 Good morning. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president and CEO here at the U.S. Institute of Peace and I'm delighted to welcome you here at the Institute for a very important conversation on how to prevent violence in a fragile world. We have a terrific set of speakers with us here today. I want to extend a special welcome to USAID Administrator Mark Green. We're honored to have him here today as a keynote speaker and a very warm welcome to Secretary Madeline Albright, who's been a fierce champion of democracy for years and a good friend. Many thanks to the National Endowment for Democracy, who made today's event possible with their generous support and our good friends and partners, National Democratic Institute and the George W. Bush Institute. It's wonderful to have them co-hosting the event with us here today. USAID was founded 35 years ago by Congress as a nonpartisan, independent, national institute dedicated to the notion that peace is very practical and it's very possible and we firmly believe that today's complex foreign policy challenges required the best thinking and partnership across the aisle. We were just talking about this. And last year Congress asked USIP to host the bipartisan, congressionally mandated task force on extremism in fragile states with the request to develop a comprehensive plan for addressing the root causes of extremism in the world's most fragile states. The principal recommendation from that task force was that the US should adopt a policy of prevention with a strong focus on governance and just before the holidays, hopefully everyone saw that Congress passed the Global Fragility Act, which incorporates many of those task force recommendations and creates a binding commitment to a long-term prevention strategy. So it's good to know that action is possible, bipartisan action is possible, and today we have a chance to talk more about the opportunity to seize the momentum that we now have before us. And we have a great program planned for you. I don't want to waste any more time and I'm delighted to introduce a very good friend and our next speaker, the president of National Democratic Institute, former ambassador to Burma, Myanmar, a distinguished and very dedicated public servant, an author, and a former USIP colleague, Derek Mitchell. Please join me in welcoming Derek. Thank you so much Nancy for that warm welcome. It's wonderful to be back at USIP and in this in this very room. I particularly want to thank Nancy and USIP for the partnership in organizing this event this morning and in particular for the tremendous contribution that USIP and the task force has made to advancing the cause of violence mitigation and conflict prevention in fragile states. The passage of the Global Fragility Act that Nancy mentioned late last year is just one indicator of the real influence that this institute has, that USIP has. There's a lot of influence in this town and passage of that act is really a tremendous achievement and congratulations to you all. I would like to thank others before we proceed. Nancy mentioned a few of them. I want to thank the Bush Institute for the partnership on this and many other endeavors that we are engaged in around the world, and I'll introduce my colleague Lindsay Lloyd in a moment. I want to also acknowledge the National Endowment for Democracy for funding this event. And for its enduring support for democratic voices globally, we are part of the NED family and it is, we are more proud than ever of that fact these days. I do want to thank Mark Green, USAID Administrator Mark Green, my good friend for being here. Today you have been a tireless advocate for democracy and good governance and for the importance of moving countries on the path from fragility to resilience and ultimately self-reliance. Thank you for your leadership, your service, and for USAID's continued support for democracy around the globe. And finally, this event has been a true institutional collaboration, as I mentioned. So I'd like to thank the core team that made today happen. That's Kareen Graf of USIP, Chris Walsh of the Bush Institute and our very own Lauren Van Meter of NDI. Thank you so much for the great work and I should say we're doing this early in the new year, which means they had to work through the holidays. So thank you for working through the holidays to make this happen when it did. The genesis of today's meeting was an idea from NDI's chairman, our chairman, Secretary Madeleine Albright. Secretary Albright serves as a task force member and she has been an outspoken that, and I quote, preventing violent extremism is not just a development and security issue. But it's essence, it is a democracy and governance challenge. The Secretary's thinking is embedded in the task force final report that was released almost a year ago last February, to be exact. The findings of the report will frame the discussion that we have this morning. The task force report identifies democracy and good governance as at the heart of any fragile state's prevention strategy. The report notes that citizen interests must be central to any and all strategies to prevent violence and extremism. The report urges that we forge new relationships and common thinking across policy communities to develop new innovative ideas among our defense, diplomacy, development, and peace building partners. The task force report recognizes the rise as well of geopolitical competition in fragile states and affirms that it's in the U.S. national security interest to support those fragile and conflict affected states that have chosen the democratic path. And as our competitors promote alternative models that ignore citizen rights and entrench elite, often corrupt elite interests. This work of conflict prevention is not easy, as both the Global Fragility Act and the Task Force Final Report note. The act itself acknowledges the likelihood of mistakes, even failures, as we try to get this right, and the need to learn from experience as we go. But the conversation this morning is meant to proceed in that spirit, and we thank everyone for joining us today. With that, I would like now to introduce my colleague, Lindsay Lloyd, Bradford M. Freeman, director of the Human Freedom Initiative at the George W. Bush Institute. Lindsay has years of experience in human rights and democracy support work, including 16 years at our sister organization, the International Republican Institute, IRI. Lindsay also has extensive hill experience, having worked for several members of Congress, including House leadership. He has been a terrific partner in this event, and many other initiatives. Lindsay, please come on up and introduce USAID Administrator Mark Green. Thank you all very much. Good morning. Thank you, Derek. I had the longest title in the room, so I appreciate that. The Bradford M. Freeman director of Human Freedom at the George W. Bush Institute, so it's quite a mouthful. We're on the Bush Institute is really happy and proud to be partnering with USIP and NDI on this. We're also grateful to NED for the financial support they've provided. This we hope is a kickoff. This is what we hope will be a longer partnership looking at how democracy and governance can combat violent extremism around the world. We at the Bush Institute, our Human Freedom Initiative tries to do three things. We aim to stand with those who are living under tyranny. We argue for fostering greater American leadership around the world, and we develop leadership in emerging democracies, including somebody you'll hear from later today, Enma Jablawi, one of our scholars from Tunisia. This morning I have the honor of introducing Mark Green for his remarks for our keynote address. He has been the 18th administrator at USAID since August of 2017 and brought to that job really an unmatchable CV in terms of his background and experience. He was a congressman from Wisconsin. Among other things, he supported two initiatives of my boss, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the PEPFAR initiative on HIV AIDS in Africa. He was ambassador to Tanzania, also for President Bush. He served as president of my old alma mater, the International Republican Institute, where he oversaw democracy and governance programs around the world. President and CEO for the Institute for Global Development, director at the U.S. Global Leadership Council, director at the Millennium Challenge Corporation, on and on and on. And for us, he also served on our Human Freedom Advisory Council at the Bush Institute. But before he was confirmed in his testimony, his statement to the Senate Formulations Committee, Ambassador Green said, violent extremism in many parts of the world, hostility to civil society and attacks on the values we hold dear, are making our work far more dangerous and more expensive. I think he'll agree that today the challenge of violent extremism makes the work of USAID even more important, more imperative in this world. After his remarks, he's agreed to take a few questions. He'll be thinking about that as you're listening to them. And meanwhile, please join me in welcoming the Honorable Mark Green to the stage. Lindsay, thank you for those kind words. It's good to be with all of you, and it's great to be with my old friend, Secretary Madeline Albright, a bit daunting to be with her. I will say the first time I spent any considerable time with her was actually my very first election observation for IRI. I've been on the job for a couple of weeks, and here I was with Madeline Albright in Ukraine, watching the elections there. Quite frankly, it's just as daunting today. So, Madam Secretary, it's great to be with you. It is an honor to be joining you for these important discussions that you're undertaking. We're obviously here at a historic moment for America and her role on the world stage. As we look around us, there's an awful lot to process. Challenges of sorts in nearly every corner of the world. So, I know we're tempted at times to feel like the story of the swimmer at the millionaire's pool party. And as that story goes, a millionaire had a party at his home or on a swimming pool. It wasn't just any pool, though. It was a pool filled with man-eating alligators. And the millionaire turned to his guests and said, Okay, I will give a million dollars or the hand of my daughter to the first man who will swim across this pool. Silence. But as he turned to walk away, he heard a splash, and sure enough, there was a guy in the water fighting his way across, pushing the alligators out of the way, got out, climbing, dripping wet. And the millionaire ran over to him and said, You know, that is the most courageous thing I think I've ever seen. What's it going to be, a million dollars or the hand of my daughter? And of course, the swimmer said, Neither, I just want to know who the hell pushed me in the pool. We feel like that sometimes. But in reality, many of the problems that we see while they have their own distinct context, the underlying causes have much in common. Many, if not most, relate back to something simple yet profound. The innate desire of every person, every family, every community to have a meaningful voice in their own future. And where that desire is unmet or attacked by government, that's where we need to focus. For example, I understand why many are confused, even confounded by what's going on in the Eastern DRC. The Ebola outbreak there is now the second deadliest in history, and it continues to claim lives, even though we have an approved vaccine, even though we have promising treatments. Too few of the vulnerable are coming forward for testing and treatment. Worse yet, we see community protests and armed attacks that seem aimed at the very officials and facilities that are leading the response. The insecurity is so great that humanitarian and healthcare workers are unable to get to some of the most important hotspots. So I understand why we're confused. But then we pause and reflect and we realize that these are the same communities that have been betrayed by their leaders for so very long. DRC has an abundance of officials interested more in self-enrichment than serving everyday people. An election system so broken that many of the most Ebola-affected communities