♪ >> announcer: this is al jazeera. ♪ hello and welcome to this al jazeera news hour and i'm marteen in doha and focus on the plight of millions offenders print people trying to get away from war and suffering only to face more horror and danger as they escape. >> at the world economic forum in davos and more accounts of the u.n. refugee situation with the secretary-general of humanitarian affairs. coming up, this news hour 20

killed in an attack in mogadishu, al-shabab claims responsibility. and rival groups in south sudan likely to miss friday's deadline to form a coalition government. >> they are proven that you cannot recycle and reconstruct waste and put it back in fashion. >> reporter: going green on the cat walks of hong kong. and i'll be here with all your sport including roger federer had the 300 match win and in the last 16 of the australian open. ♪ but we start in devos where the refugee crisis is dominating talks at the world economic forum, there are almost 60 million people who have been displaced around the world and leaders in switzerland grasp --

grappling since the second world war and 22 died and drown off the coast as they try to get to europe and we go to devos. >> thank you for that and we have been talking a lot about refugees here on al jazeera but here at the world economic forum they did such a major economic issue and humanitarian issue and that is what we will talk to our guests about and steven is the under secretary-general of human affairs and pleasure to have you on al jazeera and you were last here in december i believe, what stood out from you from that trip and what do you remember the most? >> in a world where we are facing demand for humanitarian action for suffering to protect lives and civilians there is no greater need than there is continuing in syria so when i was there in december where it's

my obvious duty to talk to all sides and try and secure safe, unimpeded access so humanitarian workers can get through i went from damascus across the line and i was talking to not only of course all the people on one side but also the other side, they are desperate and these very, very long patient negotiated agreements in order to get this very necessary humanitarian assistance to people who have been struggling in need for a long time is absolutely vital and it's the law and we need to be enforcing the law and making sure these continued violations of humanitarian law are absolutely called out and we have to maintain we have a universal approach to reach all the people in need. >> we are talking about fundamental human rights and i was talking to deaf deaf last night the u.n. envoy for syria and discussed how they may have to discuss this as the syria peace talks in geneva, it's astonishing you even have to discuss this at an official

level like that. >> let's be absolutely clear starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime and we have to make sure everyone is capturing the evidence and the urgent thing is to get food and water and shelter and security to people in need but of course throughout the u.n., throughout the international community everybody has a will to do the best thing for people in need is to secure a peace and make sure that there is no more conflict, that is the driver of the humanitarian need and working with staffan de mistura and across the u.n. of course we will do everything we can to separate support him on the political track but however much there may be because of the practicalities local ceasefires the demand is we have a universal approach to the cessation of hostilities so we can get the safe, unimpeded access to everybody who is in need and of course wherever we can we must do it but i'm demanding we do it to all. >> is it as bad, worse than anything you have ever seen before in syria? we are talking about an accumulation of five years of

war, creating this extraordinary humanitarian crisis. >> everybody knows the numbers and the scale of suffering and it is heartbreaking, it's the human level of course to see it but we really have to be determined to use the tools and the instruments at our disposal which is the political will which we tried to marshal but where we don't get sufficient agreement and we do have security counsel resolutions but to activate those we need to make sure we get these secure roots so we can get our truck drivers to get into the vehicles loaded with the goods that the people need and that they themselves are not in pearl of their lives because we have the agreement in place but it's absolutely clear in syria things are as bad as you can imagine and i have seen very sadly of course term humanitarian need in parts of the world if they are in conflict or not in conflict and it's impossible to imagine how people get through but it is our duty to try and find a way of helping them. >> slightly loaded question but are you optimistic at all? >> long-term as i said it's been

five years, you could say in the next couple of days short term we could have peace talks happening do you hold optimism after this time that something will come through now? >> putting to one side whether i'm generally optimistic or not in this particular circumstances i think there are grounds for optimism but there is a yearning a way forward and fighting and i think they know however there is no military solution. it is always very difficult to impress upon competence that is the case and there is a high recognition as there has ever been and the continuing suffering is a shame on all those who are part of the conflict because that is of course what is the result of combat, of conflict. so i think there are grounds for op missism and it's fragile and we will work very carefully towards creating the context whereby the very necessary hope for the people in need can be generated because leadership is

