 We all right could we get we're gonna get started here, please. All right. Thank you. Good evening Well, good evening everybody welcome to New America. My name is Bobby McKenzie I'm a senior fellow at New America and the founding director of the Muslim diaspora initiative Thanks for joining us for today's Conversation about refugees on World Refugee Day We are joined by five remarkable panelists here We're not just well positioned to interpret where we are globally and locally But also to provide sage guidance on welcoming and integrating refugees To my far left we have her Excellency Ambassador Dina Kaur She is the ambassador of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. She has served in a variety of capacities. I'm just gonna list just a few Before her current post as ambassador in Washington DC She served as the permanent representative of Jordan to the United Nations from August 2014 to June 2016 she's also led the Jordanian delegation during Jordan's non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council from 2014 to 2015 and became the very first Arab woman to ever preside over the council and Before that she was Jordanian ambassador of France from 2001 to 2013. So thank you very much for joining us Next to her we have Jaina Mason who is a senior advisor at UNHCR and has worked in the refugee field since 1983 This includes work at UNHCR and senior post For the International Rescue Committee for the US Committee for refugees for 11 years and has done extraordinary work trying to advance the plight of place globally Next to her is Suzanne Ucras She is the founder and executive director of the Syrian community network. She is also the founder of the Syrian American Medical Society Midwest Foundation and not to mention a friend of New America She I think has been here once or twice before and does extraordinary work on the ground in Chicago Next to her is Angela Blanchard Who is the president and CEO of Baker Ripley Under Angela's leadership for more than 30 years. She has transformed Baker Ripley Into the largest community to development organization in Texas and among the top 1% of charitable groups nationwide Currently Baker Ripley serves more than a half a million people in 48 counties and operates with an annual budget of 250 million dollars Next to her is Kutaba Libby who is a senior consultant for Petcher polls but Kutaba is here as to speak in his capacity That's what it means to be a force of the place He was twice arrested in Syria He is a survivor of torture and forced migration and has spent every single day since arriving in the US to try and help other refugees It is no exaggeration that I could sit up here for two hours with any one of these panelists and We would have a truly bracing and fascinating conversation There's lots to talk about with these five leaders for those in the audience We're going to have very brief remarks from her Excellency And I'm going to ask her a few questions and she has an urgent matter that she has to attend to and so she'll leave after that Following that I will then open it up to remarks from each speaker and then we'll have a wider discussion For those watching via live webcast, please use the hashtag with refugees and World Refugee Day 2017 Before proceeding some context is needed here though. It's worth Noting that in thinking and talking about World Refugee Day It's important to note that around the world almost 65 million people have been displaced by armed conflict and persecution Of the 65 million displaced more than 21 million are refugees and more than half are children Their numbers are growing every day. These people rely in the international community and yet too often not The international community is not collectively shouldering the Responsibilities that it that it should share and it's before I turn it over to the ambassador It's worth noting that here in the US We have had a blistering debate about how many Syrian refugees to take in and we've taken in just over 18,000 since the uprising But if you want to compare that to the five million Syrian refugees in Turkey Lebanon and Jordan You can't even compare these numbers. And so what Jordan has done is they've opened their doors And they are carrying an enormous burden and they are doing something that is absolutely mind-boggling I want you to think about this since 9 11 the US governor's taken in 9 oh since 9 11 15 years just over 800,000 refugees total Jordan has 600 over 650,000 Syrians who are documented. This does not include the Palestinians The Iraqis and also those that are not documented. So Your Excellency, could you give us just a quick overview of how does Jordan deal with just the staggering number of refugees? Okay, thank you very much Robert for inviting me and thank you to New America and to my fellow speakers here who I regret my only regret I won't be able to hear you, but I Hope to meet you afterwards Robert Jordan has taken more than 650 650 are registered with you and HCR but in reality, there's almost 1.3 to 1.4 million Syrians in in Jordan and The number of Syrians I hate to Mention numbers, but because behind every number there's a life. There's a story However, we're obliged to talk about numbers simply to show the gravity of this humanitarian tragedy the worst in our our times modern times and Also to to make my fellow Americans realize what the number is For me the only way to explain to a US citizen the tragedy of the refugees in Jordan is exactly if you were to double the Population of Canada and ask them to immigrate into the United States and I don't know if you can manage that so In Jordan, we have done so because our feeling that the Syrian tragedy is a humanitarian tragedy And we need to be supportive to the Syrian population Having said that this has not gone without many difficulties both for for us, but also for the refugees in Jordan And if I can explain a few stories obviously the beginning of the war it was very hard to to prepare for the Admission of all these in the sense of giving them all the the way of life that they should have or the minimum that they should have Now if you look six seven years down the line Jordan has advanced a lot and with the help of UNHCR we have managed to look into a new model of how to deal with Refugees and I'm sure my colleague my friend from UNHCR would be better place to explain more about this new model But what is happening now? Is that we have said the traditional way of helping refugees is to say we'll give them food We'll give them blanket will make sure they eat drink and and be warm In fact, this is not the only way of dealing with refugees The best way of doing it is first of all to help the host countries a Help the refugees get better education gets good health and get Employment and the reason being is that we know that a refugee cannot Will not move in and out in one year or two years the refugees stays at least 17 years as a as a refugee and 17 years you cannot prevent people from working and giving a living to their Families you cannot prevent children from having a proper education and going on in life Otherwise you're condemning a whole generation and that is catastrophic Not only for Syria now and Syria in the future when when things get better But also for all the neighboring countries and regions so from that perspective In February last year we came to the world community and we said we want to do a compact a compact with the world community You help us as a nation to become more resilient and support us to support those numbers of refugees In getting them a better education because the schools were not able to maintain the high level of students and We were having double shifts who are having classes that were enormous in numbers The medical system also which is free was under stress Not to mention that it was impossible to get The employment to all the Syrians because our level of employment is very high. So with this compact we've managed to maintain this this Momentum and right now we have given around 53,000 work permits to the Syrians as well as admitted 200,000 students in schools not to mention that you know the medical system is helping all these Syrians now And of course the international aid has been coming through but it has not been coming through enough And this has been a stress on our economy and on our budget And that's the message we keep saying the situation that we have had in Jordan because of not wanting to close the border And we refuse to do so and face in front of the refugees that need help This has been a stress on our economy and our way of being but at the same time This Syrians who have come into Jordan and have started to take jobs have also I am sure that one day when hopefully the political Process works and starts to work and they start going home rebuilding their country. There will be a certain Tie to Jordan that will will be positive for them and for us in the future so in that sense it has been a very wise decision that his Majesty and the Jordanians have taken in order to prepare a generation that is now out of Out of their home. Of course the the sad part of this Horrible situation is that women usually in in Situations of refugees end up being the most vulnerable Perhaps in Jordan. It's not the case as much as you would Feel it in other parts of the world because when I was in the UN we were looking at all the issues of refugees and in Some African states they end up being you know the ones that have to take care of the children the ones that have to face violence Sexual harassment all kinds of difficulties. Thank God This is not the case in Jordan because the refugees but one one phenomenon that has been Happening among the refugees to which the government is very aware and trying to deal with is marriages of young of girls Because it has become more and more frequent that parents not being able to Maintain living for all their children that they marry off their girls at an earlier age So this is one of the things that we're very aware of and myself as a female I Like to mention it often to say this is one of the issues that we need to pay attention to so Yes, the Jordanians have had increase of population of 20 percent It's a high figure and yes, it has been a stress But thank God that in every situation in the world a stressful situation forces you to behave and Bring out all the innovative way of dealing with it and with the UNHCR who have been fantastic on the ground and very supportive We've managed to find this new model which in my opinion would be a model for other parts of the world And I must also hear Say a word about the NGOs and all the private citizens who've decided to come out of their comfortable being and And to go and help the refugees in every possible way Be it with the children with the women and others and to give them that extra help that the government Cannot be given either psychological help or help in in in some kind of Studios to learn how to do this or that or learn small functions on how to work And this has been a wonderful experience and many people do come to Jordan because it's such a successful Example for how to deal with in spite of the difficulties now It's very easy for people to pinpoint and say the difficulties But believe me that the the situation in the mother that has happened in Jordan is one of the more successful ones from other places in the world just ask you one follow-up question and it's You've talked about that the crisis has led to a numb You certainly sketched out the difficulties of the situation, but you've also shown that there are innovations that are taking place because of this Are there one or two big lessons that that are worth? Siding here, and I asked this because as we had when we had his minister here His Excellency a while back. He said if you get it right in Jordan, you can get it right elsewhere And are there any examples that maybe you'd like to share? Well first of all the the Compact itself is a model that needs to be Transposed elsewhere in the world and we we tend to talk about the Syrian refugee crisis because it's definitely the worst crisis in Modern times, but if you look in Africa, there are many Places where we leave the states and countries to deal with the refugees without Given