 Let me start this afternoon session with this panel, Building Peace and Creating Conditions for Development, Internal Displacement, Stabilization and Reintegration. I have excellent news because we have a fantastic panel with us that I will introduce very soon, but basically just to put a little bit into context what we are talking about, there are over 41 million people estimated to have been displaced within their own country due to conflict or to violence. Without investing efforts in peace and stability, the pace of new displacement will continue to far exceed the current solutions that we have, resulting in increasingly protracted displacement and aid dependency. The impact of displacement and the absence of solutions jeopardize the achievements of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. The space following an emergency, but before, the national development plans have scaled up or adapted, particularly in protected situations, is a particularly vulnerable and complex space where different actors and principles of engagement intersect. The humanitarian development nexus is now widely acknowledged to include peace under a broader triple nexus, which recognizes that efforts to build sustainable peace are essential to effective humanitarian responses and for paving the way towards long-term development. However, especially when there is volatility, connecting humanitarian and political agendas can also undermine life-saving operations and impact negatively, hindering humanitarian access and increasing security risks. And those associated with stabilization or peace-building agendas can become vulnerable for attacks from armed opposition groups. So solid intervention can have a lasting influence on peace, recovery and progressive solutions of displacement, resolution of displacement situations. The purpose of this panel is therefore to consider the foundation necessary, the foundations necessary to meet the longer-term needs of and promote solutions for internal displacement persons and affected communities. The panelists here today bring with them a wide range of perspectives, approaches and practical experience to help us explore the linkages between displacement, peace-building and stabilization efforts. So let me move now to the panel. We have, as I said, excellent people here. Let me do a very brief introduction of all of them. The first one that I would like to introduce is her Excellency, Ms. Teresa Ribeiro, that serves as the Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Portugal. And previously, she was the Deputy Secretary General for Energy at the Union of the Mediterranean, an institution that we know well, and also Secretary of State for European Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Portugal. So she has a lot of experience. Almas Mekonen is the State Minister of Peace of Ethiopia, Madam Minister. She serves, as I said, the State Minister of Peace and Peace and Nation-building sector of Ethiopia. She previously occupied multiple positions with the Government of Ethiopia, including International Relations Office Head at the House of People's Representative. She also has been a member of Addis Abeba City Council for the last 11 years. So you have a minister and also a more local type of municipal experience. We have also Mr. Suadeji Marshall Wilfried Bonabasole, who is the Director General of Territorial Development at the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Burkina Faso since 2012. And he is responsible for promoting regional and local economic development and implementing regional planning policy. The Co-ordinating also the development of local economies programs, and he's also the Co-ordinator of the Emergency Program for the Sahel. We have also, by video conference, Mr. Robert Jenkins, hello, he's the Deputy Assistant Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Human Italian Assistance. Previously he was also doing some work in implementing emergency relief and recovery programs with World Vision International in Southern Sudan and Sierra Lona. So he will be joining us later for a presentation by video link. And finally we have Mr. Jeffrey Labovitz, that is our Director of Operations and Emergencies at IOM headquarters here. Jeff brings over 25 years of humanitarian and international development experience, and he will tell us a little bit of our experience in IOM into this subject. So for not talking any more, I will start by giving the floor to Madame Minister, State Minister, you have the floor please. Thank you very much, Excellencies Ambassadors, Distinguished Guests and Representatives, Mr. Antonio Pitorino, Director General of IOM, Mrs. Laura Thompson, Deputy Director General of IOM. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the Federal Government of Ethiopia and the Ministry of Peace and Myself, allow me to express my deepest gratitude to JNU all here in the beautiful city of Geneva, Geneva. I would also like to thank you, IOM, for organizing such important panel and giving us an opportunity to express and share our experiences regarding the item piece. And I would like to take this opportunity to remind you all that Ethiopia is expanding the political space and deepen its democratization in many aspects this time. The government's agenda is anchored on sustainable peace, reconciliation, inclusion and social cohesion in which the Ministry of Peace has been created as a centerpiece of the vision with an appropriately overarching the expansive mandate around prevention and peace building. In line with that, the issue of providing more and sustainable support to help displaced people and the refugees integrated into our society and economy has been a central focus in our legislative agenda. As such, we are excited the Parliament has passed this year a bill aimed at providing strong opportunities and protection for refugees shared among our host communities in all corners of Ethiopia. Actually, environmental-related displacement mainly due to drought and flooding as well as conflict-related displacement has been the two particular factors to be the major contributors of internal displacement in Ethiopia. There has been significant progress in terms of IDPs returning back to their homes this time. At the federal level, the Ministry of Peace has been leading a ministerial task force comprising various ministers and commission, which is pertinent in handling the issues of the IDP. The task force has been working with regional authorities to address displacement challenge and respond in a sustainable manner. Mandated with evaluating the return activities, the ministerial task force also distributed itself to different parts of the country where cases of displacement existed to direct and monitor progress and demonstrating political will at the house level. Finally, in April 2019, at the end of January, we have announced a strategic plan to address IDPs and a cost rehabilitation plan. Since May 2019, IDP returning operations have been implemented at full scale, and by the end of May, most IDP sites were dismantled. In particular, in East and West Wallega, which we call it Gedo, West Guji zones, and also in other areas of the country, where a very huge number of IDPs were settling there. Humanitarian partners have also increased after that time their engagement with us at all levels aiming to improve the implementation of the return operation. In particular, especially advocating for the return is to happen, voluntary, in a safely manner, sustainably, and with dignity also. Our primary goal with regards to the IDP crisis in the country has been to provide life-saving assistance where needed. And to facilitate durable solution, preferably in areas of their own origin. However, severe funding constraints have been negatively impacted sustainable, to bring sustainable solution of the current crisis. There is a need for an immediate scale up of support for the most vulnerable respective of their categorization and location. Actually, I'm glad that we do not stand alone in the face of those difficult times and challenges. The international community, including IOM, have striven to work hand-in-hand with us to help and achieve our endeavors aimed