 Good morning everybody. Good morning, and thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president of the United States Institute of Peace, and I'm delighted to welcome everybody here this morning. For those who don't know, US Institute of Peace was founded a little over 30 years ago, dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, peace is practical, and that it is essential for our national and international security. And we are increasingly, I think collectively having the conversation that peace is essential for development, and peace is essential for addressing the extraordinary burdens that we're seeing today on the humanitarian system. We have seen an increasing upward spiral of crisis. During my four and a half years prior to being here when I was at USAID, we saw that the tempo of crisis and the duration of crisis was continually expanding, and in 2015, Ban Ki-moon noted that there was in the 70-year history of the UN, it was unprecedented to be responding to 10 serious crises at the same time. I am most struck by the fact that a decade ago 80 percent of our humanitarian assistance went to natural disasters, and 20 percent went to victims of violent conflict. So a decade later, at a time when we're having increased natural disasters because of global climate change, with ever larger, more vulnerable urban populations, that ratio has flipped. And we now see 80 percent of our humanitarian assistance going to victims of violent conflict, and only 20 percent going to natural disasters. At a time where we have increased strains and burdens on both. And this fact alone, I think, illuminates why we're seeing chronic, persistent underfunding of global appeals that are going ever upwards, so that we had more than 20 billion requested last year for the UN global appeal. 60 million people displaced. This room knows all these facts well. We have violence from violent extremism. We have increased fragility. We're looking at medieval siege tactics in Syria and in Iraq that are creating terrible levels of hunger, of suffering. Afghanistan has a new wave of violence, and we're still seeing the results of the civil war in South Sudan. So I don't think it's hyperbole that we're calling this morning's event a world on fire. And the solutions to this will require a joint action that go far beyond the realm of humanitarianism. In the lead up to the World Humanitarian Summit, USIP has been very happy to partner with Interaction, with the UN Foundation, with World Food Program USA, and the Foreign Policy Institute at SICE. We convened a series of roundtables five to date to coalesce around these core issues and to look at what are the core recommendations that we as a community collectively have for the World Humanitarian Summit. Last week I attended the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, and I know I can see a number of you did as well, and I have to say that against the backdrop of terrible humanitarian crisis, and in a region that is particularly affected by crisis, and despite the summit skepticism that had mounted in advance of the summit, I'm coming away actually quite hopeful, and I'm coming away hopeful for three key reasons. First is the summit really modeled a new type of global gathering. It wasn't the usual gov to gov ministerial, but it was a very inclusive gathering with more than 9,000 participants that included 173 member states, 55 heads of states, and civil society activists, international NGOs, local NGOs from conflict affected countries, private sector, 200 youth leaders, which was particularly inspiring, an emphasis on the rights of the disabled, the role of women. It really modeled a different kind of global action that is required to address the kind of problems that we're facing, and it acknowledges that humanitarian action, peace building, is no longer just the domain of governments and diplomats. It also places a responsibility on everyone to address the issues that we're facing. Secondly, for really the first time it pulled together government leaders and the humanitarian community that collectively put politics and poor governance at the heart of the crises that we are facing, and for the humanitarian community which has shied away from considerations of politics for good reasons because of the need for independent impartial action. It nonetheless squarely acknowledged that these are not ultimately humanitarian problems to fix, but it requires that joint understanding and it requires the spotlight to be shown on the important role of governments to take action and to muster the political will. Finally, and importantly, the World Humanitarian Summit really coalesced a number of critical changes, reforms, and recommendations that the humanitarian and the development community have have been discussing for a number of years, and it turned them into acknowledged and in many cases measurable commitments to do things differently. Everything from around how we finance, how we report, how we build bridges and work collectively with the development world so that instead of individual projects, we have a shared focus on the outcomes that we need for greater resilience, for being able to get ahead of conflict. I am enormously encouraged by all of this. It highlighted the innovation of this community. It highlighted the energy and the activism, the determination to do things better and more effectively. This community is really at the forefront of turning all of that discussion and energy and commitment into action that makes a difference on the ground. I am very grateful today to co-host today's event with my very good friend, Ray Offenheiser, with whom we have shared this conversation for, I think, going on 20 years. Ray has led an effort at Oxfam America to really lead a charge on a number of hard-hitting recommendations. We're also fortunate to have two panels with us today of top experts and thinkers in these communities to reflect on summit outcomes and how we can really truly move forward with reforming the humanitarian system. How do we improve our response? Our goal today is to both hear from them and also to engage all of you in a conversation that helps us move forward. Move forward with the promise of the summit. Move toward the events that we are teeing up for this fall around the UN General Assembly. I know that we'll have a great conversation. For those of you who tweet, we're using the hashtag reshape aid. I'm delighted now to introduce the moderator of our first panel who will introduce the members of that panel. We're quite fortunate to have Kim Gattis with us, who's a longtime observer and reporter of foreign policy events, born and raised in Beirut. She's a reporter at BBC News and is an acute observer of the events that have been at the back of causing the humanitarian crisis we have today. Please join me in welcoming Kim to the stage. Good morning, everyone. I'm delighted to be here. If I could ask my panelists to join me on stage as well. While they take their seats, I'll be moderating the panel called reforming the humanitarian system. I'm really delighted to be here to moderate this very important conversation after the World Humanitarian Summit in Turkey. I'm thankful for the invitation. Thank you for thinking of me and including me in this. I'm heartened by your optimism, Nancy, because when we look around us, it does really feel like the world is on fire. There seems to be a time, long forgotten now, perhaps it never existed, where the crises were perhaps, you know, came in neat succession. At least that's how we seem to remember it, and now they all seem to come at once. They overlap and it has become very difficult for the international community to deal with it. Today the world spends around 25 billion dollars to help 125 million people devastated by wars and natural disasters. That is 12 times more than 10 years ago, and yet because protracted conflicts are the new normal, because of increased natural disasters, that still means a 15 billion dollar gap in funding according to a high-level panel report to the UN Secretary General on Humanitarian Financing. But the problem, as we'll discuss as well in this panel, is not just about financing, it's also about logistics of outdated structures, questions about how much we need to recalibrate the balance of power between international actors and local actors, and of course, you know, how do you continue appealing for aid when people feel there's no when to how much they're being asked to give, and the following panel will address some of that as well, and the more acute crisis as well of refugees. But we have a fantastic panel assembled this morning to dive into these issues. Right next to me is Ray Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America. He's been its president since 1966, and under his leadership, 66. No, no, it definitely says 96. I'm looking young, you must tell us your secret. Oxfam America has grown more than sevenfold and repositioned itself in the U.S. as an influential voice on international development and foreign policy. Before Oxfam, he represented Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and in the Andean and Southern Cone regions of South America. In 2012, he was appointed by the Obama Administration to represent civil society interests on the Leadership Council of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa. He has many accomplishments. These panelists are very accomplished. I will keep it a little bit brief. You have their full bios. But Mr. Offenheiser has also served on numerous boards, including the World Economic Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative, and key I found is he's served on, he's a co-founder and board member of the One Campaign and the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network. So he certainly knows what he's speaking about this morning. Next to him, we have Mr. Anwar Khan. He's the Chief Executive Officer of Islamic Relief USA. I'll try to get my dates right with this one. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field of humanitarian and development assistance. Born in Pakistan, grew up in England, started working with Islamic Relief Worldwide in 93. And since 94 in the U.S., he's helped with expansion of Islamic Relief USA. He has extensive experience in the field, from Chechnya to Gaza, Darfur, Haiti, Pakistan, and Syria. He is on USAID's Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. He's also on the U.S. State Department's Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group. And last but not least, Mr. Thomas Stahl. He's the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID. He spent most of his career working overseas in international development with USAID since 1988. I do have a problem with dates. Beginning in Sudan, but from Kenya to Gaza to southern Iraq, Ethiopia, Lebanon, you really have experience in difficult working circumstances, including in conflict zones. Since January 2014, Mr. Stahl has been the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance. Before joining USAID, Mr. Stahl worked for World Vision International. He also has experience in the private sector. He worked for Aramco in Saudi Arabia in the late 70s and early 1980s, which is an important perspective as well, to see how it works in the private sector. There's a lot to discuss. I want to start by asking each one of our panelists to answer an opening question. I'll go from one to the other. We'll have about 25 minutes of conversation between us and then we'll open up the stage to open up the floor to questions from the audience, because as Nancy mentioned, this is a two-way conversation as well. But Ray, I want to start with you. You were at the summit, or Oxfam was at the summit? What was Oxfam looking for, going into the World Humanitarian Summit, and do you feel that you are satisfied with the outcome? Was it a game changer? Probably not, but I think we can say it's clear it's no longer business as usual. No, it's no longer business as usual. Maybe just to echo a couple of Nancy's opening comments. I think for all of us in the humanitarian community, this was an extraordinary moment to have this event. We credit the UN and many of the other organizations that pulled this together. I would echo a lot of what Nancy said about what was important about the event, the inclusive nature of it. It was a multi-stakeholder event, so we heard from voices and people that we'd never heard from before, refugees, victims, extraordinarily important in having them define problems. The focus on politics and governance that she mentioned I think was an important outcome in a positive sense in the big picture scheme of things. Also, the commitments that were made, 1500 commitments were made at the event, and the Secretary General will be sorting all of that out over the coming months and we'll have a final report I think in September at the General Assembly as to what that all will mean and what it will add up to. And then finally, the whole framing of this around the five responsibilities I think has given us all a framework within which we can all, I think, see ourselves and our work going forward and I think it's a work plan for I think the entire community to focus on. I think in terms of what we were looking for and where we I suppose you could say we were disappointed was in the whole what was done around discussion about international humanitarian law. For Oxfam and for I think many other organizations, given the nature of the crises we see in the world in Yemen and South Sudan and Syria, we need to revisit and recommit to principles of international humanitarian law in a very serious way and this has to come from governments and the problem was we didn't have many of the important heads of state at the meeting so in some sense the standing of the meeting I think was undermined by their absence and so in some sense the outcome that we would have hoped for in international humanitarian law was not realized and I think there's a lot more work for us to do there and I'm sure we're going to talk more about that. I think the other thing I maybe in the positive area I think for Oxfam was the whole area of local capacity and local empowerment. This is an area that has been core to what Oxfam represents and many of us many other organizations in the humanitarian community literally since you know the First World War and through the aftermath of the Second World War you know and a lot of what we represent there I think is the idea that we've got to be caring for people that are victims of conflict and victims of tragedies like Syria in a serious way but more importantly I think we've got to rethink the model in a way that actually empowers local actors who are first responders in many of these cases. I think the good news coming out of the out of the summit was that the Grand Bargain endorses this concept I think rather dramatically in a very straightforward way with a lot of very clear principles that I think we can all subscribe to and many of our organizations have done that. I think also there was this commitment to 25% of funding going to local actors which was a major transition I think for the community a commitment to increasing cash programming for humanitarian programs as well and then the emergence interesting of this new network called Near Southern which is actually a group composed of southern partner organizations that actually were given voice and had had the support of USAID, Oxfam, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They're going to be bringing this I think this conversation about local empowerment and local voices into our humanitarian community and debates in the future and we'll probably hear from them again in the fall of the UN General Assembly but I think we've not had I think a structured and formal organization that's actually been taking that local leadership conversation forward from the grassroots up. It's been coming more from the international NGOs rather than from the people who really should be leading that initiative so this was good news I think on multiple fronts on the local initiatives and local empowerment agenda. Great this is a great way to give us some excellent food for thought throughout the conversation on international humanitarian law you know MSF of course withdrew from the summit particularly because of their concerns about protection of civilians. It's fantastic that there were new voices and that local actors are being brought in more in a more systemic way. Mr Khan I want to turn to you as you know an organization that has a role locally as well you are in the US but you work around the world. When you look at the system as it is right now you look at those big UN structures you look at how you operate what do you think is missing in this conversation or in the system when you're operating on the ground. As you mentioned I was born in Pakistan I grew up in England and I live in America. So you've got a