the without a plan of resilience for the country and without Giving more support to the state to be able to help the so this compact model. I think and I would leave it to my Neighbor on the right to probably go further into detail. So this has been one thing second of all What has happened in Jordan is this? Understanding of the Syrian Difficulties and and their situation has also forced the nation to become more giving and understanding and extending in hand and sharing And I know countries and I know families in the north Who've opened their homes and shared what little they have to have and maybe this is also on the psychological Level a very important thing for a nation to feel that they can extend nothing is worse than When people don't or when they reject Because they're scared because there there is fear factor. So that has been something positive and We cannot underestimate it and I so also think and I say it in the presence of all my Syrian friends here that I don't know if you know, but Syrians are fantastic with their hands. They're fantastic with their innovative there are people who are very smart hard-working and With all this terrorism that's going on in the world find me one Syrian terrorist And I will be very happy to change my mind about the theory that terrorism and refugees are not the same thing Thank you very much. I know you have to have to run. So thank you Apologize for all of you not being here, but I just wanted to make a point of coming. Thank you very much Adam a quick note here about the Jordanian ambassador she She had an urgent matter. She had to attend to and she I Suggested that she not come because of that and she said no no the issue is too big It's too important and we can't overlook the refugee issue and she said even if I can come just for a few minutes You say a few remarks so it speaks volumes about not only the ambassador, but sort of the The ethos or the climate that you see in Jordan But Jordan is not the only place Where we have refugees and so let me turn it over to our UNHCR colleague to maybe sketch out What's going on across the region and more broadly across the globe and why do we need to continue to stay focused on on this? Great. Thanks Robert and thanks to New America for having this World Refugee Day panel This is actually my second World Refugee Day event. I'm sorry. You weren't the first But I was in Knoxville, Tennessee over the weekend For a local community event. The theme of it was y'all means all And if you from the south or been in the south, we'll understand that so hi y'all are still on Nashville And but the reason I went to that is because in addition to events that we have here in DC with partners are on our Own we do like to get out to local communities in the US when we can and support partners in their events and One of the main things I said to the people in Nashville I think bears repeating here at the national level, which is that even though every year Many of us do some sort of event in recognition of World Refugee Day This year is probably like no other You alluded to it in your opening remarks this year. Maybe maybe last year as well But but this is just a different climate that we're experiencing I'd say for UNHCR and for a lot of us it started two or three years ago when the large number of Syrians and other refugees started going across the Mediterranean and Europe responded in I guess crisis mode would be one way to put it and That horrific photo of little Alan Kirti Who had washed up on a Turkish beach was in the media and everybody started really paying attention To something that many of us knew all along which was that we have a global crisis But all of a sudden the world kind of woke up to it And then following that you know last year we had the election season here in the US Where for better or for worse refugees were a big part of the the campaign rhetoric and now this year We have the current political climate where refugees have been the subject of executive orders and a lot of continued discussion And I would say that's been kind of a double-edged sword The negative part of it is that as we all know there's a tremendous amount of Misinformation about refugees, you know, you hear it on the news you you read it and for those of us who have worked on Refugees for many years. It's it's very disheartening very frustrating the misinformation the fear the unfortunate Tie between refugees and terrorism that the the ambassador just mentioned which we know Not to be the case But on the good side as I saw in Nashville and as I'm sure my colleague from Texas can speak to you see a tremendous Outpouring of community support. You see that in Jordan. You see it in local US communities So in that respect, it's that's sort of the bright side of what we've experienced But we can't take it for granted. We do have to continue With that welcoming climate and and fighting the misinformation because as you said we do still have a global refugee crisis The numbers that you referenced I think were The most recent numbers that we had up until today because every year for World Refugee Day We release a global trends document with new stats Based on the number of uprooted people as of the end of the last calendar year So today for this World Refugee Day, we just released the new numbers and the current Well, the number of globally displaced people as of the end of 2016 stood at 65.6 million So that's 300,000 more than the end of the previous year So it is once again the largest number in modern history And as you mentioned it roughly a third of those are refugees Which means people who have crossed an international border and can't go home because they fear persecution Roughly the other two-thirds Are displaced within the borders of their own countries So they are what we call IDPs internally displaced persons Syria as an example has both You have the five million plus refugees in neighboring countries that you mentioned and you have several million uprooted inside Syria Just to put these numbers in in context one out of every 113 people on the planet is uprooted and I think the new stat this year is that every three seconds a New person is forced to flee their homes so it is a global crisis and I think how we got to this point in history is Not a mystery to put it Simplistically, it's because the new wars new crises crop up and the old ones don't go away In recent years. We've had new crises on every continent and you can start with Syria Which well now that we've passed five six years. It's becoming an old crisis But in recent years, we've had the Central African Republic and Mali and Ukraine and In this region Central America the Northern Triangle of Central America, which is a crisis Right on the US in the US backyard We've had a lot of crises reignite ones that we thought were resolved like South Sudan parts of Burma Myanmar Iraq an old crisis and now a new one and You know things that had a lot of hope all of a sudden become a crisis again and the old ones just don't get resolved like Afghanistan and Somalia and Even Colombia which isn't the new in the news much these days in terms of a humanitarian crisis But it still leads the world in internal displacement for various reasons So what we've learned from these huge numbers is that the traditional solutions just aren't working The ambassador referred to the fact that we need new solutions And that's because the ones that we've relied on for decades just aren't doing the job So for example returning home, we all know refugees first and foremost want to go home So that's supposed to be the first solution that we pursue when they can go home in safety and dignity but because of what I just talked about the old crisis not being resolved and the 17 to 20 year displacement figure that the ambassador mentioned Last year. We had the lowest level of voluntary returns since I think 1984 Refugees want to go home. It's a great solution We we facilitate it when it's at all possible, but it's just not happening very much because the crises don't go away The second solution would be helping refugees integrate permanently in the host communities where they're hopefully would be given the rights similar to those of nationals But because most refugees not only come from the developing world, but because they're mostly being hosted in developing countries that have their own Political and social economic concerns that isn't a viable solution for most people So the third one the one that's in the in the news and will be discussed in a minute and more depth Third country resettlement is a great solution that we wholeheartedly embrace But unfortunately, it's available for a very small number of the world's refugees less than 1% So because of this while we still pursue these traditional solutions We need the new thinking that the ambassador referenced and very quickly that that new thinking Came out of a couple of summits in New York last September one of which led all 193 members of the UN to adopt Something called the New York Declaration where for the first time since the 1951 refugee convention They committed to a new approach That will include the components that the ambassador mentioned such as of course trying to facilitate return when it's possible also Trying to help host communities by easing the strain easing the burden on those communities by helping their own citizens Improve the standard of living in those countries. That's a big effort We're doing now with the World Bank other financial institutions the private sector a lot of non-traditional partners And finally pursuing not only the traditional refugee resettlement program, but what we call alternative pathways humanitarian admissions temporary work visas and such and it's this third one that Will have to keep working on not only in places like Jordan and in places like Knoxville But here in DC too because we have to we have to get the message out there that you know, even though the refugee story is one of tremendous suffering and and and loss it's also one of Resilience and and hope and the kind of welcome that I saw in Knoxville and and I think we need to keep telling that story Speaking of local activities. Let's turn to Suzanne who's doing incredible work on the ground in Chicago And maybe you could just share with us in a few minutes what you're doing and why it matters Good evening everyone. Thank you Bobby for organizing all of this and thank you for your remarks and thanks to the ambassador I'm really happy to be here on World Refugee Day, and I believe it's the 24th day of Ramadan, right? Is it the 23rd or 24? I've lost lost count all I know is I eat is on the 25th on on Sunday, and I can't wait, so But thank you for inviting me We founded the Syrian community network in 2015 in response to what's going on in Syria and knowing that Refugees will be coming to the United States and Chicago has always been a hub for refugees from every conflict Back in the 1970s. We saw the Vietnamese refugees arrive in Chicago. We saw the Cambodians We saw the Chinese we saw and then later on we saw the Iraqi refugees that came in in the 2000s and then when we heard that the State Department had accepted the resettlement of refugees of Syrian refugees here in the US We knew this was our call to action And so under the leadership of dr. Ed Silverman who was the head of the Illinois State You know he was the refugee coordinator for for Illinois. He really You know encouraged and pushed communities to organize You know especially like the Vietnamese and Cambodians who did not have a pre-established community in Chicago But under his leadership he created those communities, and so he told me you have to do the same you this is the this is now and this is the time where you have to organize and call your community and Tell them this is this needs to happen We need to welcome Syrian refugees because if you don't do this they will have a very difficult time So we started we officially launched in 2015 We're really proud to say that we have now 170 families that we're serving We have several programs that we've initiated We have our mentorship program Which was our very first program and that program really came out of what you talked about The picture of island Kurdim that picture