- Seven times in the last decade, from this podium,
Jeff Skoll presented a special award from
the Skoll Foundation to someone who could rightly
be called a global treasure.
You all know the expression
"wild horses couldn't keep him away".
Well, the wild horses this year, have kept him away,
the wild horses of serious pain and a major
spinal surgery just last week.
So, that's what's kept our beloved chairman and founder
from making this award to his magnificent friend.
I do know, though, what he'd want me to say about him.
But first, a bit about the Skoll Global Treasure Award.
Our prior honorees are an illustrious group,
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Yunus,
Malala Yousafzai, Graça Machel, His Holiness the Dalai Lama,
and last year, Bono.
We don't have formal criteria for this award,
young, old, rock stars, politicians, priests.
We just know when there's someone in our midst
whose integrity is inspiring, and whose record
of achievement in addressing the world's most pressing
problems is nothing less than stunning.
Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States,
is that someone, the quintessential man for all seasons.
His life's work extends from farming, to nuclear physics,
to politics played out on local, national and global stages.
Over the entire arc of his life, he has never equivocated
when it comes to human rights and humanitarian action.
He's also a man who engages as easily and effectively
with the ordinary folks who queue up for his
Sunday School lessons at the Maranatha Baptist Church
in Plains, Georgia, as he does with international leaders
across every sector and geography.
As President, he normalized US diplomatic relations
with China, and launched the process engaging Egypt,
Israel, and the United States, which led to the
Camp David Accords, and the historic 1979 Peace Treaty
between Egypt and Israel.
Let me underscore that this treaty endures to this day,
despite all the upheaval in the region, since its signing.
(clapping) Yeah, pretty amazing.
Upon leaving the White House, the President and his wife,
Rosalynn, founded the Carter Center to resolve conflict,
promote democracy, protect human rights, and combat disease.
Some of you will remember President Carter came
to the Skoll World Forum ten years ago.
He told us about one of those battles, against Guinea worm,
a particularly vicious illness.
When the Carter Center began its work, more than
3,500,000 people suffered from Guinea worm,
but leadership and perseverance has paid off.
A week ago, authorities announced that the last mile march
is now down to the final inch.
Guinea worm is within five cases, all in Chad, of being
eradicated from the face of the earth.
(clapping)
President Carter is a Founding Elder,
one of 12 independent global leaders convened by
Nelson Mandela in 20017, who continue to provide
world leadership for the world, and for his life's work,
he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
On behalf of Jeff Skoll, and the Foundation's
board of directors, we are so very honored to present
the 2018 Skoll Global Treasure Award to Jimmy Carter.
(clapping)
- [Carter] How are you?
(kiss)
Well first of all, I want to thank Sally and we just
made a video for Jeff, wishing him well and hoping
he'll be here from now on, and all of the
social entrepreneurs who are here, who have taken
advantage of their brilliant minds and their
entrepreneurial spirit to develop a program that
will be beneficial for others and was designed that way.
I noticed the proximity is a main thrust of this session,
and in a modern day world, we are pretty well proximated.
It was worth a trip here just to be with, able to listen
to Brian speak, and I watched him on 60 Minutes
Sunday night, where he pointed out the counties in
our country that had been the host people for the
assassination, you might say, the lynching of 4,300 people,
and I hated to hear it, but my county was one of them.
We have three people in our county
that were, they were lynched.
Well anyway, proximity is very important to us,
and in a modern day society, we are all proximated,
and we can use this proximity for advantage with
instant contact with each other.
I think, about a fourth of the people on earth now
have got a Facebook, and all the other ways
we can communicate, we're close to one another.
We all have instant, well almost instant, transportation.
I woke up yesterday morning in my home town,
and tomorrow morning I'll wake up in Georgia again,
so that's a good trip, thanks to Jeff's airplane by the way.
(laughter)
Ordinarily, I travel by Delta, but this is
a special occasion, which is not atypical of what
Jeff and them have done for me.
This is a time of soberness, though,
because for the first time in history,
we are now facing the possibility of the end of
all human beings on earth and all living creatures on earth.
When I was elected President of the United States,
one of the first things I did was to get a briefing from
our military experts, the generals, and admirals,
and so forth, and I was informed that, under my direct,
personal control, as a single human being,
I had more than eight, more than 15,000 nuclear weapons
available to me, and I knew that Brezhnev in Russia,
in the Soviet Union, had the same amount,
and that China, and France, and Great Britain
had weapons as well.
And I was told that, if we reached a point
of incompatibility with each other, particularly between
the United States of America and the Soviet Union,
and any exchange of nuclear weaponry would result
in active fallout, and the explosive power,
in particular, the darkening of the skies so the sunlight
couldn't reach the earth for several weeks,
that it would result in the end of all life
as we know it on earth, with the
possible exception of microbes.
With the realization of that, and also the damage that
can be done to the earth, of prime, global warming.