good comprehensive view. So I like to think I'm a bridge but I feel like I'm not from anywhere but I'm from everywhere so. And you have worked everywhere. Yeah so I get a lot of frustration from different areas. We believe so there's a part of me that's from the south so I want to pretend I'm from the south right now so I want to go to that one third of me. So there's a feeling that the UN organizations are designed as a big bureaucracy they're giving money to big aid agencies they're not reaching out to the locals and there's a lot of talk about that but we haven't seen that over the past few decades and I believe it was mentioned that 0.2 percent we want to go from 0.2 percent to 25 percent that's a huge increase. They're not ready to take it. So they don't have the capacity so we have to invest in the capacity. Now some organizations are from another family from others we've been trying to do this for the past decade or decades trying to do this but this is something that we need to be ready. So we need to change the dynamic. This can't be like it was after World War two. There was a feeling after World War two that we needed humanitarian principles humanitarian law and most of the people discussing it were white. People in the south majority of them were under colonial rule. This was their opportunity 70 years later to come and discuss humanitarian principles at this convention. So I think it was important and it's been two years of consultation. So one thing that we really liked about this conference and I was there in Istanbul is that we were invited to the table. So many people feel in the past we weren't invited to the table and we were I feel very positive very positive. I know our colleagues and doctors without borders weren't there but traditionally they are invited to these meetings. Many players from the south are not invited to these meetings. So for them it was an opportunity to have their voice heard. For us here in America we really have to question ourselves what is our purpose. Are we here to receive funding take our cart then send it to our partners overseas or are we here to do something more than that. Really is it only that we are we the best people to really decide what the local decisions are on the ground. Now I'm going to put my faith based head on. It was wonderful that faith based organizations were involved. There was one main session to do with faith. There was some side panel discussions. In the past many of us felt that we weren't being taken seriously and we were deliberately being sidelined. So it was nice that we were included. I see Jean up there from joint learning initiatives and we people keep on asking yes but this stuff you're doing do you have any evidence for it. So at this conference a joint learning initiative produced documents evidence based of how each of the core functions that we were talking about at WHS how faith based organizations are involved. I myself am a result of one of those faith based organizations projects. I was born in a Christian hospital in Pakistan Holy Mission Hospital in Sialkot Pakistan. I'm fully aware about the amazing network of hospitals faith based that we have in America and around the world of different faiths. So I think it's important for us to not just talk with people but where are we going moving forward as we're being more inclusive. Many people in the north may not be that religious but many people in the south are. So I want to come back to what I said earlier about a bridge. We need to recognize our differences but work together on what we have in common. And that's why I'm excited. I'm very aware of all of the conflicts more and more conflicts and many of these and I'm going to put my Muslim hat on so I covered a few hats. So now my Muslim hat. Many of these countries have Muslim majorities. The Muslim world is in pain and the victims of the atrocities are seen as the perpetrators. The way that we are in this country demonizing Syrians in the last few months and the last year it took us decades to do that with the Palestinians. We know the Palestinians are treated like most of the human beings. We know that here in America but the way that is tinged with the Syrians so this is an opportunity for us to hopefully make some changes. There's a whole political debate of course taking place on the sidelines and what you may have noticed is going on in this country a general election that we are heading towards that is going to be very interesting with a lot of these issues being raised there. I will come back to you Mr Khan about the issue of being an Islamic charity and the problems that you face but I think that part of the problem with the war in Syria is also that people feel there isn't really anything they can do to help. I've heard that certainly from many of my cousins in the Netherlands. I'm half Dutch and they say you know yeah we read the headlines but you know what can we do beyond donating five dollars here and there. We feel helpless and I think that that has been also one of the issues with raising funds for Syria is that people see no went to it as opposed to a natural disaster where people feel okay you can donate this much and in six months villages will be rebuilt and we can we can move on. But Mr Sal I want to turn to you just staying focused on the start of this conversation with the World Humanitarian Summit. You know what role can the US should the US play to lead the international community towards making sure that these commitments made at the summit towards making sure that these efforts to reform the system really happen or is the US today in a position as some may believe where you know it should learn to share the system better instead of leading it. Thank you I certainly the US is the largest humanitarian donor and we take that responsibility very seriously that not only that we provide a lot of funds but that we do try to lead on a number of these issues and and the ones that were highlighted at the conference. Certainly of trying to make not only more aid but better aid. Yeah even the hashtag what's it reform aid reshape aid reshape aid because we think that's critically important and that we can take a leadership role as as the largest donor and so we're doing a number of things on that both in terms of the the use of our funds but also the the way that the coordination you know is is implemented so part of that is as Roy was talking about and and Anwar about providing more assistance to local organizations but also that even within the system that we do it in a more coordinated fashion we think that that's a big part of it that you need to have a coordinated needs assessment and a coordinated implementation of that that so that means both in terms of the donors better coordinating so we're going to change and try to work more toward things like a common reporting platform for donors rather than each one having to respond on their own we're looking at a better integration between humanitarian and and development programs which we think is is critical that we make better use of the resources we have and try to get at the root causes and so that often means that you've got to go after some development issues and I think we made some major progress on that at the summit a lot of discussion about that and so you know in a number of ways I think we can take leadership role in providing a a voice for those kind of issues on the humanitarian law issue that and norms that was raised we do think more needs to be done and maybe even could have been done it was difficult in the in this conference because of the nature of the conference one of the strengths was the multi-sectoral multi groups of actors there but maybe the the weakness is then when you don't have an inner governmental you can't really bring strong commitments we did with teeth yes so we did put out a statement on on international humanitarian law and norms and we got 47 other countries to sign up to it but that's something we need to take the lead on moving forward and I think with our summit coming up at the UN General Assembly is one way to push forward some of those issues I want to follow up with a question on the system and then dive deeper into some of the other issues and the question is for for all of you feel free to to chime in you know how do we turn this massive system of diverse actors of local organizations international organizations UN organizations a system that is quite entrenched with some people who feel quite comfortable in their jobs with huge overheads with the idea that the West comes with the aid and the rest receives and countries like Russia and China that are you know perhaps only now coming to the realization then perhaps they too have a responsibility I'm not going to get into the role that Russia is playing today in in in Syria but just hearing about an event yesterday here at USIP about China coming to the realization that perhaps it should be concerned about the responsibility to protect is the system too entrenched I mean what is it going to require to make it more nimble and effective well maybe I'll jump in on that one um I think apart from the particular issues I mentioned maybe in the opening comment I think one of the the big issues for Oxfam going into the the summit was a belief that the humanitarian system if we refer to it that way which has been led by the United Nations a very since really the ends of the Second World War and the construction of the United Nations agencies is perhaps not fit for purpose for the 21st century and that it needs a radical overhaul and it needs a radical overhaul in for a variety of different reasons not the least of which is as Nancy said we are facing 10 humanitarian crises historic we've seen the largest just you know mass migration since the Second World War and it may only be the tip of the iceberg we're facing a climate challenge that actually is not a something that's coming down the road it's real it's happening it's driving migration today um we're seeing the you know in some sense collapsing of our of agricultural systems in some countries which is actually forcing people to leave because actually rainfall is irregular drought is more frequent and people are not finding that they can make a livelihood so they have to look for a livelihood elsewhere so we may see in the next two decades um migration on a scale we've never we can't even imagine in the face of that can a large bureaucracy with the headquarters in New York and Geneva manage that or do we have to rethink the model entirely and that's why this whole issue of participation of local partners is critical and um thinking about the role of governments and there and how well equipped they are to deal with this um as leaders exercising leadership at the national level we can no longer accept the notion that the future is about the big humanitarian machine arriving two weeks after the disaster and saving everybody's life and bypassing the local actors if not crushing them entirely in the process which to some degree has happened in a number of these cases in the past so we've got to think about a system where there are going to be cases where we're going to need an international response and large-scale operational capability let's not deny that but let's figure out when and where and how we need that let's figure out how we de-stress the system such that we build local capacity I mean one of the interesting things when you look at this issue of local capacity you find that the investment in local capacity is on where I said now um in local capacity building and preparedness um if you look at what's going into the un system is minuscule 1.84 percent if you look at you know cash programming it's only something you know less than 5 percent um even even uh Ban Ki-moon only called for you know get it let's get to 1 percent in terms of these investment levels in the future um for some aspects of local capacity building we've got to be much more ambitious um in what donor money's out there going to local capacity building we've also got to actually enlist governments to think more creatively where they can um produce domestic resource mobilization in other words produce their own resources and invest in preparedness and resilience at the country level um in collaboration with some of these international initiatives so there's a lot of creativity that's got to go into the rethinking the model I think it also maybe just one final point I think we're at an inflection point in the international development and aid community in a number of different respects aid money is probably flatlining relative to foreign aid investment and and local domestic tax acquisition and so in other words where the funds come from to do this may not just be from ODA they may have to come from local sources the other important point Tom made is we've got to break down this division between humanitarian work and development work we've got to see sort of a continuity here between you know an emergency which is not an aberration but particularly with climate change slow onset emergencies are our development challenge and we've got to break down those silos and see a more natural relationship and and flexible use of funding is something that we can do within a system that's actually dramatically reformed but but aren't some organizations opposed to the blurring of those lines um that's msf's concern well I think well I mean on the msf issue I would say the following first of all msf like many of our organizations was founded with a passionate concern for what I guess we would refer to as the humanitarian imperative which is we want to save lives our that's why we were created we in our case during the Second World War you know we basically were trying to basically were founded as an effort to get food into Greece in 1942 after the after the German withdrawal when there was famine across Greece and we continue to be passionately as well as every humanitarian in this room committed to saving lives that being said climate change poses a different kind of challenge that is has a humanitarian dimension to it but also has a development dimension to it so the old categories and the old approaches maybe don't serve today so while I can respect msf's desire to actually you know deliver impartial neutral assistance to victims of conflict wherever they may be on the on the one hand I also think we need to be thinking creatively about new humanitarian challenges in the 21st century that are not the classic ones and that require a whole different approach and what how do local organizations smaller organizations I mean you're a bit you're not very small but you know you're not the UN you know how do you cope with these changes how do you fit in how much can you adapt and what can you propose in terms of new ways of of working we've adapted I at our size we're not big enough we're not too big to fail we're small enough to fail we adapt or that it's very simple and I can talk from my own experience here with the situation here in America there are only two offices of Islamic relief I've seen around the world that for security reasons do not put the name on their buildings one is in Syria and one is in Alexandria just outside of DC these are the only two Islamic relief offices around the world for security reasons that don't put the name on there we have to adapt we have to work with some people who may not want to work with us so to us it really is you have to adapt and I just want to go off what was mentioned earlier I am very optimistic I have to be what's the other option I have to be optimistic I have seen changes I know that when we I wouldn't be invited in gatherings like this a few years ago as somebody who was from a forget Muslim organization that wasn't going to happen but for even a faith-based organization so I see more inclusive of now than I saw before when we were talking about cash programs people were telling us we were crazy 20 years ago now they say it's fashionable but some of us was talking about years ago we were told to be quiet no you you guys and your Zaka and your yes but we were explaining from a theological point of view we thought it was very important to empower these widows by giving them money and we were told no no you're just being lazy you don't know how to do the work properly that's not the way the big boys do the work so there's a lot of changes and I'm very as I said optimistic about those changes the shift that's being done we saw at WHS someone said to me what difference do you think was going to happen in this meeting I said in this meeting no this is a big party to celebrate everything we've done in the previous two years and the effect of this function is what it's going to have moving forward so I believe that talk about cash programs the talk about innovative new ways of money coming in the talk for example how do you bring new money and how do you appeal to donors to to keep giving we haven't