weren't even allowed to vote in the last elections. And a political system so messed up that Joseph Kabila is still serving in their Congress and his family appears still to be holding hundreds of millions of dollars in mining interests. I appreciate that people are frustrated, even bewildered by what's happening in Haiti, less than 600 miles from our shore. The U.S., Canada, OAS and others have provided hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance and relief. Facilities have been built to create new export opportunities. Hospitals and clinics have been launched or rebuilt to improve access to healthcare. And agricultural training and technology provided to help alleviate hunger. And yet, violent protests have often shut nearly everything down in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere. For weeks on end, kids couldn't attend school, patients couldn't get to market, patients were hindered from reaching clinics. Promising small businesses couldn't get supplies and equipment. And donors like the U.S., we couldn't even get humanitarian relief to where it was needed most. Yeah, that's true. Haiti often seems like a magnet for misery in terms of natural disaster. Ten years ago this month, it was rocked by a terrible earthquake and there have been tropical storms before and since. But the Haitians aren't picketing mother nature. They're not raging against the hurricanes. They're outraged by a political class that has let them down time and again. They're protesting a parliament that rarely seems to even meet, let alone author reforms. Officials link to aid and investment that never quite reaches the people. And outside peacekeepers who have been linked to the spread of cholera and even sexual misconduct. On a recent flight that I took from Port-au-Prince to an up-country orphanage, I asked my helicopter pilot how he would describe Haiti and its challenges to those who had never been. And he paused and then he said flatly, never forget, at 500 feet, Haiti's a Caribbean island. So I'm even seen puzzled by what's going on in Hong Kong. I mean, let's face it, the island's been doing pretty well economically. Per capita income is among the highest in the world, unemployment less than 3%. But when chief executive Carrie Lam and her Beijing-oriented government tried to push through a law authorizing quick extradition to the mainland and its system of justice, all in the name of peace and stability, everyday citizens, especially students, all they immediately took to the streets. Lam seemed to believe that the protests would quickly and quietly fade away, that citizens were willing to surrender individual liberties for the mainland's version of tranquility. But the crowds grew to one million and then by some accounts two. Even in the face of tear gas and rubber bullets and batons and more. Since the extradition bill appeared seven months ago, more than 2,000 protesters have been injured and 6,000 arrested. When Hong Kong held its district council elections in the midst of all of this, the results were historic and unambiguous. Now, let's face it, these district councils don't have a lot of power. And so the elections really generally don't seem much in the way of turnout. With sending the clearest possible signal on the value they place on democracy, nearly 3 million turned out to vote, the highest turnout in Hong Kong's history. Pro-democracy candidates captured 17 of the island's 18 district councils. Some would argue that none of this is an American concern. We didn't bring Kabila to power. We certainly didn't push Hong Kongers into the streets. But I think in reality we all realize the health, the freedom and democracy does affect our own interests and our own fortunes. History tells us that states with more democratic characteristics are usually more prosperous, stable and reliable partners. They're better economic partners because they possess the characteristics and conditions that we believe are vital for economic vibrancy and sustainable growth. They're better strategic partners because they're citizen-centered, making them less likely to produce terrorists, proliferate weapons of mass destruction, or engage in armed aggression. Conversely, authoritarian regimes are at best unreliable partners and at worst pose significant risks to peace and stability. Authoritarian regimes like Maduro and Ortegas give rise to forced migration and refugees burdening and potentially destabilizing their neighbors. And in order to maintain their hold on power, regimes like these, regimes like Iran, repress their people by isolating their citizens from outside influences and ideas. They often attack directly or indirectly, physically or digitally, those outside their borders, who represent the freedom that they fear. So as we look to troubled lands and fragile turf, I think these are the principles that we need to keep in mind. And that's why at USAID we are placing a new, even stronger emphasis on fostering democratic governance, citizen responsiveness. We believe it is crucial. We've institutionalized it through our transformation process that aims to build the USAID of tomorrow. Among other things, we're launching a new bureau for development, democracy and innovation. DDI will bring together expertise from across the agency and will serve as a one-stop shop for technical support and designing solicitations and programs. And as its name implies, it will elevate democracy and governance with the goal of promoting human liberty and citizen responsiveness in all of our programming and offerings. DDI will feature centers of focus that will help carry this out, like our Center for Youth and Inclusive Development, the Center for Equality and Women's Empowerment, and the Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance. And thanks to President Trump and with the bipartisan support of the Senate, DDI will be led by a long-term democracy hand, Assistant Administrator Michelle Beckering. You can also see our stronger emphasis on democracy and democratic governance in the country-by-country metrics that we are assembling, that we use to guide our investments and our priorities. The country roadmaps, as we call them, incorporate metrics that measure a country's commitment to elements like freedom of expression, association and conscience, the rule of law, protection of civil liberties, and government transparency. When countries score low in these areas, it will challenge us to ask if we're dedicating enough resources to those causes. When countries score well, it will challenge us to find ways to best leverage their strength. In coming months, you'll also see our greater emphasis on democracy in a new democracy-focused communications plan that I'm announcing today. That campaign will highlight our democratic governance investments all around the world, as well as how this work tackles the underlying challenges and causes that I've mentioned, and how all of that serves America's strategic interests. We want to help Americans understand how modest investments in country institutions and self-governments can prevent or extinguish the brush fires that seem to be burning in so many places. It will feature personal stories of individuals who are promoting democracy and human dignity in their own communities and countries. People like Archana Tamang, a tireless advocate for equality and inclusivity in Nepal. Aphrodita Batisi, the first female president of the basic court of Pristina, the largest district court in Kosovo, will tell their stories to help Americans understand our story. That campaign will run through World Democracy Day on September 15th. But most importantly, you will see our stronger commitment to democratic governance in our programmatic offerings. So what will this look like? I'm going to take a few minutes to give you a brief overview. In many countries, particularly those countries struggling to emerge from an authoritarian shadow, we want to emphasize programs that help bring greater transparency to institutions. You know, in the West, I think we're guilty of too often assuming that transparency and openness and decision making is the natural state of governance. For countries that are emerging from, say, communism, there is no tradition of openness. And it's never really occurred to officials that they might want to keep their citizens effectively informed. We're looking at ways to train a new generation of officials to make routine such matters as the public release of meeting schedules and reporting that shows compliance with procedural rules in decision making. In my recent visit to Albania, the Prime Minister told me how much he appreciated all the investments the USAID and the larger U.S. government had made over the years. But then he said to me, you know, those traditional development programs, that's no longer what we need. And when you look at the metrics, they're off the charts. It's a high-achieving country. He said, we need help to fight corruption. We need help to restore people's faith in government and their leaders. And so we plan to respond to him with tools and technical assistance that can help foster a true culture of government transparency. Pending congressional approval, we're looking to partner with his government to establish the U.S. Albania Transparency Academy. We hope this academy can focus on three pillars, promoting budget transparency in government, ensuring public visibility on government procurement procedures, and creating demand for transparency among youth. A second focus in our programming will be fostering and supporting genuine choices in elections. We want to invest in political pluralism, free elections, and strengthening electoral integrity. You know, these days, authoritarians know they can't oppose elections outright. Even Maduro and Ortega say they support democracy. They want elections. And then they work to bend them and rig them in any way that they can. In advance of the elections in Cambodia, for example, Hun Sen not only dissolved the main opposition group and banned it from politics, but he arrested and jailed its leader. And then at the same time, he announced he actually wanted free elections and he wanted to bring observers in. They would see how smooth elections can be. Mark Green's side note, especially when you're essentially unopposed. Traditional democratic voices, the U.S., Canada, and Europe, all of us refused to take part. China, which purchased the election equipment, was only too happy to oblige. And the Chinese praised the election as quote, unquote, orderly. We'll look for ways to support electoral systems and observation teams meeting international objective standards, and we will express dismay at those which do not. Third, we want to support citizen responsiveness and governance. Frustration becomes despair when citizens see little hope that officials will listen and respond to their needs and priorities. On the other hand, disagreements have a chance to remain civil when citizens believe they are at least heard. And so we'll support programs that help leaders, especially new leaders, become better constituent driven officials. One of the most uplifting things that I have ever seen was meeting with a young woman mayor in Guatemala. She had a particular way of conducting town hall meetings. She would have her team bring road equipment to the town hall. And then when someone would say, I have a pothole, she would point. And while the town hall was going on, the guy would go and fix the pothole. And I all kept thinking to myself, boy, do I have a use for a person like that. We can't all be as action oriented as that mayor. But we can teach such modest things as town halls, how to utilize polling and surveys, helping parties to construct issue based platforms that are clear and which lead to accountability. And so those are the activities that we will look to fund and to support. Fourth, inclusiveness. No democracy can be called representative if it isn't listening to all of its people. No political system is truly stable if it dehumanizes large segments of its population. Stability isn't merely the absence of conflict. It requires an environment in which all groups have a clear stake in the system's survival and success. And so we'll work to support and foster civic space, help counter dialogue that vilifies the vulnerable and reinforce the independence of journalists and media organizations. We'll pay special attention to the largest marginalized community in nearly every part of the world of women. And so we're ramping up our work on WGDP, the Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, which aims to empower girls and women in numerous ways. We'll support investments in women's education and training, expand access to financing and market opportunities, and tackle barriers to economic participation like the laws which prevent women from holding property. We'll also work to operationalize the framework known as Women, Peace and Security. History shows that reconciliation and dispute resolution that has women at the table almost always produces more sustainable results. Furthermore, we know that women are oftentimes the best early warning indicators of the rise of extremism. They are closer to their families, they're closer to particularly their sons, and so they can help spot trouble before it begins. Finally, there's no more important work for building stability, tackling marginalization and reinforcing the bond between citizens and their government than creating pathways for youth engagement. Young people the world over are eager to make their mark and to be heard. They're anxious to see a world in which they have a realistic chance to create, to contribute, to provide for themselves and their loved ones. There are over 1.8 billion youths in the world. 