Richard von Weizsäcker

Contributors to that issue ranged from Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the celebrated May sixty-eight rabble rouser and then Green Party's deputy mayor of Frankfurt, to the controversial playwright Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, who broke post-war taboos with his movie, Hitler: A Film from Germany.

Other contributors included Germany's president at the time, Richard von Weizsäcker, and then Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, whose essay was titled Nationalism Has No Home in Germany.

Even then, the issues that stirred the most virulent passions were around the influx of immigrants, lenient asylum policies, and the yearning for a lost sense of belonging.

At the time, isolated gangs were firebombing immigrant homes.

We live in a global society that is highly unequal with respect to chances in life.

Unless the next twenty years can bring hope to the children of the poor South and East, the run on our borders won't stop.

Germans must adjust to this reality and impose limits, but also realize we are already an immigrant society that democracy must accommodate." President Von Weizsäcker wrote that Germans above all must respect the dignity of all persons given its past.

Yet he acknowledged that the asylum laws were not designed for a massive influx of foreigners and that the bottleneck must be broken by a new system that controls and limits immigration, as well as protects the true right of asylum.

But sometimes for the very countries that play a key role in determining that system.

Today I'm so pleased to be joined by Sir Suma Chakrabarti, an economist and an international development leader who currently serves as the chair of the board of trustees of ODI, Overseas Development Institute Global, and is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy, where I'm his colleague.

He previously served as a president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and has held some of the most senior positions in UK public service and international development.

And would it be correct, Suma, I think, to say you hold people know USAID position as the big name right now because of what's happened with the in the u.s so uh suma essentially was leading the british equivalent of uh usaid and brings really very important knowledge to this conversation so suma very very warm welcome But before we go into the details of the subject at hand, I just want to talk about your journey and what first drew you into the world of development and public service and how has your understanding of international solidarity evolved over the years.