had a problem with that no we haven't had a problem with that you just do a better job you work harder you work harder and for both of you pray harder you think of innovative ways we went from zero to 60 million dollars cash from entirely private sources so we knew that we weren't very popular if we were going to try to get institutional funding with our name so it forced us to be really innovative so we may do puppet shows to raise money we may do fashion shows to raise money we may sit down and do religious conferences to raise money right now one of our largest sources of funding for Yemen is from Catholic Relief Services so the Catholics are giving us more money than any Muslim organization in America for Yemen and we're giving them money for other projects we're working with World Vision we're working with Adventist right now to work projects in Ecuador being done for Catholic Relief Services so I would say that when you have when you're under pressure that's an opportunity for you to either say die or become stronger and a recognition of our shared humanity of course this inclusive conversation which happened in Turkey Mr. Stahl do you think that the system needs to be completely ripped apart and put back together or is there some way that it can be reformed enough that it can address those 21st century challenges of protracted conflicts and climate change and crises on a level that we haven't seen before yeah probably ripped apart is a little too much but certainly some improvements need to be made and and I think some steps were made in that direction at this conference but more needs to be done among other things the existing system needs to be made more flexible more coordinated you're breaking down stovepipes not only between humanitarian and development but within the humanitarian and as you mentioned common reporting platforms more coordination exactly coordination both in the implementation side and even in the donor side and but also we need to focus on root causes okay much more and and local building local capacity so all that needs to be a part of the system now and then the financing part that we were just talking about becomes very critical too and again being more inclusive looking for non-traditional donors and the private sector I think that's a another part that we haven't sort of tapped into yet and not only I mean certain there's a certain aspect of corporate social responsibility that you can tap into but also private sector can bring a lot of innovation a lot of energy a lot of new ideas that that is in their business interests shall we say and I think we can do that interests right I mean of course we want to appeal to people's humanitarian concerns but if you put it in terms of interesting it's going to be bad for your business you need to be more corporate socially responsible that that's right yeah and and again that often then goes back to less about the humanitarian response and more about preparation early warning building local capacity doing those things ahead of time so that you reduce the need for the response at the end and and and that's saving lives as well you know I think sometimes we we unfortunately get into this well humanitarian assistance is only saving lives and development is not saving lives but of course you know building capacity and building systems in place to respond to disasters before they get out of hand is also saving lives I want to talk a little bit more about local actors there are advantages to empowering local actors there are also concerns in countries like Syria and countries like Sudan where local actors may be under pressure from the government they may not have the independence to give aid where where is needed you know we're acutely seeing that unfold in in Syria what can you tell us a little bit about each one of you what you think of that point Ray why don't we start with you well I do think I mean I think this whole shift to more emphasis on local empowerment and local capacity building is first of all it's a big mind shift mindset shift for the for the community particularly for the big bureaucracies that have not given this that much attention and and I do think we need to to recognize that and and actually have this discussion about the fact that this is a necessary change but it's not necessarily easy change second thing is I think we have to recognize that there are institutional actors out there who are ready to collaborate not only not for profit organizations at the national level who as partners but also governments so oxfam for example has a program in central america you know dealing with natural disasters in an area that's very where these are very frequent where we have four governments involved in a collaboration mayors involved and not for profit sector all meeting collaboratively to talk about preparedness and disaster risk reduction in that region and how to invest wisely in in doing the work well I think critical to actually you know minimize I suppose you might say some of the risks if you will that have to do with corruption if I can put you know put that word on the table or political or political manipulation well I think on the on the issue of sort of risk of loss of funds whichever you know governments worry about and congress worries about I think we have to do have we have to be very clear-eyed about doing good risk assessment up front about what partners we're working with and I think a lot of our organizations have got have gotten pretty good at that we know which organizations are solid have a track record have good boards good governance and are well managed and are going to manage our resources well I mean oxfam oxfam itself supports 4,000 not-for-profit organizations around the world and we've been funding many of those organizations for literally decades so we have a sense of what who the who the the fair-minded actors are on the on the larger issue of potential for manipulation co-optation or political pressure I think there's a larger discussion that's going on right now about the role of civil society organizations and the space needed for them to do their work properly and this was actually this was in discussion at the summit as part of a larger discussion that's going on around the role of civil society around the world and the fact that we're in this paradoxical moment where civil society is playing an ever more important role gaining more voice and presence at important meetings and yet at the national level the civil society space is closing it's closing not only for advocacy which is where it started but actually even maybe around issues of access and service delivery where the definitions of what the role of these civil society actors can be is being prescribed by governments through legislation that deals with their you know organizational mandates as well as with their ability to use the internet and a variety of other constraints that are actually undermining the the ability of these citizen organizations to really contribute. Tom and can you chime in on the advantages and disadvantages of working with with local actors? Certainly I mean we've already identified building local capacity as an issue and that's something that we need to focus on because a lot of these local organizations don't have capacity and sometimes I think we need to be a little more open to the idea of working through larger organizations who then will support local organizations and but they can be structured in such a way that their job really is to build capacity and support local organizations. Secondly something we haven't talked about maybe and that is that the vast majority and and increasingly over time of these disasters whether they're natural or conflict related happen in fragile states and there's an initiative called the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States that is is an interesting model that I think we need to put more effort into and that one is you have a group of self-identified fragile states who agree with the international community to a set of standards that they will try to meet okay in terms of the way there they operate even things like the role of civil society in in their community and a number of rule of law issues and so on financial and and and so on and and then the international community can work with them to build that capacity to build those systems within their Somalia is probably our best example of a country that's moved quite well in that in that direction other countries not so much but that's a model for building local capacity in national governments and in in such a way that they actually engage with the local civil society and I might say you know what's sort of interesting maybe paradoxically with what Roy was talking about the the closing spaces is that it may be partly as a reaction to the rise of civil society and the empowerment of civil society that's 20 30 years ago they wouldn't need to put in these these restrictive laws because there was no civil society or it was very cowed now they're standing up speaking out and and we need to find ways to support them but hopefully it's it's a trend that over time is moving in the right direction that's fascinating about the the New Deal and obviously prevention is is the best remedy and if there was a way to solve the war in Syria there'd be so much less concern about the long-term needs of humanitarian assistance there and where you want to say something and then we're going to go to Ray and start going to conversation two questions yes governments may tell decide who gets food and who starts to death we have seen that in Syria this is really one of the worst examples we've seen of this we're talking many evil sieges are being dire they're starving populations out we're going back so in many things we are going forward but sometimes we're going back so in the case of Syria we've seen that humanitarian principle humanitarian law no one's holding them accountable in Syria the Syrian government for what's going on over there but at the same time I would still say that we still need to do the capacity building we need to definitely be worried about corruption but we shouldn't assume just because people are of color and poor that they corrupt we many countries have different ways of being corrupt as far as for us over here we need to improve the capacity examples I would give with Yemen and Somalia Islamically through a partner organization humanitarian forum we set up local organizations that would hope to improve the capacity inside Mogadishu and inside Yemen and one of the ladies the lady who's the head of humanitarian forum in Yemen spoke at the WHF and she said I cannot afford to go by humanitarian principles I don't have the luxury to do that I have to take money from one of the belligerents on one side they're bombing them on the other side they're the only people giving them food or their people will die so you can talk nicely about not taking sides in a conflict but when that's the only source of food we get we don't have the luxury you have the luxury of having donors that hold you accountable and you can decide to turn some donations down we don't have those luxuries and the lines really do blur in a conflict but talking about Syrian local actors you know organizations like the white helmets are doing heroic work and there are so many civil society groups that are doing great work on the ground as well that you know are the unsung heroes Ray I'll give you the last word before we go to questions well I just briefly wanted to build on some of Tom's comments which actually I thought were really interesting in terms of how the aid community is trying to kind of assist civil society and build local capacity some of the and the funding for that interestingly is coming out I think from both the humanitarian side of USA aid as well as from the development side but I think but it's illustrative illustrative of the fact that to some degree I now I'm going to say things that Tom can't say but I can that you know to some degree the bureaucracy is in the aid of in the aid business the donor organizations to some degree are limited by this what their structures provide in terms of fundings for particular kind of activities and this is why this whole issue of great creating greater flexibility by breaking down this divide between development and humanitarian and seeing this is kind of a part of a continuum of work is more important is very important as kind of a redesign principle and so that's the first point the second point is you know if we take all overseas development assistance that's funded around the world now only point four tenths of one percent is actually funding disaster risk reduction from the development accounts which is very little money if Tom and his colleagues want to actually be working on with governments on building local capacity we need to get that number up the secretary general called for it to go to one percent we think it should go to at least five percent that's another big jump in the way the financing is allocated but we think of this greater flexibility in the development funding accounts those folks on the development side can collaborate more effectively with those folks on the humanitarian side also I just want to underline that there is a piece of legislation called the stride act which is actually you know being discussed in congress and there's some sponsors for it and stride stands for stemming the risks and impacts of disasters and emergencies or this and then the acronym of course stride act but the principle here is actually to allow the aid system and our and us i did particularly to have greater flexibility to do precisely that to move to use aid dollars in particular cases to build local capacity and to fund preparedness and disaster risk reduction work in ways that they haven't been able to do before so a little bit more discretion gets a little bit more creativity and a little bit more innovation in the system and that's what we need great we're going to open the floor to questions there are mics being passed around if you could raise your hand if you have a question please introduce yourself and do keep your questions short so we can get to as many speakers as possible I see were you raising your hand sir no up there please thanks very much jean duff with the joint learning initiative on faith and local communities there was a lot to be excited about at the summit and I think the mind shift that race speaks to is something that we should see as a great opportunity picking up on on some of anwar's comments I think we were very excited to see a tremendous growth in collaboration and confidence and presence among the very diverse religious community local global across faith lines if the panel would turn their good brains and experience to cracking the code of resistance within the bureaucracy writ large our experience was one of great disappointment that in spite of the sessions that anwar spoke of including a magnificent session at which the patriarch of Istanbul spoke and many of the world's religious leaders spoke about the deep and sustained engagement of religious networks as first responders and humanitarian response in spite of the evidence that was presented that anwar also referred to that in the end in the chair summary for example there is not one word of reference to the capacity and the necessity of engaging religious and faith networks as local responders so we have a long way to go in penetrating the bureaucracy and in moving that mind shift and I'd like the panel to comment and to to give some guidance on how we should now move thank you who is ready to crack the code well where does this resistance come from do you think well I think there's I think there's probably a variety of reasons I mean there's a lot of historic reasons why across faith-based boundaries you know communities have been at odds with one another and there's you know there's residuals of those conflicts but I think what we have to look for if we're going to crack the code if you will are what the private sector would refer to as first movers and where do we find those first movers well I think we're fortunate right now to have a pope who actually has been a first mover on a whole variety of issues and I don't think it would be that difficult a challenge to actually bring forward this issue to him in a way that actually and he's been working across boundaries I think religious boundaries in ways that have been extraordinary not only within the Christian faith but also across boundaries with other faiths and I'm aware of some other things he's been doing on economic development and growth issues and inequality questions where this he's he's engaging in multi-stakeholder dialogues in the Vatican in ways that we've never seen before with any other pope and in some cases you know jointly with the church with the Anglican church in the UK but what we haven't seen is kind