 I want to welcome you to this important event at USIP this afternoon. My name is David Smock. I'm a Vice President here for Governance Law and Society. I also direct the Religion and Peace Building Program. We are particularly pleased to be able to have this event here. As you know, there's been considerable conflict in CAR. And while it's fundamentally a political conflict, religion has been a factor with Christians and Muslims being fighting each other. So it's particularly noteworthy and an honor for us to have the three top religious leaders from CAR here with us, and they are peace builders and they work together across religious lines to build peace and we'll hear about that today. A few housekeeping things, please turn off your cell phones or at least silence them. The presentations will be in French, so I think all of you have headsets. English will be on channel one and French will be in channel two. USIP has had some involvement with CAR and continues to be involved there. My colleague Maria Jessup has been there for the last couple of weeks and will be there for another week working on giving advice on the national dialogue that's being organized there. And we expect to continue to be involved. We're pleased to co-host this event with Catholic Relief Services, with Search for the Common Ground, and Alliance for Peace Building. So this is a jointly sponsored event and we're pleased to have the collaboration. Before we get started with the program today, I want to introduce Tom Stahl, who is Deputy Assistant Administrator of AID. And they would like the opportunity to announce a new USAID program relating to CAR. So Tom. Thank you very much, David. And thank you to USIP for hosting this important gathering with these impressive and dedicated individuals who are really working on something so important to the lives of the people in the CAR. Many of my colleagues have had the pleasure of meeting these leaders in the last week. And their message rang loud and clear. If we are to build lasting peace in CAR, we must listen to local leaders. And empower them to be agents for peace. So in the midst of unprecedented humanitarian challenges around the world in South Sudan, in Iraq, in Syria, in so many other countries. We must not, and we have not, lost sight of the urgent situation in CAR. The US government remains committed to addressing this crisis, providing so far more than $150 million in humanitarian assistance. Especially outside of the main capital city, Bangi, where the need is the greatest. And indeed, right now, as we speak, the international contact group is in Bangi, including with US special representative for Central African Republic, Ambassador Stuart Simington. And tomorrow they have a meeting underscoring a continued international commitment to resolve the crisis there. Since September, USAID has also had personnel on the ground when the embassy reopened in Bangi. And so we've put two USAID staff on the ground as well. In Bangi, allowing us to better assess the needs of the local communities, whose livelihoods are threatened by cycles of recurring violence and insecurity. And then beyond the addressing the immediate humanitarian crisis, we must prevent further atrocities and support a transition towards a peaceful democratic future in CAR. With insecurity on the rise, the international community must bring its collective resources and political will here to bear to stop the violence and move the national transition process forward. And so to that end, USAID has provided already $7.5 million to empower local voices for peace, to promote interreligious and other community dialogue. And even to help dispel rumors by improving access to accurate information through the local media. Now, these are important first steps, the humanitarian assistance and these additional steps to empower local voices. But we recognize that dedicated long-term funding is going to be necessary to truly transform the societal relations in CAR. And so USAID has launched a new CAR peace building partnership. This public-private partnership brings USAID together with private donors to support a multi-year locally led peace building and atrocity prevention effort in CAR. Building on our ongoing atrocity prevention and peace building programs, this partnership will leverage and sustain additional funding over the next five years. So far, USAID has put $7 million toward this partnership, pending the final congressional approval, which we hope to have in the next couple of days. We have an open solicitation though for concept notes for a broader support to this initiative. And you can find it at www.grants.gov and search CAR peace building partnership. And we're asking for private donors, foundations, corporations, excuse me, other non-governmental groups to join us in contributing to this partnership. Our goal is to reach at least $15 million. And I want to thank the Peace and Security Funders Group for helping us get this partnership off the ground. We're very pleased that several private foundations, including the GHR Foundation, have already expressed interest in contributing to the partnership. And so we look forward to additional commitments in the coming weeks. The partnership is grounded in a desire to support courageous individuals, like these gentlemen here sitting with us, as well as women, young people, journalists in the local communities in CAR, who are seeking to break that cycle of violence and rebuild trust and reconciliation among people of all faiths and all ethnicities in CAR. CAR is really at a critical turning point now and we need an all hands on deck effort. We hope that this partnership will generate creative and durable solutions from all stakeholders to restore the peace and prevent a recurrence of violence. We believe a different and better future for the Central African Republic is possible. One where its people can live in a more resilient, peaceful, and inclusive society. And our partnership is a step towards constructing that future. We hope others will join this effort. Thank you very much for this effort and thank you again for this opportunity to hear from our religious leaders. