 On behalf of the U.S. Institute for Peace, I'm delighted to welcome everyone to PeaceCon 2020. I joined USIP last week as its new president. This is my first major event, and I can't think of a better one to underline how important, how crucial, peace is at this point in our collective history. For the past eight years, PeaceCon has brought together people who care about and are committed to doing everything possible to make peace and to sustain peace, whether we're peace builders, policymakers, philanthropists, or come from the private sector and civil society. We joined together once a year in this forum to confront some of the biggest challenges to global peace, progress and security. As we all know, the challenges are overwhelming. Record numbers of people are being forced from their homes or migrating to places where they believe there are better options for themselves and their families. Competition between great powers is growing. Climate change is everywhere evident. Nuclear proliferation cannot be ruled out, and in country after country there is deeply worrying and a rising tide of violence, deepening fractures, extremism and authoritarianism. This past year has made things even tougher. COVID has impacted every country in the world. 67 million people have contracted the virus and more than one and a half million have died. As many as 270 million people across the globe are facing what the World Food Program, the recipient of this year's Nobel Peace Prize, describes as a hunger pandemic. The World Bank expects that the number of people in extreme poverty in the world will rise for the first time in a generation, and many countries are experiencing one of the worst economic crises in their history. A glaring light has been shed on the depths of racial injustice, particularly in the U.S., and everywhere there are demands for national and global reckoning to address this. Across the world, people are rising to address the multiple crises we are facing by breaking barriers, challenging old assumptions and imagining new paths forward. Examples of this are inspiring. 170 countries and bodies have endorsed the UN's call for a global ceasefire and pledged to take steps to silence the guns and stand united against the global threat of COVID-19. Vaccines are being produced in record time. Global peaceful protests and demands for racial justice are growing and people everywhere are calling for greater accountability, transparency and justice from governments. They are also calling for more and better international cooperation and collective action to end wars, to promote equality, and to put ourselves on the right road to sustainable development and peace. Our conversation this year in PeaceCon is pandemic's peace and justice. During the next three days, we'll take a deep dive into the relationship between justice and peace building in the context of COVID-19 and the worldwide reckoning over injustice and racism. We'll have the opportunity to harness our collective energy, align our thinking, and sharpen our vision to shape what comes next. I would like to invite everyone to follow our conversation on Tritter with the hashtag PeaceCon 2020 or the hashtag shaping what comes next in closing. I would like to express our deep gratitude to the Alliance for Peace Building for their continued partnership of this event and for everything they do every day in more than 180 countries to make peace possible. I'm delighted to welcome Uzra, the President and CEO of the Alliance for Peace Building, for your comments. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening everyone. It's an honor to welcome you all to PeaceCon 2020 from the beautiful and nearly empty Carlucci Auditorium at the U.S. Institute of Peace. Thank you, Lisa, for your inspiring words and congratulations on your exciting new role leading USIP. AFP's indispensable partner in co-hosting PeaceCon these last eight years. Thank you, Julia Royk, for your visionary leadership as the Alliance's new board chair. AFP is proud to partner with you and partners global on groundbreaking narratives research to show that peace is not some utopian ideal. It is possible and integral to our daily lives. And thank you to Senator Chris Coons for offering opening remarks this morning. Despite rising US political polarization, you modeled bipartisan leadership to win adoption of the 2019 Global Fragility Act. AFP, Mercy Corps and the nearly 70 member NGO, GFA Coalition are committed to ensuring meaningful implementation of this game-changing legislation to reorient the U.S. approach to fragile and conflict-affected states. And a special thanks to our 33 sponsors, especially Humanity United, for helping make PeaceCon 2020 our largest and our most global ever. And thank you to all of you, a record-breaking audience for PeaceCon streaming in from every corner of the world for your energy, your resolve, and your action. Every day, peace-building heroes like you, from public health workers, to mediators and program evaluators, from diplomats and faith leaders to youth activists, break cycles of violence to sustain peace. Our alliance aspires to unite these diverse efforts towards a common end in the form of lives saved, violence and wars averted, and human dignity restored. This year's theme, Pandemic's Peace and Justice, Shaping What Comes Next, highlights both the urgency and the opportunity of this moment. A moment at which a global pandemic has reached 191 countries and taken the lives of nearly 1.5 million people disproportionately harmed the most vulnerable among us and has forecast to push an additional 13 countries into armed conflict by 2022. A moment when a record number of civilians are displaced far from home with little hope of return. A moment at which unaddressed systemic racism and police violence pushed millions of Americans into the streets and sparked a national and global reckoning for racial justice. A moment when just 1% of overseas development assistance is invested towards preventing violence while the global cost of violence last year was $14.5 trillion. That's 11%, nearly 11% of global GDP. You might ask what hope could be found in such stark statistics. I would counter that the gravity of this moment propels us not towards the comfort of a familiar past, but to demand and shape a better future. A future in which the inequalities and injustices laid bare by COVID-19 are addressed peacefully. A future in which every person, regardless of background, gender, income or faith, can shape their destiny and see others shared humanity. A future in which communities and nations are more resilient and less vulnerable to the disruptions of pandemics. Climate change, disinformation or the next transnational threat around the corner. A little over a year ago at Peacecon 2019, I spoke of the imperative for transformation and integration in the peacebuilding field. While none of us knew then the degree to which our work and our lives would be upended in 2020, these two themes have held true in AFP's approach in the wake of COVID-19. For 2020 and beyond, I would add one more word to the mix, adaptation, as our ability to weather storms ahead depends on the degree to which we can bounce back from disruptions and correct course. Here's how AFP has translated these words into action. On the policy front, we've advocated a transformative approach that favors peaceful prevention and a departure from the securitized mindset of the last two decades. Transformation requires integrating development and diplomacy and making inclusive peacebuilding a steadfast commitment rather than a slogan. It means changing a reality in which women make up 70% of health care first responders, but just 2% of official peace negotiators. Or in which young people make up the majority of population in conflict affected states, but remain excluded from peace processes to determine their future. Such realities are the impetus behind AFP collaborations, such as the Youth Peace and Security Act, which aims to create a new investment stream for youth peacebuilding and catalyze their leadership in global conflict prevention. Transformation, adaptation and integration also underpin AFP's groundbreaking learning and evaluation leadership to shift peacebuilding practice towards evidence, especially in the wake of the global pandemic. This past year saw AFP launch the Irene Peacebuilding Database, offering over 3,300 new indicators to measure impact, and a new short video series, Creativity in Crisis, to support research innovation in the wake of COVID related restrictions. Since PeaceCon 2019, AFP has convened hundreds of local peace builders from over 160 organizations, from Mexico to Kenya, to highlight best practices and learnings on L&E. In 2020, we published new research highlighting the grave impact of COVID-19 on peacebuilding organizations globally, as well as the growing worldwide reach of AFP members. Exemplified by the record-breaking audience at this year's PeaceCon, AFP partnerships continue to adapt, transform and integrate new players. Our network has grown by 34% these last two years, with members working in 181 countries, nearly every nation on Earth. In response to heightened polarization at home, AFP has partnered with mediators beyond borders international and network members to form a new early warning and response effort, the trust network, to mitigate violence before and after U.S. elections. We're also proud to partner with new gen peace builders on a new peace education pilot in several U.S. high schools. Transformation also requires looking inward, and I'm pleased to report that AFP has met its commitment to achieve gender parity and greater diversity on our board this year. AFP's board is now 50% women and 33% persons of color, compared to 36% women and 23% persons of color in 2019. This is a first step in a long-term effort to anchor