 Okay, I think Ambassador Page is just on her way in. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to CSIS. We were a little worried that the bitterly cold weather would scare people away, but it's great to see so many of you here. I'm Jennifer Cooke. I direct the Africa program here at CSIS. We're here today for a session titled South Sudan Political Crisis Humanitarian Disaster. First, I want to welcome you all. I want to thank our panelists, too, for joining us. And I want to say a particular thanks to Sharon Waxman and IRC, who kind of initiated this panel. IRC has just come out with a report by Melanie Teff. I think it's a very important report with research on the ground, looking into the impact of displacement, undisplacement and humanitarian consequences of the conflict. Melanie spent a good deal of time in South Sudan talking to people affected by the crisis, many of whom said they've suffered more in the last year than they did at any time during the North-South Civil War, which is saying something. So we've seen massive levels of displacement, mounting casualties with some groups estimating upwards of 10,000 killed by the conflict. The possibility of a major food crisis is now looming that could leave millions at risk for famine. Meanwhile, the country's political leadership is locked in a zero-sum battle over the spoils of the state, and that political division has permeated at national, regional, local level and has become intermixed with intraethnic rivalry, which I think could well endure beyond any political settlement, which is particularly troubling. The political leadership seems completely unmoved by the humanitarian crisis and deft to any exhortations by the United States and others in the region who have invested so much diplomatically and in assistance in the country's independence and its development. We have a great panel today, and I'm really grateful to all of you, actually. We have Ambassador Susan Page, who was the first ambassador to South Sudan from 2011 till just this August. Ambassador Page saw the country gradually unravel, unfortunately. She was also instrumental in the negotiations as senior legal advisor to the IGAD peace process that led to South Sudan's ultimate independence in the end of the North-South conflict, and so knows the player as well, I think, and knows the history very well as well. Also, we have Melanie Teff, as I said, who authored this report for IRC, uprooted by conflict, South Sudan's displacement crisis. Melanie is a senior policy advisor, or something like that, IRC. Something similar at IRC, Emergency Response Team Advocacy and Policy Coordinator is the official title there, and a long career in humanitarian work, particularly on refugees and displacement. We have Jeremy Klondike, who is Director of USID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, which is the lead coordinator on response to these kinds of disasters. Jeremy, too, has a long history in humanitarian affairs with Mercy Corps, head of advocacy there, and conflicts across the world, including Africa, Kosovo, others. And then, finally, we have Casey Copeland, who we found out last minute, who is going to be in Washington. Casey is head of, oh, this is a South Sudan analyst for the International Crisis Group. She spent the last four or five years in South Sudan, a crisis group. It really, for us here at CSIS is a really invaluable source of really good detailed analysis and thoughtful recommendations. So we're really grateful to have you here as well. We're going to start with Susan to lead off and give us the big picture on the political situation right now and where might that go and where is that going. Thanks. Thanks very much, Jennifer. Ambassador, good to see you and all of the friends of South Sudan. It feels very much like a bit of a homecoming to see so many friends out there. So thank you very much, and thanks for convening this panel. I will talk really just a little bit about where we are, the United States, and what we're supporting, which, of course, is the EGAD peace process. And what we have really focused the most on is inclusivity. This is really kind of the hallmark of where we have been trying to encourage EGAD and others around the world to support because an elite power-sharing type of an agreement we do not believe will really solve the problems. It will just end up being yet another kind of patch-up job. And these were the exact same things that the Southerners had complained about from successive cartoon regimes. So one of the things that we've been focusing on, you can't obviously include all 65 ethnic communities, and try to represent a diverse population at the peace negotiations that are taking place in Ethiopia. As you all probably know, if you've been following the EGAD news, the talks did not really result in a final agreement, but they did make some progress on some of the political powers, but could not finalize all of the transitional arrangements that they had already agreed to. So this is not something new that parties had agreed in the EGAD peace process to establish a transitional government of national unity. And we've been focused on trying to encourage the parties to think less about the who and much more about the what that that transitional government will need to focus on. So for us, what we have identified are some of the key issues, are transitional security arrangements. For most of you, you are aware that in the past, following the CPA, part of the kind of peace dividend on the part of the SPLA was to try to integrate other armed groups. This was part of what was in the CPA that you could have the two armed forces, the SPLA and the SAF, and that you would have all of the other armed groups had to be either integrated or demobilized or transitioned into other agencies, like the police force, wildlife, fire, et cetera. So transitional security arrangements we think is really critical because that will be the way that serious efforts to reform transform the security sector so that you could have a proper ceasefire, permanent ceasefire agreement and get the process underway of making it a really professional national army as opposed to the way that they fought the war against Sudan. The second thing that we believe is really important are the transitional governance arrangements. So we believe that, again, it's not about the personality but it's about what kinds of mechanisms they put in place that will govern the transitional period. We also think it's important to have good financial management. South Sudan has unfortunately become quite corrupt with a lot of the leaders taking advantage of the system and as we see so much in the third world it's hardly unique to South Sudan or Africa for that matter but where there's not a really robust private sector the only way to get resources and access to money and power is to become a minister or some sort of a government employee. That's not going to be sustainable for the long term and so if they can have a better public financial management this will help them on the way to establishing stronger institutions to govern going forward. Especially with transparent and accountable management going forward. Obviously it's really essential that they have justice, reconciliation and healing. The communities have really been traumatized not only from the wars with Sudan but now the inter-communal violence which was already pretty fragile some of the relationships between the different communities but as the crisis takes on more and more of an ethnic flavor and in some areas although it has nothing to do with the current crisis engulfing the country they've taken advantage in a sense of unleashing other long standing grievances that don't really relate to the crisis but that are coming out now almost taking advantage of that lack of strong government to show their contempt maybe of different communities and things like that. We have been supporting not only EGAD but also the AU Commission of Inquiry the report is finalized it is now with the African Union we understand and certainly hope that it will come out with some strong recommendations which we believe are the case and we will hope that we can continue to work with the government of South Sudan and the opposition to actually put in place those recommendations not alone but with the rest of the international community and of course the South Sudanese so that they can have some accountability for the unfortunate crimes that have taken place along with that of course is reconciliation it's not just about accountability but also how do you go forward and reconcile the communities that not only have been displaced that have seen their families harmed the cycle of revenge and to heal that and be able to go forward so we are looking forward to receiving those detailed findings and the recommendations especially with regard to the transitional mechanisms the church of course has a national healing reconciliation process underway and we hope that that will become more robust so that that can go forward as well there also needs to be a revised and reinvigorated permanent constitution process after the CPA was after independence the parties did come up with a constitutional commission and it started work but we had hoped even long before the crisis in December we had hoped that the constitution making process would be a way to really engage all of the communities in South Sudan about what it is that they want in going forward in terms of their constitution unfortunately that opportunity really never occurred and so once again you had a group of people kind of sitting but not taking into account the views of the population and the public so we believe it's really important to listen to the people and have a really revised and robust process so that that constitution can be forged along with that they need a roadmap to new elections and with the number of people that have been displaced as Jennifer mentioned the food insecurity all of these issues that need to take place in the role a census was supposed to occur there are lots of ways to do elections without a census except that the constitution calls for a census before elections take place these are all things that need to either occur or along with the amended constitution that could be one of the areas that is re-evaluated and decided upon whether or not that's the format they