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tom. Before we start with the presentations, we're going to have a four minute video on the current situation in CAR that Catholic Relief Services has prepared. Tens of thousands of people driven from their homes by bloodthirsty militias fled to the main airport in the capital city of Bangui, taking shelter under the wings of planes, desperate, terrified. Today, there are nearly 100,000 people here living in grim squalor, now penned in behind barbed wire for their safety officials claim. Outside the airport, the Central African Republic is on the brink of genocide. It's neighbor killing neighbor. Christians were going house to house, dragging people out of their houses, attacking them with machetes, killing them and lynching them, burning them on the street. There was one day where I saw seven people killed before 9 in the morning. Central African Republic is one of the poorest countries on earth, 4.4 million people, now bitterly divided as never before between Muslims and Christians who are simply slaughtering each other now. Nearly 700,000 people have been forced out of their homes. No one knows the death toll. Christian and Muslim leaders met to distribute food to more than 10,000 displaced people. The president of the Islamic Central African Community told Christians that it is everyone's responsibility to unite and reflect on the current conflict. Young Muslims and Christians came here. They exchanged their ideas, their analysis of the situation, they expressed their feelings and at the same time, they made suggestions as to how to continue in the immediate future. So together, they will go to distribute some aid food. It's not only up to us, adults, to put water on the fire, to put out the fire, but also for young people to bring their contribution. Women have to bring their contribution. And today, with young Christians and young Muslims, we are coming together to reflect on why our house is burning down and see what they are proposing and what can we do to put out the fire. The religious leaders of the Central African Republic have made a significant contribution to the disarmament of hearts and minds thanks to their efforts to increase awareness in their respective communities. Because of the platform created by Imam Kobin, Archbishop Napalinga, and the Reverend Girikoyame, the Central African population has benefited from this platform. Look at the Christian and Muslim leaders who came together in the Central African Republic to reject violence. Listen to the Imam who said, politics try to divide the religious in our country, but religion should be a cause of hate, war or strife. We represent the people, yes, the people of the Central African Republic. This is a wounded people. This is a tired people. This is abused people. And they are also disillusioned. And that is why we hope that the listeners here today will listen carefully and will also take us seriously. We hope that the people here will truly believe that we are the spokespeople for people who have no voice, for people who are speechless, for a population that does not have weapons, but only has words in order to express their anguish. We, through this interfaith platform, want to bring a focus back on justice and the importance of justice being sought to help us reach reconciliation. Justice can be a tool, a tool for reconciliation and for the development of our country. A difficult task, but nothing is impossible to God. We are the men of God, and we believe. That is why we are on the road to meet our brothers and sisters to find solutions. Ciao! Correct myself. I gave credit to the wrong organization for this video. This is Search for Common Ground that prepared this video. We've made the peace here. I'd like to have our presenters come up to their places at the table, and I want to introduce Ambassador Larry Woolers, who is a former U.S. Ambassador to C.A.R. and also the former Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General to C.A.R. He will be introducing the speakers and will be moderating the discussion today. So, Larry, over to you. Thank you very much. It's really, really impressive to see so many people here for this presentation today. As David Smok said, I was the ambassador to the C.A.R. until we evacuated in December of 2012 and then returned to help Minuska begin to set itself up. One of the highlights of my time there was the opportunity to work with the truly extraordinary speakers that we have with us here today. You have their bios, so I won't go back through that, but let me just repeat just very briefly one more time. To my far left, we have Archbishop Enzapa Lange, the Catholic Archbishop of Bangui. In the middle, we have Imam Layama, the President of the Central African Islamic Community, and next to me we have the Reverend Gedekoyame, who is the President of the Evangelical Alliance of the Central African Republic. As leaders of the interreligious platform, which they formed after the violence began, they have of course become extremely well known in Europe and here. This is one of several visits they've made here, and they're here in part to receive an award, the Common Ground Award from the Search for Common Ground later this week. But I don't think one can overstate their impact on the ground in Central African Republic over the last two years. Their courage, their persistence, and especially the moral standard that they continually set in their call for unity. At a time when every other person in the street had a gun with little discipline and even less chain of command, which meant that what they were doing was extraordinarily dangerous, and they persisted and have continually given hope and reminded Central Africans that as much as religion has become a part of the violence, and we all know that that was the case, it was not the cause and it should not be the cause, and it is not the solution. I wanted to thank of course USIP and the Alliance for Peace Building for today's event, and then of course Search for Common Ground and CRS, who have done an extraordinary job in organizing their week-long visit here. We're going to begin with presentations by each of our speakers, and then we'll have a question and answer session. So I believe Archbishop Zopalanga, I believe you're going to start. Thank you very much. I would also like to thank the UNI Institute of Peace for giving us the opportunity today to talk for those who have no voice in my country. I would also like to thank USAID, who has given human resources as well as financial resources in order to help the Central African people. They've helped us walk together. They have supported us and helped us work together. The Catholic Response Service has also helped us. Many people have helped us to raise awareness to inform others to give the true situation of the Central African people as we walk through very difficult times. This has brought us to Washington. We have come to bring the voice of the Central African people and to tell you the heart of the Central African people who hope for peace. Some of you perhaps have seen on the television what is happening in the country and the crisis. Today I'm going to give you a historical telling of what has happened. What has brought us to this Christ today. One of the most important