diversity, equity and inclusion in everything we do, and I hope that you'll accompany us on this journey. You'll hear more about all these issues throughout the next three days, but most of all, we're here to listen to you. Your voice and agency are critical to shaping what comes next. Speaking of what comes next, it's a bittersweet moment for me, as this will be my last peace con and my last week as CEO and president of this remarkable network. I want to thank all of you for your friendship, support and partnership these last two years, especially AFP vice president Liz Hume, whom I know will lead this network to new heights of excellence as it's acting CEO and president, and remains a singular thought leader and force of nature for our field. Finally, speaking of excellence, thank you also to an all-star team. Stephanie Boudaker, Sahar Omer, Jessica Baumgardner-Zuzik, Linda Zheng, Sara Vupadia, Shazia Di Young, Megan Schleicher, Eric Eichenberry, Xander Willoughby, Maggie Atomaco, Kaizadeh Rani, Amanda Long and Tyler Beckleman for making peace con 2020 possible. So let the games begin. And now I'd like to invite our board chair and partners global president and CEO Julia Roy to offer some words of welcome. Thank you. It's my great pleasure to welcome all of you to peace con 2020 on behalf of the board of directors of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. I know it's a strange year that we're gathering, not in person, and yet what an amazing opportunity to be together virtually so that so many peace builders from around the world could be joining us and sharing their experience and their expertise and lending their voice to helping to shape what comes next. 2020 has indeed been a year for the history books. And what an amazing moment of global solidarity that we've all been experiencing the same pandemic in different ways in our different contexts. We've seen conflict dynamics worsen in a lot of places, really bringing to light inequalities, systemic injustices, a call for dealing with racism around the world and racism in the development sector in particular. And peace builders need to be on the forefront of these conversations of these solutions, helping to rebuild our global infrastructure in new equitable ways, so that we know that women have a voice, young people have a voice, and that there's a hopefulness of a way that we're going to come together and work on these really complex problems in a way that is respectful of difference of opinions, and that we're going to be combating these drivers of polarization and divisiveness. There is such a need for our talents and our values and our way of thinking about the world. And so I invite you to take advantage of the next three days to learn from each other to make connections, to think about new partnerships that we're going to be building, amplifying our messages and all of the good work that we're doing around the world, so that the values of peace building can be shared broadly throughout our societies. A very special thank you to USIP for their partnership. A thank you to all the organizations that sponsored the conference this year. And of course, a huge shout out to the Alliance for Peace Building staff that have been working so hard to make this conference a reality, even under some very strange circumstances as we're all telecommuting. And I know that all of you are going to join me in recognizing and thanking Azra for the time that she has spent as CEO and president of the Alliance. We're going to have a moment on the last day of the conference in the morning to more formally thank her and recognize her. So please make sure to join in on that third day for that special thank you to Azra. Have a great conference, be present, make sure to not be multitasking so you can take full advantage. Have a great conference and thank you so much for all of the wonderful work that you do around the world. We are honored to share a video message from Senator Chris Coons, a champion of US global engagement. Senator Coons is famous for working across the political aisle to find bipartisan solutions to pressing foreign policy challenges. He is committed to elevating the US's leading role in addressing the global crisis created by the pandemic and he is one of the sponsors and driving forces of the pioneering Global Fragility Act signed into law last year. We are enormously grateful to Senator Coons for his dedication to peace and we are delighted to share this message with you. Good morning, I'm US Senator Chris Coons from Delaware to the Alliance for Peace Building and the United States Institute for Peace. Thank you for organizing this important event and thank you for your long standing efforts to advocate for peace and justice around the world. This annual conference brings together frontline peace builders, leaders in civil society and the private sector, policy experts and philanthropists to exchange ideas and collaborate and I'm honored to speak with you this morning. 2020 has been a very difficult year, complicating global efforts to build peace. With conflicts and crises in East Africa, the South Caucasus, Ukraine, the Middle East, Venezuela, elsewhere, we must redouble our efforts and think creatively. Global levels of violence are at a 25-year peak with 150 million people at risk of falling back into extreme poverty. This peak is undercutting international stability, reversing development gains and driving record levels of migration. So we must work together to find peaceful resolutions of these conflicts and remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Proactively addressing systemic injustice, corruption, racism and other root causes of conflict can prevent future violence. The United States must also grapple with these challenges here at home. That should not and will not stop us from also playing a positive and constructive role on the global stage. That's why I'm proud to help lead the Global Fragility Act both in its enactment and now its implementation. It's an effort to align U.S. diplomacy, development and defense policies to prevent these challenges from taking hold in the first place. As a member of both the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations Committees, I'm working hard with Republicans and Democrats to fund a robust international pandemic response, promote stabilization of fragile environments and nations, and to build peace and maximize the impact of U.S. foreign assistance. In the coming months, we must also restore trust in science and public health expertise. President-elect Biden is eager to restore principled bipartisan U.S. leadership on the world stage. He knows in the midst of the worst pandemic in a century and a global recession and a global crisis of justice and inequality that a new approach is necessary. We must trust science. We must trust those with expertise in peacebuilding and conflict resolution and only then can we regain credibility and help to lead alongside our global partners. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of today and I look forward to working with you to address these urgent challenges in the year ahead. Thank you and stay safe. Thank you, Senator Coons, for your extraordinary leadership in bringing the Global Fragility Act into law and for your leadership on peace and security issues. Good morning. Let me add my welcome to our audience and to panelists who will be joining us throughout the day. This is Peace Con 2020. I'm Joe Hewitt. I am the Vice President for Policy Learning and Strategy here at USIP. Let's start this morning talking about the relationship between COVID, fragility and conflict. The coronavirus pandemic has claimed more than 1.5 million lives worldwide. The consequences of the pandemic are profound everywhere. And this is especially true in fragile and conflict affected states. Although the vast majority of COVID-19 deaths have occurred outside the most fragile contexts worldwide, the first and second order consequences could be especially problematic in fragile contexts because of the significant potential to exacerbate existing challenges in these places. Setting aside what's happened this year and a lot has happened this year, the challenges in fragile contexts were already steep, declining trust in government, marginalized populations seeking more inclusive political institutions, weak and unreliable justice systems, unaccountable and corrupt governing institutions, persistent violence, and on and on. Adding COVID to this mix with the heavy strain it will put on already strained public health systems with the drag on markets and economic growth will only complicate efforts to remedy the sources of fragility and build on the existing sources of resilience. How exactly do we think the consequences of COVID will affect the dynamics of fragility and conflict? And what can the international community do to address the peace and security implications of the pandemic? These are the guiding questions that will shape our discussion this morning. And to help us think through those critical questions, I'm really delighted to be joined this morning by an extraordinary panel of senior leaders who all have deep expertise in exactly these questions. So let me begin this discussion this morning with introductions of our four superb panelists. And I'm going to start with David Beasley, executive director of the UN World Food Program and former governor of South Carolina. Under his leadership, the World Food Program was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year, recognizing the organization's remarkable work in mobilizing support for the global fight against hunger. Congratulations on that award, Mr. Beasley. He's well deserved. Paige Alexander, CEO of the Center of the Carter Center. She joins the Carter Center after a distinguished career in global development, holding senior