I'd like to start by showing you someone who is dressed even worse than I am.
[Who is this?]
You may notice, aside from the color harmony, a tattoo saying: "My body belongs to me."
But who is this person?
Is it a punk, who borrowed clothes from their grandmother's wardrobe?
Is it a teenager, from the 16th arrondissement of Paris, who feels like rebelling?
No.
This is our Minister of Health, Marisol Touraine, standing on the steps of the Élysée.
And this was last year, to celebrate the 40th year of the Veil Abortion Act, which enables women to take control of their bodies, through a voluntary interruption of their pregnancy.
"My body belongs to me" has become banal -- everyone says it.
By the way, for once, the entire National Assembly has voted in favor of a symbolic law in order to reapprove the Veil Law.
It's a banality, even ministers have it tattooed on their arm.
However, it's not entirely true.
I would like to give you a few examples, that are a little extreme, honestly even shocking, which will demonstrate that for many people and in a lot of cases, well, my body doesn't belong to me.
Firstly, it doesn't belong to me as long as I'm alive.
I am not allowed to rent my belly.
I am not allowed in many countries to sell my sexuality.
I am not allowed to define the gender that I belong to, since I have to face a doctor or be in front of a judge, and declare to the civil registrar whether I am a man, woman, or other.
I am also not allowed to do whatever I want with my body.
For instance, I can't do this.
[Dwarf-tossing] So, You might recognize Leonardo Di Caprio, in this great dwarf-tossing scene.
But some versions of it exist that are a little less chic, notably the one that was practiced by the great community of Morsang-sur-Orge from l'Essonne, in the beginning of the 90s.
The mayor of Morsang-sur-Orge said: "This can't go on -- we can't toss dwarfs." And so he prohibited dwarf-tossing.
And who was to protest?
Dwarf-tossers found other activities to do on Sundays.
They probably went back to fishing.
It's the dwarves themselves who protested, because they had a breadwinner, and a certain renown, apparently a certain success with women.
And the Morsang-sur-Orges Council of State's decision, which jurists know well, said: "No, this is forbidden."
I also cannot do whatever I want with my body in order to die.
I am not allowed to be euthanized, but I am also not allowed to be eaten.
In 2001, a charming German engineer posted an announcement saying: "I am looking for a volunteer to eat."
He received several candidates, made a selection, conducted a few final interviews, and in the end finally found Bernt, who agreed wholeheartedly.
So they began by cutting off Bernt's genital and eating it together, probably by candlelight.
(Laughter) Obviously satisfied by this first course, they chose to proceed -- and by the way this all on video so you can watch it.
I recommend it to you, it's really nice -- "Armine ate Bernt."
But be aware that this is prohibited.
It's crazy, considering they haven't hurt anyone.
But it is indeed prohibited to be eaten.
Well, even after my death I can't do whatever I want with my body.
For instance, I am not allowed to practice sea-immersion whereas diving is allowed while I am alive.
I am also not allowed to be embalmed, unless my name is Lenin, Mao, or Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.
(Laughter) (Applause) And I am also not allowed -- and this is even worse -- to be cryogenized.
You know, some people -- have themselves frozen, hoping that in 10 years, 100 years, or a million years, we would defrost them, as by then we will have already found ways to resuscitate them, or found cures to the illnesses that have killed them.
This has been somewhat a success.
In Russia and the United States, there are some cryogenic sites, where one can see the coffins.
Some put their entire body, while others only their head -- it's cheaper.
(laughter) And in France, a doctor named Martineau, felt that it was a great idea to freeze his wife first.
(Laughter) And as it seemed to be going well, he decided to follow her with the freezing.
Forever united in a frozen sleep, inside a castle.
And then someone found out and filed a complaint: There are some people frozen in the village, do you realize that? (Laughter) Their son was delighted.
He would go to see them from time to time.
It's better than gathering around a grave.
And the Council of State, that same one, said: "This can't be happening.
You need to defrost and burn them!
Put it all on fire.
Then there was a trial, and Martineau's son was forced to burn his parents.
Can you imagine, this poor couple who imagined being united for millions of years and resuscitate in a future where sexuality is completely open, completely vivified and rejuvenated.
Well, unfortunately, there is only a heap of ashes left.
(Laughter) So behind these tragedies -- they don't concern us all if we don't wish to be eaten, frozen, or tossed -- who cares.