shown at the areas where it needs to be done. >> pleasure talking to you thank you for your time today and you hear what the humanitarian situation is like firsthand and on the political front we spoke to staffan de mistura the u.n. special envoy last night who said he was still waiting to finalize the guest list if you like for the peace talks in geneva and yet to send out the invitations and waiting to hear what might come of that. >> okay, thank you, for now, kam ash ka kamal-santamaria live in davos. 22 people killed on attack on a restaurant in somali capitol and members of salsha bob stormed the lido beach area in mogadishu on thursday night and a gun battle with troops followed and lasted several hours and mary ann reports. >> reporter: daylight in mogadishu reveals the full horror of the attack as the grim task of identifying the dead

begins, al-shabab fighters say they are responsible for this carnage at a popular beach front restaurant. >> translator: i was intending to go out but we heard an explosion and then there was gunfire, when i looked back i saw the fighters shooting in the street at everybody and i locked myself in a room until we were evacuated peacefully by security forces. >> reporter: awaiting ceremony and a graduation dinner were underway when armed fighters rammed a car with explosives into the restaurant and they then stormed the building shooting at customers, a well planned attack from an organization which authorities in somalia and kenya thought were struggling and on the defensive. >> unfortunately security services even in the west seemed to really understate the threat of groups such as al-shabab. they have been very good at planning operations even outside

somalia. >> reporter: last friday fighters from the group attacked an african base in southwest so somalia and they have not confirmed the number dead and they killed 147 people on an attack on a college in kenya and in september 2013 fighters from the group stormed the west gate shopping mall in nairobi killing 67 people. somalia has been devastated by decades of civil unrest, four years ago somalia government pushed al-shabab out of major cities including mogadishu with the help of african union soldiers but attacks like this show somalia government and its supporters still have much more work to do. al jazeera. just days after libya agreed to form a unity government there is a fracture that could affect that union. the spokesman for libya's

national army says he has now defectled from its chief and brigadier general who you can see here has accused hasta of embezzlement and accumulating too much power and has called the army chief another version of the former leader moammar gadhafi. >> translator: by god we've had it with the constant violations, the assassinations, the abuse, burning residences, demolishing them and forcing civilians to flee to tripoli and elsewhere, i here by dis-associate myself with them. >> reporter: he has been a pretty controversial figure in a power figure since the 1960s and loyal to moammar gadhafi and turned against the leader after forced in exile in the late 1980s following a failed conflict with chad.

now he returned from exile in the u.s. to support the up rising that toppled gadhafi in 2011 after that he is back on the religious groups from the muslim brotherhood to other conservative groups. haftar commanding forces to the forces loyal in tabrook but they don't want him to play any role in the future of libya and we have a libya political analyst and director of the anticorruption organization and joins us on the phone now from tripoli, how significant is this de-fection of him turning around and accusing general hafta of many things? >> actually i don't think it's a significant thing on hafta and

libya. for three or four months he uses it to give us some relief. >> i'm sorry, the line is not terribly clear but can i ask you whether this defection affects the delicate balance of the new unity government? >> i don't think so. it doesn't affect anything in the future. what it can affect is what people see, how people see hafta in a leader in this part of libya. in the meantime to have a unity

government and to extend and not affect and hafta was the new minister of defense which is one of the leader in benghazi. now hafta can reach out but what happened yesterday i don't think there was that much affect on the ground. >> okay, solomon thank you very much indeed and thank you for persevering on a rather unclear phone line. they have until the end of today, friday to form a unity government and the rival leader signed a deal in august that the two men have been clashing exactly about the details of how to share power and we have a correspondent and she has more now from the south sudan capitol duba. >> reporter: until recently it

did seem like real progress was being made to a government and all parties agreed which ministry to go to which side of the conflict but there still remains some sticking points which are crucial and one is the security situation as the government minister michael explain explained. >> security arrangements up to now, security arrangements are not in place, some areas to this point are no containment areas, on the other hand they did not send the forces that are supposed to be here in duba and did not send 350 or so. >> reporter: so the government forces were said to have moved 25 kilometers outside duba by now, that has not happened and as a consequence the opposition forces have not been able to come into duba either but that is not the only sticking point and the government chief negotiator says there has to be amendments to the constitution