leadership positions at two regional bureaus at USAID, where she oversaw development programs in 25 countries. She also served as senior vice president and European president of IREX, an international civil society, democracy, and education nonprofit. Good morning, Paige. Ambassador Mark Green, executive director of the McCain Institute for International Leadership. He is the former administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development at USAID. He led the agency through structural reform and reorganization, an approach he named the journey to self-reliance. Prior to USAID, he served as president of the International Republican Institute, U.S. ambassador to Tanzania, and as a member of Congress representing Wisconsin's 8th district. Good morning, Ambassador Green. And then finally, Jada Doyen McKenna. She's the CEO of Mercy Corps, where she leads a global team of nearly 6,000 humanitarians. She has also held leadership positions at Habitat for Humanity, CARE, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, and in the Obama Administration, where she worked primarily on food security and on ending global hunger. Good morning, Jada. So we'll start this conversation. I'm going to start off with a high-level discussion question. I'll give each of the panelists a chance to weigh in with about five minutes of comments, and then we'll circle back and dive deeper into a number of issues that are all tied into this question. Let me first remind that we've got a, I know we have a large audience of lots of different perspectives from all around the world. I want to encourage members of the audience that they can leave questions for us that we will try to address in the Q&A period. We'll have about 15 minutes for Q&A. To ask a question, please use the chat box, which you will find located just below the video player on the USIP event page. So if you're looking at the video player, right below that, is a chat box. Put your questions there, and we'll try to address as many of them as we can. So let's start with the broadest question, and I will turn to the panelists in the order that I introduced them. So David Beasley, we'll go to you first. The broadest question, I think, for us to start off is this. What do you see as the main effects, as we look across fragile and conflict-affected countries in the world, what are the main effects of COVID-19 on global fragility and conflict? What should we be most concerned about from your perspective? Over to you. Everything. Everything. I mean, it's really bad. And this is one of the grave concerns that I brought forward to the United Nations Security Council back in April, that if we're not careful and make decisions about a COVID pandemic and a vacuum, the cure will be much worse than the disease. And this is why we must come in and thread that needle so that we can impact the most people in the most positive way, because if we're not careful and we're already seeing an economic reverberation, this absolutely devastating to low and middle income countries. And what our analysis is already showing back in the late spring is that prior to COVID, now, when I arrived here three and a half years ago, there were 80 people. And Mark Green, if you remember this, I know Paige, if anybody deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, all of you together are part of that success story. But when we won this prize, it was because of all the hard work that we're doing together, and I think it was a message by the Nobel Peace Prize committee that the worst is yet to come in 2021. So when I arrived three and a half years ago, there were only 80 million people on the brink of starvation marching to the brink of starvation out of 6,700 million people that are chronically hungry. Well, as of the end of last year, 2019, it was 135 million, give or take. And the first question is what caused that to spike? And answer number one is man-made conflict. On top of that, climate extremes, on top of that, fragile governments, then you had desert locusts coming into play, and then all of a sudden, guess what, when you think it couldn't get any worse, COVID comes in just devastating all the gains that we've made in the last, not just 25, 50 years, possibly even a couple of hundred years, and systems that have been really impacted by COVID. So now, Joe, we're looking at the numbers from 135 million to 270, 275 million people that are literally in phase 3, 4, 5, in other words, marching to the brink of starvation. And so as I responded to the Security Council back in April, because Tony Blair had called me about end of March and said, David, you travel around the world probably about as much as anybody. What are you seeing? And I expressed my concerns to Tony. And I said, Tony, we're making decisions in a vacuum. Really, that's going to be a mistake. And let me show you the areas we're gravely concerned about with regards to the economic lockdown, supply chain disruptions, decisions that countries are making in terms of border export bans. And I can go into the details of this. And as I went through probably a half a dozen countries over the next four quarters, Tony was blown away and said, you've got to go to the Security Council and express the broader picture of what we're going to be facing. And I did. And fortunately, the leaders around the world responded in a lot of different ways. And we have been able to avert famine because of that response for 2020. Now here's that's the good news. The bad news is, while it looks like we're about to turn the corner with the vaccine, but the economic ripple fate is just now rippling with devastation in low and middle income countries. And guess what? The $19 trillion that we spent in 2020 for economic stimulus and COVID response, et cetera, is not going to be available in 2021. The extra billions that were put aside for the World Food Program and UNICEF and UNHCR and so many other agencies and NGOs is not going to be as robust and available like we had in 2020 because economies are contracting. We're seeing that. And yet the needs have doubled. And when we use that number of 270 million people, that's not just some feel bad generic number. But we can break that down into every country. And here's why. Let me just give you a simple example. Ethiopia. You don't realize it, but 50% of their export revenues is tourism. Well, guess what? That's gone. A country that's been devastated from the past with desert locust, et cetera. Nigeria, South Sudan, 90% of there are more of their export revenues oil prices tank. Well, an already fragile environment, hostile with extremist groups like in northeast Nigeria. And then we start breaking down the Sahel. But we'll get into more of that, I think, later in the program. But it's a bad situation. And guess what? It's the informal economy that's being impacted just as much as the formal economy. You've got almost, I don't know, 1.6 billion informal workers that are struggling now and can't send their remittances to their loved ones in Syria. Ethiopia and Lebanon. And this is having a dramatic dynamic impact. Over $100 billion of reduced revenues into the families that depend on this help from their family and their loved ones. And so what we know and believe is that we've got to think hard about 2021. As I've said to the leaders, you're not going to have enough money for every program and every policy concern for 2021. You're going to have to pick out the icebergs. The spilled wine on the carpet in the ballroom in the Titanic, don't worry about it right now. The broken tile in the bathroom, don't worry about it right now. But let's got to pick out the icebergs ahead of us so that we get through 2021. And those icebergs are going to be simple things like starvation, famine, to destabilization, and three, mass migration. If we can be direct, be concentrated, and really cooperate, we can get through 2021. But we'll get into the details of that, I'm sure, over the next hour. So it's great to be with you now. I'll turn it back to you. Thank you, Joe. Great. Thanks, David. What you've done with that terrific answer is you've provided detail about the complexity of the systems that are in play here, that are all in one way or another being affected by the consequences of the pandemic. And what I'd like to just put a bookmark on and we'll come back to it is, does our appreciation of how the interconnectedness of all of these different factors, does that give us clues about how to work on the recovery? And so I'll certainly turn back to that and we'll have a chance to get into that as we move on. Paige, I'd like to turn to you next. I mean, from your vantage point at the Carter Center, can you tell us a little bit about some of the most important consequences that you see of the pandemic and fragile and conflict affected states? Sure. Thanks, Joe. So David really summed it up so well. It's always hard to follow him. I would say here at the Carter Center, we focused on global health and peace. And so to have walked into 2020 where these are two major aspects of what we're having to face is actually building on the work that we've done for 38 years. I think the COVID-19 pandemic has harmed economies, societies, political systems. We all know that. And it's really pushed health care providers to the breaking point and brought many of the health public services and interventions to just a heart-rendering halt. We saw this during Ebola. We've seen this during other pandemics. But this is actually global. And so we're seeing this in developed countries as well as countries that are still going through development. So tackling COVID-19 is really much harder in the countries where social and economic conditions were already unstable because of weak governance and state institutions and equal access to services for vulnerable populations. And where communities really already have been