want to go through I just want to say that unfortunately there have been a lot of accusations about the United States, about the European Union about EGAD about everyone supporting the opposition or working for regime change or working against the government of South Sudan South Sudan's government is democratically elected the president was democratically elected in the elections in 2010 they have agreed that the parties have agreed to transitional process we are not about who should lead that process but it's really about the people of South Sudan and what the people of South Sudan want in going forward and that's what we've always been in favor of is supporting the people of South Sudan this humanitarian crisis I mean we have put in over $720 million emergency alone that doesn't even include the rest of our assistance that had been going forward and although some of it had to be restructured to focus on other critical needs but over almost a billion dollars in this year with respect to humanitarian assistance refugee assistance food assistance and then our regular support to political parties our support to the constitution making process our support for EGAD for the verification mechanisms to monitor the ceasefire to un-miss and to reconciliation and local conflict resolution mechanisms that amounts to close to a billion dollars in this fiscal year with a lot of money and we want nothing but to see the people of South Sudan receive the long awaited benefits from a country that is rich in natural resources people are hardworking and determined but unfortunately have just been beset by a series of political leadership that has not really taken into account the views and goals and aspirations of the population so that's what we're working to help them achieve through the peace process with EGAD and also with the UN Security Council we are working with the council on a resolution to come up with a sanctions regime again this would not be a regime against the government this would be against individuals who are impeding the peace process or committing human rights violations so that's what we see is the way forward and we hope that when the parties reconvene EGAD gave them another 15 days it's a little unclear exactly what the 15 day period is going to be but we're hoping that when they return to Ethiopia for the next session that they will have been able to harmonize their positions internally and come up with something that is comprehensive that can resolve the problems and be able to go forward in the transition that they have agreed to so I'll stop there thank you Susan I think we'll go through all the presentations and come back at the end for questions so Melanie thank you thank you very much to CSAS for organizing this event as Jennifer was saying hopefully you've been able to pick up the thoughts that the International Rescue Committee the IRC has done about the South Sudan crisis I was in South Sudan and the region for about 10 weeks between April and September this year about half of that time I was in South Sudan and about 5 weeks I was in refugee receiving areas in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda and the IRC felt it was important to produce some public reports and statements about this crisis because we've been working for 20 years or so with communities inside South Sudan and are now working in refugee hosting areas and we've been quite shocked by how quickly this humanitarian crisis has come about and how many people it's affecting to give an overview of the situation humanitarian situation out of a population of 12 million people nearly 2 million people have been displaced by the conflict 1.4 million inside South Sudan and nearly half a million in the region the fighting has had a severe impact on agriculture and markets in May of this year humanitarian organizations were calling really an alarm saying that there could be famine by the end of this year I think this is an example of actually a successful early intervention in that famine has been averted for this year and that's largely been due to a successful humanitarian operation in getting food out to people in very difficult areas to reach and also due to South Sudanese people the resilience that they have showed in this situation but people's stocks are really running low by the end of this year it's going to be very difficult for them to live through another season of fighting and we do still have serious concerns about the potential for famine in 2015 if the fighting is not stopped and if people are not able to resume agriculture and normal life to note the different situations and our report goes into the different situations people have fled to from the conflict both inside South Sudan and in the region inside South Sudan the largest number of IDPs are scattered, internally displaced people are scattered into hard to reach areas as speaking as a humanitarian organization this is one of the most difficult organizations, one of the most difficult countries in the world to reach people, logistically it is extremely hard to get out to people and there's a lack of air assets to be able to get to people the infrastructure is lacking to be able to get to many areas of the country geography is very difficult in South Sudan for moving around and moving front lines in the conflict of affected humanitarian access and at the moment we also worried about a closing of civil society space which has an impact on humanitarian organizations ability to work and increasing concerns about bureaucratic impediments often stopping agencies getting out to people who desperately need assistance despite the difficulties assistance has reached large numbers of people and has played a large part as they say in averting famine in 2014 it's very costly as an operation but it's essential to get out to the 90% of the displaced people in hard to reach areas I'm going to mention now the phenomenon that is really a new phenomenon that we've seen in South Sudan the displaced people inside the unmasked peacekeeping bases we've got now around 100,000 people many of whom have been there nearly 12 months or nearly a year now and that's an unprecedented situation and it creates many dilemmas first of all we want to make it very clear that we are very pleased and we congratulate unmasked for opening their gates and providing protection to the civilians who are in desperate need of protection one of the difficulties of course is that those unmasked bases are being developed as areas for hosting IDPs and so the conditions in the bases are very poor and we think it's really important to be improving the conditions in the bases as far as is possible within the limitations of the space currently available we hope that there will be more space made available particularly in areas like Bentayew where the conditions are truly appalling we've been concerned about some messaging from unmasked about wanting to reduce levels of people inside reduce numbers of displaced people inside the bases we think it's really important that those who need protection in the bases receive that protection until they feel safe enough to be able to return people are staying in those awful conditions because they are scared and people would not choose to stay in conditions like that if they had real options and we are seeing though that these bases are becoming increasingly difficult places for people to live and we need proper policing inside the bases as well we need unpaul officers who know how to engage with communities and prevent and respond to violence within communities as well I just want to make a note of a group that are often forgotten and that's the urban IDPs there are thousands of people in Juba living inside church grounds living in schools living with host families they've tended to be rather overlooked they're not people from ethnic groups who feel under the same level of threat as the people who have run inside the bases but they face many difficulties such as threatened evictions and lack of services and it's important that we remember the urban population there's also 100,000 people in Minkeman in a de facto camp and there are de facto camps in rural areas one thing we've noted is there's been a pendulum of attention swinging between displaced people in hard to reach areas and then the POC sites in the unmist bases in the de facto camps and currently many donors are focusing resources and attention on the hard to reach areas leading to some neglect inside the unmist bases and clearly it shouldn't be an either or situation and attention and resources are needed for those in the easier to reach areas too inside those unmist bases people need assistance and the OFDA doesn't take that position and it's not a US position but it's something that's affecting many of the humanitarian organizations at the moment, ability to reach one other thing I wanted to say about what we are hearing inside South Sudan is a shocking amount of testimony from women and girls we're working with about sexual violence that they've experienced we we did a study recently where we spoke with some women and girls inside peacekeeping bases and 100% of them told us that rape is prevalent in this conflict used by both sides used by both parties of the conflict and suffered by women both inside the peacekeeping bases within the violence that's developing inside bases and faced by women outside the peacekeeping bases it's been quite shocking for us hearing about the levels of sexual violence and we're still seeing a lack of attention to basic security measures to prevent gender-based violence in the camps and bases even locks on latrine doors things that would be obvious basic security measures that are still not getting attention we also note that there are around 200,000 refugees mostly from Sudan and also from other countries and who have been caught up in the middle of this crisis and often cut off from aid or had attention moved from them I'm going to also talk a little bit about refugees in the region and there are nearly half a million nearly half a million have fled since December the borders are open to all the neighboring countries but there's a very different quality of asylum in each country and of course this major influx is causing stresses on neighboring countries abilities to receive such large numbers at such speed one thing we note in this report is that UNHCR