90% of them live in the developing world. And sadly, studies show that most of them don't believe that their government cares about their views or listens to their ideas. That disconnection cannot continue. It must be addressed if democracy is to succeed in the future. We'll be looking for ideas and mechanisms that bring young people together, especially across political and demographic lines and give them a chance to be heard. We'll place a premium on projects that teach young people how to disagree and yet coexist, debate and yet reach conclusions and help them become productive citizens. We'll place an even greater premium on those that reach out to the many young people caught up in the historic waves of human displacement that we see in so many parts of the world. A final thought. We recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And I had the honor of being there as the Reagan statue was unveiled not so far from the Brandenburg Gate. But it actually reminded me of the 25th anniversary, which I celebrated and marked in a different way. I was at IRI in those days, and it suddenly occurred to me as we were approaching the 25th anniversary that I had staff that weren't alive when the wall was up. And I said, okay, how do I help them understand what this means? And I went to one of our board members, General Brent Scowcroft. And I said, General Scowcroft, you were there. You were there for Europe, Poland free. What do I tell young people? And he looked and he said, tell them it wasn't easy. He said these days we look back and say, well, of course, of course the wall will fall. Of course Germany will unify. He said it wasn't easy and it was often in doubt. There were moments when we did not think it would happen. He said that when George H.W. Bush brought up to his cabinet that he was going to give that speech, many told him not to do it. Scowcroft told him not to do it. And so I think the lesson for all of us with the topic we take on today, when we talk about those problems in every corner of the world, we remind ourselves what Scowcroft said. It isn't easy. It wasn't easy. It will never be easy. Building citizen responsive governance. Bringing communities together. It's never been easy, but in that is the greatest glory that we have. The chance to work on responsiveness, the chance to work on those underlying influences that we know are crucial to addressing fragility, to preventing violence, to giving hope to the next generation. Thank you. Any questions? I'm trained politician. I'll dodge him as best I can. Okay. If you have questions, we've got two mics set up. Don't be shy. Told you this guy's got a really impressive CV. If you would just identify yourself and where you're from and let's try and keep the questions short. Thank you. Thank you and thanks administrator Mark Green. My name is John. I am from Canada, but originally from Haiti. I was very glad that you highlighted the situation of Haiti. I worked with USAID, Haiti for democracy and governance office for a few years, but I'm also a creation of the National Democratic Institute. I worked at political programming for NDI Haiti for five years. My question is, given that you are talking about the new paradigm and new strategies, new programming, is it a realization that, given the democratic backsliding that we've been witnessing in parts of the world, in spite of the massive investment of the international community, is that a realization that there is a failure or is that some incremental changes that you want to implement? Thanks. Great question. I think it is a recognition that we have new challenges but also new opportunities and new tools. I point out that back when USAID began, if you look at all of the money that flowed from the U.S. to the developing world, about 85% of it was very traditional government assistance. These days that figure is less than 10%. You have all kinds of other flows that create opportunities that we need to tap into. The largest part of course is simple commerce. Business has business in the developing world. I think there are new opportunities to collaborate with the private sector and with local government to produce outcomes. Secondly, I think we have better technology in terms of the metrics that we use to measure outcomes. Third, in terms of USAID and our approach, I have the good fortune of standing on the shoulders of those who came before me. I really like working in the development and democracy space because every administration contributes tools and we all build upon those who went before. What I am trying to do at USAID is perhaps align all of these tools in ways that point us towards, I think, a more outcome driven approach. As I have said many times, I believe the purpose of our foreign assistance must be ending its need to exist. When countries are willing to do difficult things, when they are willing to do big reforms, then we need to walk with them along the way. But we need to be clear eyed and we need to be very frank and we need to not presume that we have all the answers, but also talk about our own experience and our shortcomings and how countries can benefit. So it is new tools, new challenges and I think an opportunity to align all of the tools that we have in perhaps more effective ways. Yes, sir. I am Bob Hershey. I am a consultant. In your use of new tools, how are things going in using the Internet to hold meetings online and get transparency and gather local funding and local program requirements? Great question and yes, it is one of the biggest challenges or biggest developments that we have. I often tell people when I started in the development world, it was back in the late 80s as a volunteer teacher in Kenya. In my little village there was but one wind-up telephone and you would pick it up and you would say, operator give me 662 Nairobi and you would go sit under the mango tree until the call came through. Ten years after that, Johnny Carson was ambassador and he allowed me to go visit my old village and I walked up and I wanted to find one of my former students and I saw a young boy and I said, do you know Niva? He said yes. I said, can you go get him? And he pulled out his cell phone and sent him a text message. We have opportunities now using simple technology that change everything. And so in terms of governance, citizens have the ability to use modest technology to hold government accountable, to express their opinion and in return government needs to be putting everything online, putting everything in openness so that people can have their faith restored day by day but getting to see where expenditures go. He tried to ask me asking questions. So I just want to say I apologize for this annoyance. My name is Lee Yang. When I got to the United States several decades ago I thought after I get a PhD I'll go around the world, see where I can help the most but now I realize in America this is a problem. They try to cover up everything and we have the most highest mass incarceration in the world but we never say we have violation of human rights. There's a problem and I am here. I have a PhD. I have a very successful family with high achievers but I find out my family are destroyed and I am an activist. I am advocate. I have produced TV programs and I am really, really something I want to help the world but I decided I had to stay here. Not just my own willing to do it but I was forced to do it. I was almost no freedom. We have a question. Exactly. I want to tell you the problem so you can help me and help United States and help the world. How are we going to improve our society? I heard you mentioned some kind of partnership actually currently. Probably private partnership is a serious problem. Maybe for this reason I was always denied to afford an opportunity to speak. The police always obstruct me from entering the place. So I just wanted if you can really help our society especially from America first. I'll do my best to help society. I have all the information in three branches of government. You can go find out and let's work together. Thank you. Maybe one more question if we have one. On the right there. Hi Mark this is Alex Theer. Terrific remarks and thanks for the energy that you're bringing to this set of issues at USAID and the government as a whole. It's really critical. One of the things that you raised which I think is a really interesting idea is the evaluation of countries to see how they're doing. And if they're having challenges and problems to invest more heavily in democracy and governance in those places. And I just wanted to ask you to go a little bit deeper on this because of course one of the challenges that you face in doing that is one earmarks. And I'm really interested to hear how you get over the hump of being able to allocate more money for these things. But the second is also that those environments where the challenges are greatest are often the most difficult for us to do this type of work. And you get a lot of resistance from the government. And so I'm curious how would you do that. How would you find the places where things are the hardest and invest more as opposed to having to do less. Alex it's good to see you again in terms of of picking our targets for investments if you will. We try as much as possible to rely upon those those metrics what we call the country road maps where we've assembled the 17 objective metrics on commitment and capacity. You are pointing to the imperfect part of that in that we do have restrictions on funding whether we no longer do earmarks we do tertiary public policy directives I think they refer to them now. But there are restrictions on some of our flexibility. The grand plan to be very honest and open about it in assembling these metrics is to be able to earn more flexibility from Congress. That's across the executive branch. People may disagree with individual programs and investments but we'll be able to show them Republican and Democrat at least it's based upon objective indicators that we're using where there's logic to the approach that we're taking. So that's the grand plan on that front. You are pointing to one of the challenges that we have secondly in terms of being able to work in some of these environments. First off as you know we work primarily through implementing partners the IRI and NDI and USIPs of the world and and we rely upon them. To be quite honest they can get to places that we cannot but it is a great challenge for us right now. The non permissive environments and that we face is a major challenge and it's something that we're constantly bumping up against. It does hurt our ability. On the other hand I think that what we're seeing in so many countries is that the youth bulge that young generation that is aspirational in terms of its belief and wanting to have a voice in its future is creating pressure points such that I think it is creating new openings for us. And so it's a tough challenge and it's a balance that we strike but that is one of the principal hindrances to doing as much as we want to do. Well on behalf of USIP NDI and the Bush Center we want to thank you very much for your time and for your leadership at USA. We have a busy program we appreciate you devoting a good chunk of it to us this morning. For those of you in the audience we'd ask you to just stay put. We're going to transition very quickly to our next conversation. But before that happens please join me in thanking our speaker Mark Green. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Joe Hewitt. I am the Vice President here at USIP for Policy Learning and Strategy. I want to thank Mark Green again for his really insightful remarks. I think he set the stage for the rest of the morning. I think we're going to have a number of really good discussions. We particularly appreciate the work being done to highlight women in peace building and countering violent extremism. And just by way of an announcement this year USIP has established a new award to recognize such women which you can learn more about and nominate a deserving women if you want at usip.org slash women building peace. It's the first women building peace award where we want to celebrate women who are working to build peace in their local contexts. Also as a reminder we are joined by so many people watching from around the world online on YouTube and Twitter. And we encourage everyone who is Twittering to join the conversation with hashtag politics of fragility. We are now delighted to be joined by four leading advocates for peace building and good governance from the African continent. As we just heard from Administrator Green it is critically important that any of our approaches to addressing fragility involve locally led solutions. And I can think of no better panel to help us better understand what that looks like than the one that we have here. I'm really happy to introduce Raj Kumar who will moderate this discussion. Raj will introduce our panelists for us. Raj is the president and editor-in-chief of DevEx the leading media platform for the global development community. So would you please join me in welcoming the panelists and Raj Kumar. Thank you and good morning I have to agree this is a remarkable group as you will find out in a moment. And being in the news business I can say it is rare and in fact maybe the Global Fragility Act is kind of like a unicorn in this space. It is rare to see a great idea in this case birth here at the US Institute of Peace that turns into a thoughtful task force report that then becomes bipartisan legislation that then gets passed and turns into new policy. So we are at an important moment which is will this policy actually work? Can we turn it into something that works and maybe the critical piece is understanding what we all mean by prevention the word that we're using a lot. What does it actually mean? I would argue this panel is kind of the personification of prevention. These are people who are working every day to prevent the kind of violent extremism we all want to prevent around the world. They're doing it in their own communities they're doing it in really innovative ways. Let me just briefly tell you who we have here and then we're going to dive into a discussion and hopefully include all of you in it as well. So right next to me is Sampson Itoto and Sampson is the executive director of Yaga Africa. He's based in Nigeria. It's a non-profit that promotes inclusive governance. He also has convened a movement there called Not Too Young to Run which is pretty self-explanatory. I think in a way this is kind of the youth panel too and one thing I love about Sampson's country of Nigeria is even into your 40s you count as a youth. So I am part of this youth panel as well. Next to him is Dr. Emna Jabloui who is the director of the IDH International Institute for Human Development in Tunisia. And you're a PhD who studies a lot of the issues we're going to get into today so we're really very eager to hear your perspectives on it. Then we have Jacob Bull who is the Obama Foundation scholar and co-founder of the Anataban Arts Initiative. He's from South Sudan. He started this initiative which is an arts-based collective in Juba. But now you're based in Chicago doing a degree there. Welcome as well. And next to him is Alawel Atem who is the co-founder and board member of Crown the Woman, South Sudan. So we have two members of the South Sudan community here today. It is a woman-led non-profit dedicated to empowering women and girls to be change agents in their societies. Now since we have two of you from South Sudan maybe we can start there. Administrator Green gave kind of a tour de force of many of the challenging locations in the world. South Sudan could certainly be on that list. There is peace at the moment. There is a deal that is coming to a new government I think in February is meant to come through but there was six years of war. Nearly half the country is displaced. When you hear us use words like governance and prevention here in Washington D.C. What are you doing? What do those words actually mean to you on the ground in a place like South Sudan? Maybe we can start with you Alawel. It should just be on. Just go ahead and tap it and see. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity and it's always good to be back at USIP. I think for South Sudan I would say those are very heavy words that we are still trying to figure out what do they actually mean to have democracy and governance, good governance for example. And to have a prevention. I don't know if prevention is the right word but prevention. We come from a context of a country that was given birth to as a result of decades of conflict. In summary war is all we understand. And as people that know nothing but violence that know nothing but war and we believe that if I react violently it's the best way that I can be understood. It's difficult to grasp the context or the concept of what it means to live in peace. And we are still signing peace agreements. We just revitalized one last year and we've extended the pre-transitional period so far twice in an attempt to form a transitional government to just have a taste of what it's like to have a leadership structure that is actually functional in place. Now what that means is it still takes us back to the decades where the country was given birth from. We have warlords that are being transferred or translated to peacemakers and so you have peace agreements that are being signed based on the number of people you've killed or the number of people you've displaced becomes your leverage at the negotiation table. And so we have people that we think are trying to make peace but at the end of the day the only way you get to be heard is the amount of guns that you have and the amount of atrocities that you've committed. So we're trying to transform a country by using the same people that caused the problem to try and solve the problem. And it's clearly not going so well for us as a country and we're figuring out what it means to actually have good governance because it's heavily still militarized. And I would say that that's the context we speak of fragility, that we have no distinctions between independent institutions because everything else is militarized. And that makes prevention efforts extremely difficult especially for people that come from civilian background, people that are trying to use nonviolent actions to try and transform and resolve the conflict and using those tools but speaking to people who only understand the violent means of resolving any kind of conflict. Let's talk about some of those tools. I want to bring Jacob into the discussion too because when we talk about countering violent extremism people have very clear immediate thoughts of what that might include especially military force, right? You work in an arts collective. Why do you do that? How does that connect to the work of countering violent extremism? How does it connect to the governance challenges that LOL just brought up? Thank you, right? And I think you initially asked us what do we understand by governance and maybe prevention when it comes to the context of South Sudan. I think the word that we understand most in South Sudan is violence because that's what we have been subjected to for over decades and since 1955 up to date. We kind of experienced some instability for like two years. That was in 2011 until 2013 when the country went back to war again. For some of us understanding what governance means, you get to the idea of democracy, freedom of expression and respect to the rule of law, of which these are some of the things that our country lacks. It has a well stated earlier. It's more on militarization of politics. So we do not really have politicians in our country. We have military generals who are running the country in more of a military way. So it's a common. And these people have created an idea of collision building that keep them in that position. So there's so much of social dilemmas that the citizen are put into and it's not easy to break through the various. So getting to the approach that we're using has activism and civil society organization. People were before 2013 and after 2013, people were stuck at a point that we were just watching with blind eyes and not really seeing. We're seeing but we're not saying anything. You're hearing but you can't say anything. And in the end you just sit back because there's so many repression that you get into when you speak on issues that are happening within the country. More especially when you get to an idea of inclusion and having things to do with youth involvement and women involvement in political spaces. Because we kind of feel like the country need new breed of leaders because this is what they have been fighting for. This is what they fought for to liberate that country. And if you reflect back on some of the statement that they used to say back then before Garang died. They had this generation of the Red Army that was part of the army generally. And this guy Garang used to state that it's now the destruction of Sudan in his vision for new Sudan. He was that we will destroy the old Sudan and the young generation will fix the new Sudan. But now it's the rivers. If you try to remind them what is happening, where are we to fix that country? It's actually dangerous to suggest women and young people should take care of it. It comes with a lot of cost. Look at there's recently and most of you might have heard of Peter Beard who was jailed because of talking about generational exit and bringing in new faces and young people who understand the idea of state building. And he was taken in for just speaking out and giving new ways of the leadership. So going back on the approaches that we use as an art initiative, we felt like when you speak alone or write ideas or get into public spaces and talk about the issues affecting our country then you get in trouble. So we thought of coming up with a creative way to get people into discussion and get them to be able to bring up new ideas and bring together these energetic young people with creative ideas on how they would want to look at an ideal country that they want to live in. So we use visual art, we use music, we use spoken words, we use theater to speak on issues of concern in South Sudan. And this brings a lot of people, when you create something in more of an entertaining manner it brings people together then you are able to pass your message. And then it posted that idea of also public discussion and people start talking among themselves. And as we see of today there's so many young people out there that are able to speak up their mind either on social media or in public spaces when we organize such events. So that's the approach we are using. It might sound like soft tools and I think we'll get into some more as we go through the conversation but they're actually very powerful and potentially very effective as the report has shown. And