mistrusting their government. So fragility and conflict around the world really reversed these hard-won gains. And they stunt the opportunities for children, youth, and the most vulnerable. David was commenting, you know, we've seen this in the refugee situation where we are throwing so far back now in the education sphere. And it's really going to be hard to catch up. But in the process, this also deeply weakens health systems, which leaves societies more vulnerable to disease and outbreaks. And therefore, we're seeing every gain made in the developing world from economic gains to health care suffer. So as David mentioned, the informal economy isn't even trapped as much as we would think. So what we don't know is almost more frightening than what we do already know. But I like the way you teed this out, David, with icebergs. You know, we need to have a direct concentrated and cooperative work among all of us, among governments, among people, among community leaders to make sure that we can address what's in front of people. And for right now, that's just going to be getting through 2020 and then the vaccine. So I think, you know, there's a lot of work to be done in this area. It's hard to know how global fragility plays in any more than our developing world has shown our own fragility. So I think it's going to have to be something that we do together. That's a really important theme to land on page. You know, the importance of coordination in solving the problem. This is a collective problem. The solution has got to be collective. But working out the details of that is yet another thing that we could get into. So I want to hold that thought and we can circle back on the challenge of coordination. Ambassador Green, you've had the experience recently of working and leading the U.S. Agency for International Development. From your perch there and from where you are now at the McCain Institute, tell us a little bit about what strikes you as some of the most urgent pressing issues with regard to the consequences of the pandemic in fragile states. Great. Thanks. Good to be with you. Let me just take a moment. I have congratulated my friend, David Beasley and WHO privately. I'd like to do so publicly for the extraordinary work that they're doing. David and Paige, I think, have done a great job of setting the table. Perhaps I can amplify a few points. So one of the least covered, yet I think most important consequences of what we're seeing in the subsistence farming and agricultural sector, people always think of a pandemic and hunger in terms of emergency response and it needs to happen. I'm just as concerned about the loss of growing seasons. So it's not simply the immediate nutritional need. It's what we're going to do in the future when people have seen agriculture production disrupted and livelihoods disrupted. And so that's something I think we need to be thinking about. Secondly, authoritarian power grabs. We're seeing in too many parts of the world that authoritarian tendencies are coming to the forefront. So we're seeing leaders really using COVID as an excuse, taking powers under themselves that I think worry all of us in terms of community cohesion and responsiveness that really is key as an antidote to fragility. Related to that is the risk of scapegoating. When people are driven to despair by lack of economic opportunity, food insecurity and all of the impacts that we're seeing down certainty, it's very easy for them to fall into scapegoating of vulnerable communities, ethnic minorities in particular, especially when there are forces that are willing to amplify that and use that to break communities up. And then finally, I would point to displacement. Everywhere I go, I talk about the challenge of displacement. It's the challenge that I probably was least familiar with before I came to USAID. So we have 80 million displaced people around the world every corner of the globe. But what COVID has done is we've seen more displacement as people are driven to migrate because of despair. Secondly, the displacement that's in place in some ways is getting locked in and institutionalized. And then third, I would point to the permanent vulnerability of displaced communities. So it's the obvious and material needs, but the secondary impact there, something that I know everyone here is concerned about, is that we're seeing a lack of connectivity between displaced people in the world around them. We have children being born in camps and displaced communities, growing up in camps and displaced communities, and they're really not connected to the world around them in civic terms. And Lord willing, we get to a place where the displacement stops. They're simply not going to be prepared for the world around them, and they're going to be vulnerable to the worst kind of exploitative forces that we can possibly imagine. So all of these things are part of the impact, and I don't think the public focuses on it. We focus on the natural public health fallout, but I think the consequences as David Beasley has alluded to are far greater than that and sadly, far longer lasting. Thank you Ambassador Green. As we move along through the conversation, more and more is getting placed on the table. We have to get back to the question about authoritarian power grabs. That certainly really resonates with me. I mean you went through the disruption to agricultural livelihoods, really crucial. And this issue of displacement is really troubling because my observation is that the problem of displacement has been with us for a while. We've had a lot of populations displaced due to violent conflict. As David Beasley pointed out in his remarks, I'm curious, what can we do differently to help get at that problem, especially when the pandemic is over. So we'll circle back and talk about that as well. Jada, I'm mindful that so much has been put on the table, and I'm going to ask you the same question. Let's see if you can put something new on there. We'll see what we have there. But what jumps out as important to you as a consequence of this pandemic and fragile environments? Thank you, Jeff. Yes, and I think as David mentioned, you know, when this all started, before COVID started, we were already on the edge, we were already on the brink facing kind of multiple disasters in multiple contexts and working together across sectors and organizations to address these things. And COVID just added another layer on that and really worsened existing conflicts, jeopardized peace we got and already accelerated instability in what were fragile states already. Mercy Corps, we operate in more than 40 countries, including 17 of the 20 countries that are ranked lowest in the global peace context. So we work in some of the world's most complex and fragile environments. And there are a couple of things that we're seeing that have come about because of the pandemic or that the pandemic exacerbates that we're particularly concerned about. The first is the impact on social cohesion and community trust. And, you know, Mark Green referred to it as scapegoating. Just as an example, like we found that in Nigeria, some of the movement restrictions that have been placed as COVID mitigation measures have actually forced herders to remain in place, increasing competition with farmers over natural resources such as land and water and intensifying the conflicts that already can exist between pastoralists and farmers. We've seen tensions rise, more violence break out amongst these groups and justifying using the narrative that people are here to spread COVID in a way that exacerbates that. So we see examples of that all over. That's one thing. The other is a further erosion of what was already a very fragile social contract between governments and the communities that they are meant to serve. You know, local populations see COVID as another opportunity for corruption and many see government responses as incompetent or even worse repressive. And we see some of that in the United States as well. So for instance, in Iraq, an assessment of our program participants found that 85% of survey respondents felt very unhappy with their government's response to the pandemic and labeled it as very poor. That does not help on any issue. Finally, and it's another thing that we are combating even here in the United States, it states there's even a proliferation of intentional misinformation and disinformation that will further undermine public confidence and spread falsehoods, either that be confidence in vaccines that are coming out or just other things that will incite violence. So in, for example, in Myanmar, there was news of a Rohingya man returning from Bangladesh. She tested positive and that just helped to spread even more anti-Rohingya disinformation on social media and conspiracy theories about purposeful spread of the virus. So that this increasing problem of disinformation, something like a virus only makes that worse. So these are just a few of the examples of the many secondary and third order effects that we're seeing as a result of COVID. And it's really important as we move forward that we address not just the immediate health impacts in COVID and vaccines, but that we really pay a lot of attention to the secondary and third impacts that are coming about conflict and input resources and energy and to understanding them and addressing them head on. Thank you, Jada. This issue about trust, declining citizen trust was an issue long before COVID hit, but here again is another issue that's going to be exacerbated. And the things that you bundled in there, the misinformation, the proliferation of information sources that allow for competing truths, that could easily impede vaccination programs. It can certainly again further erode trust in government, which is crucial right now. So we certainly want to double back and talk a little bit more