before the transitional government can be formed and he spoke to the media last night about this. >> as part of the agreement first and foremost it's to incorporate the agreement on the republic of south sudan by constitution by way of amending the current constitution, that is basically what the agreement says. the proposed amendment is before the council of ministers and then submitted to the national assembly, it requires at least four weeks before the actual debate can start. >> reporter: the most important sticking point between the two parties is undoubtedly the creation of 28 states and back in october he decided he would change south sudan from ten states to having 28 states and this is despite having signed a peace deal in august on the basis of there being just ten states in south sudan and

opposition say they cannot agree to this division and they are coming back from duba from the summit with intention saying they will form a transitional government but will do so that there are ten states in south sudan and not 28. all right that was our correspondent highlighting what is one of the main sticking points and we can now put that to attorney work who is south sudan's presidential spokesman and thank you for talking to us live from duba, as far as you are concerned it is quarter past 1:00, lunchtime in the afternoon, is the deal still on, could a transitional government be in place by the end of today? >> thank you. the constitution and the government is not going to be in place today but it will be in place as soon as possible. >> and when do you envision that

happening? >> well, when the process that is actually required by the agreement are actually in place. the agreement requires that the security arrangement has to be in place and the least of the names of those would be appointed in portfolios, you know, i mean the names of the stakeholders have to be submitted before the 22nd, if they were submitted then the government would have been informed while they are waiting for the constitutional amendment to take place so that the agreement is incorporated into the constitution of south sudan. >> sorry to interrupt we are not looking at a unity government being put in place soon are we from what you are saying, many of these issues that you are raising were supposed to have been agreed on last august deal that was signed by both sides

you and the opposition agreed on many things, these are not, it seems, now being put into place, chief among the problems of course is the creation of 28 states out of ten. >> the creation i don't think is a sticking point simply because if you see they are close in agreement with the government simply because they themselves have divided south sudan into states so the number the government added is only seven so it makes it 28 states. >> the problem is. >> the states has become -- >> the problem is the deal centered upon ten states so and now an additional 18 states invalid dates the deal that was agreed, surely.

>> but it doesn't -- it doesn't make any difference because if the number of the positions given with participation with states also, you know, are also sent to 28 states and it will be even good for them and can even complement their positions and only a very small part of the agreement when in national effect the people of sudan have peace and no agreement to peace and that want to see now and not tomorrow. >> the problem is the current impass which you and the opposition are imposing on the people of south sudan gives neither peace nor war, their suffering continues. >> yeah, we recognize the

challenges that the south sudaneze are under going but looking for a way out, a way forward and the way forward is now the 28 states are now in pla place. all the governors have returned to their states and they were actually received by the people. what we are looking for now is the formation of transitional government of national unity so that we start to work for the people of south sudan. so i guess we are waiting for the stakeholders to do what the government is doing, the government is committed to you know to implement fully and implement the government position. >> i'll have to leave it there but thank you very much indeed for talking to us here at al jazeera and apologies for the delay on the line, there was

quite a significant delay on the line. >> thank you. we've got a lot more to come on this al jazeera news hour including myanmar leader frees political prisoners just days before a new government is due to take office. and a dangerous mosquito-borne virus the zika virus is spreading fear among pregnant women in latin america and he is looking to settle a score coming up, later in sports. ♪ north korea detained a u.s. student for committing what they are describing as a hostile act and wanting to destroy the country's unity and fredic from the university of west virginia entered the country with a visa on january the 2nd and we are in

the south korean capitol seoul. >> this came through on the north korean media kcna saying north korea detained a u.s. citizen a student for a supposed hostile act against the state. also this media report saying that that act was tolerated and manipulated by the united states government and the name of this man is otto frederick wombia and the u.s. embassy in seoul confirmed it has seen the media reports it's referring any other questions to the state department in washington but there as been some corroboration from a tour agency based in china, young pioneer tours that says this man was on one of their tours in north korea and he was detained on january the 2nd. they say that they are acting closely with the swedish embassy in pyongyang which is in north korea and with the north korean affairs and state department trying to get this man released.

