a just ecological transition, a sustainable agriculture that ensures access to food for all, thus favoring harmonious relationships based on mutual respect and caring for the welfare of all.

In this perspective, it is possible to develop proximity actions and human laws, because “fraternity necessarily calls for something greater, which in turn enhances freedom and equality” (FT, n. 103). Together, we want to build an environmental fraternity, to make Peace with nature, knowing that “everything is in relation to everything else”: the fate of the world, the care of creation, the harmony of nature and sustainable lifestyles.

We want to build the future on the notes of Saint Francis’s Canticle of the Creatures, the song of eternal Life. The plot of universal fraternity weaves the threads of the Canticle’s verses: everything is in relation, and in relation with everything and everyone is Life.

Therefore, we, gathered on the occasion of the first World Meeting on Human Fraternity, call on all women and men of goodwill to embrace our appeal to fraternity. Our children, our future can only thrive in a world of peace, justice and equality, to the benefit of the single human family: only fraternity can generate humanity.

It is up to our freedom to want fraternity and to build it together, in unity. Join us in signing this appeal to embrace this dream and transform it into daily practices, so that it reaches the minds and hearts of all leaders and of those who, at every level, have a small or great civic responsibility. – Rappler.com