But the problem is that it actually applies to each one of us.
It's the Civil Code via the bioethics law of 1994 that says so.
The conventions -- as you can read -- are that there is no private ownership or patrimoniality over the body, because we say that the person is unavailable under law.
And so the body itself isn't patrimonial.
You don't have an ownership of your body.
And so you might tell me: "So what, everything in France is forbidden anyway."
(Laughter) But even in the US, a country supposedly liberal, it's the same story.
It has, by the way, been declared very clearly at a trial in the Supreme Court of California.
The John Moore case.
John Moore was a patient suffering from leukemia, in the 80s, and the doctors had to remove his spleen.
They discovered that his cells had extraordinary properties for producing certain kind of proteins.
So the doctors extracted, without telling John Moore, many of his cells.
They extracted blood, sperm, and parts of the spinal cord.
They apparently told him that in order to treat his leukemia they had to remove some sperm -- that's apparently what happened.
(Laughter) And they made a cell line out of it.
John Moore's cell line.
Which they then sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars to big pharmaceutical institutions.
And John Moore, upon realizing what has happened, said: "Wait a minute, I don't get to have a say?
These are my cells, if you don't mind."
And so there was a big trial, and the judge concluded that, no, they aren't his cells in fact, given that he doesn't have ownership over his cells.
So, where does all of this come from?
There are good reasons to think that it came from a monotheistic heritage.
This idea -- as Saint Paul put it: "The body is for the Lord and the Lord is for the body." -- is that in the big monotheism, particularly within Judeo-Christian religions, my body doesn't belong to me because it belongs to God.
My body is the expression of the soul, as per Thomas d'Aquin.
The body is the reflection of my soul, my soul is immortal.
It joins the kingdom of heaven.
By the way, I can even be resuscitated if the Council of State hasn't burned me first.
(Laughter) Pope Pie XII has claimed it very explicitly -- this is the first time I'm quoting Pope Pie XII publicly.
In 1954, at a medical congress, he explained that Man is merely a usufructuary of his body, not its full owner.
So within our secular law system, a secularized system, it is not a matter of God anymore, well the concept of God has been replaced by the concept of dignity.
Going back to that trial in Morsang-sur-Orge, this is the reason why the Council of State has prohibited dwarf-tossing, because a human being's dignity is viewed as being part of the public order.
It means that today, this transcendence we have abolished, this divine transcendence, is being retaken by the State, or by society if you prefer, defining everyone's dignity.
So dignity is sacredness without God.
It's the idea that, nonetheless, the body is sacred.
We cannot do whatever we want with it.
I suggest that you try and go to the end of the modernity logic.
And if we are really, completely within immanence, to whom does the body belong, if not to me?
Who can define its dignity, if not me?
That's what John Lock did, not John Moore, but John Locke.
Indeed, there are many Johns.
He was the first person to have written, to my knowledge, that each person has ownership over their own personhood.
It's not a coincidence that he is the one who wrote that, He was a doctor, and well-acquainted with flesh, the body's reactions.
And also because he was in the midst of the glorious British revolution, the Bill of Rights Revolution.
So this whole theory about social contract rights, about elementary, fundamental rights, about civil disobedience, also means that one has natural rights that are predetermined among which, the right of ownership of oneself.
He went even further by saying: "If can have ownership over exterior things, if I can acquire the world by working on it, by adding value to it," -- this idea of property was first born out of the appropriation of myself.
And think about it, if we have ownership over the body, we have, according to classical themes, the usus, fructus and abusus.
Usus means -- it's always nice using Latin terms -- usus means usage.
So if I have usus over the body, the dwarfs can do their work with dignity.
Then, fructus, we have it fructified and so John Moore can have access to his cell money.
And then you have abusus, I can abuse it and do whatever I want with it, and if I want to have it cryogenized, that's my problem.
It appears to me that this new generation is a generation that rejects predetermined structures, one that wants to define their own career, that wants to define their life by traveling, and to build themselves, their own self, be their own creator.
And we can see, anecdotally, sociologically, to what extent this generation who appropriates their own body with tattoos for instance, It's also a way to define one's sexuality in a much more fluid way.
There is a study that came out which showed that generation Z - it's not even Y anymore, it's Z -- Generation Z is post-gender.
