 It's my pleasure to welcome now Karen Malul, who's a specialist in conflict and fragility. Welcome to this conversation which is designed to share some of your key ideas with people who weren't able to come to the conference. Can you just tell me what's the work that you're doing right now? So currently I'm a consultant working on inter-areas, so I continue to work on community-driven development in difficult places. So it can be called community-driven reconstruction when it's after a conflict, but when it's not directly after a conflict or it's in a fragile environment, it's more broadly actually called community-driven development. And that's what you've spoken about at the conference, isn't it? Lessons from community-driven development or reconstruction in Afghanistan, but also in other places as well. Yeah. And this notion of fragility, what does it mean? Well, what we've actually not discovered but realized that there's really the poorest countries in the world, and especially before the Arab springs, but the poorest country in the world were the ones either affected by a conflict or a high risk of conflict or very weak states. And actually they were following different trends from the rest of the world. So I think the international community has learned that addressing post-conflict or conflict-affected countries were very similar to addressing fragility. And this is actually a group of countries that share a lot of characteristics and a lot of similar challenges. Key characteristics and challenges, can you give me examples? There could be actually, I mean, obviously there is this issue of weak state structure and weak structure as a whole. Lack of services, very low social and economic indicators, so high poverty. There's also the issue of what we call in jargon like social capital or linkages between people or networks, so how people can cope. And there's usually a lot of safety nets at the very, very micro level, like family and extended family, but then there is not much else to rely on and especially state structure. Then there could be displacements because you could have like fragile country that are affected by a neighboring conflict country. And they're very vulnerable to neighboring conflicts. And so with a huge kind of flows of population, population being displaced, population kind of waiting to see what's going to come and they're going to be able to go back. Okay, so you've created a very vivid sense of the complex mix of problems in fragile states and fragile communities. Post-conflict or for some other reason. This whole conference is about civil agencies and defence agencies working together to try and help communities to transition back to stability. From the work you've done in Afghanistan and elsewhere, two or three key lessons about reconstruction, what makes it work. I mean, there are a few lessons, but maybe if you want before that, what's interesting is also I mean to see the entry points between the two because I can explain to you or present what we've learned or what we're trying to do when we do community-driven development. What it is is really putting the community at the centre so they decide their priorities and they manage their own projects. That's really what it is about. And big donors make the decision to transfer the funds to this very, very small structure that are created for the purpose of their own development. And when I'm saying small, it's very small. It's almost the village level. It's usually between a village and a district level. So that's what it is about. So why is it connected to the discussions of today? It's because in most of this country, when the communities or when these populations rank their priorities, security comes first. And we are in the situation where what aid or humanitarian or development actor can only maybe build a water pump or a bridge or a road. And that, I think, is something we need to think collectively about because when we're here to try to assist these people who are in need and when they rank security at their first need, we need maybe to take a step further and understand what it means. So what does security mean? That's exactly the point because what we think is because we hear security, usually development partners say, well, we don't find anything that has to do with security. So let's look at your second, third, or fourth priority. But actually taking the step further to understand what this lack of security means, it may mean that a road is unsafe to access a clinic. So maybe having another clinic might address the security issue. And I don't think none of us is really equipped to take this discussion further. What do you mean? Because it takes us at this space where security and development overlap, where none of us feel completely comfortable. And then or when none of us has a whole set of skills to be able to have this dialogue and be able to especially respond to the needs. Because if you have the dialogue and you say, well, we're taking the step further and we want to stand further and we can't do anything about it, it's even worse. But isn't that what this conference is about, what this centre is about? Well, that's why. A space for this conversation. Exactly. That's why I felt very strongly that maybe the starting point was how insecurity is experienced by the population rather than kind of broad definition or issues to define mandates, et cetera. But actually ask what it means on a case-by-case situation. Yes, absolutely. I keep thinking of the presentation by a senior representative from the European Union at the conference who talked about integrated systems. Was he partly, he was talking about the rule of law, he was talking about security in the sense of peace, he was talking about economic development, an integrated approach. Is that what you're on about? I think that's very much the direction that everybody kind of think about. But at the same time, we're all struggling because it's not that easy. It's fairly complex because these issues and to understand them how they are experienced by people may be very diverse and very different in one country. And there are complex discussions where you don't want to raise expectations or you don't want to promise things you won't be able to deliver. But in principle, I think we're all on the same page. That's the direction we want to go. And what's your professional background? Well, I've been working with the World Bank for seven years before working for the Australian Federal Police. And I would say, I mean, I'm a development practitioner. But basically the countries I've worked in are mostly conflict affected in fragile. Well, one key lesson or recommendation that I'm hearing from you is we must meet the people where they are at the grassroots and talk to them about what they feel will assist them to rebuild their communities. And you're also saying that in your experience, they'll often put security number one. And so then we need to explore with them what they mean by that and what we can offer. Is that the core thing that you've learned? I think yes. It's a core idea. I'm not sure it's a lesson because I don't think... You're wearing that word lesson, aren't you? Why? No, but I think, I mean, to have a lesson, you have to be in the position that you've done it and you know that it works or it doesn't work. Well, I was about to ask you for an example where you've seen that kind of listening and it's been productive. Well, it's been productive in many areas and in many countries in Indonesia or in African countries I've worked in. We've seen some great results in how people were actually taking charge of their own development and big impact on their social economic life and their livelihood, et cetera. So you can see this, but that doesn't mean that there's an impact on security. It doesn't impact on how the country is changing or as the transition is working. That's why I'm taking a little bit on a distance from the lesson word because it's not the result of something that has been fully tried. One example I've heard about, not at this conference, but I'll just offer an example and correct me if I'm not on the right track. But as I understand it, at the moment in PNG, Papua New Guinea, there are certain market areas that are locations where women can bring produce they've grown and trade it for other produce or get cash and it's fundamental to their family economy. But the problem is that a lot of the women get raped at the markets. And so as I understand it, there is a UN funded project to try and reduce the amount of sexual assault in markets. That strikes me as a very grassroots example of the sort of thing you're talking about. I mean, that those women probably said, I want to go to the market. I want to feed my children, but I don't want to get raped. Can you help me with that? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's exactly the idea is to really take this step further to understand what does it mean, where, how does this happen? And it doesn't mean that you're going to need a police officer, something like that at each corner of the market. Maybe it doesn't mean about this. It means about having more lights, having maybe just more people having. So I think, I mean, we need to be a bit more creative and understanding what, what, what, how this insecurities experience and what are the different ways to approach it. And I would say, I think in most cases, there are many development type solutions to, to these kind of issues. It's not only a question of having a security sector response to these things. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.