UNHCR said on June 24 that the number of refugees around the world continues to rise, with about 2.5 million people urgently needing new resettlement opportunities. In the face of the U.S. Trump administration frequently "withdrawing from groups" and cutting funding for UN refugee relief efforts, relevant international cooperation is facing greater uncertainty.
Recently, Han Hua, co-founder and secretary-general of Beijing Dialogue (a think tank), had a dialogue with Melissa Fleming, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications at the United Nations, sharing her views on the various aspects of the United Nations' work, public opinion dissemination, and discourse construction in the era of social media. Observers.com has the right to publish this article.
Co-founder and Secretary-General of Beijing Dialogue (Think Tank) Han Hua discusses with Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications of the United Nations, Melissa Fleming
[Text: Melissa Fleming, Dialogue: Han Hua]
Han Hua: Let's start with your book. In your book, you tell the story of Doaa Al Zamel. Why did you choose a personal narrative rather than some data or policies to portray the refugee crisis?
Melissa Fleming: When you talk about refugees, you're talking about millions of people. And those are numbers. Numbers don't move people, especially when they're big. In fact, according to behavioral science, big numbers can actually have the opposite effect. They can actually invoke fear. What we want is for refugees to be understood and welcomed， so the way to reach people's hearts is through individual stories. I've learned that through behavioral science and many studies. And realy I've proved it by telling the story of Doaa Al Zamel, which is actually a universal story. Every refugee could find themselves in this story.
Han Hua: Very good. But among the refugee stories, you must have encountered so many refugee personal stories. What moment gave you the strongest sense of humanities resilience?
Melissa Fleming: I think it is the story of Doaa. All refugees have to flee war. Some of them have incredible stories of survival, just getting out of their hometowns, fleeing their homes, and crossing dangerous borders. But Doaa's story is not only about witnessing the beginning of an awful war and having to flee it with her family, but also about taking another dangerous journey, which is something that many refugees do, a dangerous journey that thousands of refugees have already died in the Mediterranean Sea.
And yet, that drive to have something better, have something beyond just limbo and survival—to be able to pursue an education, to work and have a job—is so powerful that many refugees risk their lives on those journeys in the hope of reaching a better place.
That's what Doaa did. And unfortunately, it was a fateful journey. Out of 500 fellow passengers, including the love of her life, her fiancé, drowned. But the remarkable thing about her story is that she survived. Not only did she survive four days and four nights on the Mediterranean Sea, clinging to just a child's floating ring, but she also managed to save a baby girl.
Han Hua: Yeah, this is touching and she was lucky to survive.
Melissa Fleming: It was more than lucky. I think that's part of the story. It was a determination to save that life and it was faith. She's religious, so faith, but also really mostly, it wasn't even really to save herself. It was to save that little baby girl's life.
Han Hua: That's right. So compared to when the book was published back in 2017, what are the new developments in the global refugees’ situation like the impact of conflicts happening these days? The Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Iran?
Melissa Fleming: I wish I had good news to tell you, but unfortunately, things have just compounded and gotten worse. We have double the number of refugees today. People forced to flee UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency just announced this week that there are 122 million people who've been forced from their home. There is one silver lining there, one piece of good news and is that 2 million Syrian refugees returned home because of the change of government, because they felt finally, after 15 years, they felt safe to return.
So this is what we want for refugees. But the problem is the wars that push so many people out of their homes. The wars is not being resolved at year after year after year, every refugee, all they want is to be able to return home in safety and in dignity and to restart their lives. And unfortunately, this is just not possible because the wars rage on.
Han Hua: Thanks for sharing the silver lining of the refugee’s problem with Syria. You think the end of this refugee crisis would be to have the refugees going back to their hometown?