of a you know kind of a large interfaith initiative where we're getting the pope plus his equivalence across other the other faith communities coming together to say they're going to have their humanitarian summit and what would that look like and what would they commit to collectively to compliment the commitments that were at the summit in Istanbul in a way that actually would demonstrate in some sense the commitments and actions they're already taking the faith community is a bedrock of a lot of what we do as humanitarian organizations the Quakers you know the Catholic Church CRS Islamic Relief they're everywhere in our community I think it's a question of do we want to have them give voice to this agenda for reform and play a role in helping us all within the humanitarian community drive it on what an interfaith meeting on humanitarian aid no we've been doing this we've been talking about this this has been going on again this is something new it wasn't there before I would say right there's no equivalent to the pope by the way the pope is the pope there's no problem as well someone from the Muslim world we don't believe in that but he we love him but there's nobody equivalent to that and we have to recognize that different faiths have different structures but what I would say is I know when I was at WHS Jean was talking about bringing a summit next year on interfaith work and the Muslim organizations that within humanitarian forum are going to we're talking about doing their summit and we're saying how could we link our summit with the work that Jean is doing how could we link our Muslim summit with the interfaith summit and we encourage our friends of other faiths to do their summit but then we come together and we share that information we were involved with the WHS for about two years we funded in many different countries you wouldn't expect the Islamic relief to be involved in consultations in Norway Italy Germany you'd expect us to be in Tunisia Yemen and others but we were in other countries and I know here in America I believe it was through interaction I was involved with WHS consultation here in Washington DC so we are working through faith-based initiatives we are trying to do that but we're not getting we're not getting the recognition and I would once you know Jean let me know how to crack the code but what I would say is I would say before we weren't we're knocking on the door we're loud at the table but we're not able to eat but at least I would say we allowed at the table and we made our way to the door so I would say that it goes back to your previous question when you have bureaucracies that have been built up over decades either you can do a revolution or evolution okay and I don't want to make any comments but many of our hearts were broken what we saw in the out of spring and the revolutions there so I'm not saying revolution is wrong I'm just stating that my own personal philosophy is more evolution and you have to explain to people who hate you who want to kill you that you want to help them I mean just recently in Louisiana we're trying to distribute aid and we got kicked out by the sheriff of one of the counties in Louisiana because we were Muslims and we're not meant to be giving out cash cards we're not meant to be helping people who are Muslim and we just recently got kicked out what was the aid program we have a disaster response team we're working in partnership with the American Red Cross they were furious it's the second time now in America we have been trying people trying to shut down civil space because we are helping people who are Muslim helping people who don't look like us and we're trying to do human to human even then we're talking about shutting down civil space in other countries it's happening here but what I would say back to the question about the code is it's going to take a long time Tom is there a resistance to to and in the west where society is becoming more secular has been particularly in Europe is there a resistance to you know faith-based organizations even though in the US it's been a long tradition with the Quakers with the missionaries yeah no I don't think there's a resistance certainly we're working you know with Islamic relief with many other religious organizations of various you know of faiths and there is an issue of building capacity of the the the organizations themselves getting sort of more involved and more engaged and on the ground we're seeing some real success you know in the Central African Republic great work between the Muslim and Christian leaders there in Nigeria they're doing that in South Sudan we're working with the leaders there now they have their own problems of capacity of you know often even the the the ethnic or other religious divides within the country are reflected on them as well and so we have to find ways to work around that but I think I agree with my colleague that an evolutionary process is the right way to go but a conscious effort a conscious effort to to move in that direction this question in the front if you could get the microphone here or perhaps from the other side might be easier two microphones coming your way if you could please introduce good morning Maureen White from the Foreign Policy Institute at SICE and thank you all for being here today it's been very interesting I have one question about the progress at the summit it was a UN summit and we talk about reform reforming bureaucracies the UN of course is the biggest bureaucracy in this process six almost half or maybe more than half of all humanitarian assistance goes to six UN agencies what indications did you see at the summit or do you foresee in the future of the UN agency's willingness to reform themselves to address some of the things that you've talked about today sure go ahead yeah I mean can an agency that can an institution that needs reform to be reformed itself can it lead the path towards reform it's it's it's a very difficult question and I think we certainly would like to see more and that's something that we as the USAID and the US government and working with other donors and international organizations are pressing on that issue and specifically on these issues of a more coordinated approach both in terms of needs assessment of the strategic plan and the implementation and that's going to take strong leadership from the UN itself as you mentioned I think that does come back to us in the international donor community because we provide the funding for the UN so we we have some leverage and and and that's something that we want to continue to work toward we're not there yet I do think that the Sherpa process we haven't talked about that and the Grand Bargain okay that there's some opportunities in there that we need to take advantage of and so some real follow-up is going to be needed from this summit specifically on that issue as well as others we do have the UN General Assembly summits both the US one on refugees but then there's also a broader one that the UN General Assembly president is leading and that will give us some opportunities this can be a long-term process and and probably we need to have a sort of an iterative approach not all or nothing at once but how do we start to break down some of those silos some of those resistance and it's going to be a very critical time because we have a new UN secretary general we'll have a new WHO director and and several important positions are going to be turning as well as within many of the donor countries so I think this is a time to move in that direction Ray you wanted to say something yeah um well I think a careful reading of the laws of organizational development would suggest that bureaucracies seldom reform themselves um just saying um and um and maybe since I've been around since 1966 um tell me your secret for your small looks I just offer a quick historical perspective actually the UN has been challenged before on um on the efficiency and effectiveness of its work and one example I just offer is the aftermath of the Rwanda crisis in the aftermath of the Rwanda crisis there was there was a mess on the ground there was a big mess on the ground the UN and the agencies were all fighting to get in there to the camps um in eastern Congo um there was very little coordination on the ground they were also fighting with one another to get funding you know get more and more funding from the donors there was no coordination of the funding mechanism the UN leadership in New York was extraordinarily weak and it was it was an awful situation and what happened actually in that particular moment is the international NGO community of that era actually had for the first time a meeting with the Security Council members to talk about this disastrous situation in the Rwanda in the Rwandan aftermath and and this is during during um Kofi Annan's tenure and he um realized that there he needed to take a stronger hand there had to be much better coordination um on a whole lot of different fronts of of the agencies themselves and how they were led and what their roles were and who came in and who didn't come come in to particular emergency situations and out of that OCHA was born now actually OCHA was actually a significant improvement in the way this whole system worked and it's a good example of what you might call you know incrementalist bureaucratic reform um that got us to where we are now and then in the course of the last 10 years there's also been the creation of the cluster um frameworks that are actually actually driven a little bit down into the system coordination among the different sort of sectoral actors in the system that's also been a good thing but I think what we're talking about today is maybe something a little bit more radical which has to do with the system the UN system giving up a certain amount of its leadership role its autonomy and its funding that's a tough ask and that's a big political ask and that ask has to be pushed for by citizens pushing their governments to actually change the way they're approaching this issue and the way they're talking to the UN about its role and the way they're talking to recipient governments about their responsibilities to actually care for their citizens invest in local capacity building create stronger ministries for preparedness and so on and so forth this so this when we talk about systemic reform we've got to talk about it on on multiple levels we got to talk about multiple levels of financing we've got to talk about a different mandate and role for the UN um and it's maybe a little bit beyond the sort of the incrementalist you know reforms we've seen over the last few years um but I think what we learned from the Rwanda cases it does require some political push and a bit of a jolt to the bureaucratic system I'm not shocked right we have time for one possibly two more questions right here the gentleman with the tie and then why don't we take the second question behind him uh the lady with the black um top as well and then we can answer both questions hi my name is matcha lasik I'm a franklin fellow at USAID my interest is in refugee camps and so my question to the panelists with a 2.5 trillion dollar annual budget deficit for the sustainable development goals how do we start humanitarian responses looking forward to long-term sustainable development would you pass the microphone to the lady behind you thank you thank you my name is lucy and I'm from easy the relief fund my question is to us a ID um what is your project for easy these and do you have any I'm sorry could you repeat that do you have any projects for easy these you know since 2014 they were facing genocide and genocide has been recognized in us uh government so my question is easy these excuse me sorry yeah tom do you want to uh okay um yeah and then we'll we'll get the input as well on on the question of of refugees which will be addressed as well in the second panel sure yeah they'll definitely get into that um maybe I'll I'll take the the second question first and then get to the first one as well um certainly the plight of the Yazidis has has been uh you know highly publicized and very important to us aid we I was my last job before this one as I was the USA director in Baghdad in Iraq and I traveled up there to Erbil and that area many times uh and met with Yazidi leaders as well as other uh leaders in the in the community we don't have a special program just for Yazidis USAID can't work that way we have to work based on need now of course the need of the Yazidis is very high so a large portion of our assistance is going there both in terms of making sure that the actual humanitarian needs are met food and shelter and water and so on but even psychosocial so we've initiated special psychosocial programs for people who've been badly affected by atrocities and Yazidis are definitely getting a big part of that assistance and we continue to follow that I've met with Yazidi leaders here in America as well to make sure that our assistance is is there on the the broader issue of sort of the relief to development in a way is what you were after again you know I think that that's so critical I've mentioned it several times in in addressing root causes building capacity all the way from early warning to preparedness to disaster risk reduction things like safety nets and so on and finding ways to to build good local capacity so that when a shock happens whether it's a natural disaster or a conflict related you can also have conflict mitigation programs built in I was just in northern Kenya a couple weeks ago and we have a program there in an area that has seen successive problems with drought and conflict among pastoralist groups okay and so in our development programs we're building in conflict mitigation as well and sometimes that conflict is between local community and refugees and and you can build in systems to get people to talk together and and address those things while they're before they get out of hand so that's important I mean there are funding gaps there there's a funding gap I mean again we have to a small one I mean actually I mean just from USA 15 years ago the OFTA budget was a little over 200 million this past year it was 2.4 billion so our funding has increased but still not keeping up with the needs so we need to find more donors but also better more effective use of the resources we have and and that means a more integrated coordinated system but also you know I go back to then addressing root causes before they get out of hand which I think will reduce the cost we've seen that in Ethiopia with the recent drought that a lot of our early warning mitigation safety net programs have actually reduced the cost of responding to the humanitarian assistance and I think that can be true also for for the refugee program and where you had some great energy and innovative ideas about how to keep a people from giving money so we're counting on you for those to find those few billion few billion dollars but I want to give you the final word and then we're going to move on to the next panel yeah well just to build on on Tom's point there is an argument for more effective use of aid and there's been a big debate on this it's been going on outside the humanitarian community that has incorporated the humanitarian community to some degree that's what the modernizing foreign assistance network here in Washington has been working on literally for the past eight years and one of the things we need in the United States is a new foreign aid bill that actually is for the 21st century and we need a political constituency to get behind that and that's and so hopefully with the new president and new governments new congress maybe we can push that kind of an agenda we're still living with the 1961 foreign aid act here in the United States it is out of date it is we need something new second point the the whole sustainable development goals initiative when it's an extraordinarily ambitious initiative it's it's a one that gives us a lot of hope and it gives us something to work on for the next 15 years we're not going to have the money if we if we rely on the traditional model we have to completely rethink the financing for development model and the meeting in Addis Ababa that occurred before the general assembly that approved the sustainable development goals had that debate and what was the conclusion of that debate the conclusion of that debate was ODA is more or less flatlining and we're not going to we're not going to fill that two and a half trillion gap with foreign aid funding however what if you actually look at foreign aid as a percent of foreign direct investment and the accumulation of resources at the national level through remittances equity investments private sector investments foreign aid is is eight percent of foreign direct investment and falling there's all this money in these new countries we have all these emergent economies they now have to assume