moved so many people to action and people started reaching out to us and asking How can we help we really want to support Syrian refugees? And so we created this mentorship program where we pair community members with refugee families So that they can support them and help them in their integration and in anything that they need especially that for very first year It's very difficult We started now Our case management program where we have social workers who are helping the families in their adjustment as well to set goals Because we don't want to just give aid and and you know give a band-aid and just you know Here you go. Here's your money or whatever. We want to help them achieve what they want You know if they want to get their GED if they want to go to college if they want to do anything So our social workers now are helping the families set their own goals so that they can achieve and that they can succeed We started a jobs program also where we can help train the refugees on us culture, you know It's different from in Syria. So we feel those programs that we've initiated really helping But another way where we got another call to action was one in 2015 Over 30 governors said that they don't want to welcome refugees to their state and our governor of Illinois governor honor also said the same thing and and again We got bombarded with so many people so many requests to help I'm sure you have the same experience in Houston Where people started asking us how can we help and what can we do and really? You know seeing the outpouring of support from people You know wanting to welcome wanting to support our mentorship program all of a sudden grew from ten volunteers or ten mentors to all of a sudden We had a hundred mentors and where we were pairing people so that they can support the families in their in their adjustment one family that really You know comes to mind is Huda Huda is a single mother of six. She's here in Chicago And she lives in the Evanston. It's a North North suburb of Chicago and this family has been adopted by Beth Emmett synagogue and They have really taken care of this family. They've helped Huda find a job They've helped her children adjust in school. They're helping their children in programs So we feel like our mentors really are adding value to helping in their integration And we really see the Syrian community network as a connector to the community We're working with so many coalitions and so many partners with different people from different faith groups Everyone wants to help Whether it's people from the Jewish community whether it's from the Palestinian community whether it's from the Christian community from every Denomination from every church has been reaching out to us and asking us how can we help and we sit on many different coalitions whether they're faith groups or Immigration immigrant groups or groups that support undocumented because we believe in supporting everyone not just in Helping the refugees, but we want to create this welcoming You know Feeling that our city is someone that is is a place that welcomes all refugees is sanctuary city Another thing that we've worked it have been successful is working with our local elected officials in Chicago Right after our governor said that we don't want to welcome refugees We were in touch with the with city hall and our mayor said no We're gonna oppose as a Chicago Chicago ends where we are a city that resists And so he wrote with other alderman they wrote a resolution to saying that they will welcome all refugees into our city and And so that was passed and then the mayor also hosted a Thanksgiving Dinner for all of the refugees as well to give them the sense of you know an American tradition that you know that they have That this is their city that they belong to So doing things like this and advocating and working with you know the various you know coalitions and the various groups has really helped The refugees feel a sense of welcome We've worked really hard to connect them to the mainstream Community and to the larger Arab and Muslim community as well because we feel that's important for them Early on because they identify with people who speak the same language as they do But through the mentorship program where they're being exposed to other communities I think that has also pushed them out of their comfort zone and where they're meeting people from the Jewish faith You know people who are Methodist and Presbytery from the Presbytery Church and from every church that has been Welcoming and supporting. We are growing also and so we're happy about that We have chapters now in San Diego, Atlanta Phoenix and soon Toledo, Ohio And we're really proud of that. I was today speaking to the head of the San Diego chapter They have Over, you know, 200 or 250 families and that's over a thousand people that they've been really supporting Between San Diego and Orange County They've received a lot of support and many of the people who are supporting them also are people from the various denominations and Various faith groups and we're seeing this as a pattern Everywhere whether it's Phoenix or Atlanta or Chicago and so that's really been really exciting to see all of this work And all of this initiative that's been happening I will tell you that I was in Berlin with Angela, I guess About it about a year ago now give or take and She was we were on a delegation looking at Social and economic integration in Berlin and she was telling me about a center Called something called neighborhood centers and in Houston that she worked on I thought what is she doing here? Working on neighborhood centers a little bit. I know and I'm gonna tell you I've been to Houston in the last 60 days twice I'll be back there next month the amount of learnings from Angela and her team it is mind-blowing and So Angela really is the the Michael Jordan of community organizing So I just want to throw out a phrase for you and maybe you can start with this if you want you can start with something else earn learn and belong Okay so it always takes a little while to get people to come to Texas and And then to get them to come to Houston takes a little longer and Listen when our governor said what he said we just said so in in Texas when a woman says oh hell no stop Because that after that, you know, it's dangerous to continue down that path But I want to start with One thing that I always feel really it's really important to say and then I'm gonna do what my boss Bobby told me to do I want to say to you if you are in fact a refugee if you're a person who's lost your home and Your place where you felt you most belong the place you came from and you've begun your life again in a new place You had to start over I want to say how sorry I am for your loss and I want to acknowledge Your courage and fortitude. We are unique as a species in Our ability to recreate a life out of our imagination in a new place But it is not an easy thing and I've always felt that deep respect toward people who have undertaken that journey and and it's enormously enriched my life to be associated so So I I think Cities at large are at war With their states Houston. I just say is bigger and better than Texas. Just so you know as more fabulous And you know this would surprise you that one out of every four Houstonians is foreign born and in the region of about 60 million people 70% of us were not born in the region. We've all come from somewhere else We don't share a past we share a future it keeps us looking forward together and I will tell you we're not fancy So the average Houstonian after a couple of months can't remember whether you came from Iraq or Pakistan or Columbia or Cuba or Somalia. We just know you're in our city and you're welcome the thing that I've learned after three decades or more of work is We all share some aspirations and hungers That are unique to our species but common to all of us and it's the deep desire to earn learn and belong So whatever we do at Baker Ripley with whomever has just arrived is focused in one of those three areas Everyone wants to feel That they do work that others value that they can be paid for People want to believe they can learn and want to be treated as growing and developing human beings And the greatest of these of all is belonging. We all want a membership card that says we're a part of a collective Community that includes us there's room for us There's just two reactions to being written off one is rage The other despair and both are expensive and damaging and dangerous In Houston, we've pursued for decades now this notion that no one should be left out Y'all does mean all when we really mean it. We say all y'all and All y'all come here now do this But I want to offer a perspective I believe that Syria and the Syrian refugee crisis is To the world as Katrina was to the United States Before Katrina we had an idea About how disasters unfolded and how we recovered. I'm Cajun. I had a really good idea The hurricane came in everything got wet you made gumbo through a big party mopped up and went back to work But then it wasn't that way And it threatened and challenged us to look at the systems we created We saw that they in fact could not evolve and respond at the scale of what we were facing And we're seeing the same thing with Syria. This is not about blame. It's not to critique what's there It's to recognize that we're living in a disruptive world That is no longer an anomaly that flows of people into cities now our routine and that every city Every city has to understand that its first role Is not to be walkable, you know, Houston ain't walkable. I'm just telling you We don't meet any of that criteria for fancy cities They're not gonna write us up in the most developed urban thinking on the planet. We said 627 miles. There's a lot of square miles. There's a lot of room for you Come on down But what we do know is that we have to be willing and able to welcome people and that means when you arrive You need a landing place now This isn't new at the end of at the late 1800s early 1900s We call them settlement houses We built places that were meant to welcome people that we knew Weren't gonna get to return to their countries of origin anytime soon if ever and we said here's a place to start To meet your neighbors. We were founded that way and an early founder of ours said neighbors should learn to live as friends and I will tell you the integration which has to be our goal It doesn't happen in auditoriums. It happens in small rooms around small tables Person to person So these settlement houses that evolved into these were welcome centers and they were also on ramps It was a place to land and a place to get started and you were taught there both what it meant To be in a capitalist democracy, but you were also taught how to get along with your neighbors and It was a two-way street So all of the accommodation of the newcomer was not expected. It was expected to be a two-way street So I think that model in that framework of creating landing places and on ramp. This is the job of cities It's not to make a city more walkable. It's not to make it more economically Successful everybody knows Houston is an oil and gas capital But the city does not run on oil and gas the fuel of our city is the aspirations of the people who come there and our approach to engagement is to understand what is the most deeply held Aspiration of the person sitting across from us. What's most important to them? What keeps them up at night gets them up in the morning and the help we provide has to be built on their aspirations Not our our demands of them, but on what they want to achieve for themselves so in that spirit we've We have 70 locations and in those locations you can Earn you can have access to information about employment You can have you can learn everyone arriving in our region It has the first and foremost a goal of seeing their children have access to a good education Then they themselves are interested in what's possible for them And the third thing is really how to belong how to connect with your neighbors how to speak on your own behalf And how to act as your own advocate, so our programs are about that effort Because our future our entire future in our city and in this country depends