Melissa Fleming: It is. At UNHCR, we say that there are solutions that, of course, the best solution is that the refugees could return home if their home is safe. And if there are the conditions to return home. In Syria, it's still very difficult. There's so much destruction. And also, there is a lot of poverty, and there are very few services. So Syria needs a lot of help to rebuild, reconstruct, and to provide the conditions for the return of so many people. There are still millions and millions of Syrians outside of the country and also displaced within the country. So we need to invest in Syria. But there are other solutions too, including resettlement. This is a wonderful program where countries around the world agree to share the burden. Because most refugees are in neighboring countries and very often, those countries don't have very many means thinking about…
Kenya, for example, that has so many refugees from multiple different countries. The resettlement program would identify refugees who are particularly vulnerable children, young people who have traveled alone, who don't have any parents anymore, single headed families. These can be then vetted. Third countries will then resettle them. They'll board an airplane, they'll arrive in that country. There'll be a community that will welcome them and help them to restart their lives there.
The third solution is local integration. And if the country is able, they will allow some refugees. For example, Doaa and her family in Sweden. They're in Sweden now, and also the baby that she saved. They are now Swedish citizens. They are permitted to work, to go to school, and to restart their lives as swedes. So that's also a solution.
Han Hua: Yes. But how do you distinguish these different solutions for these refugees? How do you help them to figure out which is the best option for them?
Melissa Fleming: I think most of them would be happy for any of those options. The problem is that there are not enough spaces for resettlement. There are not enough countries who are willing to allow refugees to integrate locally. They may say, “Okay, you can be here, but temporarily until it's safe enough for you to return.” And they're usually in a refugee camp.
So one of the things that UNHCR is to advocate with the governments for these kinds of solutions. And at the United Nations, which I represent, we try to push for peace.
Han Hua: Of course, yes. You mentioned the key word, investment into people. Like whatever the solutions might be, investment into people directly is the key solution. After UNHCR, you move to be the under the secretary of UN in charge of taking care of the global communications. So, today's media world or the narrative world is rather fatigued or divided. So how can the public remain engaged with this refugee crisis first? And in your new role and capacity, how to promote today's information divides to bridge the gap?
Melissa Fleming: It's not easy because we are now in the digital age where there are all kinds of sources of information, as we know, online and where most people spend their time on social media.
And unfortunately, not all the information is good information on social media. You have a lot of false information, you have fake information, you have disinformation, you have hateful information. And the algorithms are trained to promote the content that creates and generates the most outrage. And at the UN, our content doesn't generate outrage because it's facts. It's what we try to do, though, is inspire. With our content, we inform, we try to move people to care, but also give them ways to get involved and to act. We do have over 70 million followers on our social media, just on the UN council, on the individual agencies have more. We do a lot of traditional media engagement as well. It's still very important. And we run our own platforms. We have UN news in multiple languages, so we tried. It's kind of like a battle of the information, a battlefield to be elevated and to get into people's feeds. We do everything that we can to try to reach people, and not just with statistics and numbers, but also with stories.
Han Hua: You are really good at that, telling especially the personal stories. You are right. Then many people, more people are getting the information, whatever it is from the social media. The statistics shows that for generation Z, 65% of the information they secured are from social media, TikTok, short views…
Do you have any targeted response plan towards this generation and the generation for the future beyond the social media? Because we have this all ai generated content, do you have any specific plan for the youths?
Melissa Fleming: One of the things that we do is that we make sure that we are on those platforms ourselves and we work with influencers. And they're not necessarily experts. Like, for example, we have an initiative called Verified where we work with influences around the world who want to work with us. And we provide them with information on climate change, mostly around transition to renewable energy, which is our big campaign push. And we give them the facts, and then we just say “go create. And you speak in your language, you use whatever style you have, and we'll just make sure you're accurate.” This is proven to be extremely effective. There's their trusted messengers in their communities. And that extends our reach.
Han Hua: You mean, you verify them first to just try to have these kinds of influencers? Like they work closely with you?
Melissa Fleming: Yes. And Tik Tok is a partner. And they help us to elevate those influencers’ accounts and their reach. So it's a great partnership and it's a very good method to reach out to communities that we would never reach as an institution sitting in New York.
Han Hua: Right. But how to drive them? How to motivate them?
Melissa Fleming: They're so motivated.
Han Hua: Why?