at promoting sustainable peace. Reconciliation and improvement of democratic constitution to ensure that it accommodates the diverse range of people's beliefs and views that are found in Ethiopia. I would like to use this opportunity to thank the IOM and other partners who can support, who supported us in that difficult time and urge the international community to continue its support and be part of the journey in making sustainable peace happen in my country, Ethiopia. Let alone to our own people, as you may know, Ethiopians have open hearted and commitment towards refugees, which is a particular domination of our people. We are the second largest refugee population in Africa, sheltering nearly one million registered refugees and asylum seekers, actually. Despite funding challenges, we have continued hosting refugees. We believe this commitment of according and reserved welcome to refugees and other people in distress will receive an important momentum as we begin putting on the ground the generous refugee law enacted by parliament. The process of embarrassing our sisters and brothers from different parts of the world and particularly from the neighboring countries in the implementation of the laws would not have been possible except without the hostables spread deep rooted in the Ethiopian culture. We are grateful and proud of our people and the Ministry of Peace is immediately honored to be part of the executive branch that aims to uphold and nurture the rich social capital of our society. The new refugee law is expected to guarantee a wide range of rights that enable refugee not just survive but also thrive together with community hosting them. These rights include work permits, access to primary education, driving license, legal registration of life events such as burses and marriages and sexes to national financial services too. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm also happy to report that refugees have already started to enjoy some of these rights, including registering the revital event, opening bank accounts and having SIM cards in their names. While it can all count on our commitment as exemplified in our initial gains from the early implementation of this law, the task ahead is huge and we obviously cannot do it alone. Nor should we leave the burden to our all-time partners such as IOM or the AUNHCR. Without their contributions, our effort to help refugees would simply be extremely difficult. Ethiopia is one of the five covenant converters of the global refugee forum in Geneva and December. I'm happy to report that we took the first major step in October last month by organizing the regional forum on local approach to deliver the global compact on refugees. Locally, we have been working in close collaboration with sources and recipient regional government to bring about sustainable intervention string reinstatement. A primary focus throughout all the first has been to ensure that IDPs resume their regular patterns of life upon return to their original homes. While effort to return and rehabilitate the remaining IDPs to their original homes is ongoing and is proving successful, ensuring that displacement do not happen in the first place has been a strategic focus of our government. For example, through prevention work, our ministry has managed to evade potential conflicts that would have worse or aggravated the displacement challenge. While we have been spearheading these activities, the role of other stakeholders such as civil society, religious leaders, and elders including the international community to build a culture of conflict resolution is crucial. Resolving internal displacement and preventing future displacement is indivisibly linked to achieving last piece, last piece. On one hand, unresolved problems of displacement may cause instability and thus threaten peace building efforts. On the other hand, durable solutions, particularly return, cannot be achieved for internally displaced persons. As long as there is lack of security, property is not resorted, and conditions for sustainable solutions are not in place. Hence, we're continuing our best in making a sustainable peace as well as creating a durable peace in our country. By saying this, I would thank you that I've missed my speech. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, State Minister, and there is certainly we have worked together in a lot of areas, but it's clear that Ethiopia has a big challenge with IDPs and also, as you mentioned, with refugees, so it's a combination that is difficult to deal with, but we are happy of being supporting you and also you're doing a fantastic job in trying to address these matters all together. Let me pass to Mr. Vasoli to present, to do your presentation. You have the floor. Thank you, Madame la Président. Thank you very much indeed. My fellow panelists, ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to talk to you this afternoon about Burkina Faso's experience with regard to management of IDPs and peace building and creating conditions for development. The situation of Burkina Faso is a very complex one, and I need to take you back to the 15th of April, 2015, when the first terrorist attack took place. There were two deaths on that occasion. There were then two further terrorist attacks that followed swiftly, with five further victims. The situation then got worse, and in 2016 there were two further attacks in January, leading to 63 casualties, 21 of which were from the Defence and Security Forces. The situation then became even worse in 2017, with further attacks and 81 deaths, including 11 members of the armed forces. Then, 2018, the attacks spread to the east and other regions, with 141 victims. And in 2019, the situation got even worse with 622 further victims, including 94 members of the Security Forces. Now, the degradation of the security situation has led to serious consequences in terms of economic and social life in the country, in particular with regard to the economy, where the economic growth has been stagnant. In spite of the resilience and reallocation of budgetary resources to security, socially speaking, the situation with education became very difficult, with 400,000 children not being able to go to school as a result of the closing of schools. Humanitarian terms, the situation of IDPs, became extremely serious from January 2019, with 83,000 by December 2018 and 150,000 by March 290,000 by September and 486,000 by October. So the situation is extremely worrying. So humanitarian aid needs amount to 187 million with a gap of 63% for 1.8 million people who need that aid. So an urgent reaction was required given the deteriorating security situation. So what has the government tried to do? Well, it's tried to draw up an emergency plan for the Sahel, drawing from experiences with regard to combating terrorism and managing IDPs during the years 2016 and 2017. In particular, we tried to reestablish security all over the country, because that was the precondition for carrying out development-related activities. Infrastructure was abandoned, and it wasn't possible to use that infrastructure anymore. Or projects that had been started could not be completed. The lack of security led to serious humanitarian crises. As I mentioned, in just 10 months, the number of IDPs was multiplied by 10. Security-related operations made humanitarian emergencies considerably worse in the short term. And it made it very difficult to deal with the number of IDPs. There was a rapid increase in the number of terrorist attacks, which undermined the confidence of our people and led to overreactions on the part of the public, where people fled their homes even before attacks took place because they anticipated future attacks. And we just did not have the means to deal with the needs of our population. So the security situation is extremely volatile, which makes any planning and management extremely difficult. And we require a paradigm shift in terms of the management of the problem. So there are two main key principles that we're trying to follow. Firstly, in the short term, trying to deal with emergencies. And secondly, trying to prepare and build the resilience of our people in the mid and