upon Everyone having a chance to earn learn-and-belong let me turn to Cateba now and when you Organize these panels nice thing is as the moderator you can pull people together that you like But I'm gonna tell you that everywhere I travel and this is no exaggeration. I'm in London. They asked me Have you heard of this young guy named Cateba? I'm at Bradley University with Susanne. They said, you know this guy named Cateba I'm in San Diego at a large conference talking about Syrian refugees. Have you heard of Cateba? And I wanted Cateba to come here and talk about maybe the experience of being resettled in the US because in Every possible way his experience is so inspiring and it grinds against what we hear in the media about Syrian refugees and Muslim refugees and I was so delighted last week to get a phone call from Cateba to hear that he's now been Accepted in the Columbia University to finish his degree I'm gonna turn it over to Cateba and maybe if you could just share for a few minutes Your experience of resettlement here in the US Thank you Thanks a lot first when when Bobby invited me here. I thought to myself They're really for smart successful woman on panel. I don't know why Bobby wants me here But I thought yeah, if I'm closer, I would learn better probably so thanks for having me here My name is Cateba Ibelbi. I was raised in Syria all my life in 2011 After the uprising started. I was detained twice by the government And the third time the government decided to try to kidnap my little brother Before they arrest me in case I I escaped I managed to escape with my little brother And then eventually leave leave Syria in late 2011 After leaving of course my brother was 16 years old at the time We had our struggle basically was trying to find him a high school so he can continue his high school We were in Lebanon for about six months. It was hard the situation there Know enough scholarships for him, of course, and it wasn't secure enough Early 2012 we left Lebanon. We went to Egypt. I was able to secure a place for him in high school and then I was Basically for me. I was trying to decide what is going on. What is the next step? I traveled around the region at the time between Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt Until early 2013. I was invited through State Department to come to the United States Through a program called Leaders for Democracy Basically the program was to learn Leadership skills how the democracy system in the United States Sorry is built and then try to implement those Skills back in the region But after I finished my program and after learning those skills I decided to stay here because I felt that there is a bridge that needs to be built Between here people here in the United States and people back in the region As a refugee and also as Just what we call a citizen of the world If Syria had proved anything I think what Angela mentioned is We might not share the same past, but we definitely share the same future And this is what Syria proved and the way the whole world has changed after 2011 what happened in Syria we can see it, you know till today After settling here. I started my Small development firm for me staying here was basically yes starting a new life And starting a new life might sound Easier for us. Just maybe moving to a different city to a new job and Maybe that was my dream when I was in Syria before 2011 Because there was living in Syria meant living with no freedom with no dignity without being able to To to express who you are what you believe in So yeah, I always you know I always felt I need to go somewhere else where I can be who I am but I never thought of course that That would be the price basically would be leaving leaving everything behind It's different when you have when you voluntarily leave your place and move to different place Then when you basically have to take your backpack and run across the borders I didn't run across the borders. Literally. I had I was able to drive through but I had to leave my house Basically and never come back in an hour. I was told I need to go. I have only an hour to go pick my stuff and leave and Thinking about everything we leave behind sometimes we leave People talk about you know things we leave the memories our personal stuff But for more as refugees and I feel I mean I was more fortunate than a lot of refugees I I'm more fortunate even to be able to speak English to communicate with people to have the opportunities I have But an important aspect we don't really think about is Refugees also when they leave their leave their souls and their hearts back home That's why they want to go back because if you ask anyone If you if you ask anyone who is forced to leave their homes and everything behind would you want to go back? They would say definitely yes the problem with Syria is It's like a crisis. Yes, but we were not displaced by Natural disasters There was a reason why people left they were barrel bombs falling above their heads. They were Government security personnel is knocking on doors kidnapping children Killing older men or a raping woman There's a reason why those people are have left and there's and that's the same reason why they're not going back home I'll give one example in the city of homes Which is a couple hours away from Damascus The city has been taken back by the government in 2013 three or four years ago till today No single family you went back to homes even though homes Most of homes is destroyed there are still places that are built But none of the refugees went back because for them it's not only about just having a place to go back to but also having a Community where they can just be who they are where no one is really, you know going after them and They have to watch who they're back before saying anything and for me making the decision to stay here was this and in a weird way I Found many there are many similarities I found between the United States and Syria which is basically that both Syria and the United States was built on Basically refugees people coming from different, you know parts of the world heading there seeking A place where they can be who they are where you know, they seek to build a new life to have a new home Syria was like that and definitely even though sometimes I feel we don't really feel it here. This is who we are Sometime along our history our ancestors came here running away from persecution They were running away here seeking a new life just like Syrians are right now and For me running coming here. I found what I was missing in Syria not the Not the face that we see in like in move face of America that we see in movies Or on TV on big screens, but basically the feeling that we I am free that I can be who I am I can speak my mind I can come here and speak freely not going back home being afraid that the government would be you know I will be taking you know spend my My next few years in jail or my family would be hurt and I think this is really important when When we really think about refugees is this aspect is why they are leaving and why they're coming here and what they're looking for in America We are short on time and probably long on many questions. I'm going to ask now that we open it up to the audience Questions only please I insist state your name your affiliation and Let's begin right here in the front. What she's gonna Sorry, he's thanks Wonderful presentation, and I just want to thank all of you speaking your mind My name is Maya arms be I represent paper airplanes which provides virtual training For Syrian refugees and not only Syrian refugees generally refugees the Skype So and my question is about innovative solutions such as this one What else is happening in the informal? Let's say indication or informal employment for example virtual employment I Know it's more of a US focus, but maybe our UNHCR represented who could address that I'll just say that you mentioned the word innovation, which is Near and dear to our hearts most people don't think of the UN and Innovation probably in the same breath, but I know it's a buzzword for everybody But we really are working on again I said new solutions, but we're doing with with partners because we don't we know that we don't have the answers But we actually have an innovation hub that's working with a lot of private sector agencies small ones Big ones like Ikea people I think are aware of you know the Ikea shelter I think they're aware of biometrics innovation that we have I had a colleague here a couple weeks ago talking about the future of biometrics being not just the iris scans that We're doing throughout the Middle East, but neural ID, which just sounded like Star Wars to me or something Education absolutely distance learning Is a big thing that we're pursuing in order to achieve that you have to have connectivity basic thing So we're working with a lot of the big carriers around the world to make sure that that Cellular access internet connectivity is available for our refugees I could probably go on but you really hit the nail in the head with talking about innovation because that's part of these new solutions Being live webcast Hi, my name is Sarah Owens. I am here representing the International Committee of the Red Cross and I wrote down my question So I could be quick So I'm wondering what are some tangible ways that the UN States or the international community can do to address ongoing conflicts today Which mentioned are at the heart of people being uprooted from their homes And are these the actors that we should be looking to who can make the biggest impact in this environment I'll say one thing and which is just One thing that can be done is what everybody's doing here tonight, which is inform yourselves With everything happening on social media. It seems like that's the battleground right now And again, whether it's international or local we need people lending informed voices to the debate in showing Policymakers that there's a constituency out there for refugees not just against but before that's something they don't they don't see that much of Believe many people don't know what's happened really happening in Syria and one way to really put a human face to This conflict and what's what's going on is to really adopt a refugee family and get to know them and to Understand why they left the country of origin and then as an ambassador you yourself can become You know champion ending of a certain conflict of rallying your friends You know on social media and advocating and calling your congressmen and your senators and and raising awareness This is I think all of us. It's our duty and our responsibility to do that Otherwise, we would have failed the people who are in in those conflicts Thank you. My name is Muhammad Najee. I'm Syrian American also belong to Couple organization the sack which Syrian American Council and Sam's in American Medical Society I have a question. I mean since the Syrian crisis. We've seen international meetings and commitments of countries to donate Or you know the pledge hundreds of millions of dollars to the students a crisis Have these Commitment being fulfilled or not because we see Severe shortage in in every in Jordan refugee area and Lebanon and now in Greece and other areas And if they did not what can we do to? To make them You know fulfill their commitments because it seems like the the financial aspect of this is one of the major problems To really help the Syrian refugees everywhere. Thank you Real real quick answer is some of the commitments are are coming through others have been a bit more of a challenge Ironically the the Syria crisis and usually when we finish out a calendar year and we kind of tally up the receipts The the serious situation in recent years has finished the year like maybe 60% funded or so which leaves a huge gap a lot of our Africa operations are about 22 to 25% funded So we have we have gaps all over I think in addition to pursuing donors to keep their commitments I think the the best thing that needs to be done again to go back to these new solutions is not to just wait for money to Come in to help refugees be empowered and successful and able to work While they're waiting to go home or while they're waiting to another solution They don't