he is not certainly the first u.s. citizen to be detained in north korea, in 2014 three u.s. citizens were released. there have been instances of missionary activity, one tourist who left behind a bible in a hotel, these kinds of things have got people in trouble in the past. also last year there was a south korean student with a u.s. green card he was studying in the u.s., he was detained after crossing illegally into north korean territory from china and kept six months before being handed back to south korean authorities here so this is not the first of its type but certainly this is a new development, a new u.s. citizen reportedly detained inside north korea. myanmar and south korean president has called for a meeting of five countries not including north korea to discuss pyongyang's nuclear program and sanctions on north korea in response to the fourth nuclear test on january 6 and china that

is pyongyang's main ally calling for resumption of party talks including north korea. releasing political prisoners winding down in office and some have been freed on friday and could be more to come in the days ahead and wayne reports from neighboring tie land. >> reporter: emotional reunions around myanmar as inmates walked free from prison and some have been held for years for activism and having protested and voiced opposition to the government but their freedom was mixed with sadness for the political prisoners left behind. >> translator: i'm not fully happy as the government is releasing prisoners separately, i want all the activists, political prisoners, students, farmers and workers still left in the prison. >> reporter: the current government is made up largely of former generals who ran myanmar as a dictatorship for 50 years

and they kept the leader chi under house arrest, after election in 2010 the government backed on a series of reforms including a gradual release of political prisoners. chi party won last year's election and will form the next government on february the first. after campaigning for democracy and human rights for so long there is hope that she will finally be able to help myanmar move on from its dark past. >> translator: i highly believe our problem also be all right because our country is under our mother chi and this will be different, that is what i believe our mother is in power now. >> reporter: there are still many political prisoners to be freed and many more problems for man mar to overcome. the army will remain powerful but it seems the old are trying to right wrongs before they step ahead, wayne with al jazeera, bangkok. true tunisia protesting

because of lack of jobs and fired a police post in several towns and demonstrates on tunis since the 2010 uprising and the government has promised to create 5,000 jobs in response to the protests. also in let's go to ties in yemen where an al jazeera news team has gone missing as they covered events there and crew members were last seen on monday evening and they are believed to have been kidnapped and al jazeera is calling for their immediate release. at least ten people have been killed in an explosion in the egyptian city of giza and went off during a security raid in the al-harim district east of

cairo and 7 officers among the dead and 13 others injured, egypt state news agency says body of five attackers found in the building where the raid was carried out. and china has signed investment and aid deals worth billions of dollars we egypt, the deals were signed during a visit from president xi jinping to cairo and expressed support for cairo efforts to maintain stability which included a crack down on decent and this is before the january 25 anniversary of the up rising that ousted mobarak is seen in the abdel-fattah el-sissi administration and china recently announced that the economy is growing at the slowest pace for 25 years but there is one thing that is increasing fast and that is public debt and lawrence lee reports from beijing and how that is hurting many sections of society. >> reporter: like many middle class wage earns in china he

borrowed money from the bank to help buy a home and a car. he says he and his wife are financially prudent. >> see how much money we have now so we decide how much money we spend. >> reporter: their loans in macro economic terms are considered household debt and classed as non-state borrowing which makeup about a third of china's total debt. that's not the type of liabilities chinese policy makers are most concerned about. as china's debt grows faster than its economy, it is money loaned to state-owned enterprises and local governments that could be a credit crisis in the making. during the global financial crisis of 2008 the chinese government pumped in lots of money to keep the economy going. local governments issued bonds and state-owned businesses borrowed money from banks to finance both new and on going projects. developers kept building even though they were not buyers, the

result, ghost cities. factories kept producing and expanding even as orders were falling. the result? over capacity. debt started to balloon. conservative estimates put it twice the side of gdp while some analysts say it could be as much as 280%. but what makes china's debt problem different could also be a mitigating factor. >> nearly all of the debt is locally and it's debt essentially issued by a stated enterprise or a local government especially and usually the person who financed that was a state-owned bank so essentially what we are talking about is a ledger where the chinese government has money in one pocket on the left and then the debt in the other on the right. >> reporter: that he says gives the central government more leeway this managing the problem. the government in beijing has the ability to force state-owned banks to take a loss on loans