about what can be done to address that. I want to pick up on something that Ambassador Green said and ask David Beesley to walk us through this a little bit. Ambassador Green said he was really concerned about the disruption to agricultural livelihoods, long-term disruption as a result of the pandemic. And I know that David, you've talked eloquently about the role of the pandemic in perpetuating food insecurity. What can be done now or in the very near future to help mitigate some of the disruption that Ambassador Green talked about? Mark and I have actually talked about this on many, many occasions when he was holding the title at USAID. And I know Paige and Jada know this discussion as well. My goal when I came to the World Food Program was literally to put the World Food Program out of business because we've achieved sustainability resilience almost no matter what comes our way. Because people, I have found that when I'm out, and I don't know if anybody gets out there more than I do, but when I'm in the middle of Niger or Tanzania or DRC, I haven't found a beneficiary that said, hey, I really want to keep getting your help. They all want to be independent and self-sufficient. The smallholder farmers want to be able to really have that entrepreneurial success story. And the women are the most amazing. I can tell you, in the hell where I've spent a lot of times in the last few years, what we're seeing here, I mean, COVID is one thing, and it's impact, and it'll be over hopefully sooner than later. But the ripple effect is Mark to say, and it's devastating to us in a lot of different ways, not just in the humanitarian context. And this is where I believe that we have not been as successful in society. When I look at the last 200 years, when there was 1.1 billion people, and 95% of the people on earth were in extreme poverty, today there's less than 10%. So we've achieved great success in the last 200 years in better systems and better programs. But try telling that to the 10% that aren't experiencing this way of life, this better way of life. So we don't tear down the systems we built, we improve them and continue to focus. And that's where we've got to be in terms of I know when we're working with the United States, USAID, or Germany, or the UK, or the EU, or whoever our funders may be, for example, in the Sahel, instead of just coming in with programs and just providing food or money, what we're doing is food for asset type programs, rehabilitating the landscape. In fact, we have working, this is what's really, it's heartwarming and heartbreaking at the same time when you talk about climate change, when basically the wealthy nations are causing so many of these issues, and it's the poor people that pay the price. And yet they're the ones that's rehabilitating hundreds of thousands, if not millions of acres of land, because we come in with a program and say, hey, we want to help you, but we want to rehabilitate the land so that you can survive no matter what comes your way, whether it's climate extremes, or whether it's ISIS trying to recruit, using food as a weapon of recruitment, or whatever it may be. And so just in the past few years, I've been a fisheries in this development side, and this is one of the great debates that I think that I was pushing when I arrived. You can't just put humanitarian in a box and isolate it from development, not in today's context. You could maybe 25, 30 years ago when it was really quite clear and quite simple, but today it's a hybrid. You don't know where the humanitarian development starts at some of these very fragile atmospheres in complex environments like in the Sahel, the greater Sahel region, where you've got climate extremes, you've got extremist crews, you've got fragile governors. And so we want to design programs that create sustainability and resilience, regardless of the government, regardless of all these factors, so that at least these people who are our brothers and our sisters equal in value as us have the right and hope before them. And I've seen it firsthand when we're out there on the ground, when we work with them to rehabilitate the lands, when we give them the water harvesting opportunities, and we give them school meals and the children opportunity. Let me tell you what happens. Migration drops off the chart. Teen pregnancy drops off the chart. Marriage by 12 and 13-year-olds drops off the chart. Recruiting by Al Qaeda or ISIS or Boko Ram or Al Shafiq drops off the chart. And you can financially come up with a value for each one of those, and this will be a lot more expensive than coming in prevention. We saw what happened in Syria when we didn't get ahead of the curve. The support of Syrian in Syria is about 50 cents per day. That's saying Syrian in Berlin or Brussels, 50 to 100 euros per day in terms of humanitarian support package. So if we could come in like Mark was talking and stay focused on the development and humanitarian context together, because that is what the Nobel Peace Prize committee was sending a message, thank you, not just to the women and men that are laying their lives on the line every day at the World Food Program, working with our partners, many of you on the screen, but saying thank you for using food as a weapon of peace because where you have food security, you maximize the chances of stability and peace. And they're both interconnected. Without food, you have insecurity. Without insecurity, you're going to have hunger pandemics. And so let me throw it back to you, Joe. I appreciate that. And as you can know, I could probably talk on this for an hour. I get all fired up about it because I've really been jumping from the countries pretty hard about collaborating together more strategically. We got to stop having the U.S. do a program here, Germany program there, and the U.K. program here. How do we come together with limited dollars and impact so that the people have a better way of life? Because these people we're talking about, unlike an American, you have a lockdown, you still got three weeks of food in your pantry. You might not like what you're eating on the third week, but these people, they're living from hand to mouth day to day. And this COVID has dynamically impacted them. And if we could build a system more strategically with them, they won't be as fragile and as vulnerable to these shocks. And so I'll throw it back to you again. Thank you. No reason at all to apologize about your energy. I love it. I love it. These are crucial issues. And this issue about developing that local resilience, if you will, to be so that people can create their better lives, it means they're less likely to migrate, just as you said, very compelling, all very important. What I want to pivot to, to add on to that, is what is the role of more accountable, trusting government that provides justice and security in accountable, inclusive ways. That's got to be a part of this. And as we've heard from multiple panelists, that's getting corroded right now in this time of the pandemic. That's one of the consequences. So let's talk about how to address that. And for that page, I'm going to turn to you. We've heard from multiple people that trusting government is declining as a result of the pandemic. There have been authoritarian power grabs, as Ambassador Green said. What can be done about that now in this moment? Or what can be done at least in the near or midterm? Yeah. Thanks, Joe. I think any response to the pandemic really has to be holistic. We need to ensure that humanitarian and recovery system reaches the most in need. And we must help countries address the other drivers of fragility in a holistic manner. So our engagement must be long-term. I know this from USAID and I know that many of our donors that we work with often struggle with short-term programs versus long-term programs. And I think we really need these to be long-term. Our interventions need to be thoughtful. They need to be coordinated and based on good practices. And it's not a one-size-fits-all. As David says, it's a hybrid. And every country is going to require a different amount, a different set of interventions. You know, I think the global reputation of the US in addressing the drivers of fragility is broken. And not only have we failed to build trust with the international partners, but in recent times we've actually undermined that trust. Some of this goes to Jada's point about disinformation. So I agree that food security leads to stability and peace. The same goes for building a health system to make sure people are able to be active parts of their society. And I think that when people, you know, we deal with lymphatic pleuriasis and oncosterocytes and things that, you know, really take people out of their, the ability to be active parts of the economy and society. And so as we're looking at what we can do, we need to make sure that both the first and second order impacts of the pandemic are addressed, but that we don't forget about the other elements, whether it's free and fair elections or whether it's a healthcare system that is strong. Those are the long-term interventions we need to keep going with to make sure that we can, you know, this isn't the last global pandemic we're going to see. And so if we get ourselves in a place where we have the systems to address that, I think that's going to be important. So for me, it's really building, helping build society's resilience comes into the long-term investment we're willing to make to build this with them. It's very helpful to make that distinction between what we can do in the short-term and what we can do in the long-term. And of course, what we do in the long-term requires strategic patience, you know, the ability to make these commitments for the long haul. And this might be a good place to talk a little bit about the Global Fragility Act, which hasn't come up too