they don't don't need to be a dependent population their agents of their own Empowerment if like Jordan is doing if other countries can see refugees as Being able to address their own needs by working and they'll make work visas available If they see that the international community can help their own people as well. So the new approaches I think will Lessened the need for just an infusion of cash for for decades to come Just something maybe a little bit off. We always think when you look at the crisis that yeah, what are the states doing? What are the big agencies doing? but I think when Jenna said that we have sixty five point six million refugees or displaced people and Every three seconds. There's someone get being displaced. I think that puts responsibility on each one of us, too I think sometimes it's easy for us to put, you know to push the responsibility to the big international actors But the work that Suzanne is doing and Angela's doing other people is doing shows us that basically yes There is a responsibility on each one of us as communities as small communities that sit as cities and as individuals too Not only to come and this is also for us here. Not only to come listen But also the question for all of us here is what are we gonna do next leaving here? What is the step that we're gonna take to take our part and our responsibility in you know in dealing with what is going on? Did you want one more comment on that? I'd like to just offer this perspective I think to the extent that you view the arrival of refugees as a charitable moment It's Certainly, I think some of the most inefficient Giving occurs around crisis everyone's moved by the moment the headline is big and loud and broad and painful And people give but the adaptation of people to new places in new cities is a long-term process Cities do have the opportunity and a couple of examples have been mentioned To have refugees and immigrants be a mirror for the existing policies So if you have existing policies about work and work permits training and who gets trained Entry to community college and who has access you have a chance when newly arrived people come to examine those to reframe those and Change them not just for the newly arrived as we call them in Houston new neighbors, but also for people in your own community so There is no there's no Solution to refugees that is entirely a charitable solution It has to be a set of adaptations and Innovations and those adaptations I go back again must be made by cities city leaders We have the most at stake the people are in our cities and our future depends on them having a place in our city We have to move to the next panel I Know that there are a lot of questions, but we are gonna have time to talk Over if tar and I certainly hope everyone's going to stay But but I I would like to just end by saying that these are four people here who have devoted their days every day to try and improve people's lives and So I am in August company here, but I'm also inspired by what they each do and so please please give them a very warm Thank you I don't want it there's about Now so we're gonna pull out the panels and get going super fast here, so Thank you. Yeah. Yeah Alright everybody, hey everybody Excuse me Everybody in the back Please can we be seated? Everybody can you please can we be seated now? We want to finish on time for for if tar I'm told by Mona. I cannot go a minute over so That's a joke There you So please be seated. Thank you. So I just want to jump in real fast the second panel And I thought it was important to have this panel Because I know two of them very well in a in a personal capacity But I know the work of their the Syrian American community in terms of what they've done and it's absolutely Inspiring it's mind-boggling what you guys have done to pull together the community And it may be if there is a silver lining and I hate to think of there being a silver lining in the Syria crisis But it may be what you guys and your colleagues have done across the country to pull people together to Create 30-some organizations to distribute hundreds of millions of dollars It is It's impressive. So let me just turn it over to Let me actually first introduce everyone properly. We have so hey Bill Gallagher He's the chairman of the board of the Syrian American Council. He's from San Diego Next to so hey, we have Lena Matar who's the co-founder and CEO of the Quran Foundation. She's based in Chicago Next to her we have Mona Joandy Who is an advisor to the Free Syria Fund? She's based in Flint And from 2012 to 2014 Mona was president for a United Free Syria And we have next to her Dr. Zahar Salul who's the founder of the Syrian American Relief Coalition for Syria and the past president of the Syrian American Medical Society He's based in Chicago and I should tell you that that my introductions of them do not give Even for a second justice to what what they're what they actually do because each one of them are professionals Dr. Zahar is a Physician Mona is a lawyer Lena is an activist Architect there you go. So hey is is an entrepreneur and so they have full-time lives professional lives and families and On top of all of that they've pulled together some extraordinary organizations So let me turn it over to so hey to maybe just hear a little bit about what you're doing But if you could maybe talk about what you mentioned earlier about You guys view this as an existential crisis. This wasn't just about getting involved to do good. It's more than that for you guys Yeah, I'd like to start by giving you a little bit deeper perspective from Syrian who had immigrated from Syria to the US The Syrian community is estimated roughly between 140,000 to 400,000 The 140,000 number may reflect first generation Syrian American 400,000 number may include second generation and a third generation by large the Syrian American community is very well educated not because I am Syrian but that's resources which has been done by other entities and With income above us average like any newly immigrant community as a community have been you know very work Focused on working and then had had very successful from from professional perspective to give you my perspective and perspective of a lot of my generation I Came into the US as a student back in 1984 and I came initially to the University of Tennessee My very first class in the University of Tennessee my English teacher gave us George Orwell book 1984 to read it happened to be because I arrived in 1984 so I was reading George Orwell book and I was reading Syria in every line and It touched me because I lived it and I fell through it where my my colleague my friend in the school Were sort of reading Science fiction book. I was sort of seeing it as reality and then I was thinking Havas I said You know big brother is just pussycat comparing to Havas I said Comparing to you know what I was reading in 1984 The point which I want to convey here is that we came out a lot of us from Syria from an atmosphere of fear Now moving from 1984 27th years later 2011 and uprising started in Syria and we in San Diego tried to create a community event to bring Syrian and Syrian-American to just you know Empathize and then have a community event in San Diego Most of them are 40 50 years Syrian who are naturalized citizen and have been for long time in the US What surprised me is that most of them were fearful from writing their name on a book and They were unwilling to participate We had about 50% of the people who attended the event in early 2017 Watching us from outside because they were afraid that we will report them to Assad regime and they won't be able to go back to Syria The reason I'm raising this point is to This level of fear is very difficult to translate unless you live in that atmosphere we struggled quite a bit to get the community to be able to participate in activities and and Different organizations start to mushroom one of the organ organization is the Syrian-American Council It was established back in 2005 from 2005 until 2011 They were virtually very few member who are willing to participate in community activity again the operative word here is fear after the revolution Activity had increased substantially and it mushroomed to 15 chapters across the US What we have been working on and advocating for is primarily to get our community to become true American by Engaging at the local level and national level to advocate for pluralistic Democratic Syria of the future which we all hope for and we all believe that most Syrian are Tolerant pro-democracy and then and the situation which degenerated in Syria is anomaly and it's not It's not a reflection of the Syrian people we Have been advocating from our vision and our mission goals and objective We believe it's very well aligned with most Spoken and and spilled policies from full spectrum in the US from from ultra-left to the ultra-right Everyone verbally would come out and say ultimately we would like democratic pluralistic representative Syria But what we are what we're finding ourselves is that we have what I call You know inherent conflict Where large part of our own community No longer trust us in intent and motives Based on how the US have been reacting or not acting inside Syria since the start of the uprising On the other end also we're faced by very heavy Russian and Iranian propaganda and along with substantial number of of think tanks here in Washington DC Where they ended up reducing the conflict to a pure fight between Assad and ISIS as if the 23 million Syrian population no longer exists To highlight what we have been trying to achieve I want to explain We have two key goals We are working on on sack two fundamental efforts one is to engage our community and Ensures that we will have much wider participation in our community at the local level and at the national level But another point which was really important for us is that we think we We need to correct the narrative about the Syria situation and in Syrian conflict the narrative which is Had been propagated that it's essentially a civil war between Assad and ISIS Where we believe the Syrian uprising was for liberty was for the same value and And an aspiration which created this same nation, you know my second adopted nation and and now the Syrian aspiration for liberty had transformed to war of liberation from International jihadists coming across the border from Iranian and mercenaries from other Regional and international actors who are looking for their own self-interest inside Syria And then we feel that Syrian people are lost in between and that's why I mentioned to you We are actually in an existential threat. It's no longer just advocating for democratic value since 23 million people Existed in Syria back in 2011 12 million of our population 50 percent of our population have been displaced More than 6 million are refugees and in that case our situation is much more beyond that your normal advocacy Which we which typically needed to be done in the reaction to to you know to tragedies Couple of points, which I want to highlight and I'll you know, I'll end we We have been working with the US administration was was a previous Obama administration and the current administration And we have the advantage of being very well ingrained with the facts in the ground in Syria Since we are dual set dual citizens and we have family in Syria. We have We are very close and in touch with the daily activity, which are happening inside Syria And we could bring that knowledge immediately here to the US We had a couple of situations where we back in 2012 we had presented to to the national security team to the State Department after Portion of Alipoh was I am originally from Alipoh after portion of Alipoh was liberated by the Free Syrian Army We presented recommended as that The administration and State Department help us Establish a police force because we were afraid that Power vacuum will happen in Alipoh and extreme extremists will fill that power Power vacuum we presented it as the administration was unable to react until a year or year and a half That's one example where our knowledge would have helped the situation if there is willingness to to understand things from You know or appreciate