they make to local governments or public companies which are now struggling to make repayments. it's also indicated it will allow state-owned enterprises that are not profitable to go bankrupt instead of bailing out and unemployment could go up. as the days of easy credit appear to be over the chinese economy will have to go through a painful period of adjustment, lawrence lee in beijing. we will stay in china now and stef is here with the weather and how is it? >> cold, i think that sums it up quite nicely and look at the temperature charts and over the next few days because the winds are firing from the north and temperatures are dropping like a stone. the average this time of year shanghai is supposed to be 8 and hong kong is supposed to be 18 so remember those two numbers because we are not near it and saturday and the shanghai is 3 and hong kong will be at nine but that will feel positively warm for some of us as we head through sunday because shanghai

maximum on sunday is minus four, that is right and stay below freezing throughout the day. it will be very cold. hong kong we will be above freezing but here it's going to feel colder than the temperature suggests thanks to rather a keen wind and also heavy rain as well and you see the sway of dark blue in china and taiwan, that is the leading edge of the very, very cold air and already in that wet weather it's not going to feel that warm so hong kong nine degrees will be our maximum and just to the north is where we have a fair amount of snow. now, the risk that we could see a flurry in hong kong but only as the system moves away and behind it it's going to get if anything even colder and hong kong eight degrees and we will see rain at first on sunday, that will clear away, shanghai minus four is the maximum and sunday shanghai down to minus four and hong kong a very chilly four. >> thank you very much, stef, we have more to come on this al

jazeera news hour including inside indonesia prisons and jails a breeding ground for radicalization and hope for autistic children for poor families in south africa. only one point can separate denver and memphis and we will tell you who came out on top. ♪

hello again and top stories here at al jazeera and u.n. stopped humanitarian officials told al

jazeera he wants secure roots for the delivery of humanitarian aid inside syria and o'brien demanded an end to human rights violations there saying the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a crime. as many as 22 people have been killed in an attack on a restaurant in somalia's capitol, al-shabab stormed lido beach area in mogadishu thursday night. friday the deadline of the formation of a transitional unity government in south sudan and president and the rival signed a deal in august but have been clashing ever since as to how to share powers so it looks unlikely. now the indonesia government has review of prisons after it emerged in one of the gunmen last night in dakarta had just been released from jail and experts believe prisoners are becoming radicalized inside

prisons. >> reporter: waiting for the body and ten days ago the 32-year-old became the face of the worst attack in indonesia since 2009 and he was photographed shooting in a crowd of one of the busiest intersection and four members were killed in the day's attack. and earlier he had been released from prison where he was serving a term for attending an armed training camp in ichi. >> translator: when it came out of prison we offered him to live here, although our house is very small. we tried hard to give him a new place. we even built a temporary small house for him but he refused so even if we would have been angry at him, if we would have tied him to a pole he would probably have done the same thing. >> reporter: so he visited his family just ten days before the attack and during the years in prison he refused to take part in the government's so called

deradicalization program and managed to secure an early release and the case shows the failure of indonesia system for radicalization of prisoners and those convicteded for terrorism. authorities admit they lose track of prisoners soon after they are released even those who are known to be high risk. in the past two years an estimated 130 prisoners jailed for such offenses have been released. >> translator: we have not been able to find him because he refuse our efforts. he was released before we could get more information about him. they should watch him after his release but there are so many things we have to do before we know it, this attack had already happened. >> reporter: the police have announced that six men suspected in connection with last week's attack are still in prison but were able to communicate with the attackers.