Melissa Fleming: We have so many people who want to work with the UN. That's the thing.
Han Hua: That’s the foundation.
Melissa Fleming:There are more people in this world who want peace, who want climate action, who want equality. They just don't know how to get involved. So our challenge is that we don't have the capacity to engage enough people who want to be engaged. But that is not a problem. There are so many good people in this world who are on the internet. And there are so many people who do want to be genuinely informed and inspired. It's just, unfortunately, sometimes the loudest and the most hateful voices prevail, and we can't let that happen.
Han Hua: Yeah, this might be some deep down in a human's basic instinct of this hate, to let the hateful messages prevail. So we need to do something to counter that. I like the initiative of involving and engaging of the influences.
At Beijing Club for International Dialogue, we actually are doing something similar to engage the Chinese influences as well as some world-famous influencers to let them know more about China and about China’s policies or opinions, even different opinions towards the foreign policies, for example. Very interesting and very effective in, just like you said, to engage people who want to be engaged. Because virtually everybody is on the internet nowadays, right?
Melissa Fleming: Traditionally the UN works with celebrities who are huge influencers. But we found that on some issues, yeah, they're not the trusted messengers that we need. That was particularly true during COVID-19. What ordinary people listen to were doctors and scientists who's spoken their language. So we worked also during COVID-19 with doctors in multiple countries. And we trained them on TikTok and other social media, and gave them also the facts from WHO. And they spoke to their communities and got huge followings and then were asked to be interviewed on the national television. So it is really important to look at what you are trying to change in the world, and then who influences those people. And that's going to be your influential communications arm into those members of the public.
Han Hua: I think this is more than a silver lining. This is really promising. So do you have any priorities of this engage into influences? You mentioned the climate change, you mentioned the health care, which are really in the universal issues. But how about the geopolitical tensions, major power competitions?
Melissa Fleming: We obviously are consumed by the crises in our world, the wars that are causing so much human suffering, but also so much tension. And I’m based in New York, so I’ve seen this in the theater of the security council in the general assembly. My team is responsible for covering all of those debates. So people can and—in a way, just a very straightforward news oriented way, we also provide the live broadcast feed of all of these deliberations so that people can enter into the UN theater and see for themselves. So we provide transparency. We provide information about what is happening. Obviously, the speeches of the Secretary General are extremely important for us to convey. He's delivering them there, but we also make sure that they reach people around the world in multiple languages. And they're often calling for cease fires or peace or talks or political solutions rather than solutions on the battlefield.
Han Hua: So basically, you're providing a platform where different voices can have the opportunity to speak out, right? To speak out the facts, I think.
Melissa Fleming: In the UN, we work on three pillars: peace and security, humanitarian and development, and the peace and security. A lot of those debates are happening in New York, and that's where the member states are the main actors. And they're delivering their positions. But I think what people can see by showing what is happening to the world, letting people inside through video coverage and live streaming, is that they can see the different positions of the different actors. And see also, though that the United Nations is there, because what we need global cooperation and multilateral solutions for our world's problems. It's very difficult to solve them bilaterally for all issues, wars, pandemic, climate, change. They affect everyone, so they need a global solution, and that's what's happening inside the UN.
Han Hua: Yes. The UN remains still as very important world stage for these actors, you mentioned. But some actors bring to the stage the facts, and some are bringing to the stage only they are acting, the facts in their perception. Do you have any mechanism to distinguish them or you just provide?
Melissa Fleming: No, when it's a member state speaking, we just let people judge themselves and we report what is being said in a very impartial manner.
Now, when the Secretary General gives his speech, he often makes judgments or issues opinions, and that's what guides us. But I think it is the stage where member states have the opportunity to speak. And in the general assembly, no matter how big you are, no matter how small you are, you have a voice, and you have one vote, only one vote.
Han Hua: That's very important. From the very beginning of the crisis between Israel and Iran, I noticed that when I wanted to look for some real news or facts, I turned to your website, I found that both representative from both countries had the opportunity to speak out, to host the press conference to the media, to the audience they want to reach. So this is very important for the un to continue this balanced role.