It's not even bi anymore, everyone defines their own sexuality by adding a little bit of this or that.
So this results in many things.
For instance, one can be half-sexual, Grey-sexual, gyno-sexual, pan-sexual, Strauss-Kahn sexual -- No, not that.
Anyway, there are many versions.
I don't know all of them, and can't describe them on stage.
But it's interesting, you should look them up.
And more importantly, it will allow us to tackle the three big themes of the future: The subject of human augmentation, the enhancement of oneself, the theme of transhumanism, and the theme of data.
If tomorrow I can, and I already can enhance myself, that's to say building my own artificial arms, enhancing my limbs, enhancing my brain abilities, even modifying my own DNA.
If I modify my own DNA, I must be its owner.
If tomorrow I want to test, I want to explore immortality, be it through cryogenisation -- here is that nice example again.
Or for instance, as Ray Kurzweil, the Pope of transhumanism, envisions it, by transferring my consciousness onto a USB key.
Well, similarly, I am going to define, even contractually, the way in which my body relates to the world.
And then there is a third question that might seem a little marginal, the question of data.
We produce, a large amount of data, and its value is humongous.
as in Europe, it's estimated be worth a thousand billion euros by 2020.
However, this data, which is worth so much money and with which some companies make so much money, well, your personal data doesn't belong to you.
In the same way there isn't a patrimoniality of the body, there isn't a patrimoniality of data.
For the exact same reasons, because data is considered to be an expression of your personality, and as we saw, within the law, the personality is inalienable and the body isn't patrimonial.
If tomorrow we find, that we are able to build a private property for data, which will be to the digital age what intellectual property was to the industrial revolution, you will then become an owner, in truly legal and financial terms, of your own data, which you will be able to negotiate.
In other words: you will finally get paid for using Facebook.
So, "my body belongs to me" isn't a platitude.
It's a tattoo we would finally all wear.
Because this brand new generation will have to confront all these problems.
Transhumanism is coming, bioethical committees are already outdated.
And in order for everyone to able to choose their own values, in this complex universe, we must first own our own bodies.
Thank you!
Every day, I listen to harrowing stories of people fleeing for their lives, across dangerous borders and unfriendly seas.
But there's one story that keeps me awake at night, and it's about Doaa.
A Syrian refugee, 19 years old, she was living a grinding existence in Egypt working day wages.
Her dad was constantly thinking of his thriving business back in Syria that had been blown to pieces by a bomb.
And the war that drove them there was still raging in its fourth year.
And the community that once welcomed them there had become weary of them.
And one day, men on motorcycles tried to kidnap her.
Once an aspiring student thinking only of her future, now she was scared all the time.
But she was also full of hope, because she was in love with a fellow Syrian refugee named Bassem.
Bassem was also struggling in Egypt, and he said to Doaa, "Let's go to Europe; seek asylum, safety.
I will work, you can study -- the promise of a new life."
And he asked her father for her hand in marriage.
But they knew to get to Europe they had to risk their lives, traveling across the Mediterranean Sea, putting their hands in smugglers', notorious for their cruelty.
And Doaa was terrified of the water.
She always had been.
She never learned to swim.
It was August that year, and already 2,000 people had died trying to cross the Mediterranean, but Doaa knew of a friend who had made it all the way to Northern Europe, and she thought, "Maybe we can, too."
So she asked her parents if they could go, and after a painful discussion, they consented, and Bassem paid his entire life savings -- 2,500 dollars each -- to the smugglers.
It was a Saturday morning when the call came, and they were taken by bus to a beach, hundreds of people on the beach.
They were taken then by small boats onto an old fishing boat, 500 of them crammed onto that boat, 300 below, [200] above.
There were Syrians, Palestinians, Africans, Muslims and Christians, 100 children, including Sandra -- little Sandra, six years old -- and Masa, 18 months.
There were families on that boat, crammed together shoulder to shoulder, feet to feet.
Doaa was sitting with her legs crammed up to her chest, Bassem holding her hand.
Day two on the water, they were sick with worry and sick to their stomachs from the rough sea.
Day three, Doaa had a premonition.
And she said to Bassem, "I fear we're not going to make it.
I fear the boat is going to sink."
And Bassem said to her, "Please be patient.
We will make it to Sweden, we will get married and we will have a future."