the UN Refugee Agency has recently put out a new policy on alternatives to camps and we think that this is a really positive policy and we need to look at this refugee crisis as one that's likely to become widespread and this should be a test case for translating this alternatives to camps policy into practice because we fear a slide into the usual refugee response with refugees stuck in camps surrounded by hostile host communities who feel resentful of refugees receiving assistance that they're not benefiting from and refugees not able to develop their skills or work and becoming dependent on international aid which gradually reduces as donor fatigue sets in over time so we'd hope this would be an opportunity to look at things differently but it's threatened by a shortage of funds it's only 43% funded the refugee crisis in the region so obviously major shortfalls in the funding in Ethiopia there have been over 200,000 refugees have arrived since December it's the biggest influx is into the Gambella region of Ethiopia there have been conditions for the refugees at this time in Ethiopia because the land that's been made available for camps has been flood prone and many of the refugees are living in really awful swampy conditions other camps that have been made available are very far away and with security problems so we think it's really important that the Ethiopian option for asylum remains open and the conditions in Ethiopia are very difficult in the refugee receiving areas in Kenya the Kakama camp which has been receiving South Sudanese refugees is severely overcrowded it was built for 90,000 it has nearly 180,000 now so that's obviously an enormous problem and refugee's freedom of movement has been affected by Kenyan government restrictions on refugees following terrorist attacks early in the year and that has an impact on the refugees in the camps, their ability to move and therefore their ability to run businesses and be more self-reliant we hear that there's a possibility of new land being made available for probably for a camp near to the Kakama camp we hope that this could this could be approached differently that there could be land for agriculture as well as shelter that the host communities could be benefiting from the work with the refugees not just the refugees themselves a more area based approach that focuses on refugees and host community Uganda has an impressive self-sufficiency policy for refugees it allocates land to refugees for farming as well as for shelter it allows refugees access to national health services and education services it allows rights to work for refugees and with some small restrictions right to move and it's shown real benefits the Ugandan model of responding to refugees has shown real benefits for refugees and host communities and it's more expensive per refugee at the outset but it's a very good investment and we've been arguing that it's important to encourage promotion of the Ugandan model for hosting refugees in other countries in the region in all of these refugee settings we're seeing a disproportionately high number of children and women many of these children unaccompanied 90% in Ethiopia it's children and women we're seeing soldiers bringing their families across the borders leaving them and going back to fight that obviously has a major impact on the type of refugee community we're having to support we also think it's very important to support peace-building work with refugees to mitigate the risk of inter-ethnic conflicts spilling over from South Sudan into host countries we have to support these neighbouring countries to keep the borders open it's going to be an essential pressure valve if the situation deteriorates in South Sudan as we fear it could ultimately though the only solution to this humanitarian crisis is an end to the fighting no amount of humanitarian programming is going to resolve the crisis and we believe the international community have to hold the parties to the conflict accountable to the commitments on ceasefires and on access while the conflict continues we have to do more to reduce the human suffering that it has created that requires an increase in financial support both by international donors and also a commitment of funds by the South Sudanese government to the humanitarian operation and to basic services for the people thank you thank you so much Malani really interesting Jeremy thank you so I'm Jeremy Kanadek I'm the director of the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance that you said and we lead the overall USG humanitarian response to the crisis inside South Sudan in close cooperation with many of you and our partners in this room our this is an interesting and unique crisis in a lot of ways first and foremost because we're talking about famine in a place where we're not seeing weather shocks normally and if you look at the famine in the Horn a few years ago there were a lot of political factors but the major precipitating factor was a weather shock of a period of unsettled a period of declining resilience here we're not seeing that this doesn't actually correlate to any sort of climatic reason why there should be a prospective famine in South Sudan it is purely man-made and I think that's important to keep in mind as we think about the humanitarian situation that this could end well it couldn't end tomorrow there were the political will to end the conflict and do the right thing and that is just a deeply deeply sad fact that I think we need to keep forefront as we think about the humanitarian response on the response front it's sort of a good news bad news situation as Melanie alluded to the response that we've seen so far has been quite effective in the face of enormous obstacles enormous challenges we were severely concerned back in the spring that there would be famine conditions emerging through the rainy season in the summer and it was to the point that we actually deployed some assessment teams into southern Unity State which is one of the worst affected areas in I think it was July June or July to see whether we could find evidence that famine conditions were present because we were very concerned that they might well be and what those teams found was so there's a four, five phase what we call the the IPC scale phase five you're in famine, phase four you're a step shy of famine what we found was that southern unity which was the worst affected area was clearly in phase four but there was a lot of evidence to say it was not in famine and that was very it's not encouraging ever obviously when you're in phase four but it's more encouraging if you're expecting famine so that was encouraging and we saw real indications that the aid effort that had scaled up over the prior six months was making a real impact we saw between June and September we saw global acute malnutrition rates in Lear County which was one of the worst affected counties go down from about 34% down to about 16% now 16% is still above emergency thresholds but it's a lot lower than 34% we saw severe acute malnutrition drop from 11% to 3% so there's a lot of evidence that that aid effort despite enormous obstacles was having an impact and it was having an impact both because of a lot of push from aid actors but also a lot of support from diplomatic actors there was a huge amount of diplomatic pressure on the parties to enable the aid effort facilitate the aid effort allow access allow use of the barges set up a cross-border channel with Sudan allow cross-border access from Ethiopia and most of those pieces are now in place we do have barges going up the river from Juba up to Malacal carrying food we do have cross-border access coming in from Sudan and to Upper Nile State we do have a pretty robust cross-border effort going in from Ethiopia those pieces are critical to the success and it's a testament to just a huge amount of hard work by the international humanitarian community and the South Sudanese humanitarian community because it is South Sudanese citizens who are doing the bulk of that effort in partnership with international groups the POCs and Melanie touched on this I think the POCs are they have many challenges and I'll talk about those in a minute but the POCs are huge success in my view in that they prevented those 100,000 people from quite possibly losing their lives or being at threat of losing their lives and what underscores that fact for me is when you look at how bad the conditions are still in some of the POCs you look at people literally living in feet of mud in Bentu over the rainy season people staying in the POCs in the early days when there were collar outbreaks in the POCs they still chose to stay in the POC that to me underscores the depth with which they fear for their safety if they were to leave those sites and the POCs despite a lot of challenges I think have been a huge success in providing immediate protection to 100,000 people who would have otherwise faced imminent risk to their safety so that's all the that's the good news if that's good news it's all relative in my world the bad news is that that's all extremely tenuous and the worst is yet to come so the coping mechanisms of the population especially the most vulnerable population are really exhausted at this point we're expecting that this harvest season we'll see about a 30 to 50% reduction in food production over the three most conflict affected states so they're coming from a situation where they already had significant food deficits and where there are already huge impediments to aid access and now they're going to have a lot less locally produced food going into the mix a lot of their normal coping mechanisms their ability to draw on their community support has been greatly wound down as well so we anticipate a really major drop off starting from around January the harvest will be smaller and they started eating it earlier so it will run out much more quickly than it normally would it won't last as long and they won't have much else the displaced particularly won't have much else to draw on at that point so starting from January we're anticipating very precipitous declines in the food security and the humanitarian situation that's also going to be the same period when the conflict will likely be ramping up again the roads will be drying out mobility will improve and barring some turnarounds in Addis the conflict will continue to