long term. So our efforts were built on four main thrusts, improving the way in which we deal with security challenges by the security forces, strengthening the presence of the state in the field so that we have a state presence and we ensure security in that way. We deal with social emergencies more effectively, including humanitarian needs, health needs, education needs, and access to water. And building a foundation for resilience through strengthening respect with human rights, social cohesion, the return of the displaced and efforts to combat extremism and radicalization. So that is where the peace building project began. And that is the key to the government's efforts facing the security situation. So three projects were set up by the government of Bukina Faso with the consolidation for peace fund. And it's related to the situation of our country. One was an issue of the security. And we needed rapid and urgent action. And it was subject to a great deal of risk because tensions were the issues related to securing the situation and the humanitarian actions on the medium and long term. So what we needed to achieve resilience was we requested support from the United Nations system through the Fund for Peace Consolidation to work with medium and short term problems and deal with the issues at that level. The first project is one which is the project for the support of the peaceful management of conflict, which helps us to look at values, to help communities to live together and providing local structures to intercede and to mediate where there is conflict in communities. The second project is the promotion of a culture of peace and social cohesion in the regions of the north and the Sahel. And the third project is the project to improve trust between the administration, the defense forces and the security forces and the populations, aiming to improve the neighborhood services of quality in order to ensure that populations, administrations and defense and security forces can work closer together. These projects complement the urgent action of the government and other partners. Indeed, the projects for peace consolidation work by acting on the mechanisms to preserve and consolidate peace in the medium and long term using local administrations and resources. And this allows the government to concentrate in the short-term areas, in particular re-establishing security and taking charge of social emergencies, in particular humanitarian emergencies. The main result of the implementation of these projects was the contribution to reducing community tensions which started at the beginning following terrorist attacks. And these are issues that led to humanitarian crises. So we worked on improving the collaboration with the defense and security forces. In all cases, the results need consolidating because of the challenges which remain. First of all, we need to work on security in the territories and the people and resources given the strong instability of the security situation. And often the people working there are the targets of terrorist attacks. And we recently had the attack on the Deputy Mayor of Jibo. And then a second major challenge is maintaining the trust and confidence of the populations on the capacity to make secure and stabilize the country. And when we look at risks involved beyond the frontiers and borders of the country, and I'd like to insist on something that one of the displaced people said to a member of the National Assembly, we don't need food and things, we need security in order to be able to bury our dead and harvest our fields. The other major challenge is the capacity of the government and partners to respond to security and humanitarian emergencies that we've been seeing really increasing since January. We've had more attacks in 2019 than in the three preceding years. We've had an increase of 120% of IDPs between January and October 2019. And just in the month of October, we saw an increase of 68% compared to September. And for Burkina Faso, the key to all these challenges is the capacity of the government and other actors to apply as rapidly as possible the response to the security issues. Because even the humanitarian response is unable to reach there without security. And so we need to work in terms of looking at the issues such as the kidnapping of humanitarian workers, attacks on convoys and deliveries of food and supplies, attacks on ambulances, health centers and so forth. So that means we need to have a paradigm change. The cyclical approach to projects with the diagnosis, planning and programming and follow-up can no longer thrive in a situation where there is volatility. And so we have to find new ways of acting to transform societies. So we're trying to learn to develop flexible approaches with a dose of pragmatism so that we can respond efficiently to the security challenges and also to the humanitarian emergencies. We need to develop national leadership with a joint building of coordination of interventions by government partners and non-government partners so that we can give the feeling that other actors can work alongside the state. And also we need to better coordinate and align public policy with goals of macroeconomic stabilization and increasing our capacity to respond to security challenges. And that leads us to the question, should we keep our macroeconomic and budgetary goals in the short term when the state is under fire or should we think about how we respond vigorously to the insecurity in the short and medium time? These are major issues we have to resolve and this helps us to look at the objectives for macroeconomics once more and maybe place them more in the long term rather than the short term. So I would like to say that the response to the security issues and the displacement of people cannot be just left on a sectoral or a geographical line. It has to be multiple in its forms. We have to think about the sectoral and time issues in terms of growing the capacity for increasing security and responding to the population's needs in the medium term. And as well, in addition, we have to think about instruments for macroeconomic stabilization in the medium term. And on a geographic level, we have to think about putting into place provisions for action in areas for reception for the displaced as well as setting up a prevention mechanism in areas that haven't been affected. So we need to look at this junction between security, humanitarian action and development. Our country has understood that to preserve peace, we have to have security. In order to carry out humanitarian action, we need the minimum levels of security and that humanitarian crisis develop in a way which is more than in proportion with the security crisis. So we have to have, first of all, a secure environment in order to have development. So that's why we've asked after the following, after the meetings of May and September, where we looked into the situation the government called for the Commission on the Consolidation of Peace to help us before the end of the year to mobilize the resources that will finance the priority actions which come from the joint evaluation mission which was carried out with the African Development Bank, the World Bank, the United Nations System and the European Union. And the urgency is now and we have to act before tomorrow. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation and thank you for sharing with us your experience in Burkina Faso. And I think the government has really raised some significant questions. The challenge of the connections between terrorism, the humanitarian, the security situation and humanitarian responses. That's very important and it's important to see that it's essential to have responses in many forms. I think you have provided some fruitful opportunities for other colleagues here to participate in our discussions. Cool presentations of some very important people that are dealing with situations of IDPs and refugees in their own countries. Now we have the Secretary of State Reveyor from Portugal that is going to tell us the other side of the coin. So Secretary of State, you have the floor. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mrs. Deputy Director General. It's really a pleasure and an honour also to be here with this high-level panel. But most of all, I would like very much to thank my colleagues of the panel to bring us this very, very rich testimony about the situation they are living in their countries. And you know, more than delivering my speech that I had prepared before, I would like, if you allow me, just to go directly to what we just listened to from the minister, from the minister, the distinguished minister from Ethiopia and also from the Director General responsible for refugees and all these matters from Burkina Faso. As I was regarding Ethiopia, Ethiopia is a very interesting country and is a very strategic one with a population of more than 100 million of inhabitants, persons. And at the same time, with a strategic location in the whole of Africa, of course, Ethiopia is really, is a key country to the peace in the region. And what is happening in Ethiopia can really also spill over the country and have positive effects in the neighborhood countries. And this is, of course, very important and this is the reason why we should support the efforts of Ethiopia. I had the privilege to have lunch with the Minister of Education from Ethiopia last Monday in Brussels within the framework of the Council of Foreign Affairs for Development of the European Union. So, and it was the experience the minister brought to us was really, really impressive. After all the efforts to reach peace and it has been very successful in doing so, the Prime Minister is very committed really to really ensure sustainable peace. And we have to be aware that as far as I know, you have like 80 ethnicities, different ethnicities, which makes the situation very vibrant, that's for sure, but very challenging too. And the peace with Eritrea was a complicated process, but finally it was enshrined in a peace agreement. And this was a big achievement. But now, of course, Ethiopia needs foreign investments. For that, Ethiopia needs to create the right climate finance, I guess. At the same time, you have all these challenges in the field of education. The minister told us something that was really amazing. You have to use 51 different languages in your education system, which is enormous. I don't know how could anyone be dealing with, could manage in this very difficult situation. So this situation really deserves a strong support from the international community, that's for sure. It's for the interest of the international community to bring a strong support to Ethiopia, to this transition government and to the efforts that the government is doing to achieve a sustainable peace and to achieve prosperity for the population. So this is enormous. And the international community has to be very, very conscious about its responsibilities regarding these countries and the effort they are doing. In terms of Burkina Faso, I was touched to hear the presentation. So we have a situation which, on the one hand, is a very volatile security situation, very difficult. And this is what was highlighted by the deputy director general, the need to combine the fight to try and stabilize the situation in terms of security, and also at the same time to provide a response for the population. So there's always a nexus between security development and also at the same time the humanitarian action. Because if we don't manage to stabilize the security situation, then we will not have any means of providing the population which have very current needs. So we can't provide them with the aid they need. So it's very complex and dramatic. And for the countries where we have a close relationship in terms of cooperation for development, it's very difficult to manage to balance both the short-term aspects and the long-term aspects. And the problem, as well, either in the case of Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and other countries which, unfortunately, like Burkina Faso, are experiencing very, very current needs, we have to see how we can achieve results very rapidly. We need to demonstrate to the population very rapidly that the authorities are able to achieve results which are rapid. And at the same time, there's a need to build the pillars which will allow for long-term development which will guarantee prosperity and conditions that the populations need. So I think it's always an issue of these tensions between the short-term, the long-term, and the humanitarian needs and the security needs which are issues that need responses from the international community which are ever more robust and stronger. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Minister. I will not comment on what you said because I think we both totally agree that these presentations have been, I would say, very important with regard to understanding situations and needs and those challenges that we all suffered in trying to bring together these nexus between these three elements. And it's, I would say, probably a challenge that was raised very much during the humanitarian summit. And we are still in that process trying to address that important challenge. We have now, by video link conference, we are hoping that it's going to work. Robert Jenkins. Hello, Robert. How are you? Do you hear us? You're well. Can you hear me OK? Do we hear you? We don't. Hold on a minute. OK. Are you able to hear me now? OK, yeah. I think we hear you now. Well, thank you so much. Madam Deputy Director General, Excellencies, ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen, it's an honor to be on this panel. I sincerely apologize. I'm not able to be there with you in person and apologies for making extra work for many people so I can come in from a rainy day in Washington. So thank you. As colleagues have mentioned, there's a confluence going on within the international community these days. As our colleague from Burkina Faso said, a paradigm shift that we're calling it the nexus. As we see the United Nations, the World Bank, other actors coming around the interjection of peace building into what was the Relief to Development continuum. I would say it's a rethinking and a recalibration around interlocking and mutually supportive sectors and disciplines. It includes resilience. It includes stabilization. It includes prevention. It includes countering violent extremism. I like to sort of try to group all those together and call them targeted peace interventions. Here in the US government and my agency USAID, we are creating a new bureau, specifically just for conflict prevention and stabilization, which is taking a new look at how we tackle these problems. But I'd say we're not just discovering new things as much as acknowledging, admitting, emphasizing, and stressing what we've known for a very long time. So first, as Secretary General Gutierrez says, there are no humanitarian solutions to these humanitarian problems. Are humanitarian efforts as critical and as heroic as they may be are treating the symptoms. They offer no cure. The cause of displacement is conflict. The causes of the conflict are political. Some instances it's local politics and some it's national politics and some it's regional politics, fueled by geopolitics. And I would argue in our world of today, it's often impossible and meaningless to try to disentangle all of that. Local, national, regional, global, it's all political and our political and our diplomatic colleagues are the ones to save us with political and diplomatic solutions along with our security sector colleagues. Second, that does not mean we as assistance providers and practitioners don't have a role to play. We have a vital role to play. Humanitarians, development actors, peace builders, different communities with different missions, often with different interests, seemingly so. I'd argue we all have the same mission ultimately. We have different tactics, different specialties, different disciplines, different capabilities, but it's all one mission. Fix it, make the world a better place. Now that might be one village at a time, one district, one province, one country, one crisis, one region. With all of our self-imposed differentiation and self-defined mandates, our hair splitting and our turf battles, we