Day four, the passengers were getting agitated.
They asked the captain, "When will we get there?"
He told them to shut up, and he insulted them.
He said, "In 16 hours we will reach the shores of Italy."
They were weak and weary.
Soon they saw a boat approach -- a smaller boat, 10 men on board, who started shouting at them, hurling insults, throwing sticks, asking them to all disembark and get on this smaller, more unseaworthy boat.
The parents were terrified for their children, and they collectively refused to disembark.
So the boat sped away in anger, and a half an hour later, came back and started deliberately ramming a hole in the side of Doaa's boat, just below where she and Bassem were sitting.
And she heard how they yelled, "Let the fish eat your flesh!"
And they started laughing as the boat capsized and sank.
The 300 people below deck were doomed.
Doaa was holding on to the side of the boat as it sank, and watched in horror as a small child was cut to pieces by the propeller.
Bassem said to her, "Please let go, or you'll be swept in and the propeller will kill you, too."
And remember -- she can't swim.
But she let go and she started moving her arms and her legs, thinking, "This is swimming."
And miraculously, Bassem found a life ring.
It was one of those child's rings that they use to play in swimming pools and on calm seas.
And Doaa climbed onto the ring, her arms and her legs dangling by the side.
Bassem was a good swimmer, so he held her hand and tread water.
Around them there were corpses.
Around 100 people survived initially, and they started coming together in groups, praying for rescue.
But when a day went by and no one came, some people gave up hope, and Doaa and Bassem watched as men in the distance took their life vests off and sank into the water.
One man approached them with a small baby perched on his shoulder, nine months old -- Malek.
He was holding onto a gas canister to stay afloat, and he said to them, "I fear I am not going to survive.
I'm too weak.
I don't have the courage anymore."
And he handed little Malek over to Bassem and to Doaa, and they perched her onto the life ring.
So now they were three, Doaa, Bassem and little Malek.
And let me take a pause in this story right here and ask the question: why do refugees like Doaa take these kinds of risks?
Millions of refugees are living in exile, in limbo.
They're living in countries [fleeing] from a war that has been raging for four years.
Even if they wanted to return, they can't.
Their homes, their businesses, their towns and their cities have been completely destroyed.
This is a UNESCO World Heritage City, Homs, in Syria.
So people continue to flee into neighboring countries, and we build refugee camps for them in the desert.
Hundreds of thousands of people live in camps like these, and thousands and thousands more, millions, live in towns and cities.
And the communities, the neighboring countries that once welcomed them with open arms and hearts are overwhelmed.
There are simply not enough schools, water systems, sanitation.
Even rich European countries could never handle such an influx without massive investment.
The Syria war has driven almost four million people over the borders, but over seven million people are on the run inside the country.
That means that over half the Syrian population has been forced to flee.
Back to those neighboring countries hosting so many.
They feel that the richer world has done too little to support them.
And days have turned into months, months into years.
A refugee's stay is supposed to be temporary.
Back to Doaa and Bassem in the water.
It was their second day, and Bassem was getting very weak.
And now it was Doaa's turn to say to Bassem, "My love, please hold on to hope, to our future.
We will make it."
And he said to her, "I'm sorry, my love, that I put you in this situation.
I have never loved anyone as much as I love you."
And he released himself into the water, and Doaa watched as the love of her life drowned before her eyes.
Later that day, a mother came up to Doaa with her small 18-month-old daughter, Masa.
This was the little girl I showed you in the picture earlier, with the life vests.
Her older sister Sandra had just drowned, and her mother knew she had to do everything in her power to save her daughter.
And she said to Doaa, "Please take this child.
Let her be part of you.
I will not survive."
And then she went away and drowned.
So Doaa, the 19-year-old refugee who was terrified of the water, who couldn't swim, found herself in charge of two little baby kids.
And they were thirsty and they were hungry and they were agitated, and she tried her best to amuse them, to sing to them, to say words to them from the Quran.
Around them, the bodies were bloating and turning black.
The sun was blazing during the day.
At night, there was a cold moon and fog.
It was very frightening.
On the fourth day in the water, this is how Doaa probably looked on the ring with her two children.
A woman came on the fourth day and approached her and asked her to take another child -- a little boy, just four years old.
When Doaa took the little boy and the mother drowned, she said to the sobbing child, "She just went away to find you water and food."