deteriorate that will make access tougher and you know we're just not seeing as Susan alluded to we're not seeing the political will to do this and get this done and fundamentally ending the humanitarian crisis ending the political crisis and ending the conflict and that is the driver of everything that is that we're responding to and that we're trying to prevent on the humanitarian side and that's critically important not just because we're expecting that the current million and a half people who are in an emergency food security situation will balloon to two and a half million people in the spring it's also important because we're in a really unprecedented phase right now in the global humanitarian in the global humanitarian field in terms of demands on humanitarian bandwidth back in early July I joined a bunch of my colleagues from NGOs in the UN and other donors the emergency directors from various of those groups get together about twice a year to solve the world's problems and we don't generally succeed and at that point we were all worried about primarily about South Sudan within a few weeks what had come absolutely out of note well not entirely out of nowhere but largely out of nowhere on to the humanitarian system screen huge new displacements in Iraq and the Ebola crisis and we've all then focused our efforts throughout the fall on mostly on those two things and that's diverting bandwidth it's diverting money it's diverting personnel capacity and they're just I don't know going into next year even as we face this declining situation and a real possibility again of South Sudan falling into an entirely man-made famine I don't know that the humanitarian system has the bandwidth or the resources to stop it frankly and I hope we do but there are a lot of other demands it's all particularly hard when we're facing all the demands we're facing around the world to sustain support for a crisis that is entirely man-made and could be resolved very easily not very easily but could be from a humanitarian perspective resolved fairly expeditiously this isn't a drought this isn't an earthquake this isn't an uncontrollable disease outbreak this is something that could be resolved and the fact that it's not is just deeply sad so I will leave it on that happy note thank you Jeremy I think Casey great thank you for having me here today I'll try not to repeat what's already been said but I do think there are a few a few things that are useful to look at from a political angle in terms of trying to understand the nature of the war that we're seeing in South Sudan today that began in December of last year we saw a period of quite intensive fighting throughout the spring as the rains came and into the summer the fighting drew down a little bit we saw a few major offenses but nothing like the levels of fighting that we saw in those first quite brutal months of the war we released an alert about two weeks ago stating that we believe that there are a series of looming military offenses we've already seen the first of those with the opposition attempt to take the capital of unity state been to you about two weeks ago and we think that there will be more from both the opposition as well as the government if this peace deal and Addis doesn't move forward with the attendant atrocities and humanitarian consequences that we saw in those early months of war so it's something to be quite quite concerned about one of the ways that I think it's useful to look at South Sudan's conflict is to look at how multi-layered it is we have a conflict that is a regional conflict we have Uganda and Sudan pitted against one another with various armed groups and actors the Ugandan army deployed inside of South Sudan we have members of the Sudan Revolutionary Front inside of South Sudan fighting alongside the government we have Sudanese support now to Mashar's opposition forces so we have this regional peace which is very very dangerous, very alarming and is one of the things I know that the Americans and others and Addis have been working quite hard to try and contain to make sure that South Sudan doesn't become a place where the neighbors are fighting their own conflicts with one another on South Sudanese soil using South Sudanese to fight one another we have a second conflict which is this sort of national level conflict which is what we're seeing addressed through the talks in Addis this is the government and Mashar's opposition group this is the former detainees so a group of very senior officials and both the SPLM as well as the SPLA coming together to sort of discuss these sort of national matters and then the other layer of the conflict is the much more local level the much more communal level and I think in some respects this is the least well understood part of this conflict we see that we have official armies on both sides but we also have entire communities at war with one another we have often it's the SPLA in opposition and the so called are conflated to be one thing they're actually two entirely separate things the white army have repeatedly said that they don't report to Mashar's opposition yet they make up quite a significant number of fighters that are fighting alongside Mashar's group and fighting the government and the way that they are structured is much more community focused so what we see when the white army mobilizes is a community mobilizing for war there's a lot of conversation about women being the peacemakers in South Sudan but if you come to some of these communities you find women are really supporting this war they're really supporting their men who are going out and fighting so we need to also be a bit honest about how deeply this war is being fought and how much communities feel like they have no option but to fight this war so Anadis we're really seeing this national level is the level that we're really working at in terms of the talks and then on the sidelines of that through other mechanisms such as the state summit that are being held with a really astounding level of regularity showing how concerned the neighbors are about this and it's been quite important. We've also seen the constellation of international actors change and as Ambassador Page can attest to there's quite an important role that China has taken that we haven't necessarily seen them take either in South Sudan Sudan or in Africa more broadly really sort of stepping into a new role recognizing that they are an important power, an important influencer on the continent and that there is an interest in a peaceful and stable South Sudan so we're seeing them taking a much more active role, actively present at the negotiations trying to work with the Americans with the other members of the Troika which are the United Kingdom and Norway and as well as with the EU so this has been an interesting sort of international reshuffling that I think reflects some of the interest that various countries have in South Sudan and in supporting this EGAD process. So this is kind of where we are and we have as Ambassador Page said we have semi-formed deals on the table in Addis that the parties can sort of take or not. We have the opposition meeting with some of the generals, some of their supporters in South Sudan as we speak discussing this deal, the government as well is discussing this internally they've returned many of them from Addis. We have also meetings happening in Kampala so we're seeing a lot more movement and a lot more serious movement in terms of a peace process and a peace deal than we've seen before but there's a harder reality I think that lays behind that is that there are quite a lot of people on the side of the government and on the side of the opposition that don't like this deal and don't want it. When Minister McQuaid returned from Addis he spoke about the threats that the government of South Sudan came under and told the population of South Sudan that they were being threatened with the UN protectorate if they didn't make a deal. These kind of words and language are things that many South Sudanese will reject a deal that comes from this kind of pressure after struggling for so long to become independent. That kind of thing is something that resonates even with people that actually want to deal feeling that they're under threat like that is not something that people are all responding very well to. On the other hand I think we have a very, very tenuous level of command and control that Mishar has over some of his senior commanders and they've been incredibly open about how little they are interested in the Addis process that the Addis process is not. They don't view it as a viable means of achieving peace in South Sudan unless it removes President Kier from office which he has said the president has said is a red line in terms of the negotiations. So we have actors on both sides that are not in favor of the deal that are speaking to their people in ways that also will move their people to become a bit more bellicose in the face of a deal to be less interested in taking it. So it's going to be very, very difficult to actually get a deal that also brings along many of the fighters and many of those that control various military factions into this. And as well we also need to recognize that we have unleashed something in this war that is going to be very, very difficult to put back into the box and that is the arming of these ethnic, people call them ethnic militias for lack of a better word and we have them on the opposition side as we said with the new air white armies but we also have several on the government side. And these groups are now armed and they certainly feel entitled to a stake in whatever comes out of this peace process in the words of one we have not fought and died for and we are not going to let these people sell us out. So we need to be quite careful in looking at these real multiplicity of groups that aren't fully represented in Addis. So we have, even if we do have the acceptance of a peace deal we do have quite a lot of things that are concerning. We have a government that has leveraged its fiscal future to fight this war meaning that at a point where we do have a peace deal it's quite likely that it will fall to the international community to fund the various processes that Ambassador Page discussed in terms of constitutional processes, elections and things like that. So this is a very difficult situation coming