hinder ourselves from seeing our individual role within the larger collective role. It's much simpler to define, much harder to achieve. How do we make these places better as steps to making the world better? If we can care less about individual agency mandates, if we can break down our own internal barriers and our own efforts to break down the barriers in these countries we're trying to help and work with, barriers that really, really matter, we need to help them by helping ourselves first get over what is often us getting in our own way. If we can care less about our differences and more about the differences we're trying to settle. How many refugees know, understand, or care about the definitions that we use? Is it a refugee? Is it an IDP? Is it a migrant? All they know is they're in trouble and they want a better life for themselves, for their families and for their nation. They don't care which agency provides them help. They just need help. They want it, they require it, and they deserve it. So let's help them. Third, these are big problems, structural problems. These are generational problems. And sadly that means generational solutions. There are no quick fixes. There are no easy solutions. If there were, we would have found them and executed those solutions. If the conflict, displacement, and crises were facing are the result of deep-seated underlying structural problems, our solutions need to attack and solve those deep-seated underlying and structural issues. That will take time, lots of time, and it won't be easy. However, in the meantime, there's much we can do. As humanitarians do their important life-saving work, much can be done to stabilize the situations and work together, as our colleagues have mentioned, in what was not just a whole of government response in these countries, but a whole of the international community response that takes these complex, multifaceted issues head on with what will be complex, multifaceted responses working together. We can do much, much more in these times of crises to empower local organizations and individuals to unleash their power, working towards immediate and eventually lasting solutions with the governments, the host governments involved. Now, two years ago, our government started what we call the Stabilization Assistance Review, or SAR. We looked at many, many lessons from the last two decades of trying to stabilize these countries. Now, a lot of our hard-fought, hard-learned lessons come out of Iraq and Afghanistan, but we looked across the spectrum at where we as a government, working with other governments have tried to make things better past the humanitarian realm. I won't go too much into it. It's a 15-page bureaucratic document, but there's lots of color and pictures and you can get it on the internet. I think it's a helpful read because there's nothing in there that is so mind-boggling and so alarming that we didn't already know it, but it reminds us that we can't just throw money at the problem, we can't just throw people at the problem. It's about slowing down, listening to local voices. It's about small is beautiful. It's about the need for political will at the local and national levels in these countries. It's about making sure that the governments in charge are in charge and we're working by with, through and in support of them. And it's a differentiation for the first time ever for our government between the role of the three, what we call the 3D, defense, diplomacy and development. So I urge you all to look at the SAR, there's lessons there that go way beyond just our government. In fact, it stresses the need for all of us in the international community to work together as one and not compete and confuse the very people we're trying to help. We've all seen how we do that too often. We need to accept the troubled world for what it is. We need to accept the fact that we can't fix everything. There is no fixing a country. But we need to get on and work together making things better. Lastly, we work in these countries struggling to help them get over their own divisions. And I repeat myself for emphasis. We have to get over our own divisions, those of us that are trying to help. Be those sectors, be those disciplines, be those agencies, be those individual donors and practitioners governments. Please, we've struggled with this before. We used to call it the relief to development continuum. We've called it resilience. Now we call it the nexus. It's our most recent definition. I'll accept it. It's important terminology. I'll accept it willingly. If it means we can actually get this time to where we need to be. We all understand the problem. We talk about the solution. We just need to get on with it. We need to marshal the forces for positive change in the same direction, collaboratively with minimal competition. We are humans, there'll be some competition but can we just acknowledge that and keep it to a minimum and stay focused on the real problem set? Can we really, really come to agreement on the same simple objective that all of us are trying to make things better? That is our challenge. And I would hate next year or two years from now at this August gathering when IOM brings the world together I would hate for us to sit down with a new term and say maybe it will be like the nexus but this time it will be better. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Robert, it's always good to hear you and it's a very inspirational speech but also a very practical one. And I think indeed we have done a lot of work trying to bring all of us together and in the last years, the efforts that the international community has done to try to break those silos that we ourselves we have created and IOM is one of the few organizations that works at the UN level that works in development but works in humanitarian as well. And the same thing happens with the agencies of governments and I think we have all understood that it is not working but we have to look at it in a totally different manner. And I very much appreciate your part when you said let's do it, it doesn't matter who does it. And at the end of the day, the people in need they don't care who is providing the assistance they just need the assistance. So also I think a very important points and thank you for joining us from the US despite the fact that you are celebrating Thanksgiving we really appreciate that. Let me conclude this panel by giving the floor to Jeff Labovitz that is as I said our director for the Department of Operations and Emergencies. Jeff, you have the floor. DDG thank you and it's a great pleasure to participate on this great panel. I think we've succeeded in a really dynamic conversation already. To the director general of territorial development I really enjoyed your presentation I thought it was poignant. I thought it was brave in many ways and you've pointed to a whole bunch of different areas where we jointly need to support your lead. I was just in Burkina Faso with the Emergency Directors Group and one of our recommendation on behalf of the UN system was to raise the level invoke the cluster system the resident coordinator now as a humanitarian coordinator hat. But I think the message that security is needed for your people and that's a root of the problem is something which reverberates beyond Burkina to the Sahel and we have concern over many countries which goes on the same line. Certainly none who have had so many people displaced this past year and an increase of so many attacks. And so we stand together. I wanna be a champion for you but I also wanna assure you that you have many champions within the UN system. I'm Honorable Minister of Peace. You have a lot of pressure on you. You have a Peace Prize Prime Minister and you're a Minister of Peace and we thank you for the openness of your discussion. I'm gonna come back a little bit because I think we've helped support some of your initiatives in building this nexus discussion and I'll talk about that a bit in my discussion but thank you for your comments. Secretary of State I think you summarize and I'm not gonna repeat your summary but recognizing the importance of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa. There are countries which benefit from their fantastic economic growth. I was formerly working in Eastern Horn of Africa and one of the biggest growth in terms of GDP in the world is in Ethiopia and that gives us a lot of hope. They have an engine of creating wealth which we want to distribute to their people and that brings us a lot of hope and I wanna add that to the discussion. And to the Assistant Administrator Rob Jenkins. You said small is beautiful. I'm gonna come back to that point in my discussion but thank you for everything which you raised so far. The global displacement context is something which is hard to imagine. There are over 40 million internally displaced people for conflict alone. That's a massive amount of people. It's a massive number. 