points that I would like to make today is the crisis of our state. The state has ceased to exist. The state is limited mostly to Bangui. The rest of the country is lawless. The school system, the health systems, and other functions that are normally taken over by the state have been left. Several places are without law entirely. Outside of Bangui, people work with impunity. People take two weeks going from one place to another because the roads are in such poor condition. The state has been reduced to Bangui. The state has not been able to prevent the misery and poverty all around Bangui. This misery is affecting mostly the young people. It is the youth. It's 50% young people in my country. They are no longer going to school. They have nothing to do. They are easy targets for militia groups for a billion. We have seen how in these coup d'etat many young people are involved. Many have gone off to join other militia groups. So in Bangui, they dream of something else. That dream is, for many of them, death. It's not the old people that are fighting. It's the young people. And there are many of them that are fighting. On the 5th of December, there were lots of dead people on the streets and they were all young people. Young people are not afraid. So they would go and their dreams were interrupted by death. The director of the hospital was telling us, in three days, 500 deaths. It took us more than three days to collect the body, the corpses. These young people were sacrificed. I insist, sacrificed. They were the future of the country. We launched them to go and fight on the front lines and they died. Many were used as tools, as instruments with false promises. Because many were not educated, so how can you speak in a country when people go to school only three to six months and then they receive a degree at the end of half a year. So this is not true formation. We have students who are in college and they cannot speak French. They cannot speak even less in English. That is the background. That is the soil in which the conflict rose and took root. So when we saw everything was destroyed, all infrastructure was destroyed when we arrived at the beginning of the conflict, we have never understood how to respond to such unorganized violence. For many people to go and kill and to go and rob had become the only future. People watch, look against. Look, that is what happened in our country. Everything came, stemmed from poor governance. So people on the side would watch and all the people who would kill and rob were not punished, were not sanctioned. And that led also to stronger rebellion and revolt. So when the rebels came into Bangi, nobody was ready to stop them. In fact, we saw people acclaim them thinking that they would be the redeemers of the population because people were so tired by the fact that the state and the government had no clout. So when they saw rebels coming up, they thought that was changed, that was a promise of change and that's how violence spread in our country. And we saw that, as you saw in the video, that religion was used as a tool, as an instrument. And the three of us said, no, that's wrong. This war is not a religious war. And the religious fiber of our people is being used and manipulated for political purposes. So we said, no, our tradition, our patrimony in Central Africa has always allowed that Muslims and Christians live in harmony. So we could not sacrifice the unity of our country of Central Africa. So the three of us, we rose together and united with one another and said, no, religion should not be an occasion for division, but an opportunity for unity. And we took on the road. We set out to the roads of Central Africa and beyond. And we tried to show that because of, for power struggles, people are pushed to being killed. And we see how people, manipulating young people, and then once they arrive in a position of power, they don't care about those young people anymore. So we have condemned this way of doing politics and we have united. And it was just simply our plain duty of being shepherds, good shepherds. Our faithful are being manipulated and we shall defend them against the wolves. And that's the mission that we see for ourselves and that we're trying to accomplish and fulfill. There are lots of partners trying to support us and now it's an opportunity for us to say that this crisis that is still ongoing, but that through this crisis we can find new ways, new roads to open new perspectives for peace and community building. And now I leave the floor to my brother, the Imam, to continue. Thank you, brother. Thank you and everyone here. The activities that we have been involved in are the following. We began right before the crisis when the government, as he said, began to fail our communities. Okay, Mubozi Zay was there. He pushed the Christian community to attack the Muslim community. And Salika also became a storm that affected our country. They plunged us into a crisis and lit the fire that today is burning. This has affected all the countries around us. We have created our platform in the east of the country in our community in order to face this fire. We work in a prefecture close to Bangai community together. We work there to stop the war in our country. In other zones, we work in the entire territory of the CAR. We work with the eastern part of the country and we have put in place our community of Imams so that they can be close to their communities and help them. That's the work that we have done in the country in Bangai. And that was before the hostilities of Antebalaka began. On December 5th, we began to make the call for tolerance and working together for brotherhood in the Central African Republic. When Antebalaka rose up, they ended many things and they took many hostages. They began to fight with Salika and we put ourselves in the midst of this fight in order to bring a message. We have also put in place a community of young believers, Muslim Protestants and Catholics in order to be able to raise awareness among the young people in order to bring them together. Right now the social question is put in danger. We also have a community of women that work together for the same objective. These women work together and with the young people as they can. The international community doesn't know a lot about these, but this is part of our platform. So that is how we have responded to the crisis. After our tour in Europe and the United States, we mobilized many people to come to our aid. We have a lot of activities that are affecting the social fabric of our country and benefiting it. We have many partners that have been great. Many people have worked in social humanitarian aid and we are working to resolve the crisis. There are many