things from our own perspective 2013 2014 the Free Syrian Army which had increasingly been shifting to extremists The Free Syrian Army had started a war against ISIS and kicked ISIS from most of Western Syria we went to the administration and to the State Department and plead for them to help us destroy ISIS when they were on the ground Retreating from Western Syria and at that time was late 2013 2014 We did not hear any receptive You know we felt that if if the US Air Force would hit ISIS at that time We would have made them collapse completely from a euphoric space and and of course there was unwillingness to participate Where we are right now is that we are focusing on one key point. This is going backward looking in the future We're focusing on one key point, which is now ISIS is going going to be defeated and Hopefully within six months. We no longer will have ISIS It's a question becomes to say administration. What next? We don't believe if Assad is going to remain is going to be a solution to the problems There is some from from Russian perspective from Iranian perspective are arguing that Assad ought to remain we think that will perpetuate the Refugee problem and actually it may increase it and As an example, which was mentioned about hummus Assad regime took over almost three years ago and most of the population were We are unable to go back to homes. So we know for facts that if Assad is allowed to win Refugee problem is going to be Will remain and instability will remain and my deepest fear is that we will move Afghanistan to the Mediterranean So we hope that they will be a shift in our policies because it's win-win for everyone It's win for the refugee. It's win for democracy. It's win for peace for the area And then however the current trajectory is that Assad is winning and that's our you know Our biggest fear and that's our key point which we're at getting Thank you very much. Thank you Bobby for inviting me I'm very honored to be here at New America and I thank all of you for showing up in this kind of bad weather It's always a pleasure and it's very very rare six years in to find panels that are all Syrian and so you managed to put together two very powerful panels and We're very happy to come and speak to you about what's been going on in Syria and And on this occasion, I mean world refugee day six years ago really didn't mean much to me personally and And now it's a very important occasion for all Syrians to speak up for refugees Because there are over five million Syrian refugees and over 11 million Syrian displaced people so that's almost half of the population that no longer lives in their homes and As Bobby was talking about the Syrian American Community we've all had to step up in our own ways to Put together Organizations and communities and groups of people who began all kind of we started all together Working in emergency mode in any way that we could and with time we got organized and kind of got specialized To work in different sectors on the humanitarian or the political crisis I'm originally from Aleppo. I grew up half my life here in the United States I was born in Brooklyn moved back to Syria when I was 12 Lived in Aleppo with my family and came back in 98. My parents came here in 2012 They're not refugees because they're American citizens, but they came with their four suitcases So my mother says that she's not a refugee, but she feels like one I started Kedem Foundation back in 2007 and since 2011 we've been focused on building a better future for Syria Kedem means generosity in Arabic and it was very much inspired by my father's Work of charity that we grew up with in Aleppo watching him give to people in different ways And that's kind of what we want to emulate with Kedem Foundation in Chicago Working with all different kinds of communities both locally and internationally. We were very small and We never expected that in 2011 our organization would have to take such a radical shift to focus on a Crisis that would become the largest humanitarian crisis of our lifetime and that our organization we would have to learn how to be an organization on the front line of a conflict zone and We began working an emergency aid and with within a couple of years we began to visit the refugee camps and We began to see how children are growing up as refugees and that there is really no end in sight and So many children actually over one million Syrian refugee children do not have access to education So we began to focus on innovative education programming for Syrian refugee youth and teens And that's what we do in Turkey and we also work in Jordan and Lebanon as well as inside Syria on education programming Because I'm an architect by training. I no longer practice architecture The work one of the workshops that I do with the Syrian refugee kids when we go in Turkey is called mapping home and In that workshop kids get to pretend to either be architects or urban planners And I teach them how to draw floor plans of their future homes or floor or urban a maps of their future cities And when I was doing this workshop about a year and a half ago In southern Turkey in a very crowded classroom Kids began I had had the kids draw their ideal future cities and They were really excited. They were drawing all of these I talked about monuments homes schools What an ideal city needs and they were drawing and I was walking between the Desks and I saw so many of the kids had their cities situated against an ocean or a sea and Many many many little triangles and I didn't know what they were and I asked one of them What are these and he looked at me as if like I didn't understand anything and he said that's the refugee camp and So many of them had drawn refugee camps because they couldn't imagine an ideal city Without a refugee camp and without a sea to get to there I asked them where is this city and they said oh, you know very far away. It's in Europe and Because the kids that we work with actually for them it would be a dream to be able to afford to get on the smuggler boats to get to Europe and So these kinds of moments teach you about how Syrian kids are growing up in this crisis and What it says about us about our collective humanity that in 2015 16 17 until now Thousands of people are still drowning Because to get to safety and what it means that We still have a system in this age and you know look at where we're sitting in New America and all of Have this floor plan and the layout and the technology and we're living in an age of uber and Airbnb and still we have a situation where people literally have to step foot onto European land to be able to be granted refuge this we were we have been watching a genocide for six years and We have been watching silently Unfortunately, and nobody has been doing anything. This is the crisis of our lifetime and Syria is not just about Syria It's about all of us Syria is what happens when we decide to become bystanders To genocide when we decide to just watch and maybe ring our hands and maybe donate When that when one one picture of one child goes viral or when a hashtag goes viral will donate But the next day we're consumed with the next image But every single day Syrians are facing death By airstrikes by barrel bombs by hunger By every way imaginable and unimaginable. I just watched today City of ghosts everybody should watch this about the suffering of the people of Raqqa They're dying in ways we can still not even imagine and every day. They're dying including today So what I'd like to say is that it's very important for us not to forget about refugees But also not to forget about Syrians and the war that's going on because the war needs to end for the refugee crisis to end Syrian refugees do want to return home. They do want to go back and rebuild their country but at the same time they can't there's nowhere for them to go back to and So it's very important for us to show up like just you all of you showed up today for refugees To show up and to make refugees in your communities not only welcome But we need refugees to belong we need them to feel home again But we also need to act together to to work together to bring peace justice and freedom for the Syrian people and to end this war And end this genocide. This is on all of us. Thank you Thank You Lina. So hey, thank you Bobby for inviting me and for having us I think like what Nina said, you know, it's kind of rare now to see Syrians at the table talking about Syria I think the last Geneva Meeting there wasn't a Syrian on the table. So It's a little bit refreshing, you know, this is not an academic conversation I'm assuming that most of you are here because you have some interest in Syria. How many of you are following What's happening in Dara today? Yeah, okay, so a few of you It's getting barrel-bombed napalm, you know, my father comes from You know, this is really not an academic conversation. We're not talking about history. We're talking about something that's occurring Right now. So my father is from that. Oh, my mother is Palestinian 1948 refugee In Camp Yarmouk in Damascus. She was born there, you know, my family on both sides You know, when the siege of Camp Yarmouk broke my uncle went missing. We've never found him since 2011 my dad's brother was killed by security forces when he tried to stop them from taking his teenage sons November of 2016 my cousin and his daughter were killed by an ISIS Car bomb in Dara. This isn't the victim Olympics But this is I'm just trying to give you examples to understand that this is real for the Syrian American community I wasn't born in Syria. I you know, I've born in Flint, Michigan But I know what this had done to my family even from years ago You know, we weren't allowed to get to know my my family I didn't know my father's family. Most of them didn't know most of my mother's family because we weren't allowed to go to Syria You know at that time. So, you know, I remember my dad in 2013 I think went on a Sam's medical mission From you know from Turkey into Northern Syria and he had not been back to Syria since 1970 And I remember he called us the night before he was going in and on Skype And we all cried together because he was finally at the age of 76 being able to go back and stuff into Syria even though he obviously comes from But the idea that he was going to be able to go back and to use his skills, which is what he had initially wanted to do He's a trauma surgeon You know that he was going to be able to do that. It was a very sort of moving moving moment So I think that you know, what's important to note too is the diversity. I think of the Syrian American community I'm not sure how many people are familiar but you know a lot of our organizations represent people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds You know, we have like the Coalition for Democratic Syria has representation of yellow whites, Kurds, Druze You know, and obviously Sunnis involved Christians You know, we have Republicans, Democrats, Capitalists, Socialists So we really do have a sort of wide gamut of diversity from the Syrian American community And you know, I was one of those people that was a little bit more frustrated in the beginning of the revolution And I had been involved in political campaigns and you know, door knocking since I was a teenager So when the revolution began, I was like, alright, let's do this And you know, everybody was afraid like what, so how he was talking about And I was like, seriously guys, like we're in America, like you don't need to be afraid anymore But it's not that simple, it's a culture that needs to be changed And I can definitely say that the Syrian American community learned in a pressure cooker You know, the existential nature of the crisis really made the Syrian American community try to get its act together as quickly as possible And the Syrian American community has a very unique role, you know, of all the Syrian diaspora communities You know, we always say, we know that the decision on what's going to happen in Syria is here in this city And there's nobody else that can do that work except for the Syrian American community As citizens, as voters, as constituents, you know, we have access in a way that no other Syrian diaspora community does So that