maybe you can jump into this discussion because in a way what Jacob is talking about is about changing the narrative using art. And I know narrative is something you're very focused on in your studies. So tell us a bit about that perspective that you bring especially in your context in Northern Africa which is a bit different than in South Sudan and then Nigeria. Hello everybody again. So thank you Raj. In our organization since 2013 we started working on PVE programs but before since 2000 we've been telling to the government to the dictator that something should be done among the rising radicalization of the EU. We've been seeing since 2000 wave of radicalization which wasn't addressed. And one of I think of the causes of the rise of Tunisian protests in 2011 was that the government didn't really address the needs of some clear religious policies in Tunisia. So I may link this to the 80s and to the Afghan radicalization process and also to the consequences of Iranian revolution on women rights, on liberalism in Islam. And the rise of bigger jihadi Salafi narratives. And as you may know and it is published in our website in IDH Tunisia.org website. We have a study on the causes of youth radicalization which is explaining and also causes of women radicalization. So we detected that there is a big work on first generation of TV programs and then second generation of let's say websites and Facebook pages and so on. But the first generation targeted women and we know in Tunisia that some Gulf countries TV programs were using satellite to broadcast in Tunisia but even also in some European countries. And that are bringing a lot of housewives, a lot of unemployed young people to more radicalized views on religion. So we've been trying to bring the attention of the people to this program. And I think that I'm very grateful today that you helped me raise my voice about these issues. These programs are still broadcasting and they are nurturing the radicalization and all of our security efforts in the global level will not give enough responses if we don't work together on countering these narratives through YouTube but also through TV other programs suggesting new narratives. So also among the young generation in Tunisia at least we see that through YouTube, through Facebook which is very popular in Tunisia there is still big, big groups of radicalizers using these tools and using this free space to radicalize young people. And we cannot do a lot against it but in IDH, in our organization we produced 30 videos so you will find in our YouTube channel IDH Institute for Human Development 30 videos. A lot of these videos are bringing narratives positive stories. For example we have the Hamouda story who was a young teenager who joined Ansar Sharia Group which is terrorist group in the early 12th to 12th 13th and then thanks to his mother work, thanks to his family work he was resilient. And he is telling his story in 12 minute short film and we use this film to go to the secondary schools because we think that there is a big vulnerability among teenagers so that this is why we target in our work women and teenagers from 11 to 18. So this is part of our work but I think we can later talk. I want to come back to some of the themes you just brought up. I want to bring Samson to the discussion. In northern Nigeria in particular you see similar themes to what we heard from in Tunisia but you are working on electoral reform. You are working on political reform. How do you connect that? Why is that such a priority and how does it connect to these issues of radicalization of young people? Thanks to USIP and NDI for inviting me to share some perspectives on this. There is a connection and the report, the tax force report is very very clear on the nexus between leadership recruitment process and governance and fragility. What we have today are fractured societies. You have got that disconnect between state and citizens because our elections have been typified by violence, by money politics and we don't evolve with responsive, accountable and transparent leaders. And so the first preoccupation of leaders when they get into office is about recouping the monies that they spend for elections or just serving their own pre-modial or personal objectives and it isn't about the people. So at the heart of fragility, at the heart of violence is exclusion but economic and political exclusion. If you take responsiveness and accountability out of the democratic process you just have leaders who simply run the affairs of state without regards for the people. Look at Uganda. Bobby Wine today who is intending to run for office is unable to run because of the onslaught and the clamp down by the government of the day criminalizing political aspiration. If you go to Liberia, where we were in Liberia a few years ago, George Wehr enjoyed maximum wide popular support. Jemima was there as an election observer. We're there. But today the citizens in Liberia are very discontent with the leadership of George Wehr. If you come to Nigeria as well I can go on and on. And so there's a connection and that's why if you fix elections, if you fix politics there's a probability that it will evolve with transparent and accountable leaders who will deliver the dividends of democracy. But at the heart of that is you empower the people. If we don't put people at the center of governance then this attempt to bridge this relationship between state and citizens will be a marriage. If you think about this issue of violent narratives coming in through television or internet it is this opportunity, the exclusion that creates the opportunity for young people to say I don't feel connected to my government. Mark Green talked about this tremendous disconnection of youth from their government. What do we do about that? When you think of the prevention work you're all working on what's actually working? Some of these challenges you're talking about in Liberia for example or in Uganda it feels too difficult to address in the short run. What do you do in the short run? What are you doing today? Maybe you want to chime in? Yeah I think when you have, I just want to pick up from where he stopped with the value and the importance of democracy and getting to politically elect your leaders into power. When you don't have an opportunity to choose your leader as a citizen you have someone who is imposed on you to lead you and for South Sudan context I would say you have leaders who have committed atrocities and so they are governing people who are terrified and traumatized of these particular leaders. There's no room for accountability. You have citizens that are willing to settle for any small thing that they can get that doesn't displace them or they don't even look at provision of services as a responsibility of the people that they have in leadership. So just the inability to have citizens that can hold their leaders accountable because this is not someone that I put into this position and this person came through another channel and he or she can easily use that channel to go back out if it doesn't get their interest met at the table. It's difficult for example in South Sudan to be specific because when we talk about exclusion I would speak as a woman first of all and I will also speak as a young people. So I'm dealing with two challenges that I actually need to address individually before I can make it into any space. And when we look at the national trend when people are talking about youth in South Sudan the picture in their mind is a young man. They're not thinking of youth as women. And so people will say we need to address the issues of youth exclusion and young people who are picking up arms. And when they talk about young people who are employed they're talking about the youth who are on the streets maybe becoming gangs. No one is looking at the young girl who is being forcefully married off as a youth issue. And you have for me in some situations I feel like as a young person you graduate from being an adolescent girl to being a woman. And when I go to spaces I'm quickly identified as a young woman leader. You know the word youth they would probably think of bull as the first person when they're talking about youth inclusion. And I feel like that's really quite challenging but as someone who comes from civil society space and someone who comes in who also belongs to a lot of women groups and coalitions. One of the ways that this has been very effective for us is a lot of advocacy and lobby and also opportunities that enhance capacities of young people. You know trainings on leadership skills and just getting people to be comfortable in their spaces to air out their issues. And I think so far from the civil society perspective that is working because if I look at the recently revitalized peace agreement the mechanisms that were developed out of the agreement to oversee the peace agreement have a lot of young people that sit on the board. For example I sit on the CTSOM board as the women's representative and I'm definitely a young woman. So that I'm a youth in a way and also a young woman. So this mechanisms the security review board the JMAG board all have young women and young and youth that sit at the civil society as civil society representatives and different group representatives. At this mechanism and it's been a way that has enabled the voices of citizens to be reflected at some of these extremely politicized spaces that young people don't eventually get to. But the other challenge with that also is when you come from a civil society wing there is very minimal influence you can make at the political level. Because there's still not very many young people that are picking interest in politics because it's not purely politics it's militarized politics like we already mentioned. And that you know at some point you have influence but then you get blocked when it gets to a point where the representation and the decision making is by those who actually feel like they have earned the positions that they're in. And so that's something that we're still struggling with. But I think from the civil society perspective there's a lot of progress towards addressing the issue of inclusion for both women and young people. And a lot of it comes back to that word you use of expectations where you talk about citizens not even expecting their government to provide services. And if you can change that you fundamentally change the way people look at their government. Or not expecting a young woman to be on a panel that's overseeing a peace agreement. Or maybe not expecting young people to stand up and say we should run for office. And what does it mean to create a movement like you've created in Nigeria this idea not too young to run. Why did you create that tagline and how do people respond to that? So we come from a continent where when you talk about transition people think you're wishing them death. We come from a continent where when you talk about wheels people think you've already dug their grave and you're waiting for them to just die so you bury them. And that's the tragedy of my own generation that we have a political leadership on the continent of Africa that does not think about the future. Their own conceptualization of the future is the future of themselves, their tribes and those who have either political affiliations with them. But at the bane of our challenges is the leadership problem if we fix leadership. And for a lot of young people just understanding that leadership is a big problem on the continent of Africa. It was time for them to rise up and say we're going to get into those murky waters of politics. If you say politics is dirty we're going to be the deterrents that will transform politics. And it's simply how we use political power for the common good. And I say this you can have young presidents in Africa it won't guarantee good governance. It's not a guarantee. If you have 60% of African leaders or parliament occupied by young people it means that there will be economic prosperity in Africa. No. But what we are saying is if you get young people with content, with character and competence into office the probability that our continent will make progress is very, very high. And we've got those