techniques that are used in order to weave together our society. We have trained many people to help with this policy and to work together in our society in the parliament as well. In the interior of the country, we are still looking for people that we can train and organizations that can help us and help all Central Africans. We understand that this crisis in CAR should be put before the international community so that we can find peace in many ways. We are no longer there. We have many activities that are working for reconciliation, but we have many problems still in the country. We have a transition government and our strategy for reconciliation has been to put confidence in the government and we believe that national reconciliation is based on this kind of confidence. We hope that those who hear us can encourage national dialogue. By national dialogue, it is the same thing that we have looked in our country that has been lacking with coup d'etat and other events. We are trying to organize dialogue on a national level and bring the population in different territories who have been victims of violence. The crisis has deeply affected many people and we want to bring them together in reconciliation and bring justice to our country. Justice is a part of reconciliation. In order to ask ourselves what can we do to bring justice? It was a lack of justice that plunged our country into crisis. What has happened in our country in the Central African Republic has affected our people. We hope that reconciliation can come and that we can organize reconciliation with dialogue on a national level and that victims who are still there that hate and vengeance can move out of their hearts and that those who have done acts of violence we can condemn them. We insist that reconciliation happens at grassroots level. If not, it will never take root. Everything needs to be done. Power needs to be shared. Amnesty needs to be shared. So victims need to be taken into account so that true reconciliation can happen and the pastor will enumerate to you the different ways in which we're working. I have a dream. It's that very famous thought that all of us in Central Africa, in high school, we learn and when we come to the American soil and we think of the man who pronounced this famous sentence that man who made head this dream allows us to have a dream too. We cannot continue to feel bad about ourselves and about our past and what has happened. We need to dream about our future. Martin Luther King would say, I have a dream and we too as religious leaders we are dreaming about the future of our country. Religion did play a role at times positive but unfortunately often negatively. So to the point that the crisis in Central Africa was seen as a religious crisis. So it's all the more important that all the religions be equipped with a radio because so many rumors and the national radio have shared so many false truth and rumors. It is necessary for us now to equip ourselves with a radio that could convey the message of national unity, national reconciliation and sharing also tools so that our population can take its destiny in hand. And we hope that we're going to receive help so that we can set up this tool for us that's going to be very helpful for the peace building within our country. And Thay Balakas now have known terrible situations in which wounded people were taken from hospitals to be killed. It is necessary to bring all religious people, all believers to work together and to take care of Central Africans in hospitals especially in clinics of wounded. And we need to take care. So we want to have a hospital in Bangi where it's possible to have nurses and doctors who are both Christians and Muslims so that they learn how to take care of suffering people without discriminating on the basis of religion. So we also hope that we will find support in our country for us to put together, to move forward with such an endeavor. Education is also key. We used to say, this one is a Muslim. This one is a Christian and you cannot live together. And yet we believe that it is necessary for us to build schools where Christians and Muslim children can develop together, learn together, grow together and play together. So we also hope that we will receive support from the U.S. and from the American people to create those kinds of schools. Some farmers could not use their own fields because they were forced at times to leave their country to be in refugee camps. We also believe that we need help from the American people and the American government to have seeds so that these people can use those seeds in their new fields. As the Archbishop said, the state at the moment has very little access to our provinces outside of Bangi and the capital. And yet we are the shepherds, and we need to help those people to have such seeds and to prevent our country from famine. And we are a country that is agricultural, arable, and it is possible for us to cultivate and have very fertile fields. We need means in order to have those seeds. And in order to do all of this, we need transportations and we need infrastructure. We have no roads left. And so we need very strong sturdy vehicles, cars and trucks that can go on those very bad roads or where roads are missing in order to reach those populations who are inland and are not easily reachable and in great suffering. They have problems that have weakened the state in a large way and that's one of them is the problem of salaries and paying government workers as well as problems with students. Every time that a new regime arrives in power, state workers want to hire salaries and the government will say, well, we can't do that. We are looking towards the future. So in the month of November, they began in, excuse me, school began in October. But there was a strike up until today and so even today we're now in November and students still haven't gone to school. So this issue of salary and pensions for their retired is really affecting the state of the CAR. We believe that this is not right. The United States is a country of law and you can help the CAR and the CAR authorities in order to address this problem of salaries. We are also weakened by the disappearance of many of the businesses. We are destroyed and by those who are having to look for power and it has created a lot of unemployment in our country. Many of the youth, as my colleague said earlier, they are a large part of the Central African Republic and this population, this group is exposed to becoming instruments to be used. This goes to exploitation by armed groups but we want to bring together the private sector to address this problem of unemployment. We want to create credit. We want to create, to generate activity, to