some responsibility for their own development financing in their own countries what does that require that requires effective tax systems it requires better taxation of corporate presence in their countries better presence of better tax systems that are actually taxing their citizens that actually can with where you have an emerging middle class it can actually participate in financing development in those countries this model that's been around since the second world war it is this this is over we're at an inflection point it's a new ball game we've got to rethink the financing model do you want to say something Anwato to wrap us up it's really important to remember that there is more money outside of the traditional players i know when i was in Pakistan i think there was a telephone and they raised a hundred million us dollars in a few hours but we don't talk about that in america because we think they're poor people but they have big hearts so i think more and more we need local governments like in Pakistan to set up um their agencies so they can deal with it and there's a lot of money available and i agree with what the panelist said but we need to be more efficient we cannot be writing blank checks anymore and tap into these emerging economies and get countries like russia and china to perhaps feel a bit more responsibility this was a fantastic panel uh tom yes i'm seeing the countries like european sure and countries like Pakistan and india there's a lot of money there's more millionaires in mumbai than there are in new york that's the city with the most millionaires in the world is mumbai in india so it's it's nice about india russia and china but i'm saying there's a lot of money out there that we can talk to you thank you tom stahl anwar han ray oftenheiser round of applause thank you very much thank you for joining us don't go anywhere the next panel starts in just a few minutes thank you all kimmy panelists thank you so much for for this discussion very wonderful discussion we're going to do a quick transition to our second panel i'd like to invite our panelists here our second panel which will take a deeper dive in the the plight of the displaced and what can be done about it will be moderated by howard lefranke howard has been at the christian science monitors and has since 2001 and has been their diplomacy correspondent previously spent 12 years as a reporter in the field serving five years as the monitors paris bureau chief from 89 to 94 and as a latin-american correspondent in mexico's city from 94 to 2001 this time everyone would take their places thank you for all being here i i was at istanbul at the summit and covering the summit and you know i found many many inspiring innovations there was something called the innovation marketplace where there were hundreds really of of NGOs of of individuals bringing their ideas for for improving the lot of of the rising number of refugees and displaced people there as i say there were you know inspiring ideas really i think one of the one of the most touching things i saw was a actually it was a photo a photo exhibit where a photographer had dressed young palestinian girls in the in the uniforms of the careers they aspired to and so you had these pictures of of of a girl in an astronaut's outfit um a girl in a nurse's uniform a girl in um in a classroom of one in a pharmacy and one as a homemaker and uh you know it was it was it was um as i say inspiring um but the summit wrapped up with two things one a press conference by secretary general ban kimoon where he noted the absence as nancy mentioned of of of the world leaders of the top most powerful leaders from the summit and that that press conference was followed by a um a closing event with a chorus of refugee children from syria and i couldn't help but think that as they sang beautifully that that those leaders the the leaders of the security council should have been there the leaders of the g7 to hear those children because as as ban kimoon made the point and others that i spoke uh with at this innovation marketplace the point they made was it can't be about uh better and bigger band aids all the time the the need is uh constantly outs uh outsized um and the the point now the what has to happen now is prevention and um focusing more on um either preventing conflicts from happening as nancy noted with the great shift to um in humanitarian needs to um to addressing conflict and the the victims of conflict that the answer can no longer be just doing more and better humanitarian intervention but um actually conflict prevention and then when conflicts do arise conflict resolution and um so i i i'm hoping that today we're going to hear on our panel we're going to talk about this um this rising number of um of refugees and just this place people but also um what some of the answers are what needs to happen um not only to um to address their needs but to also um to reduce conflict to end conflict to prevent conflict and um i think we do have a couple of events coming up where maybe uh those leaders who were absent from the summit maybe they have a second chance and um so i think today um maybe on our panel we'll talk about some of those uh other events coming up and um what some of the steps um um um might that might be taken where um uh leaders together with uh organizations with uh the private sector may go in this uh critical area of crisis prevention um building resilient communities and um in in crisis and conflict resolution so i think we have a great panel here today um i'll start um here with uh Fadi Haliso uh Fadi is a native of Aleppo and has been providing relief and development assistance to refugees for a decade first to the Iraqi refugees who poured into Syria during the Iraq war and then more recently uh to Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Turkey through the relief organization that he co-founded uh Basme and Zaituna um then we have um Ann Richard Ann thank you for for being here Ann has served as assistant secretary of the state department's bureau of population refugees and migration since 2012 Ann has dedicated much of her career to government service serving in positions at the state department and at OMB but she has also filled some impressive shoes outside of government serving as vice president at the international crisis uh i'm sorry international rescue committee Ann playing a lead role on the team of experts that created the international crisis group and I think maybe Kim and I especially are hoping that Ann will provide a couple of scoops for us um on President Obama's initiative for a global refugee uh crisis summit um that will take place at the UN General Assembly in September next to Ann we have Elizabeth Ferris Elizabeth is putting her decades of experience in the humanitarian field to good work at her current post as senior advisor to the UN General Assembly's um high-level meeting I've now been told has now become a summit because of the number of um of um uh heads of state and government who have accepted to attend so what we will now call the summit meeting on addressing large movements of refugees and migrants and that's set for September 19th in New York uh President Obama's summit will then take place the next day on September 20th Elizabeth has deep experience on both the aid delivery and academic sides of the humanitarian aid system she's now a research professor at Georgetown school of foreign service and specializes in internal displacement at Brookings where she recently um published the provocatively titled paper serious humanitarian crisis and the failure to protect so thank you all for being here and I think I'd like to start if I may with uh with you Fadi and um just your decade of experience um not only um what you find uh works in addressing the needs of refugees but maybe if you have any clues as to where the international international community may go in terms of um building more resilient communities and and resolving conflict so that the needs don't continue to arise again and again thank you first of all let me start by saying I do not share the optimism that was on this panel before regarding the world humanitarian summit at all actually as from a Syrian point of view and as a Syrian with few of my colleagues we were quite disappointed of how things are going around Syria so we sent a letter to the summit entitled evolve or dissolve we because we feel we feel deeply disappointed by the failure of the humanitarian system in general and the international community to protect Syrians to protect the civilians and it seems that there is a deadlock a paralysis in this regard that nothing could happen uh in our discussions with politicians with secretary of state uh the the discussion came come to the point where do we should go to war with Russia to stop the bombardment of hospitals and the schools so yeah the scene is very disappointing on one hand on the other hands we keep going on from one conference to another summit to another workshop where the very amazing pledges are made in on behalf of the refugees on behalf of Syrians or for the humanitarian system but very little development is taking place at the contrary since last summer we've seen the closure of the borders in front of refugees especially the Syrians all the surrounding countries have shut down their borders uh Turkey also has closed the roads to Europe the borders inside Europe are being shut down so and meanwhile no real effort is being made in the surrounding countries to improve the life of refugees so the the talk about the resilience is for me a little bit out of its place because there is a lot of effort to be made beforehand there is a lot of nice talk about we heard in the previous panel about uh empowering local actors but the practice we've seen on the ground is very disappointing in this regard lately there was a report launched by local to global initiative around Syria mentioning that out of the 2.1 billion dollars spent on Syrian crisis in 2014 only 0.3 went directly to Syrian local humanitarian actors out of it only 9.3 percent was indirect funding and indirect funding comes with restrictions when it comes through NGOs it means mainly that local humanitarian actors are deprived from the overhead and which means they are not able to sustain themselves to build their capacity and to graduate from these capacity building schools that we are not able to graduate for from so it is a vicious circle for many of us we've seen that there is a lot of progress to be made but first of all there is a need for a political decision to be made it was really disappointing to see the world leaders absent from the summit it was like if the humanitarians were talking to each other where they were celebrating their work and themselves but there is no hope for real change what is the what is the purpose of having summits and pledges and commitments if there is no one who able to make the countries accountable to what they are committing what they are pledging if there are security resolutions made to protect the civilians but no one is making the effort so yes so um Ann do you think I realize you're not the president but was this this uh clearly there was this plea all the way from the top from Secretary General Ban for for global leadership especially in this area of of prevention and conflict prevention and was that message heard and how is that going and if it was and how does that how does the the president summit is the president summit just a bandaid or how does um that uh summit um which you know has uh you know a great title and um you know looks to address what is a you know this uh burgeoning uh number of refugees uh how is that um going to address this issue and and again this but this crucial element of world leadership was that heard um well I was able to attend the world humanitarian summit as part of our delegation which was composed of people led by Gail uh Smith the administrator of USAID people with decades of experience working on foreign assistance on development and humanitarian assistance and it even included a couple of uh veterans of humanitarian operations overseas so a lot of people who have been in and out of government working with the top-notch non-governmental organizations and Gail's case starting advocacy groups and so I think if you look at the actual people who the US sent it was an impressive group who know a lot about the issues as opposed to people who um have um uh a role in the photo op uh that takes place in about five minutes of the summit the summit was a 12 ring circus I'd say um there were Hollywood stars there was media there was an exhibition space with um a lot of um hard working thoughtful people trying to surface smart ideas um there was much more going on than any one person could attend and that was a frustration because in terms of the issues that my bureau cares about that cares about refugees migration um and also reproductive health needs of women you know I could have attended 16 events at once and and had something to say or learn from them um and so I found it uh a frustrating place to be in terms of trying to be everywhere at once um and so we tried to make the best use of our time showing up speaking up getting messages out we had two to three minutes to to speak at most of these events messages that maybe to this audience is not you know radically new we should protect women and girls but that need to be heard by some of those governments and some of those leaders from parts of the world where women and girls are not being protected so I thought that we um were smart in how we approached it and how we used our time um in terms of um so if if if as you say the the people who know the issue and um as opposed to those who would be in the photo up uh we know who that is um but uh the people if the the um the officials who know the issues were there how are they going to carry that forward uh first of all towards September what is the purpose of the summit in September well let's talk about that because um this is I think the president's decision about how he uses his time is where is he gonna make the biggest impact and he's decided that looking at the global refugee immigration crisis that's going on today that he could organize an event in New York in September where real change would be accomplished in terms of raising real money getting actual places for refugees to be resettled to get to safety in other countries and then also getting countries that host a lot of refugees to adopt policies to make uh the lives of those refugees um more fulfilling in the places to which they've fled so they get more kids in school and get um uh the ability for refugees to work and take care of themselves and take care of their families and live as much as a normal life as possible um Fadi you know I can't argue with some of the things he's reporting about what he sees out there in terms of people civilians not being protected in war zones and international uh humanitarian law and humanitarian principles not being observed inside Syria and in uh places in Iraq that are being overrun by ISIL for example uh but this is a more this event in September September 20th the leaders summit on refugees would be an opportunity to encourage countries to actually do more than they have before the entire event is modeled on a peacekeeping summit that the president led last September where countries were encouraged to provide more troops more equipment and more funding for peacekeeping and that was very successful and so building on that event that became then the model for this year's event this year's event though I think it's a tougher sell it's a tougher sell I'm you know talking to foreign government officials who host lots and lots of refugees and have for decades and asking them to do more and they're coming back and saying well you know why do you care now and not in the past and what are you going to do to help us do more and so this is the sort of the flavor of the conversation that we're having right now with with governments around the world and so Elizabeth the day before President Obama's summit there will be another summit and could you tell us a little bit about that how that shaping up and how that is how that fits into this effort really spearheaded by the Secretary General to to not only to address but to do better at addressing the needs of refugees and the millions of displaced there are a lot of summits going on this year and I think they represent kind of a collective yearning to fix something we haven't got it right and so we're trying in the UN General Assembly Summit on the 19th of September to build on the World Humanitarian Summit which was a different animal as Nancy pointed out it was a different kind of meeting the 19th of September summit will be an intergovernmental process negotiations on the outcome document started an hour and 11 minutes ago they have about two months to put together a recommendations