53 countries have ID please and displacement for more than 10 years. So it's not a quick fix issue. It's a long-term issue. And that's where we have this next system peace discussion. 20% 27% of displacement affected countries have areas of land where development actors cannot operate. Which means there's a humanitarian imperative and there is a prohibitive environment for developmental actors and that's worth noting. Within the system, the UN system, and I wanna be representing the UN system on my discussion today, we have global commitments to adapt to new ways of working. And that includes the humanitarian development peace nexus which we keep talking about. The agenda for humanity and the secretary general's prevention agenda amongst many others. As in conflict settings, peace building provides the mortar between the bricks by establishing foundations for longer-term development. IWIN believes that supporting capacities to coexist peacefully is not given sufficient attention and that's gonna be the cornerstone of my intervention. Peace building can be a key part of the nexus but it is often the missing middle. I wanna give an example about how using peace building to address the mobility dimensions of crisis. I'll talk about Kismayo in Somalia. It's a location I know well I visited just a few months ago. It's an area which has been affected by instability and is recovering from al-Shabaab since 2014. It's not a part of al-Shabaab right now but it's fragile, it's 25 kilometers from the front lines. Currently there's nearly 65,000 internally displaced people. So that's large. There's drought and there's conflict and there's many competing issues. There are 50,000 returnees there. This is also phenomenal from Dadaab camp in Kenya, 50,000. So that's a mix of different populations. There are 1,700 returnees from Yemen. And so there's a lot of population movement in one place which is already fragile. And following drought and refugee returns, we saw expanded humanitarian response, targeting the displaced people and providing assistant packages for returnees. However, what's missing in that constellation, we have pre-existing vulnerabilities in the host communities in an extremely fragile context. With limited long-term capacity to absorb the influx of these different populations, both economically and in their infrastructure. The potential result and what happened were ongoing tensions with the risk of renewed conflict. IOM worked on a project called Mid-Nemo, which means unity in the Somalia language used there. And it used peace building as a foundation for solutions. Humanitarian needs are important. They're life-saving and they're very important. But the risk of preferential treatment to mobile populations to returning populations to internally displace was to create more tensions. So we wanted to create opportunities for long-term recovery in the absence of capacities to co-exist peacefully at the time. IOM and the UN in support of the government launched a government-led peace building program aimed at supporting the government to become accountable to communities. It supported communities to define, own and drive their own solutions and created space for civic dialogue. These are and establish a conflict resolution system. A senior government official summarized the project by saying build your social infrastructure then use your social infrastructure to build your physical infrastructure. We have humanitarian response. We have development cooperation. The missing middle is transition and recovery and that's what this project sought to address. In transition and recovery, we look to empower and enable, reconstruct and rehabilitate, recreate social capital, initiate government and citizen collaboration and support social, economic and political participation. IOM has expanded its role in peace building and this is the cornerstone of those activities. We have developed a community stabilization methodology to implement peace building programs on the ground. In 2018, we had $496 million in transition and recovery programs, 312 projects in over 70 different countries. 46% of those projects are multi-year. This is really significant. It's in line with the HDP and recommendations and the new way of working. It's in line with the grand bargain and responsible donor support. The Mid-Nemo project, and this is where I come back to you Rob, started at $1.5 million and it expanded to $45 million based on the success that was seen in reaching out and building and working to support the government with those communities. And these projects are the basis for interventions we have in Nigeria, Mozambique, and then I come to Ethiopia where we are working jointly on replicating some of those successes and molding that to the local context. In conclusion, peace building is an important and foundational component in strengthening the humanitarian development nexus. We strongly add the P. Peace, the peace nexus. However, we need to apply due diligence to who we are working with and deepen our understanding of the contexts in which we work. These are fragile environments and each situation is nuanced and different. More work is needed on explaining the approach and it's placed in the nexus and the complementarity with both humanitarian and development programming. IOM is currently investing in institutional coherence and capacities to implement peace building and community stabilization programs and to reinforce this approach. But last but not least, we need not forget the limitations of our own approaches in the absence of political will. And the cornerstone of the success of our project in Kismayo was to support the government who was leading efforts. And without that political will, we cannot do much. Thank you. Thank you very much, Jeff. And as you can see, we in IOM we are trying also to do our part of adapting ourselves to the response and to provide better solutions also to governments. So I think we have had a very rich discussion with panelists and they have presented to us very interesting different experiences that they have faced at the national level but also some others as in the side of trying to support governments to respond to those needs. So I would like to open the floor a little bit for comments and I have already a request from the European Union for the floor. You have the floor. Ambassador. Well, thank you very much, Madam Chair. Director General Excellency's distinguished delegates. Indeed, I will speak on behalf of the European Union and its member states. We've heard it from the panel, the scale of internal displacement has risen to unprecedented levels. As of December 2018, more than 41 million people are displaced within the borders of their own country by conflict, by human rights violations alone. Each year, another 25 million people on average are displaced due to disaster. As a result of the Syrian crisis alone, there are 6.2 million IDPs within the country including 2.5 million children. Significant numbers of IDPs are also found in Europe as a result of an ongoing conflict in Eastern Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea. Ukraine hosts the largest displaced population on our continent at around 1.5 million. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of IDPs are unable to return to their homes in Cyprus or also in Georgia. Internally displaced people who often face protection challenges and lack access to shelter, food and other basic services struggle with security or face marginalization. In urban areas in particular, many struggle with poverty, lack of psychosocial support and difficulties in normalizing their legal status. Secondary and multiple displacements reflect a collective failure to address the specific needs and vulnerabilities of internally displaced people and their host communities with credible erosion of coping mechanisms and loss of productive assets. Yet finding sustainable solutions for IDPs remain a particular challenge as situation often becomes increasingly protracted due to lack of political solutions to conflicts, recurrent violence and instability. The UN and its member states recognize the importance of linkages between the sustainable development, humanitarian assistance and conflict prevention and peace building, as well as the importance of diplomatic and political solutions to support peace and security in line with the EU global strategy and also the 2030 agenda of sustainable development. In the same spirit, we stress the importance of investing in prevention and addressing the underlying root causes of vulnerability, fragility and conflict while simultaneously meeting humanitarian needs and strengthening resilience, thus reducing indeed the risk. Since 2016, the EU has taken a comprehensive, development led approach to addressing the needs of IDPs and their host communities. A policy outlined in our 2016 communication lives in dignity and accompanying council conclusions. In line with the Yedrinda 2030, we work together with partner countries and partner organizations to strengthen the resilience and self-reliance of IDPs and host communities and to work towards the durable solutions to internal displacement situations. The EU activities, for example, in the Horn of Africa, follow the triple nexus principle, improved governance and conflict prevention projects there account for 23% of the EU, of the, sorry, of the emergency trust fund for Africa, which indeed the greatest focus on peace building and conflict prevention. That fund programs rely on several principles, including the conflicts, including, sorry, that conflicts can be addressed only once understood through localized analysis and that interventions focused on upstream prevention help anticipate crisis and conflict resolution processes, which in turn mitigate forced displacements. System-wide responses and approaches to address protracted displacement, including importance of close cooperation among several UN agencies and partners, are also needed at UN level in support of national governments. The UN new way of working is particularly important as it should provide a coherent approach to reduce the vulnerabilities of IDPs and host communities, build their resilience over time, harnesses respective experience, expertise, sorry, of humanitarian and development actors and better cooperate within international financial institutions and the private sector. We follow with particular interest to work of the new way of working in its eight pilot countries. The Secretary General has recently agreed to constitute the high-level panel on internal displacement, promoting practical and sustainable solutions to internal displacement and its impact, as well as strengthening humanitarian and development collaboration on IDP related issues, features among its most important objectives. We believe indeed that IOM, together with other UN agencies, are active in the subject, should contribute to the panel's work. The UN, its member states, have also continuously recognized the importance of integrated approach to reintegration, thus appreciating the complexity of the integration process and the need for a holistic and needs-based approach, not only at the individual, but also at the community and structural levels. We're very much looking forward to further exchanges on this important matter. I thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you very much, Ambassador. Any other request for the floor? Yeah, ma'am, you have the floor. Thank you, Madam moderator, and I wish to thank the entire panelist for their insightful and comprehensive presentation. And I wish to comment on some of the issues have been made. We do believe that reintegration is a continual process or establishing a comprehensive framework for such integration would facilitate the efforts in this regard. And I wish to emphasize the importance of the multi-secorders approach with the social initiatives that aim at the IDPs, refugees, or their returnees integration and social cohesion need to be promoted and supported. And I support what Mr. Labovitz has mentioned about the social infrastructure, which is highly important. And the comprehensive approach is another important issue with the host communities needed to be targeted by the related projects. And I think the relationship between the host communities and the returnees is essential and needs more attention. And in this regard, I have one question for Mr. Labovitz that regarding what the distinguished Mr. Bessel of Burkina Faso has mentioned about the challenges of trust-building. In this regard, to what extent trust-building was a challenge in the civic dialogue process in Kismayo. And is there any initiative that has been supported to overcome the challenge of trust-building? I thank you, Madam Moderator. Thank you, Yemen. ICMC. Beauty Director-General, thank you for the opportunity to speak today and thank you to our panelists. In the context of this discussion, I'd like to suggest two opportunities that can lead to strengthening migration and development implementation and enriching partnerships for migrants and communities. And what I have to say is a bit of a bridge between the last panel and this panel. Point one, we at the International Catholic Migration Commission very much welcome IOM's institutional strategy on migration and sustainable development released this year and its acknowledgement by IOM's membership at the Standing Committee on Program and Finance at the end of October. We are pleased that the strategy will anchor IOM's work in the 2030 agenda, providing clear outcomes and taking into account three main cross-cutting issues, inequalities, climate change, and gender. Yet as we heard this morning, children make up a very noticeable percentage of arrivals. In light of that operational reality, we recommend that the strategy consider adding children as a cross-cutting issue. Now the strategy places great value on partnerships and we agree and stress that it is critical that they involve adversity of stakeholders and be translated into concrete steps improving the lives of migrants. In the rollout of this visionary and ambitious strategy, we encourage IOM to systematically bolster partnerships with civil society from operations to policy for we continue to stand ready to work together with you. Point two, indeed strengthening implementation and enriching partnerships for migrants and communities is the driving theme at the Civil Society Day of the Global Forum on Migration and Development in January in Quito. There, civil society leaders will gather to take stock of initiatives being implemented across the spectrum of migration and development, including during a separate voluntary dialogue on GCM implementation. For over a decade, the GFMD has been an opportunity to informally meet and discuss migration challenges, exchange ideas, network, advocate and build and reinforce meaningful partnerships, leading to the creation of mechanisms and policies that respond to migrants and host communities' needs. The specificity of this year's GFMD summit is that it is truly multi-stakeholder, gathering together mayors and leaders from civil society, business and government. On GFMD partnerships specifically, we are particularly encouraged by the positive collaboration between the mayor's mechanism of which IOM is a steering committee member and civil society in joint preparation for the GFMD common space. Thank you. Thank you very much. I don't see any other request for the floor. I have a very specific question for Jeff. Can I give you the floor on that? You can, and perhaps the peace minister from Ethiopia might want to talk about her