young people. So let's open up the space. It has why young people rose up with support of different partners, NDI, to advocate for a reduction of age in our constitution. And it was historic and one of us is here, Lumide, who is here, where we changed our constitution from the streets with our phones and we're building a strong alliance with a generation that cared about inclusive politics. And that we're doing. I mean the last elections, for the first time in Nigeria, we had 21 under 30s, between 25 and 29, who currently sit in parliaments in Nigeria legislating for their people. We also have about four under 35s who are speakers of state houses of assemblies. Because if you look at them all in Brian Index, over the average age of African leaders today, it's about 64. There are people today in public office who have no business, who have no business in public office. And how do we expect to make progress? How do we expect to address the economic and development challenges that we face as a continent without fixing leadership? If you look at the Mediterranean Sea, look at migration, look at Boko Haram and all the insurgent groups who are recruiting and radicalizing these young people, it's simply because we've not created opportunities, both political and economic opportunities for these young people. But my generation is rising up and we're saying we're not going to sit back, fold our hands and just complain. No, we're going to take action. And not too young to run is one of those actions that young people are taking to say enough is enough. We care about the future and we are going to take intentional steps to bring Africa back to the part of progress. Emna, what do you want us to know about the region you're in? Now, Tunisia has a relatively recent government with a fairly, I think a historic high number of women in ministerial positions and cabinet positions now, I believe. There are many signs of progress is what I'm trying to get at. But if you look across the region, you see a very challenging environment. And what do you want us to know here in Washington about the region and the opportunity to take this new prevention approach when most of what we hear might feel like a military approach first is the direction to go. Thank you, Raj. Yes, I also have to congratulate the global world for the new act, the fragility act, because it's mentioning the preventing violent extremism problem as a problem to be addressed on different level. There is for sure the security level, which is normal. But I think that 30, 40 years of combating terrorism linked to violent extremism and violent religious extremism on security level or security oriented solution wasn't a good or wasn't enough to address the problem. So for me, it's a very good opportunity to raise my voice about the, let's say, ideological problem. As Islamic studies professor, I have really to point out that there are poor population and employed population, but unemployment poverty does not push people to be terrorists. There is some seeds of radicalization linked to dozens of Islamic schools, linked to dozens of radicalizers. And we see in my region, in North Africa, in Sahel, in West Africa a very challenging, let's say, environment. And they have to say that the Libyan numberhood is not helping Tunisian emerging democracy to be stabilized. It's very fragile North Africa now. It's more fragile than it was in 2011. So what should we do globally to make North Africa, West Africa also Mediterranean area more stable and the global world? Because if Mediterranean area and Europe is more fragile, then I think it's also a challenge for homeland security here in the U.S. So everything is linked in a way. So for me, Tunisia is in a way in a storm. As you can see, there is a very challenging moment even maybe bringing me to question decision maker here. What is the role of the sixth fleet? What is the role of Africa and what should be done to make Mediterranean area more stable with the Turkish ambitions for the new, how to say, control of some water linked to energy ambitions in Libya? So all this is very challenging. I have to say that also our borders linked to, again, to Libyan conflict, the western borders of Libya are challenging because there are a lot of armed group, very big number of terrorist group, linked sometimes to Saraj government, hopefully, and as woman, as Tunisian woman, I have to say that even though this conflict is very complex, it's more challenging and it's exposing more children and women. And we sometimes expect now new waves of maybe refugees in Tunisia if the conflict rises. So we are not really prepared to receive big numbers of refugees. Among these refugees, there will be women, children, and a lot should be done. For the moment, there is not big readiness but we expect us really as civil society actor to help these groups. But allow me to come back to our work as NGO on peace building work. We started working on a project called 100 ambassadors of peace and it was mainly targeting police women and professors of civic education because we thought it's very important to empower police women and we really helped some women to be powerful in Tunisia but even outside. Some of them are working in peace keeping missions in Congo in Darfur and we trained them on the resolution 1325 resolution, women peace and security resolution. Still a lot should be done on giving budget because we can talk a lot on women peace and security resolution but if the country's states doesn't give budget, we cannot really train and empower these women. We trained civil society, we trained professors of civic education who are leaders and have clubs and do a lot of work in secondary schools. As I said, to make societies resilient for us, we targeted and we made a research action plan with very precise mapping in 2017 where we identified vulnerable areas and then we went to the secondary schools, two different levels of secondary schools from 11 to 15 and from 15 to 18 and we trained on PVE issues the professors. We made them understand what is the first signs of radicalization, what is early alert signs of violent extremism and for example, we have a little nice story with the professor in Svax, southern city not far from Libya again. The professor identified early signs of radicalization among a teenager and this teenager had a brother who already went to Syria and as we trained the professor, she contacted us and she said, I have this young student, he's refusing to talk to the girls, he's becoming isolated, he's giving radicalized posts on his Facebook profile and we have very, very brilliant, generous professors who are giving every day a lot of support to these young people. So some of the posts was about music for example. So these narratives about saying music is haram, so forbidding in Islam, which is not real. So I said to her, tell him that among the two big books on the story of the life of the Prophet Muhammad, for example, the story made by Ibn Hisham, a very, very notorious story, that the Prophet was received in Medin with songs and the Prophet also sings some songs during the marriage of one of his daughters and give him the source and the page and let him do his research and this young teenager had already prepared his luggage to go to Syria and thanks to this, let's say, sensitive but very important and crucial discussion with the professor, the young person decided not to go to Syria because he understood that he was following YouTube channel or some radicalizers who were saying wrong things about Islam and he identified new YouTube channel with new leaders telling him different stories, that music for example is not forbidden. So these are everyday stories that we work on in our work and we really help prevent radicalization in early stages. I appreciate that story a lot because I think it really crystallizes how this works out at a very individual level and now we have to imagine this across many millions of people. It's very important to know Islam, to really know what we are talking about and I'm really sorry to say that there is a global laziness in addressing this issue so I do recommend highly that we should work together on research about how to prepare the counter narrative on the ideological basis and I'm open to work on this with you. Thank you for that, Jacob. Before we go to questions I want to get your take on this. In a way it can sound like we're facing a huge fire and we've got a cup of water to put it out that we're using education on an individual level. We're using arts programs, we're speaking out in community groups. How do we turn this narrative now that we have a global fragility act here in the United States, now that we have a USAID administrator who believes in these ideas and is ready to organize the agency around it, how do we take this to the next level and what motivates you as a young person now here studying in the U.S. planning to go back to South Sudan to see this through to the next level? What can you give all of us to take from this? Thank you. I think there's more of politics being taken as a career and not form of service delivery in my country context because most of these people see themselves to die in power and if they lose these positions they have nothing to run back to. So, going to the point on how do we deal with the situation that we are in, I think the best way and the approach that we are working on is by coalition buildings and no one will be invited to these tables where maybe warlords continue to manipulate the citizens. It's a tug of war. We have politicians who are trying to utilize their influence to manipulate the citizen and we have the civil society who are trying to create those platforms to be able to persuade this citizen and have them get to have a wide understanding on what is their role and how do they hold these people to account whenever they go in an opposite direction. I remember in 2017 we were never invited. The civil society forum was not just invited to participate at the peace talk in Addis Ababa but we had to come together as a group of civil society activists and organizations within South Sudan and formed this coalition and we wrote our letter to EGAR of which is the regional intergovernmental organization for development that was facilitating the peace talk in Addis Ababa and I saw that when we did this we were accepted to participate and that's what gave us to the 35% women's representation and the 20% that will be youth representation. As you said earlier, it's so blurry on what is the definition of youth in my country and right now we are working on having a youth policy that clearly defines the age bracket of youth. During the peace talk it was said that there should be a ministry of youth culture of sport of which you will be led by a young person and what they describe as youth is somebody under 40. There's no definition, it's just under 40. And somebody can just go and vote, maybe bad certificate or whatever it is and you will see them with gray hair, whatever it is, maybe some military general and you'll say I'm young, I have lost my youth time fighting for your liberation and so now I will add those number of years to being a youth. The other thing that I would add into it is that there's this idea of ethnic polarization and tribal hatred that is fueled around people in the country and there's that thing that is introduced that people hate themselves that so and so is from this tribe and this and that and the politician used this narrative to kind of gather more support and affiliation from their community leaders and maybe when somebody is removed out of position or power then he would use that card to recruit and have more young people support his interests. So we kind of try to create a different narrative around it and right now we have an initiative that youth nonviolence to talk on different issues and train people so we have what we call the new tribe. So regardless of our 64 tribes that we have in South Sudan we need to create that umbrella that belonging to a tribe is not a problem. The problems come in when you kind of use tribalism as a way to influence others and try to find yourself different. There are so many myths that are created around different tribes