a resolution a declaration which the plan at least is will be adopted by consensus on the morning of the 19th this is a tricky diplomatic process I'm involved with the secretariat which prepared the Secretary General's report that made a lot of recommendations which we hope will be taken up by the diplomats and will result in some concrete outcome we're working very closely with those organizing President Obama's summit which focuses on commitments by individual states which is crucial but we're trying to focus on the system you know a million people arrived in Europe in the past year this should not be a crisis Europe has 550 million people if our systems for sharing responsibility and being able and prepared to respond to this kind of influx were in place this should not be a crisis in developing the report and preparing for the summit like you we've heard from a lot of governments who say yeah Europe has a crisis what about us in Kenya or what about us in Central African Republic or Central America and so trying to balance the urgency that the world has seized upon in the case of Syria and and people coming from many other countries to Europe with the global needs has been a challenge we've also faced the challenge of dealing with how shall I say conflicting messages around migration and refugees migration is good migration is a driver of development and economic growth and at the same time what we've seen happening in the Mediterranean and Central America and lots of other places this irregular migration of people using very dangerous routes to escape indicates that our systems aren't aren't equipped to deal with this kind of movement of people so the report makes recommendations for dealing with refugees and for migrants you know strengthening our systems of international governance of migration and also some common issues that affect both this horrible toxic narrative xenophobic narrative that we see not just in Europe and North America but in many places in the world how do we counter that how do we deal with questions of integrating refugees and migrants into societies which is a security issue as well as a human rights issue so lots of issues a very high risk environment to be putting some of these proposals out there the it will be I think we're all holding our breath to see if in fact the world's leaders do take advantage of this historic once in a lifetime opportunity to create a system that can somehow deal with these these pressures so what you see is the the act the outcome at the at the end of the at the general assembly summit what you spoke about a resolution um what what what do you foresee and what will that matter what we hope to see is one adoption of a global compact on responsibility sharing for refugees a commitment in advance that next time there's a large movement we will all step up and call on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to develop at the beginning of a crisis a comprehensive plan we've got lots of good examples of comprehensive plans bringing in development actors and so on after five or ten years or more but couldn't we start that process a little earlier a process to come up with an international system of governance for migration that includes more safe regular orderly pathways so people don't have to take to rickety boats and trek across deserts to find some kind of future for themselves we want to bring the international organization for migration the world's largest most competent migration agency into the united nations right now it's an intergovernmental organization outside of that we know that there are lots of people who flee who don't qualify as refugees under the 1951 refugee convention but who have serious protection needs they're called force migrants vulnerable migrants crisis migrant survival migrants but there is no consensus on who they are what how they should be treated could we set up a process to develop some guidance so next time people arrive on borders we aren't starting from scratch and inventing how we deal with you so i think there are some concrete things that we hope will come up but it all comes down to political will and commitment and frankly i have great hopes for civil society which will be on the margins of this summit but which has a crucial role to play in terms of pressing governments encouraging governments not only to make commitments but also design perhaps some little follow-up mechanisms to hold people accountable for decisions that are eventually hopefully made in new york i think one of the um one of the really biggest most daunting challenges that uh that i think came out at least if nothing else that the summit sort of provided a mouthpiece for just the reality today that the length the length of time that that a refugee or a displaced person is away from home has extended now to what's said to be on average of 17 years and there's some controversy about how that number was arrived at but uh you know whether in fact it's the average is 15 years or 20 years the point is that that's a generation that's um for a for a child that's education um for a young person that's the period almost of a career and so um that that's just um and uh as someone from actually from us i a i d was telling me it's not just um the um the refugees and displaced uh from from conflict although that's a big part of it but even um with um with natural disasters um more intense today um hitting um increasingly urbanized areas that even the people displaced by natural disasters um what the us um through us a i d um in setting up uh intervention teams to go in once thought in terms of months um now it's extended to years and so what um um uh fadi in your work um how are you um how are local organizations um uh coming to grips and dealing with this um with really this this extended length of time that people are um um either displaced or in refugee status what are what are the some of the things that need to to happen to meet the needs of those people new needs different needs in the syrian case and even the iraqi case before it was obvious that it is a long crisis so the response should be taking this into consideration and people people are emigrating because they are seeing no hope for the future because syrians in Lebanon for instance where i'm based uh cannot be convinced that uh they are going to be returning soon and cannot be convinced to stay in Lebanon in those awful conditions uh where many people are still residing for the fifth year under tenths in the beqaa valley that get trapped with snow every year uh with no opportunity to work no right to work with a lot of kids out of schooling uh they cannot be convinced that to stay in Lebanon so they might return to syria because first they don't see any prospect of the return in the coming one or two years second they don't have the means to survive meanwhile the aid money is dropping and i understand very well that we cannot keep distributing food and blankets and NFIs forever for people so we need to do something we need to help them work and provide for themselves and their families fortunately in london donors conference big pledges were made for livelihood but unfortunately we haven't seen much progress being done on these aspects in the surrounding countries in regards of legislation and giving the refugees the right to work yes turkey's government has done this but also they have put some quota limits on syrians the geordanians are making small improvements on this regard in lebanon there is nothing being done unfortunately the mentality in lebanon is that they don't want to repeat the palestinian president by having refugees temporarily then stay forever so the only way they seem to have in mind is to make their life as miserable as possible so to drive them out as there is no way to go back to syria of course they will try to go wherever it is possible around the world whether to europe or to any place else and by blocking the roads to europe we are only forcing them to make to take more dangerous roads what we are trying to do is really is trying as much as possible to provide people with hope with little as hope as we can yes we cannot find those legislation unless we have support of our friends who can talk to the authorities but what we can do is start on a small level as for us on the grass root level saving the life of one person is rewarding enough so what we are trying to do is to help people get back to their normal life create job opportunities as much as possible though it is not always possible with the legal framework current legal framework and this is and meanwhile train them and provide them with the skills necessary for them to use in syria to rebuild the country when they are back but this is a big challenge and to tell you the truth it seems that we are fighting this fight on our own well i saw in your on your on your organization's website different different approaches you're taking training women for example helping helping women to to learn a craft or or something where they can become breadwinners and help support their families but and in in your comments you mentioned to both education and and employment opportunities and so how is how is the u.s. government as fadi mentioned there's there there is some progress both turkey and jordan have moved in the direction of of allowing the some of the millions of refugees in in those countries to to go to work and on on education i think one of the perhaps we'll find that one of the most concrete and promising results of the humanitarian summit was a new education initiative that was announced by gordon brown the u.n.'s education envoy that was really going to focus on on trying to make sure that there is no lost generation in terms of education and education cannot wait education cannot wait exactly and because as gordon brown said there is a that risk of of a lost generation and as the previous panel was talking about national interests and it's clearly even if just viewed from a national interest perspective it's in no country's interest to have a whole generation of of young people who have no education no hope and might look elsewhere for a future so how is the u.s. addressing those two questions what's being done there well i mean before talking about the specific questions i just want to say you know the u.s. is a leader on the humanitarian assistance on diplomacy of trying to resolve some of these conflicts and by sending diplomats to the field including my boss secretary carry going out and trying the hard slog of trying to convince people to put down their weapons talk to each other and have peace and we're also a leader in the formal program to resettle refugees taking 70 000 refugees to resettle in the u.s. each of the last three years and then aiming to do more this year those numbers pale i realize in comparison to the numbers of migrants and refugees walking into europe but this is a piece of how the u.s. has always behaved in ensuring that we were a leader in responding to crises around the world so there's a there's an underlying base of how the world responds that while not sufficient to resolve all the crises right now is an important piece an important constructive positive piece of saving a lot of lives right now we are the world leader in humanitarian assistance to all the top u.n. organizations that are providing food and shelter and protection to people in a lot of very dangerous places so it's not perfect but it's it's more than any other country does and certainly any other donor country does and so that's the backdrop and so we know that it's not enough and that more has to be done so we are trying to get other countries to do more we and that's part of the president's summit we are also finding better ways of providing assistance one of and that's get to your question then of if these situations can't be resolved in the short term if they can't be treated like short-term emergencies the way sometimes natural disasters can be resolved you know by competent aid workers and countries well-governed countries then what more can we do to help people not just survive that initial flight but then have fuller lives because what's clear is that and I'm speaking about refugees and displaced people they don't want to be dependent for decades and see their children born and grow up in these very artificial camp environments they want to take care of themselves they want to be self-sufficient they want to thrive and have full lives not just survive and so education is a key piece of that our delegation announced 20 million dollar contribution to that education cannot wait half from a ID half from our office because so many of the people who need the education are refugees but that's intended to be I know gail Smith is very tough minded on this it's intended to be seed money to get the program started but it really is a challenge to the organizers of education cannot wait to raise more money from the private sector raise more money from new donor governments that perhaps haven't done a lot in the past in terms of people being allowed to work and take care of themselves that's less about us providing assistance to countries to build schools and to take care of both their local kids and the refugee kids but also to change their policies so and part of that is a mindset that we see sometimes in our own country that if new people are coming in they're going to take our jobs they're going to steal our jobs and we're all going to lose and so this is where we need economists to write the rescue and explain and make the case which I think can be made but it's up to them to prove it that if you bring in these highly motivated people if you do the right thing and through humanity you act on your humanity and generosity and bring in people and allow them to take care of themselves everybody actually will end up better off because it will be an engine for your economy and they can contribute so much we've seen this in the United States that refugees we've resettled can be some of the hardest working motivated staff members of any enterprise but we never get that far in some countries because they are so threatened or they feel that even if they understand this at the top of the governments they feel that they can't explain it to their public why they would do so much for foreigners coming in when their own citizens have needs so it's clear that for most people working in the refugee world you don't just provide humanitarian aid to the refugees you also find a way to deliver development assistance in a constructive way to the societies that have done the right thing especially poor societies they've done the right thing and taken in people and you help them invest in their water and sanitation build out hospitals and renovate schools so that both communities can live well side by side that's the vision Fadi can tell us you know how give us a report card on how it's actually you know being carried out in the in the countries we're talking about I think it's it's very hard to do but what I find remarkable is there in the in the people who do long-term development there is a whole new sense of a need to work together with the materians and you see the head of the world bank shifting the whole direction of the world bank in in getting pushing his colleagues to work in crisis zones and to get figure out what kind of instruments or mechanisms they can use to help these countries that are doing the right thing and taking in refugees something else that I was really struck by in in Istanbul at the summit and looking at some of the private sector involvement in in humanitarian assistance the growing participation of the private sector but the number of companies that that are getting involved or were in Istanbul seeking to finding ways to get involved because they they know that first of all as you were saying that there's a pool of hard workers there people who don't have maybe don't have or are taken away from their activity their normal activity but their their good hard workers they want to participate also the companies realize that it's in the long run it's very good for their for their image and so you know that was encouraging to see that involvement growing but Elizabeth I'm wondering as Anne was saying you know it's really in in many ways and as Fadi said as well the key will be getting the countries that receive refugee populations and and this place to change their laws and to allow people to work and to allow children to go to school and to to buy into some of these new initiatives to expand education so will there be can we expect to see something coming out of the either the resolution or the the the general assembly summit that will really I know use of force is something that maybe that's not even very well exercised by the Security Council but they can really push countries in the direction of opening up in those two areas of education and and economic involvement jobs I think