explicitly yet, but I think we really do need to bring it in. Global Fragility Act is a new tool in the tool kit, if you will. And so, Jada, I'm going to turn to you. You've, Mercy Corps and the Alliance for Peace Building were an important part of the coalition that helped to build support for the act. And, you know, in your view now, how can the Global Fragility Act be utilized to help address some of the consequences of the pandemic as part of the recovery in some of these places? Thank you. Now, the timing for the Global Fragility Act could not have been more perfect. We, in partnership with the Alliance for Peace Building, have had the honor to lead the Global Fragility Act Coalition, which was a coalition of 65 organizations. And it really shows the power of civil society in that working together and so many leaders of organizations gathered today using our program and evidence-based research to really reorient U.S. foreign policy towards looking at the root causes of violence that had displaced so many people worldwide. And by calling on the U.S. government to develop a whole-of-government strategy to better align its diplomatic development and defense capabilities to identify the risks of violence early and to take coordinated action to prevent and mitigate these drivers of conflict. COVID, as we've talked about, sleeping communities more vulnerable to violence than they were before. And we've seen this firsthand. One recent study predicted that 13 more countries will fall into conflict through 2022 as a direct result of COVID. So that would result in more than 30 countries being in conflict in such ways and so levels that we have not seen in years and years. A couple things that we're doing that are all types of things that we hope to see come about through the Global Fragility Act and things that the U.S. government can fund and expand. In North East Nigeria, we have launched a rumor tracker to address misinformation and that allows us to target messages to communities where we see certain rumors grow up coming up. The law provides authority and resources to address the underlying causes of fragility. It empowers the U.S. government to really look at locally led programs to focus on marginalized groups like youth and women in this programming and to really amplify inclusive dialogues within countries. So getting people talking. It also, as David was talking about, we have to leverage humanitarian and development assistance to address the secondary impacts of COVID-19 conflict and the Global Fragility Act calls just on that. Paige was talking about the Global Health Resources. All these things have to come together to prevent more fragility and more violence and so the Global Fragility Act really calls on the U.S. government to look at all pieces of those and to bring those together in formation. The last time the peace parliament last year this act was just a thought or something in discussion and today it's lost. So it really shows the power of all of us here coming together to drive change and to let us continue to adapt what we're doing to changing circumstances on the ground. Good. I want to stay on this issue again about addressing the drivers of fragility in a way that helps to strengthen the legitimacy of governing institutions and I'll turn to Ambassador Green. You talked about being worried about authoritarian power grabs in the wake of the consequences of COVID. It strikes me that there's there could be an opportunity here not in every environment but maybe in some where a well orchestrated vaccination program delivered inclusively with transparency and accountability helps to restore some trust in governments. Maybe I'm being a little too optimistic because I understand the challenges in fragile environments but if I could say this I mean your posture is optimistic I think as well. I mean the whole premise behind the journey to self-reliance is an optimistic vision about what can be accomplished in these places. Talk a little bit about how you see a strategy emerging for recovery in some of these places that perhaps takes advantage of some opportunities that were created by the pandemic. Well, great. First off you have to be in the optimism business. I think all of us on the panel afforded is that we do. So a couple of thoughts we've been talking about confusion and authoritarian power grabs so we've got misinformation, disinformation and lack of strategic capacity in leadership and there are three very different things. Disinformation is or say misinformation is simply confusion right too much going on and people not sure what to do where to turn disinformation is what the National Endowment for Democracy refers to as sharp power and that is malign actors ceasing to sort of pierce civil discourse for nefarious purposes and then on top of that I think there is a lack of trust in leadership, community leadership and national leadership and all of those things I think can be addressed and need to be addressed. You know it's interesting when you think back on the battles we had in fighting Ebola in Eastern BRC remember we had more than one vaccine we also had multiple interventions and yet we saw cases and deaths continue to rise. Why? It wasn't for medical reasons it was for leadership reasons. Nobody in outlying communities believed their government they didn't believe in the community leadership they didn't believe in multilateral institutions when institutions would say if you've got symptoms come in we can help you you'd have community leaders say well wait a minute you've been ignoring us for decades and now you want us to come forward so these are things that I think have to be addressed and maybe we get the opportunity to address it because of the mandate that we see. You know a couple of things so we have the Global Fragility Act and that creates a policy framework at USCID when we undertook our transformation we also from our career staff leading the process took certain elements of resilience and made sure it was closely aligned with our humanitarian assistance work so that we weren't simply addressing what was immediately in front of people but also adding in some of the resilience elements some of the capacity elements to help recurring cycles of food insecurity and despair and I think that was key and finally and I think back to a session that we had at USCID it must have been about two years ago that Stephen Hadley moderated and it was around the stabilization assistance review so a couple of years ago you know we all got together and decided that so much of this was being driven in fragile areas, conflict and post-conflict areas and so how do we make sure that we're not over militarizing assistance in aid how do we make sure that we're doing it in transparent ways and effectively and efficiently with proper oversight and so we entered into a stabilization assistance review combat DOD state and USCID and we said look here's what we each bring to the table DOD is hard power so it can provide security and stabilize it can obviously in the battlefield secure areas but that's for the moment and you can argue it makes even a greater power vacuum opening up so what state does is obviously reach out in the diplomatic lead and at USCID we make sure that we're not only providing emergency relief but we're providing behavioral change communications so people know where they got to go what they need to do how they can peer through misinformation and also and maybe truly finally what I would add to this we're talking about some of the problems that we see in disinformation but we also have to recognize there are great voices of moderation out there there are wonderful community leaders all around the world who for a long time have been doing they care about people they care about communities and what I think we need to do is take those voices they already exist and amplify them so in all of us we have a tendency to put new things in to create new institutions to create new organizations the good news is we have a remarkable set of leaders all around the world many are faith driven leaders the voices of moderation their voices that are calming and peaceful and I think we need to invest a lot of time and resources in amplifying those voices so that we make sure that that leadership comes from the communities themselves not all of us in the organizations that are represented in this session today great, thank you I'm mindful of where we are in the time I want to ask the panelists one other question about the international coordination and then we'll turn to some of the questions that we're getting from our audience and this question I'd like to pose to all four of you so as I spin this out if you could think about how to answer a complicated question succinctly that would be really appreciated but let's see how we do here how can we do better as you think about where we are with the pandemic and the international response to it where do we need to improve with regard to international coordination and what do you look to the United States to do to improve the way it works with international actors we have the Biden administration will be coming in and taking their seats in about a month and a half there's the possibility of greater improvements in international coordination but what specifically needs to be improved where do we need to step up our game with regard to coordination among international actors David I'm going to turn to you first and then we'll go to Paige Ambassador Green and then to Jada David please I wish I were answering this one last but this one is not so simple and as I mentioned in my first response to the issues that we face out there sometimes for example and Mark and I know Paige and they didn't know what I'm talking about sometimes US programs don't talk to each other in the same country well then you have a German program or a