in South Sudan and I think this is where the government in my country started poorly because we thought we were all united and fighting for common goals and we did not understand that South Sudanese by themselves had issues within South Sudan but because we were fighting with the Sudan government by then we were all under the same umbrella. So the first way we would have started when we got independent would be to kind of try to you know at first the SPLA and the SPLM committed a lot of atrocities by forcefully recruiting some of these young people who are their soldiers now. So the best thing would have been going back to these communities, apologised to them and said okay we have delivered this as this is what you pay for taking your children, eating your crops, taking your katoes to be able to fight this war. So now let's try to kind of create social cohesion and try to bring communities together and have an understanding that okay we might have these differences because if you go to South Sudan today even you by itself it doesn't have infrastructures, you don't have roads. So there's no connection between different counties, different pay arms, different group of people. So people are not connected. South Sudanese do not know themselves and this is easily exploited by our politician to recruit young people. So we're trying to break that barrier by using the new tribe as a platform where people come together and do trainings on non-violence action because we are so used to like solving conflict with violence. So we're trying to use non-violence action and try to propagate this into the mindset of young people that there is an alternative to using violence to be heard. I think that word alternative is important and it seems to be the theme we're hearing from this panel which is there is a political culture of division that exists in much of the world. It's very tempting for politicians to divide people in various ways. Tribal is certainly one, that there are narratives out there that are ugly narratives that are violent narratives that need to be combated and that we have to have that alternative. We have to present that alternative. I think all of you are working on that in your own ways. We want to go to questions now. I know we have a lot of expertise in the room so we'll try to get to as many of them as we can and I'll just ask you to try to tell us who you are, who you represent if you're with an organization and try to keep it relatively brief so we can get to as many as we can. Maybe we'll take three at a time and then we'll tackle them as we go. Maybe we can start on this side of the room and then we'll come over here. Hi. Is this working? It is. Wonderful presentations. I wish I could talk to each one of you for a couple of hours. My name is Mindy Reiser. I'm Vice President of an NGO called Global Peace Services USA. My question has to do with the education systems and structures in your country. Education takes place in many ways. It takes place in schools. It takes place through media organizations. But let's talk about the training of teachers and making teaching a profession that talented people want to go into. How can you influence your ministries of education? How can you provide good wages and good futures for young people who are teachers? How can you encourage young men to go into teaching so that it's seen not just as a woman's role and also the role of the media in investigative reporting, in looking at the changes in Islam, the various ways of interpreting the words of the prophet? There's a lot to do and please talk about some ways to do this. Thank you for that Mindy. We have one on this side of the room. Go ahead. Hi. My name is Joseph Haley. I'm a ACLS Mellon Public Fellow at the World Justice Project. And prior to this year, I was a secondary and college humanities teacher. So it's really gratifying to hear all the voices on the stage. And one of the things that my teaching career involved was a full bright English teaching exchange in Malaysia where we worked with counter radicalization education in Islamic schools through the ETA program. And I think that was really effective. So my specific question is whether there's anything similar to this happening in the countries where you work or a desire to bring this type of educational teaching exchange to these countries. And then just maybe a slightly more general version of the question, what role does education around the rule of law play in this secondary and undergraduate kind of window of opportunity to intervene in the lives of young people? Thank you for that. And I think we've got one toward the back. Thank you. I'm from the troubled, as well, UN British Southern Cameroons territory, which shares a boundary with Nigeria and the Republic of Cameroon. I am very, very happy about what my folks have said because I see Africa like one country. I wonder whether in your works you do reflect on the impact of international political economy, which started all the way from the partition of Africa. And I give you an analogy. If there are cracks on the walls of this room, it's going to introduce fragility. So the fragility we're talking about has a foundation in the destruction and disempowerment of Africa way back from its partition. So we need to look at that. Secondly, I would like to follow through with the person who asked the lady who asked the first question about education. The curriculum that we are functioning with in most African countries is precisely one of the sources of the fragility. We have African values. I've worked in the civil society for 35 years. I've been an attorney representing civil society organization for 33 years. Now on exile here. And what you hear from the north and from the west is this is our understanding. But we fail to tell our partners, this is our understanding of democracy. In Somalia, when there is conflict, if two men are fighting and a woman takes off one of our loans and drops in between them, they stop because of the respect they have for mothers. I have a daughter working in Mogadishu now and I have the connection. And I'm saying that we need to be able to go beyond reading WhatsApp and really reconchipselize Africa. So I'd like to hear how you are factoring this in your works. Thank you. Thank you. I think if there's one more burning question, we can take one now, otherwise we'll go to this panel. Okay, I see one there in the back row. Can we get the microphone? Thank you. Just try to keep it fairly brief if you can. Sasha Kissenchand and I've worked in a number of fragile states. And the question that I have regards the definition of youth because that's something I grappled with with doing monitoring and evaluation. And I was wondering if we should have a universal definition, so consistent brackets all over the world for every country. Or should the brackets depend on other criteria such as life expectancy in that country or when women begin to bear children? Of course, the other complicating factor is death through conflict is going to alter what life expectancy is. So what are your ideas about what the bracket should be based on? Let's start with that question because that's a fascinating one. I think we've all touched on a little bit this issue of youth. Samson, do you have a take on this? Do we need to have a universal definition of it? How do you look at it? I think prior to the UN's classification or adopting an age-based classification of youth and this debate about whether there should be a universal classification ensued, in fact, even in Africa. And as you can see, it's going to be very difficult to have an age-based universal classification of youth because context matters a lot. And the UN says it's 15 to 24. The African youth charter says it's 18 to 35. In fact, the national youth policy in Nigeria classifies young people as 15 to 29. That's the new classification. And all this is just targeted at ensuring that in policy formulation we capture different age cohorts. But as you find in the literature that youthhood is the period between independence and independence. And because there's different socioeconomic context of variables that define a particular society, it will be very difficult to adopt a universal classification of youth. My proposal would be that societies, depending on their context, depending on their socioeconomic and political context and their reality, should classify youth. But at the regional level, we already have existing frameworks in African youth charter that classify youth. Maybe what I will push for is to bring it down from 18 to 15. Say it's 15 to 30 or 15 to 35. But societies should clearly define that. Any other takes on this point? Why does it matter? Why is it important to think about youth in this context? I think, as he mentioned, I would completely agree with him that there will be no way of universally defining youth. And we have already seen there's a different definition of youth bracket within UN and the EU, the African Union. So what I think of as an African, I think for us, African Union is not just some independent institution somewhere else, but it's an institution that brings together all the African countries. So they have kind of harmonized what youth mean to them, or what youth mean to the African. So basically, I would stick with the African Union definition as a continent, and I think every continent has to define the youth bracket based on, as he mentioned, when do young persons start to be independent instead of being dependent? So I think that will be my take on that, on the youth definition. Any last thought on that before we move to that? Same, yeah. I think in some ways it seems like it only matters in a political culture where people aren't able to advance and take power that you have to identify who count as youth because they're marginalized. But we can come back to that. I want to get into the question we had for Mindy and Joseph around education. Maybe you can jump into this and I'm about the messaging, the kinds of messaging that we can use in education programs and counter radicalization. Joseph talked about a program in Malaysia. Is that happening around the world? Yeah. Thank you Mindy and thank you for the three question mentioning education and importance of education. I have to say that it's very important to point again the fact that we are in Tunisia, North Africa, now more linked to West Africa than to Middle East. And I always say to my American friends that sometimes geographically we should point this link. But then also it's very important to explain to you that we are among to live and hopefully the fourth generation of Al-Qaeda in North Africa. First generation was bin Laden. Second, Zarqawi in Iraq. Third, Baghdadi in Syria. And the fourth will be maybe preparing in Libya and Mali and all the West. And we've been watching or being watching the rise of, in a way, Talibanization of North Africa and West Africa. You hear often now talking about terrorist attacks in Burkina Faso in regions where there was nothing linked to these terrorist views. For example, even in Senegal we hear that there are very violent extremist group rising. So it's in a way preparing something. So we should be prepared to the new waves of fourth generation and allow me to insist it will be more Al-Qaeda than ISIS and in maybe other opportunities we can discuss this. So we should prepare ourselves because the young people are exposed to a lot of contacts in a contact, discourses and a lot of narratives. So who should be prepared? Families, mothers, but mainly professors because professors spend a lot of time with a teenager, as I said. So what we did and what we do and what we recommend you to do, there are different levels. There are the formal programs, curriculums, but I recommend you what we did. It's informal work. We go to the schools and we, how to say, use the, how to say, clubs, informal activities led by leaders, open and generous to work with young people. So it's more the informal activities led in the schools that can allow us to, because they are flexible. In Tunisia, if we open the story of changing the curriculums, it's too much political and it can bring the curriculum to become more conservative. So we use informal spaces and it's