But down the road, the narratives in the past decades or almost since the establishment of Yuan for 80 years is that we have to confess that is mostly controlled by the western media, all by the western capabilities to shape the narrative. There is the surge of Global South and the multipolar world is taking shape. So how the Global South countries reach the larger audience through a more evolving or more sophisticated narrative capabilities from your expertise?
Melissa Fleming: I think there are a lot of possibilities now. This is the good side of digital media and social media. I think there are many more voices who can be heard, whether it's countries that have never had that chance, or it's also individuals who have been marginalized. They can now find a voice. Now, it's difficult to compete. But there are, I think, now many channels. Our goal at the UN in our Communications Department, because we believe in the value, as we say, of multilingualism, that we not only report in the six official languages, one of which is Chinese of the UN, but we have 59 information centers around the world, where we can also extend what's happening at the UN to these populations. But conversely, we can report about what is happening in these countries to a global platform. It's very often, especially in Africa, there are very many stereotypes. People just assume Africa is all war torn and poor. There is so much innovation. There's so much to be inspired by. And there are so many solutions that are being found locally to problems that could be transferred globally. And we try to bring these examples out into the world.
Han Hua: Yeah. So the UN is playing definitely a very important role. Because from the AI calculation states that only 85 % of the information, they only work on six basic languages. And you are doing more than that.
Melissa Fleming: Certainly. We are advocating for AI actors. This is a huge concern of the Secretary General and the UN. And we just adopted last September a global digital compact. And it calls for the creation of something like the IPCC that is for climate change. That equalizes the research around climate change and climate solutions to the world. And this is what we endeavor. Every country should be able to access the AI possibilities for solutions and for expanding development in their countries.
So this is one of the roles that the UN plays. We advocate on behalf of the countries that don't have as much power to be able to access the same kind of technologies and science that can lift their people as well.
Han Hua: Great. Try to make the playground more even for all the actors. I just want to resonate when you mention about the Africa’s innovation and development. Most recently, China held this conference for African countries, 53, all of them, and signed this new agreement of the free trade with even the least developed countries in Africa, meaning that the African products can be imported into China tax free. So it means that Africa do have some very interesting, productive products, be it like the industrial products or some cultural products. Chinese people want to have more direct engagement with these projects.
Melissa Fleming: Delicious coffee.
Han Hua: Exactly.
Melissa Fleming: Beautiful flowers. But also many innovations. I remember being in Kenya and way before anyone was doing this, they have this in M-Pesa where you can transfer small amounts of money to each other, people paying the tips, the taxes. It was so innovative, their banking system.
Han Hua: Their E-payment is actually very developed, right?
Melissa Fleming: Yes. It was first, before everybody. And Kenya is also mostly powered by renewable energy. And people don't know that. There are many, I think, solutions that many African countries have found that can be also transferred and adapted to other places of the world.
Han Hua: Yeah. I have a case to share with you and want to seek your idea.
When I talk to a very famous Iranian professor about the Global South development and other issues, he said that, “The most information I got regard China are from the western media.” It's like even Global South countries want to develop the friendship and ask other relationship, enhance the relationship. But we have to get information from the so-called western media. So how should we tackle this kind of issues to have the information playground more even?
Melissa Fleming: That's interesting that you say that because when I travel to Africa, I see more Chinese journalists than Western journalists, because there is a crisis of foreign correspondence. There are really not enough foreign correspondents from my country or from Europe. And I’ve been impressed to see how many from especially your news agencies that are reporting from across Africa.
But we have a crisis of media, public interest media globally. I don't think enough stories are getting out. Because with the rise of social media, we saw a complete crash of the financial model for independent media around the world.
I don't know about here in China, but because they're often in advertising model and the distribution had to move to Facebook and other. They soon started losing the revenue. They needed to survive. So it's been a real struggle. And often what was cut first from it is reporting on foreign countries.