UK program or a EU program and I've been going to the parliament of each of these places saying that we need greater coordination in fact your humanitarian division doesn't talk to your development division and we've got to break down those barriers to be flexible, be more fluid and I've asked this question a lot of places like the UN we need to be honest with ourselves if we've been in a country for 30 years and we haven't made gains then maybe we need to step back and say what do we need to do differently and a lot of times it's scaling up and sometimes it's just the programs aren't working but I know the people on the ground working within the world food program and UNICEF their hearts are really out there but there's really a tremendous lack of coordination to the degree that I think necessary I know Mark and I've actually talked practically about this because when I go to Germany and I talk to the leaders there I'll say you really need to get on the phone at the time it might have been Mark or it might have been someone else in the UK or the EU and having better collaboration but one of the things that I've done and really gone out of my way to do is speak to the parliaments the ministries they do want to change but they need the support and the go ahead from the parliament and it's a very extraordinary important psychological factor and so what I try to do and one of the things I don't do and I don't do well, I don't speak the UN lingo because most of the time people don't know what you're talking about so I try to really simplify the message so that members of parliament I get it because they've got to be able to talk to their taxpayer and say why are you sending money to Chad when we've got health care problems road problems, school problems right here in Bavaria and so you've got to give them the tools to be able to speak to their people to justify changing the methodologies as well as keeping the funding going I mean right now I'm almost less concerned about methodology in the next 12 months than I am about keeping the dam from busting but we keep back off our concerns about what Mark was talking about Paige and Jada were talking about in terms of the humanitarian development side and I have literally sat down with many country dynamics, particularly when I go to a country and bring in the ambassadors in as well as might be the USAID rep or the Benz ad or depends on the DEVCO whatever country it might be and say let's talk about this practically how can we collaborate more strategically looking up goals, objectives, benchmarks and how do we measure against that but keeping it simple how do we achieve goals and objectives because I can assure you the beneficiary they don't care whether it's a development dollar or humanitarian dollar they want the right type of support that will lift them up so they can take care of their own families Mark I think I showed you that one, I know one time we were in the middle of Niger and Niger's got you know the Sahara moving down about a kilometer per year because of the climate exchange and you got al-Qaeda over here, you got ISIS over there and just flash floods and droughts and I don't know how they survived and so we have been working in this area changing the way we do things and the development humanitarian side coming together and the US was tearing down some of those barriers Germany was beginning to tear down some of the barriers the EU's been a little more struggle but we're moving this not nearly as fast as I would like to see but I remember talking to this particular woman and again as I said earlier the women are the most entrepreneurial they want to really have freedom and liberty and take care of their families and their village and sell the marketplace and this woman said Mr Beasley she said before and I was totally dependent on the outside and now because WFP and other organizations have told us how to rehabilitate the land and harvest the water and all these other things I now am not only taking care of my family and my entire village I'm now selling to the marketplace she said I just bought a motorcycle for my son to carry products back and forth well if you say you can buy a motorcycle for your son in the United States you're thinking that's for fun well no instead of riding the goat or the sheep or the donkey you're now riding a motorcycle to carry your products whatever it may be that's just I think a good point to lead things off into a deeper discussion these good leaders right here are much better than I am they know more than I am I'm still learning in this job great thank you David Paige let me turn to you what can we do better international coordination what do you look for in the role of the United States yeah well I think it's interesting with this panel in and of itself because you've got a lot of us have been both in the government side as donors we've been on the policy side as David and Mark have and we're now working in implementation and so I think we all as David pointed out have the ability to see what is happening across the board and we need to be better at storytelling to David's playing spoken Southern Point we really need to be able to speak in a language that we're working in so you know tackling COVID-19 is going to be much harder in countries where social and economic conditions are already unstable because of the weak governance in the state institutions but unequal access to these services especially for women where you're seeing domestic violence really come to fruition increase these communities are already mistrust government and so this is added an extra layer so add into that the donor community which often muddies the water and skews what we are each trying to do because everyone's trying to get in there first we really need that coordination I would say that you know earlier this year the World Bank started an effort to strengthen the health system and to try to mitigate the pandemic risk and I think 19 of the most fragile countries from DRC and Mali and Niger to Papua New Guinea Haiti and Afghanistan and so this effort helping countries implement emergency health operations and strengthen economic resilience you know the overall goal is to protect the poorest and the most vulnerable and the hope is that it will support businesses and save jobs in addition to this the UN Secretary General's Peace Building Fund has been providing support to mitigate the conflict that may now be exacerbated by the pandemic so you know I think that the US should be the most generous contributor to these special funds to become a real interested partner in these efforts that's part of the problem is we're all going at this separately and we have separate lines of efforts and so we need that coordination and regardless of what you think of WHO or UN or anyone that were just part of the piece of it it forces the coordination and I've seen this firsthand and you know overall any aid from the US really must address the realities in these fragile countries you know on top of building the generous support from these funds we need to concurrently look at home where our response is for lack clear vision so I would hope that the incoming administration is going to improve the US reputation in the Department of Health and Human Services and Pandemics and Emerging Threats is the pet office which sets policies to support initiatives to prevent and detect and respond to health threats and I think that we in the US need to be able to do this our voice will become stronger on the international stage and we can show that we can put a plane together while we're trying to fly it at the same time these are important elements which the US needs to step up and step in and be part of the coordinating voice and body Thanks Paige I'm mindful of time so Ambassador Green Jada I'm going to ask you to be as quick as you can on this question what can we do better on international coordination Sure three quick points first off I want to reverse things here so we also need on the international level good open reform oriented leaders the international organizations need that both back in their headquarters and out in the field I want to pay a strong compliment to David Beasley our first conversation after I got to aid with some quite frankly some demands on transparency and accountability and the ability to look and see where money was going he said yes yes very important secondly we have to pledge ourselves and all of the donors have to pledge themselves no duplication communication so that we're not wasting money through bureaucratic lines the duplication and third recognize the irreplaceable role that multilateral organizations play among other things David Beasley's organization and WHO provide security that allows some of our partners our people our dollars go into very fragile areas follow his social media and you see where he broadcasts from no thank you I'll let David do that the fact that the UN is willing to do that and provide that security allows all of us to do what we do great thank you Ambassador Green Jada your thoughts on this yeah very quickly one I think the points made earlier about making the case to the American people and having that come out in funding and legislation is critically important a lot of the supplementals that Congress has put through on COVID have had very very little funding for international development and international cooperation and we need to increase those numbers quite a bit recognizing that vulnerabilities elsewhere affect us here too the second thing when I was in the US government leading in the future I used to say that part of my job was to bring the best of the American people to the problems of the world and I think the US government response should be no different obviously the agencies have to work together but also bringing in NGOs like us a private sector research