>> there is so much wrong with the prison system it will take years to fix but there are some things that could be done immediately, for example, no effort has yet been made to ban mobile phone communication and that should be something that is quite simple to do. >> reporter: meanwhile the family had to face fellow villagers who were angry about what he did, after some discussion village leaders said the body can be buried in the village. >> translator: as a family we want to apologize to those involved in what happened, to the victims and others please forgive us, we apologize for what happened. >> reporter: besides tightening the prison system the government said indonesia who joined i.s.i.l. in syria may lose their nationality, west java. head of the u.n. refugee agency says syrian war is the largest crisis it has dealt

with. and phillip has been visiting aid agencies in the syrian capitol damascus and u.n. and humanitarian groups come together in an appeal to end the conflict which will soon enter its fifth year and u.n. says an estimated 400,000 syrians are trapped in 15 besieged areas across the country. >> the reality of the crisis hits me when i talk to people like the ones that i saw just now in the hospital with the doctor, people that in addition to being displaced forcibly by war away from their homes have serious illnesses or children that are traumatized by war and that have developed some problems, some physical, psychological problems as a consequence of that trauma. >> reporter: well, one group of syrian children who had been living in a refugee camp in the

french city of cali reunited with their families in britain and happened after a group of activists won a court case against the british government and lawrence lee explains. >> reporter: how easy it is and how simple a journey when there is finally nobody in your way to stop you, the small group of three teens and a young disabled man who had been in the camp in cali for several months simply picked up their stuff and got on the train and sat for an hour and got off again in london. within an hour they were being greeted privately by relatives who were already living in britain. in a nearby cafe the brother of one of the teens could barely contain his excitement at the prospects of being able to look after his little brother again. >> translator: i want to provide my brother with all the affection he missed out on being on his own for so long and want to makeup for all the time he was alone so he never lives another day by himself ever again. >> reporter: this happened at all because of the work of an

activist group called citizens uk and one gave up her job and took up residence here where she goes about trying to find children who have relatives in britain and met some of them over the new year and so far she thinks she has counted 200 in the camp. the children were eventually allowed to come because of a court ruling for citizens uk and against the british government, it argued that the children should seek asylum in france and then try to get transferred to britain. and since the government may continue to fight the ruling it is not clear exactly how many more children might be able to come. it is worth bearing in mind all this happened despite rather than because of the actions of the british government in allowing refugee children to be with their carriers but nonetheless it does demonstrate the uk still has an independent legal system and that could have ramifications in other european countries as well. what for instance of the refugees in denmark trying to be with families in sweden who activists have been taking by boat to get around border

controls, civil rights campaigners in other countries may be able to use this ruling as well as a precedent. >> the knowledge this is hopefully going to help a couple hundred across europe if others can follow suit and it's a wonderful development and it's a big blow to people smugglers across europe because the people they exploit are desperate and those are families trying to reunite. >> reporter: no help to thousands of other refugees and migrants still stuck in northern france without families already in the uk but all the same this was a celebration for the activists trying to proof the uk retains they look after the vulnerable, as for the syrian children they disappeared in the london nights and a new life and no longer surrounded by tear gas but a warm bed and a roof over their heads, some love and finally some refuge. lawrence lee, al jazeera, london. dangerous mosquito-borne virus spreads in latin american

they have health warnings to women and it's linked to birth defects in babies and first detected last year in brazil prompting authorities to urge pregnant women to use insect repellent and women are supposed to postpone getting pregnant in columbia where there has been more than 13,000 cases and bolivia and columbia is among them and we report from there. >> reporter: in this clinic in central columbia future mothers anxiously wait for their doctor's visit. some of them were sick with the zika virus a mosquito-borne disease they believe is causing congenital defects in some babies. >> translator: i saw it on television in the news and people told me about it. i'm very worried and that is why i'm here now. what if my child is malformed, can you imagine bringing him to life like that, it's so scary. >> reporter: thousands of

babies have been born in brazil with unusually small heads and brain damage, a condition known as microencpephaly and mothers infected by zika and infected 13,000 in columbia since october making it the second worst hit country in the region. authorities say it could infect as many as 700,000 more in coming months so they are warning women to avoid getting pregna pregnant. >> translator: they should consider postponing pregnancy for six or eight months and saying it because it's good to communicate the risk involved because there could be serious consequences. >> reporter: to this point there have not been confirmed cases of microencephaly in columbia related to zika but the officials say it's only a question of time. >> translator: unfortunately we can't avoid all cases and no cure for the virus and no way to