to the international community that's already spent billions on South Sudan. And more critically there is a view that people have about what government means in South Sudan and we can call it corruption or patronage or whatever this may be but there's a very interesting study that was done last year that showed that about one in eight South Sudanese were reliant on SPLA salaries for part of their livelihoods. What this means is that when we talk about what the state is, the state to many people was the army. That was where their pride as a community was, was their representation in the national army, that's where they got back benefits of the state and this went down into the smallest of villages, places where you didn't actually have formal government structures. Everyone still had family in the SPLA. So this is a really important way to start looking at when we talk about the security sector reform and sort of the way that we're looking at the security arrangements in a transitional government because if the government doesn't have money to pay those kinds of salaries for this vastly inflated SPLA which would come through any kind of integration process, we're going to be at a point where people are very disappointed they feel like they've not gotten what they're supposed to get and very difficult to explain to them sort of financial mechanisms behind why they would and would not be receiving salaries and who and who would not. There are still concerns at that much more local level that are going to create the sort of instability that can be either dangerous in and of itself or played upon by more senior political actors. We have some other issues in terms of, you know, something I like to think of as the tyranny of elections, which is that we often view elections as an end in themselves. That an election gets us a democratically elected government board and everything is wonderful. But what South Sudan needs right now and one of the things it needed last year was an actual political process in South Sudan to determine how South Sudanese want their state to be shaped what they wanted to do, what they value and that process never really happened. We saw as Ambassador Page, we saw a lot of these processes that could have been the constitutional process, internal SPLM party processes becoming much more about the who than the what. And I think this is going to be one of the most critical, critical things during the transitional period is that we actually make sure that it includes processes not just outcomes. We don't just need a constitution. We don't just need an election. What we actually need is a process of a political process and a process that approaches a form of healing that allows these parties that have been at odds with each other and fought each other so to come together in something once again and I think that that is no small task and really can't be underestimated and one final thing that I'd like to say we also have quite a difficult situation with the peacekeeping mission as both Melanie and Jeremy said this issue of refilement of civilians out of un-missed bases maybe to UNHCR camps maybe to other locations is quite critical. We in our conflict alert that we released two weeks ago we called on the UN not to force any civilians to leave its bases and not to pressure them to move to humanitarian sites or other sites that are not bases despite assurances that they will be as well protected the realities of that are highly unlikely. It's putting these civilians in a much more dangerous spot. At the same time it's also important that the UN restructure itself. We've seen that it went from a mandate the UN in South Sudan has a long history it came in overseeing the CPA period so much more traditional peacekeeping seen if they could be the guarantors of a peace agreement between the cartoon government and the SPLM and SPLA. Then it moved at independence to the state building this type of mandate that they were strongly supporting the government. Now that's been put on hold with the protection of civilians being their primary responsibility enabling the movement of the monitoring and verification mission teams as well as some other things like human rights monitoring and so on. What it needs to do now is to restructure and envision that what it will likely be called upon to do again is to be the guarantors of a peace agreement between the SPLA and opposition and the government. That requires a very serious stance of neutrality it requires much more analytical focus on what's going on in the country who the different armed doctors are what their relationships are making sure that when the day after tomorrow comes and the UN has handed this peace agreement that they're meant to be overseeing that they're actually prepared to do that because right now they're not. So I think that we're going to have a very difficult difficult few months if we get a peace deal the chances of it holding are are very limited there's a lot of will and it will take a lot of pressure and it's taken a huge amount of pressure even just to get as far as we've gotten but if not I think we're going to see an uptick in fighting and all of the brutality that comes along with that so I think that's what we kind of need to be looking at over these next few months and sort of preparing ourselves for more of the bad news that we had last year but I think I'll end over gosh thank you all really for just an excellent set of presentations I have lots of questions I'm not even sure where to begin I may just throw it open we had hoped to have someone from the UN peacekeeping office here today I think there was a last minute scheduling change I wonder if you or you might say a little bit more about kind of what's been the response for example to pressures to is it a financial issue of managing the camps is it a mandate issue what's been the response and maybe Susan I think well as you were saying the unmiss was set up as a mission to support the South Sudanese government and despite the change of mandate made this year it's been very slow to move from that state building support role to prioritizing protection of civilians so I think there's been some reluctance and slowness in the move in the shift of priorities secondly when it comes to the question of funding unmiss has often said we weren't funded to host a hundred thousand displaced people and have often suggested that the humanitarian agencies should be funding things like improvements in the sites clearly humanitarian organizations should be providing the humanitarian assistance inside the sites that's not in question but when it comes to reinforcing the walls and the physical protection elements and civil engineering capacities that unmiss has and humanitarian agencies don't have readily to hand we certainly feel it is squarely within the role of unmiss to be making their bases a safe place for civilians that falls within their protection of civilians mandate I think then there's been the suggestion well we will protect displaced people the civilians somewhere else so for example there was a suggestion a couple of months ago that unmiss would say we can move the displaced people out of Malacal base into Malacal stadium I think the feeling was from most of the civilians in the base they didn't believe that if they're not inside the base unmiss is not going to protect them to the same level even inside the ball base we sadly as IRC had two staff killed when there was an attack on the base and the peacekeepers did perhaps slowly come and provide protection to people inside the base if those civilians were outside of the base I think people believe it would have been a much slower reaction maybe just to add I think Melody is correct in terms of all of the issues but part of the reality is also that the protection of civilian sites on the UN compounds have also become extremely rife with tensions and a lot of fighting has gone on inside of the compounds between different communities and Malacal is actually the perfect example where unfortunately because of inter-communal violence within the POC site the humanitarian workers have been threatened that the internally displaced people on those compounds are going to take over do some harm and they've actually had to temporarily suspend operations to provide some of that humanitarian assistance because of ongoing threats and ongoing violence so it's not a simple unfortunately it's not a simple issue and so how the unmasse response is quite complicated but with different challenges, there are also issues that you may think are serious, thank goodness that they provided that assistance and opened their gates on the other hand now they have 100,000 people in various compounds and that's just as Melody said in her presentation even walls, let alone somebody to protect them, but all of the issues involved about what is unmiss's duty to protect and what does that entail. If you go down the road of fortifying these bases, then are you giving an incentive for people to stay indefinitely? If you don't fortify them or you don't improve conditions, conditions are terrible. It's really quite a catch-22 as well. Strikes me that there are a lot of catch-22s here. One is the question of it's the what, not the who, but you need the people who are going to be able to bring along at least the majority of their factions. Yeah, a pretty bleak picture you all have painted here. Why don't we open up? And take three or four questions at a time and then turn back to the panel if it's directed at someone specific, let them know, and please introduce yourself before. So in the far back, and then the gentleman here again, if you could wait for the mic as well. Will Farajaro, a consultant on foreign policy, a question about the, and I think, Casey, you alluded to it in terms of the leveraging of one's fiscal future for the war. Could you speak, you or others on the panel, speak about the supply chain of weapons and material just so we have a sense of that factor in the conflict. Thank you. Thank you, American people, to concern our problems. So there's more American here and more than South Sudanese. We are the one who's starting the war, not American who's starting the war. I don't have a real equation, but I'm going to keep suggesting how we're going to get out on this mess. Hi, myself. My name is Gwad. I joined the first war when I was 11 years