there's a general consensus emerging that education jobs livelihoods are the key to integration to long-term refugee displacement situations generally you know we've been hearing about this development humanitarian divide for at least 25 years I'm more encouraged now than I ever have been in part because of changes at the World Bank you know when you were talking and I was thinking about some of the studies the World Bank has done that shows pretty conclusively that worldwide refugees and migrants are a tremendous positive economic advantage they can be a short-term shock when support is needed to deal with the initial adjustment of receiving so many people but in terms of economic growth in terms of education in terms of contributions to the society I think Germany is going to come out of this as a real economic winner and not just as a expression of generosity and compassion which it also deserves admiration for but I think we need to start saying that loud and clear it isn't just something you're doing for these poor people but this is a way in which you can contribute you know help your own own society as well so I think that there are some really positive things that are happening out there but it takes a mind shift you know to see refugees and displaced people not just as humanitarian but as a development issue to include them in development plans to be able to access development funds there these are slow bureaucratic things to change but I think we are seeing some movement on that and I hope too we're starting to see some recognition that our immediate response systems need to be better in terms of how we receive large numbers of refugees and migrants I was doing a little bit of historical research this week looking for past examples where the international community had responded well and was reading about the 1956 Hungarian revolution when something like 180,000 refugees poured across the border into Austria and I was amazed to see that in 10 weeks 10 weeks 100,000 of them were resettled 100,000 out of 180,000 were resettled in 10 weeks it took two years to deal with the other 80,000 who for some reasons were more difficult but you know I think 1956 to 2016 maybe we should go back and look at some of those historical examples and see if I mean the world is more complicated and our systems are more complex but by golly if we got it right in 1956 surely we could do a little bit better in 2016 well let's hope that that perhaps these events and can can put more of a positive this this positive cast a positive light on on the place of refugees and on what they the roles they can play in there the countries that receive them I know many of us feel that if anything the tendency that we see on a daily basis is in fact in the other direction whether it's the European Union sending out boats you know supposedly to to to save refugees but really what it looks like is to to keep them bottled up and to keep them from coming forward in our own country we certainly can't you know puff up our chests and and vaunt our response when I think the last the last numbers I heard on even a woefully small commitment to accept what was it a thousand Syrian refugees ten ten thousand sorry ten thousand but the but in April anyway I think that the number was just around a thousand that we had managed to bring in so I don't know if if we're doing better on that but yeah before we we are okay where are we now we're gonna bring in ten thousand okay we're gonna make it okay all right and Canada by the way has been a great example really amazing but before we open to questions I would just like to ask each one of you quickly okay so if you had the audience you you had an audience with the with the security council all five of those those top leaders and and so on this question of getting beyond the better band-aid to preventing conflict what what would you say what needs to happen I don't know if there is any point of talking to the security council because it has already failed us enough through the last five years is our resident realist here okay no really really I mean what could have been done five years ago to preserve us from reaching this point was much simpler than what is needed now so I don't have much hope but what I hope what whom I talk to right now is the citizens in the countries where we visit we ask them to do more to push to push their governments to do more because if Europe is nagging about one million refugees and consider it as a crisis what a small country like Lebanon with four million residents say about receiving one point five million refugees so yes we are doing our best in pressuring the Lebanese government to change the legal framework but how even the most compassionate politician Lebanese politician would justify the change of legal framework when he sees a whole entire Europe entirely entire European continent is nagging about one million refugees so there is much more efforts to do in each country to push the governments to do more in regards to refugees in receiving more and not to be that much selective because unfortunately most of the resettlements program are favoring the upper middle class refugees the educated ones who can easily be integrated in the society who can easily find a job or even some favoritism towards the minorities which is which needs to be ended because this is putting more pressure and create more dangers for the minorities who are staying back home I don't believe all countries are created equal so when I hear criticisms of the five member permanent members the security council or the g7 except uncle miracle you know I think it requires looking a little deeper at you know which countries are investing time and attention and trying to negotiate and sue for peace and which ones are involved in bombing innocent people which countries are you know government sovereign governments are responsible for protecting their own citizens you know who's bombing their own citizens who's dropping barrel bombs on innocent people and then who's instead sending out diplomats trying to you know try against the odds to wage peace and so I would your plea be to hold responsible and I think we all know who you're with barrel bombs so I think that the US is trying to as a member of these bodies trying to do the right thing but can't do it by fiat and the diplomacy is really really difficult and the sad part is that the consequences are felt by children and innocent people and families who despite coming from places at war are not combatants are not terrorists and are just trying to live peaceful lives like all of us would so we can't give up we have to keep trying but it is it is terrible that this is continuing on to yet another year of war Elizabeth I mentioned your recent paper on the failure to protect and that's the sad commentary years after the entire general assembly adopted the responsibility to protect as a principal so what would you what would you plead for what would you call you know we talked to 80 different governments in preparing the secretary general's report every single one of them said our number one priority is to address the causes of refugee flows drivers of migration and yet when you dig a little deeper we've got all the statements that we know what needs to be done you know stop the violence respect human rights alleviate poverty we have dozens of declarations and recommendations what we need to do is implement them and find some way of holding governments accountable and if I just say one word about US policy I you know I've also been very critical of the low number of Syrians that have been resettled in the US but if you look beyond resettlement I mean the US has been a leader in terms of driving a humanitarian response sometimes we just kind of toss off the amount of money that the US has put in and but that has been that has been critical you know we wouldn't be where we are things would be a thousand times worse without US money and also without US energy it isn't just about money I mean I see it now at the UN and I've never worked for the US government but I see it now at the UN that the respect the US has held and because of the energy and thought and compassion it isn't just about money or numbers so I mean I can be critical of the 2,500 Syrian refugees it should be much more but but I think the US has done a good job on on humanitarian issues more can be done but it isn't enough to just look at those paltry numbers and say the US isn't doing enough okay thank you okay I see a number of hands already so you have microphones coming down and again as Kim mentioned I'll just repeat please keep your questions short identify yourself we'll start here woman in the white sweater and we'll hi there I'm penny star with cns news and I have some statistics the state department refugee processing center is reporting that the May figure of Syrian refugees was 1037 this is actually an increase of 130 percent over the previous month so that stats from the state department my question is though there's a report that of those 100 and 1030s I'm sorry 1037 Syrian refugees only two of those are Christian the rest are Muslim and I just wondered if there's if I could ask you what why that is the case thank you you know we are bringing people this also gets back to something that you were saying about who do we resettle and we have been accused by some governments that we go in and we skim off the cream of the crop we take the people who will be the most successful because they look at our program and see all these successful refugees well we don't do it that way we take the most vulnerable people including sometimes religious minorities of all types of religions even though I get asked the most by members of congress about Christians we take Christians we take Muslims we take Buddhists we take Jews from parts of the world and because we are trying to help the most vulnerable people we also take people who are LGBT we take people who have been torture victims we take people who have hard really severe medical needs burn victims because maybe they'll be able to get the kind of medical care here in the US if you just can't get in the places to which they've fled in the neighborhood around Syria or whatever country they fled from so this means that for that fraction of the world's refugees that come to the US they will get you know a new a chance to restart their lives and it's an incredibly challenging thing to go through but the refugees I meet in the US are very grateful for that and they really grab a hold of opportunity if they're you know sometimes in a family there may be somebody who can't really work again if they're been traumatized by war but there might be other family members who really can and start small business or really really support the rest of the family so this piece that we are taking you know the well-off the middle class that's not the intention of our program and it's I think if you look if you meet refugees in the US you often meet people who didn't speak English originally were not business people you know the refugees who are coming across from Jordan for example are coming from rural areas of southern Syria and they were farmers so they're gonna uh and you know I meet a lot of people who are farmers they're now doing gardening in cities across the US urban garden space because they're from Bhutan or they're from Burma and so you know we're they we are finding a place for them in our society in terms of bringing the numbers that you're looking at for the Syrians I would say to get to your question earlier too we're over 40 percent of the way towards that 10,000 but what we've done is we've sent a group to Jordan to move the process faster and something we haven't been able to do before we have very good interagency cooperation with the security and law enforcement folks who have to do the security vetting and so this should deliver and is online to deliver a lot more Syrians arriving in the US in the next few months than arriving the first few months so that's why I'm saying with confidence that we'll reach the 10,000 so is it enough in terms of rescuing all the refugees from Syria well it will never be enough because it's only going to be a fraction of the Syrians who come this way the solution for most Syrian refugees that would be best would be peace in Syria and being able to go home and and secondarily a better life in the places to which they fled so so we have to do all of this we have to get aid as much as we can inside Syria we have to sue for peace we have to help the people who are in the neighborhood we have to encourage the people who are concerned about refugees going even further afield and taking dangerous journeys we have to all work together so they don't feel forced to do that in order to live full lives and and we have to resettle some piece of the world's refugees to show who we are to demonstrate our humanity and to actually revitalize and benefit our own country and the religious breakdown is that anything you know we take a lot more Christians from Iraq actually 40 of the refugees we've brought from Iraq are Christian because of who was fleeing and in Syria we there haven't been significant numbers of Christian refugees fleeing and then registering and then being referred and it's partly because of the makeup of Syrian society so I think on all these numbers which I know the press are really focusing on you have to look deeper into into the story I think to get the full story okay I think Fadi wanted to say something yeah in other cases there are governments who are saying very clearly that they won't accept but Christians I am a Syrian Christian and I feel very offended of the way of segregating us in a religious manner yeah this is totally wrong all Syrians are being affected by the crisis whatever their background is they need to be helped and resettled regardless of their religious affiliation and really when the Belgium government has resettled 250 Christians from Aleppo my hometown in secret operation through Lebanon it created a lot of backlash and the Christians who remained in Aleppo okay let's go on you have an enthusiastic can coming up right here so thank you again Fadi thank you so much for actually highlighting I'm Lucy from Izid-Ulifan thank you so much for you know highlighting the treatment of refugees who are receiving in Turkey I you know attend many conferences and to hear this type of statement it's very highly rare so my question will be this way we see Kobani and Afrin there are people and people are trapped because the humanitarian aid border has been blockade both from Turkish side and from Karachi side Iraqi Kurdistan so we've been asking so many times US government to moderate between these countries at least to get the humanitarian aid because there are people who want to flee but there are so many people who wanted to stay for example in Kobani so many Kurds they went back to destroy totally destroyed city they don't want to go back to Europe or Turkey and be treated the way how Fadi just you know described so they wanted to stay and there are so many NGOs foreign NGOs in Turkey who are prevent from Turkish government to operate in Syria as well as in Karachi so my question to State Department are you moderating or are you some kind of you know doing anything to to lead to let this humanitarian aid to go through thank you but don't to get hand back the microphone yet because I didn't completely understand what your what what your point was because you described a you know a certain dynamic in the neighborhood yeah the humanitarian aid question is yeah humanitarian aid doesn't go through because it should go through Turkey to Syria and there are borders between let's let's say Afrin and Kobani and Turkey is closed so for example there are so many containers full of clothing or you know dry food it's still there since 2014 and the fees to transfer from Turkey to to Syria are so high that make no sense to pay for it you know so there is no humanitarian aid that goes to Syria to keep those refugees or people there and to support them so what the US government does is it supports trying to get aid in through all channels whatever channels work into Syria and I'm saying this and Nancy Lindborg used who's now the President of USIP used to say this when she was in her job and tried to make this happen so her words are actually echoing in my ears to try to try to get aid in through whatever channels work so part of that is from Damascus out but that doesn't cover the whole country and part of it is trying to get in through other means and there has been success in getting aid across borders and into the country and to hard to reach areas but every day it's a challenge and there are combatants on the ground who are stopping aid at checkpoints who are keeping aid workers out and this has been for years now a struggle to make the case that there should be what's called humanitarian access the aid