be fully protected and it's reality. >> reporter: spread by the same mosquitos that carry fever and chikungunya and she is eight months pregnant and says unlike many of her friends she has not been affected and has been careful. >> we are going live to davos whereas you can see the secretary-general of the u.s. john kerry is preparing to address the world economic forum and of course we are going to take that statement live, standing by listening to it will be kamal my colleague who is normally with us in doha but is currently in davos and has been speaking to a lot of the main players involved but as you can see he is getting a fairly lengthy introduction and we will listen in to what he has to say. >> you are a man who has a wholistic approach to foreign

policies and who knows that foreign policy can only be successful if you handle the root causes. i will have to thank you because if we had again a very important iranian delegation here i think it was thanks to your tireless efforts which finally brought something which you brought to a conclusion, a successful conclusion so without further adieu mr. secretary the floor is yours. >> thank you. [applause] thank you very much. hello everybody, good morning to you. first of all thank you for your very warm, generous introduction. i especially want to thank you for your superb economic forum

for many years and it's my honor to come here and may have been the hardest trip of all and looking at the mountain, fresh snow and saw the beautiful powder tracks carved up there and i could say none of them were done by me. i feel somewhat deprived and a moment ago i had the luxury in the room out there of meeting your panelist from the last session those of you who were here for it. i was very gratified to meet the ift and the iotola and had a great conversation and one i want to follow-up on and i think for sure we need more and more conversations like that, more and more people need to see that sunni-shia divide is being exploited and islam itself is being hijacked. so a great privilege to talk

with both of those courageous spokespeople for the true islam and for reconciliation and peace. i want to tell you that it is genuinely good to be back in davos. been here a long time. i just want to share a quick personal story, i came here, my dad was in the foreign service and serving in berlin shortly after the war and he was a legal advisor to the high commissioner of germany and i was at school and he dragged me here at age 11 and took me out, i never had been on skis and they took me up to do it on day one and i want you to know i went down the entire mountain on my rear end. [laughter] but it was a hell of a lot of fun. folks, we have so much on our minds as we come here today so i'm going to jump right in. i want to ask all of you to

think back to the most endelible images of last year, the body office a tiny boy laying face down in the sand, masked figures, wielding knives over kneeling prisoners in orange jump suits, a teenager clinging desperately to the outside of a packed bus, urban neighborhoods reduced by war to cinders and rubble. a jordan pilot burned alive in a cage. i can't think of a time in my life, and i grew up in the shadow of world war ii, where i have seen so much atrocity alive, thrown out as so relentlessly, headlines bear grim stories of savage terrorist crimes, populations wrecked by

sectarian violence, social media marred by eruptions of hate and millions of refugees risking everything to cross dangerous waters to reach freedom, to reach for a better life. now engaged as we are in some parts of the world on the daily struggle with terror and conflict with people, who want to blow themselves up and people who care not about life here today but about something they have been told about the future, people who kill innocence people simply to destroy, shock, so living as we do with those images it's understanding that some people wonder whether we are now tropicapped in some irreversible decline and whether we are forced to accept a new

normal, a new normal that is far less than any of us anticipate or want and certainly if this were true let me tell you the best intentioned efforts of any second secretary of state or prime minister would all be lost in vain. we could spent our time rearranging the deck chairs all we want and our global titanic would still go down. but i do not believe that this is where we find ourselves. we are not living a new normal and we don't have to. we are not the prisoners of a predetermined future. to me the frustrations that we feel are definitely not the sign of a weakness. in fact, i believe that our commitment to address the challenges that we face is, in fact, the most reassuring

strength. people don't fly to davos to celebrate the status quo. none of you are here for that. you've come here to change the world for the better and to define the future. now, obviously that is not to say that we don't face real immediate challenges, of course we do. when has any generation not been test tested? this moment is particularly defined by narrow tribalism, by aggressive nationalism and even by medieval thinking that reminds us of a distant and bloody past and we feel the anguish of the displaced and the international homeless and from all of this and more i believe that everyone here and i have felt this, just the two days i

have been here, the conversations i've had, that is what davos provides, an opportunity to really put your fingers on the pulse of the world and that pulse tells me that everyone here senses a call to action and, in fact, welcomes our shared duty to respond. but i don't believe that the road ahead should be defined by the casandras who only see turmoil and challenge. frankly they are missing much of the positive change occurring in the world. i know media automatically because of the confrontation of the media and the 24/7 of the media finds a self selecting audience to a certain degree and does it by exploiting some of the worst of what we see. good stories just don't sell as bad as the conflict. but the fact is change is