But also in those countries themselves, there's very little news being generated. So we issued last June UN Global Principles on Information Integrity. And there we advise on how to create a healthy information ecosystem everywhere. And one of the recommendations is to bolster free and independent media in every country. But also there are many recommendations for the platforms and for advertisers. Because we believe we need a public that is informed. We need facts to be prioritized over lies. And we need trust, we need public trust in order to advance in the areas that we are working on to make the world a better place.
Han Hua: Of course. Very interesting. And the last but not least question is about this, your bold idea. Very quick response. When structure change to rebuild this information ecosystem, you mentioned a lot, but to summarize it a little bit.
Melissa Fleming: We have a set of recommendations in the UN Global Principles for Information Integrity. To create an information ecosystem in which people are free to express themselves without fear of being attacked or undermined. But at the same time, where harmful information, especially if it's illegal, but there are other forms of very hurtful information that there needs to be more moderation of this. And we call on the social media platforms. It just to live up to their own terms of service. We also call on advertisers to make sure that their ads are not funding disinformation. It's a very difficult, advertising environment where they often don't even know where their ads get placed. And they inadvertently get placed against harmful content. If we could stop that, we would go a long way.
Again, we want independent media to have more viability. We call on governments also to play their role in making the information space healthy for their societies. And then finally, users. We don't want to put all the responsibility on users, but we need users to be educated, to understand how to navigate this very difficult information space. It should be taught in schools, media, literacy. But also for our older people who spent a lot of time on social media and don't know how to navigate, especially in AI age where people can't distinguish between what is real and what isn't. We need more education for users.
Han Hua: Otherwise spring rot, as you mentioned before, right? So I think it should be a lifelong continuous education, not only from school. From school is a really good start, just like you are sharing with a lot of school students, young people. But it should be a continuous education. On this, I really encourage you to travel more. I think you like travel, right?
Melissa Fleming: I wish I could do only this because I was so inspired being here in Beijing. I just spoke to an amazing group of students at the school 80. And I was so impressed with them, but also the Beijing Book Fair, World Refugee Day in the Page One Bookstore. And just such an incredible interested audience and people who understand that books are timeless and yet so important for our knowledge, for expanding our imaginations and expanding our hearts.
Han Hua: I think one more approach I want to mention is that your experience being a UN professional as well as a writer. So this kind of balance and through the length of personal story could be a very useful approach to reach the audience that you want to reach or enlarge the audience that can be resonated through this kind of personal stories. So that may be a silver lining for the media outlet to develop.
For example, when we support our Beijing Club Experts to go to the international forums or to publish in the mainstream media platforms, we always want to encourage them to share some personal stories in this global power play, competition, discussion or opinions because it’s very unique.
Melissa Fleming: That's very smart. It is so important. Public speaking how you deliver and come across and what you say is so underrated. It's not taught enough. So diplomats or officials, doctors, people who are so important for our world in our society, they're not trained in effective public speaking.
Han Hua: I thought Americans are trained from their childhood in schools.
Melissa Fleming: I think there's more now definitely because I think it's recognized no matter what career. For example, I went to Boston University where I studied journalism, they now have a program together with the department of Global Health and the department of Engineering to work together so that their students understand this modern information world, that the people who are working in public health can also learn strong communication skills to convey. Because they need to persuade the public. The engineers are looking at the digital technology, and of course the college of communication. And the School of Journalism are looking at how do you reach people in this day and age.
So it's interesting to see the evolution. I think it's been too slow. The digital age has gone too fast. But there is a return to listening to people. Pod casts are incredibly popular. There was this conventional wisdom that young people only need 30-second videos. No. They listen to 1 hour, 2 hour pod cast. So if you are a good storyteller, if you're a good interviewer like you, then you can really reach a lot of people and get into their hearts.
Han Hua: Yes. As you mentioned. So on this note, I really hope that we can establish some educational seminar or whatever to equipped my experts with more communication skills. Like you said, whatever the career the people is undergoing, communication is so important, maybe the most crucial parts of the success to reach people's hearts and to achieve the results or the aim. Thank you so much.
Melissa Fleming: It was really interesting.
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