should be allowed to get in we are have actually gotten more aid in in recent months than ever before but it's still not good enough the idea of containers sitting for years though should not be happening and so on that if you have facts and figures about that we need to get them to Tom Stahl to do something about that but aid is getting in it's not just stopped but it's not reaching everyone who needs it right I think we have time for maybe two more and if we could take two together I think we have one here and anybody over here that I ignored and then there's a hand up here in the black jacket hi hi this is Kari Reid with Save the Children thank you very much for this panel it's been very very informative and it covered a lot of ground but one issue that I heard missing from the discussion is addressing the biggest refugee and asylum seeker flow coming into the US and by that I mean Central Americans and those fleeing violence from the Northern Triangle in Mexico so given this big upcoming summit that the US is hosting in September I'm wondering what the US is doing and planning to do to address this crisis and the second question yeah hi Sarah Williamson from Protect the People my question is in regard to a global comprehensive plan of action and it's a two-part question could you address a little bit the role of the Gulf States in this crisis and do you think there are other forms of protection that States can offer that don't want to open up to resettlement such as temporary protected status for Syrians in other regions of the world okay great maybe Anne can you talk about Central America and Elizabeth talk about the second question on Central America which I work on in my voluminous free time when I'm not working on these other crises you are absolutely right in describing the phenomenon and we're paying attention there too and it's often raised actually by Europeans when we're meeting with them they go but you have people coming too it's like yes we know and so there is no one solution to that situation we see in the three northern triangle countries of Central America El Salvador Honduras and Guatemala that innocent people are being terrorized by criminal gangs and they are running for their lives and even if one generation feels safe sometimes they're worried about the younger generation and these are also places where there may be a family in the United States and part of the family is still in Central America so we've done a number of things the most important thing is to address the root causes to go after the criminal gangs and so that's what part of the U.S. government is trying to tackle and we've also gotten funding from Congress to try to invest more in this area and other parts of the U.S. government are looking at the development programs the law enforcement programs the security programs that can help address than the root cause so that people don't have to flee in the first place our piece from my bureau is that we started a modest program to try to bring children to the United States to reunify with their parents if the parent one or the other parent was lawfully present in the United States so that they wouldn't have to make this very dangerous journey up through Mexico to the border alone or in the hands of unscrupulous smugglers or so-called coyotes so we are seeing that program start to take off too and we're what we're we're trying to accelerate that we're also trying to work with UNHCR and with countries in the region to see if there's ways if people really feel threatened that they are helped to safety nearby rather than feeling very much on their own and they have to set out on this dangerous journey so that is something we're working on actively right now and of course this involves a lot of U.S. politicians and policymakers state governments department of Homeland Security looking at the border areas of the southwest U.S. border in terms of what is the reception for people there you know how are people who come across there seeking asylum how are they helped what are the judgments when this this some of these folks don't easily fit the definition of a refugee the way Elizabeth was talking before so is there a gap there are they are they should our country help them and treat them as refugees if they're fleeing criminal gangs and I think more and more immigration judges are determining yes they do fit the definition of a refugee and should be allowed in so that's another another piece of it but from the state department point of view we want to help them before they get to the southwest border we want to do more so that they don't feel the need to flee or they don't have to travel so far and they certainly don't have to fall prey to criminals on their route to safety okay thank you and Elizabeth so what do you see as the you know what are you seeing in terms of Gulf State participation both the upcoming summit and otherwise and you know any movement in the region to to step up in terms of working with and protecting the displaced and and refugees in the region maybe take the second part of Sarah's question first which was I think a really positive thing that's happened this past year has been a recognition that refugee resettlement isn't the only way for people to reach safety and we're talking now about any more alternative pathways labor mobility scholarships let people have opportunities to study abroad for a few years Syrians and elsewhere I think there's a real move in that and the Gulf States have often said you know we're not taking many refugees you know when our ability they're not providing it perhaps sufficient economic support but they are hosting a large number of workers from the Middle East from Syria and other countries who are sending remittances home so I think that that may be one way in which they could provide more support to Syrians and others who are in need of assistance to means other than traditional resettlement or traditional financial contributions and specifically at the at the summit do you see are they active or the Gulf States we've talked with a number of Gulf States we haven't seen them play a very active role yet in the negotiation process but that just started two hours and five minutes ago I'm not there oh great well thank you very much I think our time's up great well a few closing comments the first I hope you all found both panels extremely stimulating I certainly have um maybe just to begin I just want to thank my good friend Nancy and and the terrific team here at USIP for all the support and and help they've shared with us in the Oxfam team that's put this all together it's great working with your team and I hope we have other opportunities just the beginning of a great romance between our two organizations to our wonderful panel and moderators some of whom traveled very far thank you very much Fadi for joining us and thank you all for your thoughtful remarks and reflections on where we are today and where we need to go to make sure the humanitarian system is responding to the most vulnerable people around the world I think that's the big project that we're all here to discuss and hopefully we'll continue discussing into the future I think it's probably fair to say that based on what we've heard today from those of us up on the stage as well as from the audience and the questions that we've we've heard in the last few minutes the world humanitarian summit was a start certainly but it didn't resolve the many thorny issues that bedeviled the humanitarian system today as we heard from some of the panelists the summit often felt like a talk shop unfortunately and I think probably at the heart of that was the fact that it lacked enough world leaders to give the event the kind of if you will global standing and political will that will be required to kind of drive the the necessary changes for the people who need it the most I think Fadi's critique of the event and sort of the and I think the the Syrian situation the protracted conflict in that region I think is is cause for all of us to reflect upon our responsibilities to push our governments to deliver that political will and to deliver that negotiating outcome that I think we all know is essential and I think that that and has kind of commented on I think it's fair to say the United States has been engaged as you know as actively as we could imagine and in the diplomatic initiative but you can't dance alone and this is a situation where diplomacy requires partners that in the absence of a partner you don't get a solution and I think we all understand that and appreciate the work that that and in the State Department and others are doing to try to move that agenda from here inside the United States on the positive side I think it's fair to say and I think numbers while we shared our optimism and our desire to you know that there will be a hopeful future and reform in the humanitarian system I think it's positive it's fair to say that the event brought together thousands of partners and civil society organizations and gave them a platform to be heard and I think Anwar in the earlier session made it you know a very powerful point about the fact that there's been many many many of these meetings and his organization and his voice was not heard and many of the other partners that were there have not often been heard and it also allowed I think for vigorous debate and critique and formulation of sort of the problem definition if you will in ways that perhaps we haven't seen before and I think that was that was a good outcome the emergence of this near coalition of southern partner organizations that are now giving voice to that critique from the grassroots up and hopefully their formal inclusion in these processes going forward I think is another positive outcome and I think most importantly we came out of the meeting with a framework of the five core responsibilities so I think in some ways are the guidance for all of us of how we should be thinking about these issues going forward how we should be thinking about the reform process and as we think about those core responsibilities you know maybe what's really behind that and what are the things we should be thinking about and I think first and perhaps foremost is that political leadership is not being used to prevent an end conflict this is I think at the heart of this is this is all about political will at the end of the day and that's what we've really got to be working on we can we have to have a system that has respect for humanitarian law and actually addresses these questions of accountability that seem to have been sort of set aside as we watch the Syrian conflict and the Yemen conflict and the south Sudanese conflicts unfold and become more and more protracted over time the norms that safeguard humanity such as the international humanitarian law and the humanitarian principles aren't really being upheld to protect people in crises they really lack teeth today and I think that was I think that's at the heart of what was missing perhaps in the in the summit those of us in the humanitarian community need perhaps to redouble our efforts to reinstate the importance and respect for international humanitarian law as well as human rights and these norms I think it's probably fair to say and we would all agree that they're critical for us to build a safer world for all citizens that ensures accountability for violations of globally accepted law and norms we probably need to recall as we leave today that there are 60 million people displaced and living as refugees or seeking asylum that are being left behind with little protection and no hope for an education or livelihood unless something dramatic changes the system we have in place today and we talked a lot about the system in the first panel is a need of radical overhaul and change of approach and financing maybe not a revolution but certainly a radical incrementalist transformation process it doesn't do enough to to end need it off and it often bypasses local actors and can be ineffective and delivering aid and doesn't perhaps do enough to address the humanitarian development and even climate change divide and I think we heard a lot about the need for that divide to be eliminated I think we heard some hopeful comments on the fact that maybe we've made more progress in building the bridges between humanitarian work and development work for the future but I think there's a lot to be done in the way we sort of what we have to do in terms of changing structures financing mechanisms and behaviors and perhaps most importantly mindsets in order for this this transformation to occur and finally the unprecedented 24.5 billion dollars in humanitarian aid that was delivered in 2014 was actually as it turned out still not enough to meet the need of this extraordinary moment that we're living at this at this time and while working in conflicts and address needs we need to find new funding mechanisms I think this question about you know is the historic funding model adequate for the 21st century is one that needs to be much more front and center in our discussions we had the question about you know the the gap in funding for the sustainable development goals this is in you know this gap for the humanitarian need is is enormous as well but we've got to get much more imagined it's about where that money is going to come from in the 21st century and it's not all going to come from ODA it's got to begin to come from some of the new emergent economies from some of the new dirt donors the G20 more broadly and from taxation from those emergent economies and we've got to capture more value and we've got to channel more money into into meeting these needs so what's actually next in this agenda the major outcomes of the summit have been captured I think and in the secretary general's chair summary of the proceedings we're informed that an online action platform will showcase all the commitments gathered the 1500 commitments that were made at the meeting and a report of the secretary general on the outcomes of the summit will also be produced and likely presented to all of us at the UN General Assembly in September again it's important to note that some 1500 commitments were made at various events across the summit itself so it's actually going to take weeks I think from the meeting itself to for the world humanitarian summit secretary to compile all this and produce a summary that actually has some coherence and makes some sense but I think that's an important piece of work and I think I think we have to actually find some way to have mechanisms that allow us to track those commitments and see if we're actually delivering on them and as we heard from both Ann and Beth many of the outcomes of the summit are going to feed into President Obama's refugee summit and the secretary general's high level meeting on migration and refugee flows at the UN in September this is an extraordinarily important meeting and I think maybe a nice way to think about this year is this is the year of the humanitarianism the summit was the start the UN General Assembly and the Obama sponsored summit are a continuation of that and we need to use every one of those opportunities to kind of continue this conversation about reform and change inclusion address politics and governance issues in very direct ways and I think you know I think we should be grateful that President Obama is actually taking a leadership role among heads of state to actually make that happen as he's leaving office so this is a nice legacy to hand off to the next president as an area of responsibility to move this agenda forward. I will say I do worry a little bit about not having a track perhaps to discuss a whole variety of issues that also have emerged in the summit and also to some degree in this conversation some of these complex questions about refugee status that I think that Beth was talking about I mean so and there's a variety of other ones as well and and perhaps there'll be an opportunity to talk about whether we can create spaces for those conversations as well so in summary again I would just repeat this the summit should not be viewed as the beginning of a process but and and not should be viewed as the beginning of a process and not the end of that process I think the true test of the value of an event like this and the ones that will follow will be whether or not we see real impact for the 125 million people affected by crises around the world so all of us I think have a lot of work to do and it's great knowing that all of you are a constituency for this work and hope that you will carry forward some some thoughts from today that will motivate you and be inspired you to continue this important work so let me close by just thanking you all for joining us this morning I hope you will continue to work alongside humanitarians around the world and building a more peaceful just and safer world for us and our children thank you all very very much