address unemployment. We also believe that in the current situation in our country, our platform is created. We would like to create a permanent secretariat. We are not eternal, the three of us. And so we have a vision but we need to transfer this vision and bring it up with others that can take it from us. We need individuals, whether they're priests or pastors, they need a place to work in. So the help that we have received to this point that will work with our vision will be put inside of a place. As a dream, we also believe that we need other religious leaders. We believe these things and we believe that they can help the Central African people. We believe that social cohesion is extremely important and that it can exist between Central Africans. Thank you. Thank you very much. We'll go to a question-answer session. If I may, I'll start by asking just two questions before opening it up to the larger floor. The first one concerns the future of national dialogue and elections. Of course, elections are mandated in the transition. There is, I think, two visions of what dialogue should be. One is that you should move quickly through the dialogue process and as quickly as possible through the elections so that you can finish with the transition and a new government can take over. Another vision is that the country is sufficiently traumatized that you need to have a careful dialogue about where the country wants to go in terms of its politics and the constitution, decentralization, the role of the state. And that needs to take time and therefore perhaps elections can wait a little longer. What's your vision of that question? I leave it open to one of you or all three of you as you wish. I believe that the Imam addressed that question. The crisis that we are going through right now is very deep. It's not just a surface problem. There are deep problems. So in order to come out of this, we believe that it's time, but we need to talk about things. People need to discuss things. We need to grasp roots, movements to bring people together to hear each other. That's extremely important. What people have seen, the traumatic experiences, what people have lived through, crimes and everything, they need to talk about it. They need to explain. They need to feel that they are heard. If you go day to day, you don't have the chance to talk about things. But with dialogue, with community dialogue, somebody can say, you know, someone's done you wrong or you've done wrong and you feel relieved. And so that's very important and that's truth. That will allow us, each one, to take responsibility for what's happened and say, you've killed, you've stolen, and that's against the law. And victims will be represented. And they'll say, no one's above the law. Whoever kills or steals, they are the strongest. That's what's been said, but then where's the law? So it's through dialogue that we can talk this out and say that justice has its place. And that's where we can talk about reconciliation, where we bring everyone together from all places to talk together. The Imam says that, you know, it's all, we all work together. People who have seen their houses burned, they won't live alone. People can talk about them to them. We dream about doing this. If people, grassroots movements, have an effect, we will be better for it. And that's what we want for our villages. We want our villages to be built in this way, to have good relationships that people define their own villages and have social cohesion. And before we go to a national dialogue, we want that grassroots movement. Of course, we don't have the means to do that. We're simply telling you what we think and what we hope to have. But it's other people who decide. So it is donors who will decide if our vision becomes reality. In respect to elections, the Central African people, we believe that we should address the crisis in our country. We need to avoid suffering because a poorly organized election would only be a cause for more war and more confrontation in the country. So we want our country to work together and not be concerned with the arms that are through the country with rebel groups. They have taken the population hostage. The southeast of the country is taken by the LRA. The central and the north are affected by the Celica groups. And the southwest is the Antabalaca groups. And then those groups are strongly armed. So that poses a lot of problems for elections. So it's not really realistic to have elections right now. The question we ask ourselves as Central Africans, but also as religious leaders, concerns the international community. Could, might the international community accompany the Central Africans to leave the Central Africans with the main questions they need to solve? And support, have a support role of this process. We've had many crises. We've seen many resolutions in what happened. A poor share of the cake. Elections were organized for decades. What was the result? But what happened today? And today the international community needs to be mobilized. So we think that the Central African people needs to be respected and needs to be able to frame by itself the framework of what the people want to do. But not, I think it's important for the international community, it would be wrong for it to impose that framework. If not, the people is going to express fatigue against the international community. So we want to know what the international community thinks, what the vision is, and we want to be able to express ours and maybe dialogue over this, but we cannot be imposed a framework from the international community from outside. Oh, you don't hear it? Okay, good. The last two years have been a time of extraordinary trauma for all Central Africans. And the population and particularly young people have seen a time when the state could not protect them, could not provide services. And some people feel this has changed the relationship between the population and particularly the youth, the attitude of the youth toward the government and toward the governing elite. Has something profound changed? And what does this mean in terms of thinking about the political future of the country? I'm going to give you an example. With Imam, we were together in a city called Biali. In that town, there was the anti-Balakas and we arrived. We wanted to meet with the chiefs. And a young came, young man, and said, we freed the city. Now the mayor that has fled wants to come back and be in leadership position again. But no, he says he's been sent by the state. You see, the kind of conflict the young people had already seized the power. They had the arms and they thought they were having the power, but they don't know how to manage or lead. It's not because one has