old, really before. So when did our young user come here, and I'm the one user driving around, and then I was a cigarette salesman at the same time. What I know about the fees, these two people, they're not going to make the fees. E.B. tried to put them in power sharing, it's going to be declaration of new war. So my suggestion, all of them, they should be told to step on the side, because at least this country for nine years, I didn't do anything. You see this book I have in my hand, that's the way they're supposed to South Sudan to be run from 2005 and 2010, 2011. They put it together in 2003 and 2004. Some of you, they're no brown, they're silver. It was a member of doing these books. When they came in the power of 2005, they put it in the trash. South Sudan, when they started in 2005, it was not starting to do for tomorrow. They was coming, you take what you can take, not what you can give. When you know what to take, end of day, you're going to take yourself. What happened to them now? They're taking themselves. It was not South Sudan who did that. So that's a suggestion I can tell you, Susan Page, and now we are talking about the killing. Before this war, there was a slow killing. We lost a lot of people more than this war, from 2005 and 2010, 2011. A lot of people died more than these people we are talking now. So that's my suggestion I can tell you. Thank you. Thanks very much, and we'll see if either we want to step back out of the process. Yes, the gentleman here and then in the back. Thank you. My name is David Dao. I am a South Sudanese and American citizen at the same time. I'm a resident of Virginia and one of the lost boys. Before I can ask my question to the ambassador, I'd just like to share something. I really feel that what happened or what transpired in South Sudan has contribution from international community as well as the U.S. government. And the reason I say that is this. Immediately after 2005 or 2011, there was a neglect of the diaspora from the U.S. government as well as the European Union and international community. They refused to focus on reintegration of the diaspora. And the South Sudanese and the diaspora are well educated and they love their country. So I would like to hear from the ambassador, why was there a disconnect between those who live in the diaspora and the key actors in South Sudan, such as the United States? Personally, I have been affected by this war. I lost the closest person to me in December in Borotown. That is my mother. I only spent four years with my mother when I was born and I am a lost boy. So I haven't lived with my mother that much. When peace came to South Sudan, I moved her to Borotown. I paid her rent. I built her a house. She was very happy. But then war happened and she was killed. I have been using my story for peace and reconciliation because I don't believe that I would be honoring my mother if I go out and push for revenge. So if we need South Sudan to have a better future, why are we not talking about reconciliation? Because we need to remember this. The fighting between these two individuals and the two parties did not start in 2013. As Casey mentioned before, this is a deeply rooted conflict. And I believe that there was an emotional rush to independence in 2011 while the people were not morally prepared for independence and what comes with a free country and that is government. Thank you. So Ambassador, the issue of the diaspora neglect. Thank you very much and very sorry for your loss. There's a gentleman in the far back. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming. My name is Anthony McCrae. I work for the Madison Coalition. It's unrelated, but I have a great interest in South Sudan and I'm actually writing a report on it. And my question is particularly regarding the ABA region and how does the unresolved status of ABA play into the politics within South Sudan, the issue of displacement, and the greater humanitarian issues? And anyone can answer that. We should start with you. Okay. Thanks, everyone, for your questions and for your rapt attention to all of our presentations. Let me first, not sure exactly which order I want to go in, I'll speak about ABA first. ABA is something, a region that for me personally is really close to my heart. And every single time I went to ABA, I got in huge trouble from Khartoum because the Khartoum government considers ABA its territory and I would go from South Sudan. The South Sudanese always allowed me to travel, was not a problem. And especially after the paramount chief was killed, Jason Mattis and I were at the funeral services, memorial service for him at the now chief of police residence. And it was actually my last visit outside of Juba before I left South Sudan. So in mid-August I made my last trip to ABA as ambassador. And it's painful that this is still a region that is unresolved. The Noctinka did hold their own unilateral referendum that was extremely peaceful. Obviously, it was not recognized because it didn't come through the process. As Butros mentioned, I mean, some of the fact that ABA was somewhat put aside in the rush to independence, if we want to call it a rush to independence, for the referendum because the ABA boundaries commission could not decide on the eligible voters who should be able to vote in the referendum, I won't go into the whole history. But the current conflict has almost engulfed South Sudan in everything except the ongoing negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan. And that makes it very difficult to actually resolve some of these other issues, the border resolutions, the other unresolved areas, Khafi-e-Kingi, et cetera. So there are a lot of border points that or areas that are not yet decided which territory they belong to, but ABA in particular with its long history of conflict and the people of ABA in particular, the Noctinka who fought alongside the SPLA. It's really difficult. We had a delegation here in Washington from South Sudan of primarily Noctinka leaders and the ambassador was, the chargé was with us in that meeting with our special envoy, Ambassador Booth. It makes it very difficult for a foreign country to recognize the results of the referendum when the country to which they want to join has not recognized their results either. So our advice, of course, is first get the government of South Sudan, whether it's recognizing the referendum or at least publicly claiming that this area, we believe, belongs to us and we want to go forward. To President Kier's credit, he has written several times to President Mbeki, who is the chairman of the AU high-level implementation panel, saying, we the leaders, we the two presidents are unable to resolve this on our own. And we, he has agreed to the proposal that Mbeki put forward now over two years ago and it's just stalled. So we've been encouraging the AUHIP to really take this up again and be a little bit more proactive on that and we understand that there are some sideline negotiations going on with respect to ABA. So maybe one day that will finally be resolved. I think it would be really important, although not necessarily contributing as much to the displacement, although there are a lot of IDPs displaced from Wurop state in particular who are, were up and wow, who are finding themselves in ABA within the ABA area box. And so that has caused some of the increase in displaced people from the fighting. But I think it would be really important for the African Union to come out with their report, formal, final report on the findings of the death of the Paramount Chief. I think that if there's no formal and final resolution of that, I just don't think it's going to be possible for the Noctinka to really move forward on any kind of resolution to ABA when the most peaceful man in ABA was brutally murdered. On the neglect of the diaspora by the U.S. government, you know, there was a resolution that was introduced in Congress some years ago after the peace agreement was signed or maybe right before it to try to forgive student loan debt by South Sudanese so that they could move back to South Sudan without having to be burdened by student loan debt at least in the United States. It never got very far, even though it was introduced by people who clearly supported South Sudanese people and the ability of them to return home now that peace was at hand. As I said, it didn't get very far. You can probably imagine that that's extremely controversial because American student loan debt, regardless of what your national origin might have been, is extremely high. And the loan rates are usually government-sponsored, quite low interest rate. So there was quite a bit of controversy about that, but that was one way that it was tried to at least sponsor South Sudanese to return. UNDP has had programs to get diaspora back into countries, not just in South Sudan. This was true with Rwanda and elsewhere. One of the biggest problems actually was that even the diaspora who went back, however they got back, whatever means that they chose, there is so much conflict between South Sudanese, whether you stayed, did you fight, were you a lost boy, even the whole term lost boy as you all know has negative connotations for a lot of people. And so even for us as the U.S. Embassy, working with different government institutions, there was a lot of sidelining of people who were in those institutions, but because they were considered to be from the diaspora, were not necessarily appreciated by the South Sudanese authorities themselves. So it is actually quite a big issue. That's not to say that we couldn't have done a better job. But most of us had gone all around and spoken to lots and lots of people in the diaspora. You mentioned Brian De Silva, all of us know Brian. But I, even before going out as ambassador, I mean several years, I mean I've been working on Sudan and South Sudan for a long time, would regularly go to South Sudanese events, celebration of independence or a celebration of CPA day prior to independence and speak with the diaspora. But I think what needs to happen is probably a better scheme worldwide because it's not unique to South Sudan. But diaspora from lots of countries who want to return home, but they have families here and families there and it's, again, it's not unique to South Sudan. But it's difficult to come up with the proper, you know, setting to do that. Do you want to