But his heart soon stopped, and Doaa had to release the little boy into the water.
Later that day, she looked up into the sky with hope, because she saw two planes crossing in the sky.
And she waved her arms, hoping they would see her, but the planes were soon gone.
But that afternoon, as the sun was going down, she saw a boat, a merchant vessel.
And she said, "Please, God, let them rescue me."
She waved her arms and she felt like she shouted for about two hours.
And it had become dark, but finally the searchlights found her and they extended a rope, astonished to see a woman clutching onto two babies.
They pulled them onto the boat, they got oxygen and blankets, and a Greek helicopter came to pick them up and take them to the island of Crete.
But Doaa looked down and asked, "What of Malek?"
And they told her the little baby did not survive -- she drew her last breath in the boat's clinic.
But Doaa was sure that as they had been pulled up onto the rescue boat, that little baby girl had been smiling.
Only 11 people survived that wreck, of the 500.
There was never an international investigation into what happened.
There were some media reports about mass murder at sea, a terrible tragedy, but that was only for one day.
And then the news cycle moved on.
Meanwhile, in a pediatric hospital on Crete, little Masa was on the edge of death.
She was really dehydrated.
Her kidneys were failing.
Her glucose levels were dangerously low.
The doctors did everything in their medical power to save them, and the Greek nurses never left her side, holding her, hugging her, singing her words.
My colleagues also visited and said pretty words to her in Arabic.
Amazingly, little Masa survived.
And soon the Greek press started reporting about the miracle baby, who had survived four days in the water without food or anything to drink, and offers to adopt her came from all over the country.
And meanwhile, Doaa was in another hospital on Crete, thin, dehydrated.
An Egyptian family took her into their home as soon as she was released.
And soon word went around about Doaa's survival, and a phone number was published on Facebook.
Messages started coming in.
"Doaa, do you know what happened to my brother?
My sister?
My parents?
My friends?
Do you know if they survived?"
One of those messages said, "I believe you saved my little niece, Masa."
And it had this photo.
This was from Masa's uncle, a Syrian refugee who had made it to Sweden with his family and also Masa's older sister.
Soon, we hope, Masa will be reunited with him in Sweden, and until then, she's being cared for in a beautiful orphanage in Athens.
And Doaa?
Well, word went around about her survival, too.
And the media wrote about this slight woman, and couldn't imagine how she could survive all this time under such conditions in that sea, and still save another life.
The Academy of Athens, one of Greece's most prestigious institutions, gave her an award of bravery, and she deserves all that praise, and she deserves a second chance.
But she wants to still go to Sweden.
She wants to reunite with her family there.
She wants to bring her mother and her father and her younger siblings away from Egypt there as well, and I believe she will succeed.
She wants to become a lawyer or a politician or something that can help fight injustice.
She is an extraordinary survivor.
But I have to ask: what if she didn't have to take that risk?
Why did she have to go through all that?
Why wasn't there a legal way for her to study in Europe?
Why couldn't Masa have taken an airplane to Sweden?
Why couldn't Bassem have found work?
Why is there no massive resettlement program for Syrian refugees, the victims of the worst war of our times?
The world did this for the Vietnamese in the 1970s.
Why not now?
Why is there so little investment in the neighboring countries hosting so many refugees?
And why, the root question, is so little being done to stop the wars, the persecution and the poverty that is driving so many people to the shores of Europe?
Until these issues are resolved, people will continue to take to the seas and to seek safety and asylum.
And what happens next?
Well, that is largely Europe's choice.
And I understand the public fears.
People are worried about their security, their economies, the changes of culture.
But is that more important than saving human lives?
Because there is something fundamental here that I think overrides the rest, and it is about our common humanity.
No person fleeing war or persecution should have to die crossing a sea to reach safety.
(Applause) One thing is for sure, that no refugee would be on those dangerous boats if they could thrive where they are.
And no migrant would take that dangerous journey if they had enough food for themselves and their children.
And no one would put their life savings in the hands of those notorious smugglers if there was a legal way to migrate.
So on behalf of little Masa and on behalf of Doaa and of Bassem and of those 500 people who drowned with them, can we make sure that they did not die in vain?
Could we be inspired by what happened, and take a stand for a world in which every life matters?
Thank you.
(Applause)