arms and guns that one knows how to lead and to have the power. So the entire society is disorganized and we risk to go further into chaos and to lose that young generation that is currently using the machetes and the guns and for us they are a sacrificed generation. They didn't go to school, very few went to college and if they went to college they had no job and then they went to fight instead. So you see the kind of reconciliation work that needs to be done and organizational work that needs to be done to give a project to young people to send those young people back to college and we're in college to make sure that these young people can develop projects that would be fruitful that if he wants to do business he can do business and so that people who have developed competencies and learn in college how to be political leaders then that they become political leaders. If we do not do this we'll continue to have great chaos in the country. So don't forget that Central Africa is at the heart, at the core of Africa. So there would be consequences throughout of Africa. We would export our young people once they've finished killing and destroying everything in our country then they'll move in other countries and they will say oh in that neighboring country there is still money so let's go there. So we want to prevent the spreading of that situation and we want to get out of this situation. We also believe that in order to build trust, to restore trust it is necessary to support the government so that the government can develop its capacity to govern. The international community is present in Bangai and very often this international community tells us that security is first and foremost to support the government but this government is not equipped for its own security or the security of the population. It's without army, without police, without equipment. We have gathered a few military people but they are not armed. There are no arms for them. So there is an embargo on arms and we need to think about that because we need to equip our government if we want our government to be able to govern. I think that young people will continue to trust people who pretend to govern when those very leaders have never kept their own words. If you see some of the rebel chiefs, they use, they manipulate young people. Once they've shared the cake and that they've given, let's say, a position of power to one of these rebel chiefs they abandon the young people. They let them down. How do you want young people to trust people in power? These young men, do you think that young people will trust such a leader? No. Political leaders always try to manipulate young people. They try to buy their consciences in order to get people to campaign for them on their behalf. And once they are in a governing position, they let people down. So how do you think that such leaders that are elected by such poor means? How do you want those political leaders to be trusted and to be considered respected? That's why we need to have the support of the American people. You are a democratic—a people who develop democracy. So we would like you to help train our people in democracy. Our young people, they need to learn very practical professions. You see, in your country, in the United States, very early on, you teach young people to be responsible. And that would help prevent the way our young people are manipulated so early on. The authority of the state and of the government will never be there until we have a new generation of young people and of new leaders. We need to create a new model for leadership. Amma, who raised a very important question about the arms embargo and the question of re-arming security forces. It's a very popular sentiment with many Central Africans. But I remember speaking with representatives of the Muslim community of Kilomethsank who expressed nervousness about re-arming the security forces. Would they be objective, neutral, professional? Should it be done in the absence of a comprehensive security sector reform? How would you answer that question? It's well known that our army for several years has not been a Central African army. It's been used by different regimes and it has become a tribal army. It's got several different colors that flies. So we have an absence of the military. So a lot of our army went to put the Celica or Antibalaca. So they have been used. So we need to bring them together. We need impartiality in the army. The current army is in fact composed of people that the Ministry of Defense has validated and has considered as not being part of those armed factions. But with intentions that could really help create a true army. So at the moment we have our military people walking around with sticks, you know, wooden sticks. And what can they do again to protect the population? It's a real issue. If we cannot consider that the current army is constituted of rebellious factions, we need to reform our police and our army. It's a priority. It was now open to questions. There will be mics on each side. So feel free to raise your hand. Hi, I'm Jacinta Plainer with the Enough Project. And my question is, in the work that you have done with young people especially, what sorts of messages have resonated with them? What sorts of strategies have been most effective in bringing people together? Are there traditional mechanisms of reconciliation and dialogue that have been particularly helpful? And can you share some stories about particular situations and incidents where you have had some success in bringing people together? Thank you. Thank you for this question. I want to speak of the district where I live, the fifth district, where Muslims and Christians live together. We had organized a reconciliation meeting between young Muslims and non-Muslim youth. We discovered that our efforts should not stop there, because those young people, as we have said already, so often had been used and manipulated. So we need to talk about arms, war, guns. How can we free them from those arms? We need to offer an alternative. And the alternative we found in our fifth district is to try to obtain funding that would help those people to reintegrate the kind of jobs, the kind of situations they were in before. We've asked them to create associations, an organization, and they called it a new vision. They understood, they became aware that they had committed themselves into a way that would lead them nowhere, and they wanted to get out of it. So that message spoke stronger to them than speeches. So I think that the best way to bring people back to a safe future is to give them the means to go back to work and to give them a simple way of earning a living. I believe that the Central African has only as a