Few people who own high ground in fertile areas
could possibly survive, but it would be a great damage
to our population, as well, on earth.
These kind of things are very sobering,
and it brings me, and many others, to wonder
what can we do about it.
I think one of the things we can do is to take advantage
of our proximity, of our knowledge of one another,
to decide whether we can live, possibly, in peace
with people on earth with whom we disagree, or not.
That is the basic question for us to face.
I had to face it when I was in the White House.
All of the other Presidents since Eisenhower
have had to face that same question, and it's one that
President Trump faces now, with all the cases possible
between North Korea and the United States that
could precipitate an exchange of nuclear weapon.
We have the opportunity, though, to learn from the basic
principals of human rights, from our deep religious faith,
whether we are Christians, or Jews, or Muslims,
or Buddhists, or whatever, we can extract the finest
aspects of our religion, and apply it in our own
personal lives, and in the lives of those whom we support
in elections, to resolve that question favorably,
and learn to live with one another, but also to care
for one another, to be concerned about one another,
and to try to help one another, instead of being
willing to go to war with each other.
That is a question that we face now.
So, getting along with each other, and treating
each other as equals is one of the hardest things
for us to do on earth.
It's very difficult for any person, including me and you,
not to feel, at least, superior to some other people.
We have that inclination as human beings,
to be superior, at least in some aspect of life,
maybe because of the color of our skin, and we face that
in the Deep South where I grew up, where the lynchings
occurred, or between men and women.
I happen to be a Christian and the Bible that I study
says that in the eyes of God, there is no difference
between Gentiles and Jews.
There's no difference between slaves and masters.
There's no difference between men and women.
Period.
That is difficult for us to accept.
The Carter Center, recently, has kind of,
changed its position.
In the end of the last century, I was asked to make
two major speeches, one in Taiwan, and the other one
in Oslo, and the question I was asked to address was,
"What is the greatest challenge that human beings face,
"in the coming millennia?"
At that time, I said it was the disparity in income,
within countries, between the rich and poor,
and the favorable treatment that rich people get
from governments, whom they can influence,
and on the other hand, between rich countries
and poor countries, but we've changed our mind,
I have, and we now feel that the greatest disparity
on earth, the greatest challenge that the human beings face,
is the discrimination against women and girls.
(clapping)
This morning, I covered that subject, encouraged by
Mabel, who used to be head of The Elders organization,
and she extracted more information out of me than I
intended to provide, which she always has been able to do.
But anyway, I'm going to be quite brief.
One of the things I pointed out this morning was
that the unknown aspect of gender prejudice is the
loss of life of females.
For instance, in the country of India,
for every 100 women, alive today there are 112 men.
So, something happened to the other 12 girls.
In China, the disparity is 118 to 100,
so 18%, you might say, of Chinese women have been
executed, primarily by their parents,
and the same thing in India.
In one region of India, the World Health Organization
tells us that the ratio is 100 to 154.
It's estimated that 160,000,000 women,
because of prejudice against females,
are no longer living on earth, that ought to be alive.
Well, those things are of deep concern,
and we're struggling, we, and the Skoll Foundation,
and many others, to provide equality of treatment
and respect between men and women.
The overall concept is for us to do that with everyone.
I would say that down through the ages,
human beings have prevailed because of our superior minds,
compared to other animals.
There was a time when there was an equal struggle.
In fact, many animals had an advantage,
because of their strength, and their rapidity,
and their fangs, and so forth, or tusks.
Well, we changed that.
Human beings changed it, with the development of weapons,
with spears, bows and arrows, and then guns,
human beings became superior to animals.
What's the next step in the evolution of human beings?
We have faced the challenge that I've already outlined,
and that is can we ever learn, with proximity constantly
increasing now, and in the future, to be able to live
peacefully, without military conflict, between us
and people with whom we have an honest
difference of agreement, or who look different,
or who worship differently.
That's the big question we face.
It's a very sobering thing to realize,
that what we need to fall backup on, as a guide,
is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
which has been boiled down as an extract from the
major religions on earth, to 30 very brief paragraphs.
I would urge all of you to read those again,
if you haven't read them recently,
and you'll see that one of the key aspects,
which we are failing on throughout the world,
is the fair treatment of women and girls.
That's just one of them, but it's a very important thing.
I have pledged myself, for the rest of my life,
I'll be 94 this year,
(clapping)
to devote my time to finding equality among people on earth.
(clapping)
I don't have any problem in my own life, because my wife
has always been, obviously, superior to me, but
(laughter)
we've been married, now, 72 years.
I said 73 this morning.
(clapping)
And I have pledged to try to look upon other people,
who are different from me, the same way,
with respect, and even with love,
like I look on my own wife.
That's a pretty big commitment, but I promise you,
having gotten this award, for which I'm very proud,
that I would try to adhere to it.
Thank you very much.
(clapping)