very good because I can tell you a very rapid story. We went to Tadaman City, which is a very marginalized city. And Tadaman, for example, brought 25 emirs, leaders to ISIS. So it can give you, it was one of the top exporters of foreign fighters in the borders of the capital. So we went to this school and we were among the very rare NGOs who went, it's very violent, it's very, how to say, marginalized and it can be even dangerous for us. But we went to the school, we had the professor who opened us the space, who gave us, in a way, legitimacy to go to the school. And then we made our training, it's three hours of training. This time it's more training addressed to the young people. And we were surprised with the generosity of the young people. We usually work with funders and sometimes with private sector. We just bring videos, some debate, some exercises and we bring a little coffee break. We brought our coffee break and we were surprised that this very poor school, the young men and women spent the night preparing orange juice, preparing cakes. And we were really amazed because it was a very poor area and it was the only one area that prepared the coffee break. And what they did, because they were really amazing, they said, okay, we will take your coffee break but we will duplicate this activity to the other school, not far from us. So it's also to say to you that we learn every day from these young people. They suggested this and they duplicated it and they even had their own money to print, like we offer mugs with peace messaging, we offer t-shirts and they love this. And they just said to us, you have to send us the logo and your hashtags, 1,000 ambassador of peace and we already have the money. So we were amazed about this big energy and positivity that these young people can produce. So it's in a way to tell that informal groups or activities can be better than formal programs and it's also to say an alarming thing to you. It's that in Tunisia there is among 1,800 Quranic schools and some of them are official and the same number, 1,800 other Quranic Islamic schools are informal, are not officially registered. And we don't know what curriculum are, teach it and it's not simple to invest these spaces. So for us they are bringing a parallel society, they are preparing parallel vision on democracy, on freedom. So it's an everyday challenge and a lot should be done. As I said for us research young and women are very important and we are here even I spent two other days to maybe open an office for energy working on peace in North Africa on regional level because we think we can bring our expertise but duplicate what we do in Libya and in other areas in North and West Africa. Hello, maybe you can give us your final thoughts and perhaps if you want to address the question about the role of teachers and their importance in the South Sudan context. I think I personally believe that education for South Sudan is going to be one of the ways that we might actually transform the conflict because when you have a country that is considered a crisis zone, the services that are provided are more humanitarian than development and for South Sudan that's exactly the case that we're in. For example, CPA, the comprehensive peace agreement that was signed in 2005, a child that was born in 2005 in South Sudan will be making 15 to 16 years today with still zero or very minimal access to quality education. And that's going to be another generation of youth and another generation, future generation that has been denied access to rightful education to be able to be independent and make decisions on their own. As we speak currently, education is considered a development aspect and what we're getting, the kind of services that are being provided are more humanitarian than education. We've been struggling to actually just define a curriculum for our country, for our country for the past couple of years. And one of the main challenges with that is also that our education sector is heavily donor driven as supposed to be national, you know, own and driven with support from development partners. So the minimal commitment for us to transform the sector, we have less than 300 schools in South Sudan in the whole country. And as violent continues, a lot of these schools get destroyed and occupied by military forces, kids are kicked out of the learning spaces that they're in. And the efforts that try to come in to just restore just seems more temporary than support that is meant to actually transform the children or a proper education. I believe there's 2 million children out of school in South Sudan. Yeah, 2.2 million children, school going children that are out of school. So for us, education at this point is a need, a basic need that is being considered a development aspect and we're just wasting more and passing more years in the crisis space. And that's a generation of children that are growing out of school with no access to education. And there's also very minimal investment in the human capital because I think it doesn't matter what structure the children have, I could be taught under a tree. But as long as the person that is teaching me knows what they're delivering, I think the impact would be more than sitting in a fancy room with someone that doesn't know what they are teaching me. So I think there's very minimal investment in human capital. And when people think of education in South Sudan, people are talking about the schools that have been destroyed, the infrastructure that needs to be built. But I think the aspect of human capital is something that we are lacking. And a lot of young people are also not picking interest in that space because it doesn't look like an attractive career that is going to put food on your table. So that's specifically to South Sudan. It is not for all African countries, but it's a crisis that we're actually in in terms of. Unfortunately, we're running out of time, but you have a great photograph on your Twitter feed that I was looking at before this panel of a young kid, a beautiful picture of a kid who is working on the ground with his little backpack and his book studying. And you're saying, look, the kids are ready to learn. They just need the facilities and the investment to do it. Samson, maybe you can close us out here. We had a question from a fellow West African there talking about kind of the historical partitions and the fragility that that may have created in the region. We just heard Emna describe how really North Africa and West Africa and the kind of tremendous instability we're starting to see and maybe future instability that's beginning to be rooted. It kind of paints a somewhat dark picture and a very challenging picture. Maybe can you close us out on what is the opportunity given that we're here in Washington with this very rare species of a bipartisan act that has been passed of real coalition building around the importance of prevention and governance. What do we do? How do we take us forward here, Samson? Well, thanks. And I would like to chat with my with my brother, my elder brother after now. Just three things happened recently when the permanent representative of the EU did make a very staggering and surprising revelation. Even though it was not in public domain about how Francophone countries in West Africa were still paying what you call HIDA fines to France. And the response was to fire her and we saw the opera that that generated and this ongoing debate around the echo, which is the currency for West Africa and France's involvement in that. China is everywhere on the continent of Africa, determining development, determining politics and very, very active. So I don't think my generation is oblivious of this dynamics of international politics. We're very mindful of that and that is also reflected in our conversation. But my little pushback and permit me to do so is to say for how long as we as Africans will continue to complain about how we were configured or reconfigured. Nigeria is the poverty capital of the world today. We celebrate 20 years of democracy. We've had leaders who have been in office. What did these leaders do over the last 20 years, harnessing the resources that Nigeria has to advance its own development? I think as whilst we look at the dynamics at the international level, we also need to look inward to ask ourselves some deep questions about what is leadership doing. Look at the transformation in Ethiopia with Ahmed, who is one of the youngest leaders that we have on the continent. And so I'll push back slightly on that and then on our traditional African values, pre-independence. If we look, some of those values were very hierarchical, repressive in every respect. And one of the things my generation is doing is actually pushing back on those values that says the male child is entitled to the head of the fish or the head of the chicken. That says young people cannot question their elders. This generation is pushing back on that. And we will continue to push back on some of these values that we think does not advance our development. But in conclusion, I think we need a new political mobilization strategy as we advance this discourse. That for me will do four things. One is, how does it inspire active citizenship on the continent of Africa? And it's about how does it put people at the center of power? The second is how does it strengthen the capacity of civil society groups to engage with the state? Whether institutional or financial capacity, it's very, very critical because building that relationship between state and societies, you need very, very active and strong civil society groups, not just at the urban centers, at the national level, but at the grassroots level. So we need to look at how we strengthen local groups at the community level to address some of the factors that drive fragility. The third is about dislodging inequality, both economic and political inequality. And this is where inclusion plays a critical role. And the fourth is how does it promote leadership or political transition, both from one generation of political leaders to another, or even promoting leadership transition within civil society? For me, this new political mobilization strategy is one that would deliver on some of the gains of the fragility, the Global Fragility Act or the recommendations contained in the tax force report. Thank you for that. Mark Green closed out his comments reminding us about the Berlin Wall and that iconic effort to bring it down and how hard that was. And I think it's important to remember that in a sense there is an equivalent effort underway in each of your countries, in each of your regions and many others around the world. There's an equivalent effort to tear down a wall, to change something fundamentally. And that we're all invested in that. And I hope, I know this Institute, the US Institute of Peace and many other organizations here in Washington and around the United States care about these issues and are here in solidarity with all of you. It is a real privilege to get to hear from these incredible leaders and understand better the work that you're doing on the ground. Thank you so much for being here. Terrific. Let me add my thanks to the panelists for a highly engaging, very informative conversation. I think you've given us a lot to talk about. Let me now invite you to join us for the next part of the program, which is lunch, where you can continue these conversations at lunch. And it's not just lunch. Included in lunch is another, I think, very good conversation from some distinguished leaders from the peacebuilding world and the governance world, who are going to help us think now about everything that we've heard and think now, well, what do we do about that? How do we set a strategic frame to help support good governance in fragile states? So we will have that exciting panel during lunch. What I'd like to ask you to do if I could propose this, if you're in the top half of the auditorium, it might be easier to exit out of the doors in the rear. And if you're in the front half, please feel free to exit through these doors right here into the great hall where we'll have lunch. All right, see you at lunch. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.