single national language. It's very important. All the territories can use the same language. So that language is a common bond, a fraternal bond, that reinforces the social cohesion and our mutual approach one with another. So our strategy when we come into a special place, a district, is to bring people together. And we invite everybody to go to their own religious community. Then we come all together, the three communities, and we make a synthesis. And then we try to facilitate dialogue among the three communities, but we start by gathering each community by itself. So we insist, again, on having a radio, a new radio, so that the same principles can be applied and broadcast to a broader audience. Because very often information is wrong. There are false accusations, rumors. People are told that such a group is Balakar, the other is not. And all of these accusations very often are false and not helping. So we want to have a platform that would facilitate reconciliation and we believe again that a radio, a common radio for us would be immensely helpful. And also where we could broadcast fraternal, brotherly messages of brotherhood. We need words that are very meaningful, piercing almost, so that Central Africans remember of their past, their common past. When they were living together, they used to know, their population used to think of themselves as Central Africans and not by ethnic. We have a common history. So that's one of the strategies that we have put in place. You know that you're aware that this kind of strategy requires a lot of activities and we've reached our goals in many ways. In the seventh district, we have also been working. We've been working to increase the successes that we've had from different neighborhoods and bring them all together to reinforce political cohesion. In the seventh district, the entire Balakar have really developed and come against the Muslims in that area, even in all of Bangi. So many people have been affected and especially Muslims. The government has not taken any responsibility. The government even celebrated Ramadan in order to show the support of everybody. There were fences and walls through the city to prevent circulation and serving as tools to get money. And of course, this is another example of a problem that needs to be solved. And I think the archbishop is going to give you other examples. When we go towards the people, it's not always necessary to start speaking, to give speeches. We need to start by listening. People have heavy hearts and they need to be listened to. They need to be heard. It is very important to listen to them. In most recent events, I asked to go and meet them, 50 gathered, and I said, I just come, I heard that you've set up barricades and I don't know why, and there was a lot of violence and they started to speak to me. The only thing I asked them is that I wanted to listen to them. As soon as they started speaking, the tension started to lower. And I took on their aggressivity. I took on their anger on myself. I took on their desire to see change on me. And at least we have listened to them. And now that they have spoken, now that they have been able to say what they wanted to say, my role, I don't see my role as a religious leader to tell them what to do, the truth. They told us we do not want international forces any longer in our district. I told them, but you have anti-balacas everywhere. Who is going to control them? Who is following them? What formation do you have? You cannot invent yourself as a military. Who is going to be responsible when something goes wrong and right? Oh, then when we started to discuss, they said, OK, we understand. So we all spoke with our hearts and they realized that they had not measured the consequences as young people. So my role as a leader is to point out to highlight issues and to show them that those questions have consequences. And that's how we work. I believe that because our time is limited, we'll take several questions at a time and then we'll split. And then we'll answer them. Thank you. You've talked about national dialogue. The Imam mentioned the arming of different groups in the country. The pastor said that Central Africans need to find a way to improve and work with national dialogue to talk. All of this takes theoretically quite a long time. What is, according to you all, a timeline that could be a realistic timeline and not just to get out of the crisis and have elections as well? Because if you wait until all problems have been resolved, that's not really a good idea. So what is your realistic planning? What does that look like? Do you have a date? Excuse me, I'm sorry. What is a realistic timing for what you've looked to do? I would like to speak in French directly. Oh, I'd like to thank you all for being here. And what I'd like to ask is something that pastor said. He talked about building roads. But I think that as Africans, we don't need to use the Dionysus Hates as an example because we're in Africa. And it's our African government that should take charge of that. So the United States cannot do everything. The U.S. and Europe can't fund everything. So it's about Africans. So the second thing that I would like to say is that I'm glad that you came. However, it's not about politics. We need politicians. People from among have been used for political means. So we need to create democratic institutions because the people in power, some of them are still crooks. So we need to take them into account. We need to take them accountable. My question is in fact a contribution. I want to say that until we have democratic institutions, we won't have peace. I'm also going to speak French. Hello and thank you for being with us today. On several occasions, you mentioned the question of justice and its relationship to reconciliation. How do you see the justice process to be led in Central Africa? And I think that there is a technical issue. And it's the question of memory, of remembrance. How are violence acts going to be documented in order to enforce justice? We need evidence. We need proofs in any trial, in any justice process. So how you yourselves or the communities for whom you work or with which you work, how are you helping and facilitating this work of memory? Hello. My question concerns the return of the refugees and the displaced. We saw how important it was to reinvigorate the economy in order for refugees to come back and play their role. Some of them had a very important role in the economy, businesses and such. So my question is, among those people who had to go, the refugees, how many of them intend to come back? And is the government ready to welcome them back? And what can be done to facilitate that movement that can have great economic