occurring in our world for the better and it is occurring faster, moving faster than perhaps ever before. between 1990 and 2015 the rate of child mortality fell by over one half. life expectancy and the number of boys and girls attending primary school in developing countries has increased dramatically. in 2001 there were less than a million kids going to school in afghanistan and all of them were boys. today there are almost eight million kids going to school and about 40-45% of them are girls. change. more than 2 1/2 billion people have gained access to clean water in the last years and a number of people living in extreme poverty has declined by more than one half.

success stories like these are really just the tip of the iceberg. measure it. it wasn't so long ago that we saw a rapidly growing nuclear program that claus referred to in which iran was only months away from having enough weapons-grade uranium to build 10-12 bombs. we were on the cusp of confrontation, believe me. i can't tell you how many leaders when i traveled through certain areas said you have to bomb it. that's the way we will solve this problem. now because of the join comprehensive plan of action and the implementation we formally certified this past weekend iran's path to building a bomb has been closed off and and additional source of danger in the middle east has been removed, believe me president obama understood that he would be criticized by some for

reaching out to iran but he also knew that we were on a collision course and iran itself was on a collision course with the international community that in all likelihood, without diplomacy would have ended in war. two years ago when our formal negotiations began iran's nuclear activities had already grown from a few hunt der centrifuges in the year 2000 to more than 19,000. iran was ready to commission almost months away from commissioning a heavy water reactor that was able to produce enough weapons-grade plutonium for a bomb or two a year and iran already had a large and rapidly growing stockpile of enriched uranium and experts

told us iran could if it chose to obtain all of the thissle material it would need for a nuclear weapon in as little as two months, compare that to where we are today. under the joint comprehensive plan of action every single one of iran's pathways to a bomb is blocked, it's uranium and plutonium pathway and covert pathway blocked due to massive cuts in the uranium stockpile about 98% and reductions in enrichment capacity all of which by the way iran agreed to. the country's so called breakout time has now stretched from two months to 12 months or more for at least a decade while we build confidence, while we build accountability and there will be 130 additional iae inspectors in

iran 24/7, 365 to make sure that that holds true. now before the talks started the idea, the iaea was unable to get answers to its questions that is why we have sanctions. that is why we are in confrontation. it did not have access to investigati investigations where nuclear activities may be carried out. today the iaea put in place every one of the extensive transparency verification measures called for in the jcpoa and because of the unprecedented monitoring and verification requirements they are an integral part of the plan, the world can now be confident of precisely what iran is doing. for iran to breakout secretly its technicians would have to do

more than bury a processing facility deep beneath the ground. they would have to come up with a complete from start to finish nuclear supply chain and our experts agree that they could not do that undetected and although some of the specific limitations in the plan apply for ten years, some for 15 years, some for 20 years, some for 25 years uranium and mine and cake and centrifuge and waste and full cycle will be monitored for 25 years. but more importantly all of the expanded monitoring and verification provisions that now exist within the iae because of mistakes that were made in north

korea are now in effect for a lifetime, the lifetime of iran's nuclear program. and iran has agreed to never, ever pursue a nuclear weapon and that is codified in the united nations security council resolution as well as in the agreement itself. my friends, the region is safer. the world is safer. last december representatives from more than 190 nations came together in paris to express their commitment to build a low carbon energy future in which greenhouse gas emissions are curbed and the worst consequences of climate change prevented and we have been working on that 20 plus years and i was in rio1992. part of the delegation with al gore and tim worth and a bunch of people that many of you know but it was voluntary and we were

not able to get there and went through matinations and kioto and other efforts and finally we came together in an unique, multi lateral event and when i became secretary of state we had the failure of copenhagen and china on the other side f the ledger and president obama asked me to go to beijing and open up a new collaboration if it was possible on climate change. everybody was skeptical but we built a strong -- our two presidents, shi and obama were able to stand up in beijing a year before paris and make a historic announcement that changed the entire dynamic of the negotiations in paris. in august i had the privilege of traveling to havana to raise the american