gives us a unique opportunity, but it also I think is a quite a responsibility And I'm not sure that we're doing it as well as we should, but I think that, you know, we're giving it a shot So, you know, we have the advocacy machinery is developed over the course of six years We have, you know, the C3 non-profits doing advocacy We have a lobbying arm and we have PAC So, you know, we're getting more sort of, I would say, mature in our political advocacy If any of you are familiar with the Caesar legislation that passed in the last Congress Passed again this Congress that was, again, the Syrian American community The newly formed Syria caucus in the house Chared by Congressman Adam Kinzinger Co-chaired by Democratic Representative Brendan Doyle out of Pennsylvania And now we are up to 14 representatives in the Syria caucus in a pretty short period of time, couple of months So, you know, we're sort of working on these things I do want to talk a little bit about policy I mean, this is what we do, we do advocacy And, you know, I think the most frustrating thing to hear after this many years is There are no good options in Syria And as if that's like an excuse to say, well, you know, that's it, it's too late now So now we just got to sit and, you know, sort of watch things roll by That's just simply not true And our community is here to say that's just simply not true Yes, there's no silver bullet, but you know what? Changing from a dictatorship to a democracy doesn't happen You know, it's not an app that you download And then all of a sudden rays of, you know, the rainbow and butterflies come out, right? I mean, it's a struggle And the Syrian people have a freedom struggle That is legitimate and it's of course going to be, you know, it takes a lot of effort And so, you know, we in the Syrian American community Really feel that this is something that is our responsibility And we hope to be able to take it on Our central message is really not a message but more of a question Which is how many more? You know, Nina published the book twice now, I think you've had The book, what's it called? Yeah, how many more the book of Syria is dead And our question is how many more? After six years, like okay fine, after one year we don't know, we don't understand what's going on Maybe it'll be this way, maybe it'll be that way After six years that's just simply not the case We know what's going on, Aleppo might not be in the headlines But there's still a massacre happening in Aleppo We have a plan for ISIS, we don't really have a plan for anything else So, you know, we believe that we have to keep advocating Advocating for the freedom struggle that the Syrian people stood up for And really there's two main goals One is civilian protection And I feel like we should just put that on repeat, right? Civilian protection You know, we can talk about refugees all day long Treat the symptoms, stop the cause You know, these barrel bombs are, you know, it's the aerial bombardment That is overwhelmingly killing Syrian civilians That is something that we can stop President Trump knocked out 20% of the Assad regime's Air Force We welcomed that But you know what? 20% is more than what it was before But it's not enough You know, there's just so, so much damage and killing that happens Through the aerial bombardment People are still getting kidnapped, people are still getting raped The prisons are still full of people being tortured So civilian protection, first of all And secondly is political transition You know, the Syrian people stood up for freedom, dignity, democracy That's what they stood up for And that's what we're advocating for That's not going to happen without a political transition And you don't need to be a lawyer to understand That when you go to a negotiating table You actually have to have leverage When you go to negotiate So going to the table Which I like to call the Geneva hamster wheel Going to the table and saying Please stop killing us It's really not going to wield any results We have to be able to go to the table And have some, there has to be some real pressure on the regime Through Russia, through Iran In order to get the political transition So you know, I was mentioning at the last Geneva meeting There was an Assyrian on the table There was not a Syrian on the table It was all of the other countries that got together to discuss Syria And ultimately what was it? Tisk, tisk Russia, Iran, you're being bad little boys Stop being bad little boys and then everybody went home Again, that's not the way that negotiations happen So until we decide that we are going to stop the killing And that this machinery of Assad, Iran and Russia In Syria has got to be put to a stop Really Geneva is going to continue to be the hamster wheel Last point, you know, and again put this one on repeat We've talked about it, I'm sure that you've read about it We will not defeat ISIS without getting rid of Assad, period It's just, it's not going to happen So when we want to focus on ISIS We have to be focusing on Assad If you remember the train and equip program That is really the number one reason why it failed President Obama had required that everybody that wanted to be trained Agreed to be trained and equipped Had to sign something saying that they would only fight ISIS Of course, there was like 100 people that signed up I think it was within a month the whole thing had dissipated Because that's not the reality The Syrian freedom struggle began against Assad It is against ISIS as well But they are both part and parcel of the same problem The end, thank you Well, first of all, thank you very much for the speakers I'm really honored to be among them And I left the heavy lifting to my wife, Suzanne Who was in the first panel And thank you, Bobby, for organizing all of this And thank you for coming after six years of the crisis It looks like there is a lot of interest Just a question, if you're a Syrian American Or a person who worked with a Syrian American organization Raise your hand Wow Did we take that in the picture? That's impressive And I think the reason that most of you are here Is because of the young people Who are the second generation of Syrian American immigrants Who are very attached to the cause And they are still active in advocacy And humanitarian appeal in Syria And they are doing the heavy lifting And we have some of them here in the panel But we have many of them here also The second point that I would like to make The silver lining that many have talked about Is the fact that Syrian Americans in general Have stepped up And it started very chaotic It started with individuals like Dr. Najee Who was an anesthesiologist from DC Who went and spent one month in the field hospital In Northern Latakia, risking his life And he spent the time there Dr. Suhail Habbal, who went to Aleppo Risking his life We have too many people who started their own NGOs There is a joke that which is probably a real story That if you have two Syrians in the room You're going to end up with five NGOs Four or five So initially we have these NGOs I remember that the first meeting That we arranged for the American Relief Coalition For Syria, which is a coalition Of right now 13 member organizations We had about 30 Syrian American NGOs That attended the first meeting in 2012 Right now we have about 14 or 15 Who are specialized as Lina has mentioned Some of them are focused on medical relief Some of them are focused on education On shelter and food and protection So there is maturity in the Syrian American NGOs And community as the crisis has gone on And this is not very un-similar With other diaspora by the way We're not doing something that is unique Every other diaspora have done the same thing When they had crises in their homeland The Ethiopian diaspora, the Bosnian diaspora The Irish diaspora and we are doing the same And this is our debt that we have to give back To our homeland But I can tell you that the Syrian American community As Soheb has mentioned is one of the most resourceful And creative and resilient diaspora That we have in the United States And I think some of the criticism That we had to previous administration And also to the current administration Which is slow still in formalizing The policy on Syria that they did not use The resources, the diaspora The way it should be used Yes, we had contact with the administration With the State Department of National Security Council With the Congress at the highest level Yes, we met with them tons of times But at the same time we felt that we were not On the table when major policy Had been done about Syria And that was a major failure Of the Obama administration That they did not use these resources Although Obama preached for the role of diaspora But he did not use the diaspora That is connected to the homeland That they understand and they know what's happening In Aleppo and in Raqqa and Dar'a and Homs They did not use this information and diaspora To formalize the major picture in the policy I wrote an article in Chicago Tribune In the last day of Obama's administration Titled President Obama Why did you fail us in Syria The reason that we have 6 million Or 5 million refugees and 7 million Internally displaced people is because of the failure Of our policy in Syria And I think we have to admit that And maybe part of you why you're here after 6 years Is the feeling of guilt Feeling of guilt of all of us Because when President Obama when we talked With their National Security Council about How come that we're not intervening in Syria How come that we're not protecting civilians How come that we're allowing chemical weapon use The executes that the American public Did not care And they quoted some numbers that only 100% of the American public were paying attention To what's happening in Syria But in spite of that In spite of the challenges I can tell you That the Syrian American diaspora Have done miracles I'm going to talk a little bit about the resiliency Of the Syrians inside Syria And I hope that I'm going to show A couple of pictures and I know That this is not the platform But it helps sometimes to highlight What's going on With pictures if we're allowed to So this is a picture of Fatima Who I've seen in the last Medical mission to Aleppo In June of last year Right before the siege And Fatima is 25 years old Who has three children And she was pregnant in her Third month baby and Two barrel bombs fell in her house And she lost her unborn baby She lost also the older child Abdul who was 9 and the younger Daughter who he left who was 3 And she had internal bleeding She was on life support in this hospital Now this hospital is called M10 This is a hospital that was Built underground in Aleppo Because of the frequent bombing And I think we always talk about The 5 million people who left Syria But I think a more important Number to talk about is the 18 million People who are still inside Syria In spite of the barrel bombing In spite of the chemical weapon attacks In spite of the siege we have 4 million people in areas Under siege for 5 years We have 400,000 people in east Al Ghouta near Damascus That have no electricity for the past 5 years No phone lines, no sewage treatment In spite of that they are still there Because they are attached to the land I think it's very important to understand That people in Syria are Attached to their homeland My parents are still living in Homs My sister had her house bombed And she left the house with her children But she still lived in Homs because They said, my parents said I live in the United States, I invited them Of course to come here, they said We lived in that city, I'm going to die in that city So people in Syria are attached And there is this Somali British poet Who said that you have to understand That no one put their child In a boat unless the water is safer Than the land No one will leave home unless The home is a mouth of a shark The problem that Syria is a mouth of a shark Because of what has been said Because of Assad regime Because of the extreme brutality Because of the chemical weapon attack We're not talking about one or two Some of us maybe think that we had Only two chemical attacks In Syria We had more than 175 Chemical weapon attacks in Syria Most of it were