say a quick word on power sharing and maybe Casey, you can say a word on that and then on the supply chains? Yeah, maybe just in terms of power sharing, I mean I, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, I think if this conflict is simply a patch up deal between the same people who cause the problems, I don't think that we'll get very far. And that's why the inclusivity factor is so important. Because with more inclusiveness, again, you can't have 65 ethnic groups around a table. But if you can get women, if you can get civil society, obviously these are people who have lots of different perspectives and backgrounds, religious leaders and others. It doesn't mean that any one perspective is right, but at least those views are heard. And so that's why we have been pushing EGAD, which has been trying to do that and incorporate other voices, into the process. A couple of months ago I went out to Baral Dar, where the negotiations were taking place and the mediators actually started their consultations with these other groups first before they went to the parties. So at least they are listening to the views, even if that's not necessarily that they are in the immediate negotiating rooms, but they're at least listening to their views. And this is one of the reasons why it's important on the reconciliation front. Because again, yes, this is a long, deep-rooted conflict by crises that have been long buried. When you had the CPA and you had an agreement, it helped to banish the enemy of Sudan and Khartoum and all of the words that people used, which I will not use. But once that was taken away and you had independence, the only thing left was to turn on themselves instead of coming up with a South Sudanese identity and what does it mean to be South Sudanese? And I think this is one of the ways that the reconciliation process led by the religious leaders, the church writ large, small C, which includes the Imams as well, is one way that they can try to get at some of the root elements of the conflicts, not just the December conflict but all of the things that have happened in the past and break that cycle of impunity. Thank you. Disclosure before I answer this question. The beginning of this year, Crisis Group has publicly called for an arms embargo on South Sudan. We were joined over the summer by a group of 38 international African and South Sudanese NGOs in calling for this. One of the reasons that Crisis Group did decide to call for an arms embargo was not only the scale of violence and violence against civilians, but following an interesting conversation I had with the Minister of Defense, General Kulman Yang, who said to me that when I was asking about weapons and weapons procurement that he was a constitutional post holder who had taken an oath of office to protect and defend his country. And his country was under attack by rebel forces and that he would be abdicating his constitutional duty if he did not seek to procure the weapons that they needed to defend against this rebellion. And I think that's a very difficult position to argue with. How can you ask the government to refrain from something while the opposition is clearly receiving support from various quarters? So we've advocated that an arms embargo be called and effective against all parties in the conflict. And one of the things that that's critical for is that this conflict does not just sell Sudanese. We've seen the Ugandan army deployed. We have, as I mentioned before, the Sudanese rebels fighting inside of South Sudan. And we've seen the opposition moving quite freely inside of Sudan along the border of South Sudan. It's often asked, you know, when do you declare a proxy conflict as South Sudan, a proxy conflict? Well, I think one of the things that we can say right now is that we have emerging of conflicts. We have the new South in Sudan. That conflict is being fought out and those groups are fighting inside of South Sudan right now rather than fighting in Sudan. To a large extent, we're seeing South Sudanese opposition groups being given safe haven in Sudanese territory and receiving support from the government of Sudan. Some of the weapons tracing showed that the weapons used in the Bentayou Mosque Massacre in April of this year were weapons from the government of Sudan. I think it's quite critical that if we're trying to end this conflict, that an arms embargo is critical. It has to be applied to all sides and it certainly can't be effective any other way. We've also been disappointed to see that the U.S. government has not supported the call for an arms embargo despite the brutality of this conflict and its critical role in trying to end it. And we've seen weapons coming in from all over the government. There is absolutely nothing illegal about the government procuring weapons right now. So they've been able to purchase weapons from fellow nation states as well as from independent operators. So we've seen that there has been quite a significant procurement of weapons, which again nothing illegal about it. They're simply defending themselves against this insurgency and I think it is what we can expect to see continuing on absent a peace deal and absent any sort of movement on an arms embargo. I'm Ken Isaacs with Samaritan's Purse. If there were an arms embargo, how would you practically impose that on the North? Could you put an embargo on all of Sudan and to stop the weapons coming across from the North to the rebels in the South or the opposition group in the South as well as all the other nefarious actors down there that apparently are supported with weapons? Hi, I'm Nora Malikin with Interaction. And I was interested in getting Ambassador Page's thoughts on something that Melanie had raised, the issue of shrinking civil society in South Sudan, a shrinking civil society space. One issue of concern for NGOs right now is the NGO bill that may be presented before parliament again as early as today. And for NGOs, our message all along has been that the government is well within their rights to regulate NGOs, but the bill as it's presented would make doing our job and providing humanitarian assistance that much more difficult and in fact impossible in certain circumstances. And the concern as well is that proper parliamentary procedure be followed if in fact the bill is presented once again. So I just wanted to get your thoughts on that and if Ambassador Booth et al is engaged in the government and the conversation around the shrinking civil society space overall. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. My name is Angong. I'm actually with the South Sudan Embassy. I had a question for Ambassador Page. You know very well when we had the peace talks initially in 2005, I mean the Sudan and South Sudan peace talks, there was always a sense of trust with the EGAT peace process which is very, it's missing in this particular peace process that's going on in Addis. You're also quite well aware about the details, I mean these three groups, it's not actually two groups that are in this peace talks, you know, you have the 11 detainees, you have the government and then you have the, you know, the React Machar group as well. There's a sense that the international community has been, you alluded to this earlier, that the international community has sort of been siding with the opposition and there's a sense of distrust from the government and also a sense of distrust from the people and have sort of lost faith in the peace process itself and whether that it will produce any results. So my question for you is, is there a way to bridge or is there a way that the international community can sort of bridge this thing and give the sense of impartiality so that this accusation of, you know, we're not being supported and, you know, this should have been condemned, you know, these questions really keep popping up and I really don't see a solution if this is not resolved between the international community and the government. Thanks, Tim Carney, the last U.S. ambassador to the whole of Sudan. But I'm going to make a point as a former U.N. secretariat member because there's no one from the U.N. here. I'd like to observe that the U.N. is not, cannot be and never is neutral. Neutrality is the wrong word to describe U.N. actions. The word is impartiality and the U.N. is impartial in realizing whatever mandate the Security Council gives it in a peacekeeping mission. Impartiality, not neutrality. Thanks. Sure, and of course, most of the questions are political-focused questions and it's a humanitarian agency. That's not our role to comment. I am glad, though, that you raised the question about the NGO bill because we are concerned that there could be even more impacts on not only international NGOs, but also on national civil society. Just maybe break briefly on Unmiss. I think one of the points you were raising about why the difficulties. One of the difficulties in protecting the bases, one of the issues is it is also very important, of course, for Unmiss to be getting outside of the bases and not just concentrating on the 10% inside. And one thing we recommend in our report is the importance of engaging with community, with members of civilian leaders to discuss what would make people feel safer, where are the civilians' priorities on where Unmiss should be patrolling to make them feel safer. And I think that's a really important point. It shouldn't be either or the bases or security in the rest of the country. Lastly, I just hope that you could all pick up a copy of our report, which goes into more depth in the humanitarian situation of the different groups who've had to flee the conflict. And we fear very much coming into the dry season that things may well be getting worse, given the risks of anticipated increase in fighting. And we fear the impact on civilians. Thanks. Okay, I'll try to answer the questions as opposed perhaps to wrap up. Shrinking civil society space, we have been, the embassy and the Special Envoy have been extremely actively engaged in this. Just to give us a bit of a flashback, back in December of last year, right before the Investment Conference put on by the government of South Sudan, the Special Envoy was there. And this was an issue of great concern. And personally, I also could feel all of the tensions coming. And so, you know, it's a bit of a balancing act. Now that the bill looks like it's going to