institutions all those parts of the US government onto this and to the international floor quite important and they're just to re-emphasize the importance of multilateralism and looking forward to increase support for the world health organization the various UN organizations involved in this really using the G7 and G20 and using our platform and our place in the global community and asserting that for increased cooperation and multilateralism will be quite important great I'm looking at some of the questions that we have from the audience they're fabulous questions it's hard to pick out any one here I'm going to go with this one but one of the second order effects of the pandemic that maybe we don't think about although I have a feeling we do is that we're likely to see some pretty severe global austerity measures with regard to spending on foreign assistance donor governments are all spending a lot of money on domestic programs for emergency relief in some cases like in the case of the United States trillions of dollars that might lead to some austerity on the willingness to spend for foreign assistance down the road here's the question what is the argument that we make for sustaining the resources for aid going into the future even while we've spent so much so many of the donor governments have spent so much domestically how do you make the case for continued assistance in the places where it's most needed I'm going to turn to Jada to go ahead try to make that argument first and then I'll work my way back to Mark and then to Paige and then to David Beasley Jada? I actually think the core thing that we're talking about here conflict is the number one reason to remind people we do not exist in isolation and the way that the community has reminded us of that we were acutely aware of that and Ebola and other pandemics as well we also we in the U.S. have born the brunt of conflicts of terrorism from other regions and we know that we can't just sit by and watch these things happen so I hope that the lessons from the past and this idea that we're not safe anywhere until everyone is what will help resonate with people who are coming good thank you Mark Green well first off our security as Jada suggests is tied to security and fragility elsewhere if you would have told me in 1998 when I first went to congress that I have to worry about an attack from Kandahar and what that would mean for devastation in America or worry about a virus coming from some place called Wuhan we have to understand that we do have to care about what goes on in the world Americans get tired of the burdens of leadership fiscal burdens and so on and so forth but our economy is tied to opening markets around the world and economic activity our security is tied to attacking fragility all around the world these things matter and then finally I would just say as one of my friends likes to say it's good for our soul we're going to be that city on a hill if we're going to project American leadership and core values compassion and generosity as part of what we have to project thank you for bringing that point about values into it that is part of the argument and it's important not to forget that Paige Alexander thanks so I would say we know this from everything we've worked on but you look at this global pandemic we're interlinked in a way that has never been expected before and so I think that recognizing that that as Jada and Mark said it's good for our soul but we're also interlinked so it's the same argument that we it's a perpetual argument that we had made at USAID and with the foreign affairs budget this is less than 1% of the national budget we have got to get better about telling that story so people understand when there is a global pandemic it is not just the work that we are doing to help ourselves it is the work with less than 1% of the budget that we are doing to help others and that in fact as President Carter likes to say that is a moral value that we need to be working in that area and so I would say that sort of becoming better at the storytelling explaining what we need to do as to why the foreign aid budget needs to be where it is while we have to cooperate with WHO and COVAX Alliance and the UN we need to be doing that because that is in our best interest great thank you and finally David Beasley you have the last word about this one I can assure you because I have been asked to speak to a lot of parliament and it is usually the right side that I have to speak to and I ask my left side give me a little bit of freedom and liberty with my words to speak the language they understand but I think as Mark and Paige and Jada both said number one is the right thing to do and that is one of the things that makes America such a great nation some say it was Alexis to Togil I don't know but you know America is great because America is good and if America ever ceases to be good America will cease to be great that argument right there should be sufficient but if it isn't then I get into this other argument it will cost you a lot more if you don't go in and stabilize nations and Europe regretted that it did not do that in Syria and we are all interconnected and you know if we can come in and address root cause then you eliminate the debate of migration by necessity because people don't want to leave home then when you have eliminated root cause then you are left with migration by choice and that is a pleasant discussion versus the more vitriolic discussion that we have otherwise you know one of the advantages of feeding 100 million people on any given day if I fed everybody in your neighborhood every day for two years I know what is going on and what you are thinking well we survey people we talk to people and let me just give you a simple example the Syrians that moved to Berlin Brussels they didn't want to leave home they actually moved two, three, four, five times inside their country before they left their loved homeland but when they didn't have peace or any food for their children they would do it any one of us in America would do you will find it for your family and guess what for every 1% increase in hunger there is a 2% increase in migration the solutions are not that complicated we just got to have the willingness and make the as page was saying make the case in common sense language because I have found when I talk to even some of the most conservative people who are concerned but I don't find that a really conservative a liberal and conservative they want to make sure the dollars are being used strategically and we are competing against funding needs at home they have got to understand what it means to them and when you explain it to them right I have found that most like okay I think that is one of the reasons where our funding went from 5.8 billion to 4.4 billion dollars just in the last 3 years and now COVID I need 15 billion so I am really going to be making the case over the next few weeks and months especially to those billionaires who need to step up and put it where it matters anyway thank you thank you we are just about out of time my apologies to the audience for not being able to get into more questions if your interest has been peaked by all this I do want to say that USIP just today released a very new brand new very timely report addressing fragility in a global pandemic the report is edited by Karine Graff you can find it on the USIP webpage it brings up all of these issues and focuses on how the global fragility act can be implemented successfully I want to thank the audience for tuning in with their excellent questions and I really want to thank again our panelists David Beasley Paige Alexander Mark Green and Jada McKenna thank you so much for a fascinating discussion and with that I want to turn things back over to Azrazea for some details about the rest of the day thank you Joe thank you and a huge fusive thanks to our amazing panelists virtual applause for you that was just a tour de force for the message the imperative to see our own national international security in the security and fragility of other nations a critical message on the need to make that substantial and sustained investment to recover stronger to make the triple nexus real and to protect these hard fought gains in development in humanitarian relief that so many of our network members have dedicated their lives to advancing thank you to you and congratulations on your Nobel Peace Prize and I want to let everyone know that this concludes our morning plenary welcome all of you coming back for the four o'clock afternoon fireside chat with Darren Walker the president of the Ford Foundation but we've got a lot going on in between right now from ten thirty to eleven all of the registrants on Bizibo AFP's conference app can visit the booths for our thirty plus sponsors and learn about their amazing work and then at eleven o'clock the action continues we've got five breakout sessions on issues ranging from racism and peace building the global fragility act environmental peace building power grabbers in times of crisis and digital wildfires how to contend with disinformation in the age of COVID we've got some great workshops in the afternoon focused on inclusive organizations and barefoot psychology and then more afternoon breakout panels starting at two p.m. on data for effective peace building nonviolent action the role of local peace builders and women peace builders in pandemic response and social media interventions to our online audience and I want to announce we have over seventeen hundred registered from all over the world wow this is an all time record for USIP and AFP I hope you'll keep sharing your insights and views on social media remember the hashtags hashtag peacecon 2020 hashtag shaping what comes next thank you and look forward to hearing from you throughout the day in the next three days take care