impact? You mentioned discussion groups with young people in villages and the different assemblies for dialogue. And you've mentioned that there has been some progress under your common action at the grassroots level. But you also have a government. You even have a lady president. So what's the connection between this activity on the ground that you're doing and the activities of the government? Is there a very large chasm between the two or are there connections? I'm going to take the question regarding justice, the justice process. When we had the RONDA events, we called it the Tree of Talking. We would go and see the chiefs in our villages when there was a problem and with their counsel of the wise, they would make a decision. But these counsels of the wise, the chiefs have lost their authority. We need to restore the authority of the village chiefs because they know how to regulate tensions. There is no need to go to a big city. They know how to regulate those conflicts at the ground level. We need to restore such authorities. If we manage to restore those leaders, then we will see progress in the justice process. I want to take the example of John the 23rd in Mangai. All the women and children, both Muslim and Christian, can come to this John the 23rd centre and they can come and register and be matriculated. They tried to get a computer in which they knew there were listings and so they were trying to rob that computer. But we were able to save that computer and those listings. So this John the 23rd centre continues that role of collecting data that can be very important for the justice process. For the question, we have a special vision. We believe that if the international community that is present on the ground and wants to support us could begin to participate in the conversation with us while starting to disarm people who are still wanting to fight. Because then if we start this kind of dialogue, people will start to relax a bit and be able to be trusted and engaged in the dialogue. And they will know that the UN resolutions will apply to those who take down their arms. And so if they see that we try to prevent armed groups from their exactions and also from yielding power, then once they have given their arms, put their arms down and they see that they are listened to and that they become the actors of change, then peace can be built. Of course it's a problem because they may feel threatened at night if they have no arms but we're trying to find solutions for that particular issue. Regarding refugees, those who had to go and leave the country, yes, there is a deep interest and some of them have started to come back to return. But this return needs to be organized. Some people have lost absolutely everything. They have no roof left. So at times being in a refugee camp is more comfortable than coming back to nothing. But some of them think it's better to—if they are to suffer, they would rather suffer in their village and towns than suffering in a camp. So yes, there is a movement for people to come back. But I repeat, this movement needs to be organized so that when they come back, a few basic conditions can be ensured. And so that they can go back to participating in the economic activity. When you mentioned—one of the questions mentioned the other African states. We need to see Amuniska. You have to see how these African forces, what they had to deal with and how in what kind of shape they were. They had no transportation means. The African states, some of them could not honor their commitment because it was impossible in terms of infrastructure. So if—we would not have traveled so much to Europe and the U.S. if our African neighbors had been able to action. I agree completely. At some point we have to stop begging. I agree with that. You have to understand that our situation in our country of Central Africa is considered as a non-state. So someone who is in a coma, it is normal for this person to welcome help and care so that the minimum of healing can be achieved before that person can start taking care of themselves again. So what is a country which is so beaten up as ours can refuse some external help? It is—there is no shame at getting help when we are completely on the floor. There is no shame to ask someone of good will to help us go up again. But I completely agree. And even for our own African pride, we need to reach a state of good governance, but it is a long journey. As I mentioned earlier, we need a deep work of education. And this support for education, we need to learn it and we need the support of countries who have experience in good governance. And that's why we are asking the United States to be involved in the process of reconstruction of Africa and in particular of Central Africa. We need the collaboration and the support of the United States. Regarding the relationships with the political authorities, the relationship is good, but what we do not want is to be used and manipulated as political instruments. We have a religious mission and a religious vision to which we intend to remain faithful. It's very new that the president of the transition has come here. As part of her vision as a political leader, we are religious leaders. We represent the voiceless, those who do not have no voice, and we come to speak to your hearts, to the hearts of Americans, to the hearts of the international community. We want to tell people, do not forget about the plight of Central Africans. We know that you have Ukraine and you have Syria, but please do not forget that the crisis in Central Africa is not over, and that's the reason of our journey in the U.S. and in other countries. We are not substituting ourselves to our governing leaders, but we want—and we agree at the same time that our nation needs to recover its dignity. We've come to the end of the program. I would just point out that this is being webcast on VOA, and you can also see our participants this evening at the Holocaust Museum, and they'll be here for several more days. And you can see how much courage and integrity they represent, not just for themselves, but for many others, as they would be the first to tell you back in Central Africa who are working for peace with them. So thank you very much. We have also webcast this, and it will be available on our website on a continuing basis. I want to thank all of you for coming. I want to thank our partners, Search for Common Ground, Catholic Relief Services, Alliance for Peace Building, Ambassador Woolers and our good friends and impressive friends from Central African Republic. I also want to thank my staff who has been helpful in this, particularly Renata Stubner and Asya Frotan, who did so much to get this organized. But thanks for coming.