be represented, just before coming over here, I had checked with the embassy. It looks like it was not presented today. I don't know if it's because the National Assembly didn't meet or they didn't have a quorum or whatever, but revving little communications problems with the State Department. So, but I understand it was not presented today. But this has been a bit of, you know, a large preoccupation on our part from long ago. I mean, so not just with the after the conflict began, but long before we had, along with lots of other actors around the table, lots of you in the audience from different NGOs worked with the NGO forum, worked with different NGOs, had endless meetings with the government to try to encourage them to make changes that we had, again, collectively suggested. And they did actually take some of those changes on board so that the new version from what I understand is better than what existed in December of 2013. But it doesn't go as far as we would like for it to go. But again, even a few weeks ago when Ambassador Booth was in Juba, again, he discussed this with government officials. I can't say that it looks as if they are going to re-review it. It looks as if they will go forward just as they did with the national security bill. But that's our role is to encourage the kinds of changes that we think make them more democratic and more fair. Obviously, at the end of the day, it's the decision of the parliamentarians on what they vote on and hopefully also to encourage them to make sure that their own procedures are followed, like making sure that there's a quorum, that it's properly on the docket and notified. In partiality, I just wanted to mention, I'm not entirely sure how to get over that view that the international community is biased against the government of South Sudan. Diplomats always come under attack when there's a conflict. I hardly think that it's unique to South Sudan or to us as, on our side, the diplomats. It's somewhat shocking at times to hear, oh, but we understand, React Mashaar was hiding at the U.S. Ambassador's residence. No. They also said that React Mashaar was hiding at the U.N., you know, unmiss residents. Not true either. We also had military troops guarding the U.K. residents because React Mashaar was also allegedly there. So, you know, in societies like South Sudan where people get their news from, you know, word of mouth in this way, it's unfortunate, but those stories end up becoming true no matter how much you either try to refute it and sometimes by refuting things, you just are reminding people, see, we knew it was true because they're denying it too strongly. It's sort of part of, you know, it's part of the game, unfortunately. It's part of our job is to try to make people understand, maybe as Ambassador Carney has mentioned, we are impartial, we are trying very hard to help the South Sudanese get to a place of peace, what would work best for the people of South Sudan. And that's not supporting React Mashaar or the government in their fighting or an uprising, but it's trying really hard to, you know, help the people of South Sudan. With respect to EGAD, same thing, and Casey's already mentioned this, the fact that you have all of the regional players engaged with their own history of why does Ethiopia need the government of Sudan, plus the government of South Sudan, what benefits do they get? You have Kenya, Uganda, South Sudanese have a lot of assets in these countries, they don't put on sanctions against them because partly it would impact their own interests, economic interests. So there are a lot of, you know, there's a lot of mistrust and, you know, I don't, I'm not entirely sure how you can get that back except in acting as, you know, as impartial as you can and hopefully, you know, the proof will sort of be in the pudding, but, you know, at the end of the day it's up to people to believe what they want. I'm sometimes really shocked when I read the Facebook comments of people and, you know, the U.S. has blood on its hands and, you know, all of this, but again, it's part of what an individual's perception is about the way that they, he or she perceives the situation and there's little you can do to influence that except to, you know, work as admirably as you can to try to bring peace to the people of South Sudan. So I'll just briefly on the NGO bill and I think that I think Susan's largely covered it. You know, the only other thing I'd add is that for years and years the international community in the U.S. has pressed Khartoum to give more space to NGOs and looked to some of the space that NGOs had had in the South as a better model and certainly a more effective model for helping people and it's a shame to see I think the government in the South arguably learning some of the wrong lessons from their northern neighbor and ultimately it's not going to harm the NGOs because the NGOs are there to help the people of South Sudan. So if that's impeded, ultimately it's in soccer terms you'd say it's an own goal if the outcome of this is that the aid effort is harmed and that would be really unfortunate and really needless. Your question earlier about the POCs and what limits on this, I think you know they didn't know that this was what they were buying when they let everyone into their camps and I think they've done a really admirable job of holding the course on that and it has come at a sometimes at a real cost to unmask as a reputation I mean as you stated they're impartial but not neutral and this has, from the UN's perspective they're letting anyone in who faces a credible risk regardless of ethnicity and we see in the molecule POC for example we see Dinka and Shaluk and Nuair not necessarily always getting along very well but it's not on the basis of taking one side or the other and yet it's sometimes spun that way by voices within South Sudan which is really really unfortunate and it has been a very difficult situation for unmask to maintain and I think they deserve an enormous amount of credit for holding the line on that and the issues about who does which piece I think are being worked out it's a bit dynamic and this has some capabilities that the NGOs don't have. They also don't necessarily have funding for all these things so that's a subject of sometimes vigorous discussion across the donor community but ultimately those things need to get done and they need to be done and the long term tenability of those facilities really depends on whether the conflict ends or not because it is a protection function. It's not a refugee camp or an IDP camp they're there for protective purposes and addressing that means addressing the conflict. So an arms embargo and this is I think a really critical point needs to be well monitored with a quite serious panel of experts. South Sudan is in a region rife with arms embargoes and rife with countries violating it. The two biggest regional players involved in South Sudan's conflict Uganda and Sudan are notorious for violating other arms embargoes in the region so we don't have a great track record of this but the other piece of an arms embargo that is critical is that what it does is it exposes what's actually going on. It shows which countries are providing weapons while also saying that they're supporting peace processes. Who is doing what to whom? I think we have this very interesting case of Sudan being on the mediation team in EGAD right now. But we also have other situations and I think we saw what happened China this year when the weapons shipments were exposed and now they've stepped back and said actually we're not providing weapons to any side in this conflict anymore and they've come out and publicly said at least that people start to know about it and then we can say okay actually this China you are a critical player in resolving this conflict and actually by stopping providing weapons to the parties they're stepping up to their role as that player right so there are a lot of benefits that we can get from an arms embargo even if it's not perfectly enforced. And then I think finally what I'd really like to say is that and it's important to be on a panel with these humanitarians up here because one of the things that we're looking at is international presence in South Sudan is huge and humanitarians you find them all over the country in the most remote locations but humanitarians aren't political actors they don't monitor the politics of the situation they're not focused on who's winning and who's losing the war and they don't take a side they're simply there to provide assistance to civilians in need and what happens is this can mask the fact that the international community has very very little footprint in terms of analysis in South Sudan just because there are internationals there does not mean that these people are monitoring political developments can understand the various machinations between different armed groups and different communities so we need both for the UN mission to step out and really sort of reinvigorate its analytical capacities and at the same time it's really important that we see IGAD starting to spend more time in South Sudan starting to go out and talk to different communities to make sure that we're part of getting buy-in for the peace process for any peace deal to hold and it will also help the negotiations in terms of making sure everyone really understands what's actually going on in South Sudan because the war is in South Sudan it's not an adis so I think I'll finish there thank you I just want to say a big thanks to our panel and to our audience for the great questions sorry my time management was not great but I really didn't want to cut it you know the fracturing of the political process and the political leadership and the levels of distrust around the negotiating process unfortunately a humanitarian situation that looks like it's going to get worse unless that political agreement can come together and then as Jeremy said a real humanitarian bandwidth and resources that are getting stretched in the global context and you know those are three very worrying trends and I hope a very sobering I hope maybe it galvanizes more to action rather than leave us all kind of hopeless and shaking our head so I just want to say thank you very much to all of you who are contributing a lot to to the process and to our knowledge here in Washington DC so thanks very much