not reported in the media We wrote a report in the Sam's called A New Normal Ongoing chemical weapon attacks in Syria And we counted 165 Chemical weapon attacks With serine gas and chlorine gas Up to March of last year And that was before Khan Sheikh Massacre This is Mahmoud This is the son The surviving son of Fatima He's seven years old And I would like you really to look at his eyes This is what you see in Syria When you see children They're shocked They cannot smile They cannot cry When you ask them to draw That's what they draw Helicopter throwing barrel bombs House on fire Mutilated children Children who are crying And children who are dead The amazing about this drawing From a second grade student In Aleppo That the people who are dead Children do not lie But I'd like you also to see These pictures Of A hospital that was built In a cave This is a hospital that was built In a cave in north of Hama I visited that hospital last year And it's called the Central Cave Hospital Of Syria People want to live In Syria People want to have education And I think what is important For us as NGOs As Syrian diaspora As people who care about humanity Is to provide them with a chance to live In their own community and prevent them From displacement No one would like to leave Right now we have maybe the third Or the fourth exodus in Syria Not because of the bombing Because the bombing slows down In the last few months or so But because young men between So if this continued, we're not going to have men in Syria. We're going to have only children and women. And this is the major, and this is the Central Cave Hospital from the outside. This is also another picture that talks about the resiliency of the people in Syria. This is distant learning. These are students, medical students in East Al-Uta, who are getting learning through the web from Dr. Basil Atassi, who's in Chicago. And they don't have electricity in East Al-Uta because it's under siege and the government cuts the electricity when they have areas under siege. So they are using car batteries to operate their laptops. People are resilient. We have one of the member organizations in the American Relief Coalition for Syria called SIA, Syrian American Engineer Association, which provided solutions for people under siege. And I think we can write volumes of books about these solutions, how to adapt to siege. I think we should have movies about how to adapt to siege. One of the solutions that they provided to people in East Al-Uta because there is no electricity, that they instructed them to build these holes in the ground that they put animal waste and they produced methane gas. And the methane gas was used to operate generators in the hospital to produce clean energy from animal waste in East Al-Uta under siege. So I think what we need also to focus on now that we have a new administration is what else? What should we tell President Trump and the new administration? It's very important to talk about what Suhaib and Mona and Lina has mentioned that people in Syria would like to have the end of the crisis, would like to have a political settlement, but in order for political settlement to happen there should be a political transition. No one will accept after six years of brutality and half million people killed and more than 20,000 people who were killed under torture to have the same regime. So that's the most important thing that the administration has to know. That yes, stability is important, but stability does not mean that accepting the people who committed war crimes to continue to be an office. And I think the majority, the super majority of Syrians will agree about that. The second thing that the administration has really to consult with the Syrian Americans who understand what's going on in Syria and who are the main front in fighting ISIS and extremism and sectarianism in Syria. It's not only extremism and terrorism that we need to fight, but also sectarianism because sectarianism is feeding into extremism not only in Syria but in the whole Middle East. And we are the ones who understand how to talk with the other side and how can we educate the Syrians to be moderate because Syrians in general are moderate. Syrian in general, Syrian Islam by the way and not all Syrians are Muslims, only 65% or 75% are Muslims is very moderate traditional Sufi Islam that does not know any extremism and that's why we don't have any, and I'm really sorry to say that because sometimes we're asked about linking refugees, Syrian refugees to terrorism. There is no terrorist act that was committed by a Syrian refugee period in the last 100 years. So I think it's very amazing that we focus on the refugee as a threat instead of focusing on them as an asset. So the Trump administration has to consult with Syrian Americans and also have to use Syrian American NGOs as the frontline to not only advance democratic values because we all of us believe in democratic values but also to fight extremism and terrorism and sectarianism and also to build reconciliation in order for Syria to survive and it will survive by the way. This is not the first time that Syria had the major disaster. I mean Syria is the oldest civilization in the world. By the way, Syrians are full of themselves, right? You probably got that, right? So Syrians have the first city in the world, the first alphabet in the world, they have the first music in the world, they have the first everything in the world, right? And this is the fourth exodus from Syria, by the way, in history. I mean the first exodus was through the Phoenicians when they built most of the major cities in the Mediterranean. The second exodus was in the 7th century when Syrians populated North Africa and Southern Spain and the third exodus was during the Ottoman Empire where 100,000 Syrians came to the United States and most of them are not known except by their last name and this is the fourth exodus. And I think there's always goodness out of these things. You know, when you go to Egypt where you have now 250,000 Syrians and you ask Egyptians where you're going to go for dinner, they will tell you, we'll go to the Syrian neighborhood in 6th October because the Syrian cuisine is the best cuisine in the Middle East. And when you go to Jordan and yes, Jordan and Lebanon are very small countries and we really love the people of Lebanon and Jordan. They will tell you that Syrians came and they brought with them businesses and they built businesses and restaurants and they infused the economy and I think that's what we need to focus on. I can talk about Syria and Syrians for the next two hours but I think that the time is limited. It's very important to look at the future and it's very important to look at creative ideas to end the conflict and bring reconciliation and make sure that the refugees will go back to their homeland, not only to areas that are, you know, de-escalated but to the areas that they originated from. And in order for that, the Syrian, American diaspora have to play a major role. Thank you. Hi, my name is Alissa Lalim and I work with Refugees International. Both panels, was that for me? Okay. So both panels have talked about what needs to happen and I think I speak for probably most of us that we are here because we tend to agree with you. I'm wondering if you could tell us your experiences and suggestions for working outside of the Echo Chamber to engage with people who don't think how most of us probably think. Thank you so much for your question, for being here and for everybody for being here. And I know that you're here because you care. I think one of the most important things that we've learned from this crisis, I can say probably for all of us, is that there was not... You know, I was shocked to realize how few agencies and administrations and governments were actually listening to Syrians themselves. For us, our programs and even everything that we do and our decisions are fueled by listening to Syrians on the ground, to listening to refugees, their own problems. And actually we've seen... Kerem has been called a disruptive organization in terms of humanitarian aid, but the thing is that the Syrians themselves, the refugees, they disrupted the humanitarian aid systems. They didn't accept that they were going to live in a plastic tent for the average 17 years that UNHCR has found out through decades of working with refugees, that's how long it is. They refused that and they wanted a new model. So you're finding innovations in humanitarian aid happening at the highest levels. You're finding things that are changing because the Syrian people living through this specific crisis at this specific time demanded new solutions in this technological age we're living in. So what we need to be seeing is a lot more innovation on all levels and probably on the political levels as well. We're seeing the higher powers are very stagnant and want to do things as we've always done them, but they can't be done like that anymore. All of the systems are broken. So this is the opportunity and our obligation to change the systems. And to change them is to listen to Syrians. Hi, I'm Emma Fagawa, I'm with New America. I'm curious about the visions for the future that you guys have and thinking maybe 10 years out if you could talk about as good a future or as good a vision you could hope for and something that you worry about and perhaps what would be some markers, some signposts along the way that we would know which one we are moving towards. I'll give it a try. Nothing in history had changed without how powerful nations have exercised their power. The US is a superpower in the world and ultimately the fundamental question is is that superpower is going to be used for good, for evil or for indifference? In major tragedy in the world. And we have faith in the US that ultimately will use its power for good because we feel being indifferent is another form of evil. And we believe good ultimately in Syria is a democratic, pluralistic, tolerant governance and we think it's achievable. But we need help from powerful nations to be able to achieve this. We cannot do it as individuals considering the regional geopolitical struggle which is tearing our people apart and causing this tragedy. We don't need in Syria governments to help us. If Syrians are left alone but they are free I think they will be rebuilding their home country. I think if you just look at Ethiopia for example. Ethiopia went through famine and civil war 20 years ago but right now it's a thriving country in Africa because of the fact that they have more freedoms and the fact that the diaspora, the Ethiopian diaspora have been going back and investing and rebuilding and I think that's a model that we have to aim to. The most important thing that major power and regional power let Syrians build their country and don't interfere with their affairs. I hope someone would say that to Iran and Russia. On the other level is that if you saw 10 years from now you're going to see a new generation of Syrians and the Syrian kids that we work with, the Syrian teenagers I was just with a few dozen Syrian teenagers a couple weeks ago in southern Turkey in our innovation center and if you go around and you ask every single one of them I ask everybody what do you want to be when you grow up what do you see yourself in 10 years these kids when you give them the opportunity and you give them access to technology access to mentorship access to the same things that we want for our own kids here which is exactly what we're trying to do for Syrian refugee teens they will tell you I want to be a coder I want to be an animator I want to be a novelist I want to be a scientist I want to be an astronaut these are the kinds of things that Syrian kids talk about this is what they want to be this is what they want to do and so when you're giving, they need opportunities they do need freedom and they will do what they want to do and they will be productive citizens wherever they end up being in the world hopefully in Syria but even outside Syria you will see them doing and accomplishing amazing things thank all of you for too often in these things we have folks like me thank you because they like our other talents spend every day their lives trying to