experience and how she works on dialogue, because that's something which I think is a part of the approach which you mentioned in your presentation. And that's exactly it. I mean, the basis of the Kismail intervention was to support the government in working with the coast community and build the bridges with the returnees. And there were these peace dialogue platforms which were established where you have representatives to work together and communicate their needs. And that was the basis. Kismail remains very fragile, but there's prospect. And if you look at the window of 10 years ago until now, there's a great deal of progress. And a part of that is recognizing that we need to bring communities and people together from different parts and giving that platform in support of government cohesion, I think is what was supportive and successful in that project and approach. Honorable minister, do you have something to add? Thank you. I would like to appreciate the compliment that has been given to my country. Of course, there was a new found freedom and drive for change has been created on 2019 with a new government. Following that, there was two sides. The other side, the one side is that some people have used that freedom as an opportunity to rekindle deported resentment. And while others have used the same opportunity to fight over boundaries, ethnic identities and political differences and so on and so on. So the country was almost in turmoil. So the major thing is to bring peace among the society. To bring peace, I believe that peace building is the solution. We have engaged elders, religious leaders, civil society, youths, women and so on and so on. Even some social informal groups, local groups that can solve social problems traditionally. We use them at all levels to bring all these people in a dialogue to talk about the problem, the root cause. To bring them to the peace conferences and reconciliation process. So everybody was talking and engaging in different dialogues. And we try to create about 300,000, 333,000 networks at work level, at the grassroots. We use them, this network, to bring up the people in various dialogues in all regions, especially on those IDP settlement areas. And so we engage those conflict, those IDPs together together with the local community. And they discuss up on the problem and the root cause. They agree on the root causes. And we use them, all the capacities that we have that time was to bring up all those conflict entrepreneurs by the local communities themselves. After so much dialogues. So that was very important to us. In that case, we also accept each other to bring those conflict entrepreneurs into the rule of law. That is one of the instruments that we have used. So basically dialogues, dialogues, dialogues are very important to bring up the peace building process because it's a process, it's a long process. Still we are approaching and engaging various stakeholders and civil societies in various dialogues on all regional types. So that was very important for us. And we use all these peace measures also to go to different sectors, even the universities because the universities were one of those target groups to bring up all these conflict inside in different institutions. And we use peace measures to go to the universities and bring up a discussion, a dialogue with the student, with the peace forums, with the peace clubs. And that was also another important. So we do have a lot of peace actors and we do have a lot of peace structures. We use them at all levels to discuss with our people, to discuss with the IDPs and to bring up a solution together. So that was very important. So that is very important. And to build trust, it's still important to have dialogues at all levels. So that's what I comment. And you have to work all together with the civil society, especially the youth and the women that are the major peace actors at all levels. This is what we have used in our case. So thank you very much. Thank you, State Minister. Thank you, thank you very much. I would like very much not only to comment a little bit what you just mentioned, but also what the message that was brought to us from ICMC, which is very important. It's about involving the civil society as you rightly mentioned. Civil society is a very, very important partner. In all, we can do to try to bring some solutions to these important challenges. And also I would like very much to thank ICMC to bring us also a strong remind about the poor factors, climate change and inequalities. These of course are really poor factors of conflict. So we need to tackle them in a very efficient way. But about the civil society allow me just to bring our personal, our an experience of Portugal, a very recent one with Mozambique. As you know Mozambique was hit by two strong and devastating cyclones in a period of four weeks, which is of course terrible. And our, of course, Portugal with Mozambique we have very special relation is a partner country within the framework of our development cooperation. And so for us it was very important in the first hours of course to deliver humanitarian aid and emergency aid or IOM was with us and was very effective providing shelter and medicine and food, et cetera, as well as Portugal. And in this effort of course we had official aid and official actors but at the same time our first aid reflex was to involve civil society. So civil society was involved in this first aid we delivered and we provide to our friends of Mozambique. And but we thought that okay this first phase is now being finalized even if there are still more than 100,000 IDPs in Mozambique, which is of course a lot still in need. But now there is also another kind of help that Mozambique needs. And for that once again we involve the civil society. This is very important. Civil society can reach in a way the populations and territories in a way that the government's the official aid has some difficulties to reach. So this is a very, very valuable partner. So partnerships as I see and see remind us that they are very important, yes they are. And I really, my personal experience is that they need to be involved in this kind of operations. But at the same time so now we are in this different phase, in a second phase and we need to have two components. One component is of course to deliver and to respond to social needs, education, food security, health and at the same time to create and to help to normalize economic life. And this is very important. So it's important to create the right mechanisms to respond to social needs and that the time to work on social revitalization of the territories most affected. And this was also something that Portugal is trying to do with Mozambique. Thank you very much. Thank you, State Minister, Monsieur le Directeur General. Merci Madame la Maudere. Thank you, Maudere and I'd like to also thank the other panelists. I'd like to speak on two points. The first is the issue of the representative of Yemen who asked on what has been done to re-establish trust and confidence. First of all we have to explain that trust between the administration, the security forces and the population arose in the area between the Sahel and the north of the country. It's an historic area from the colonial times and this is due to a weaker sub-administration of this area and so the weaker presence of administration there meant that the relations between the administration and the population were a little difficult. When the crisis arose that exacerbated the situation so there wasn't the collaboration with these populations and the security and defense forces. So to solve the problem we involved the community leaders in the organization of the work between the population and the organization. So we called it civil military relations and we involved them in activities and we had days where there would be communication and then we also looked at the operations for the establishment of the identity issues where there was an area of difficulties with the population and it was under a sub-administration. So there were many people who didn't have identity cards and so when there were interventions in the field and checks on identity documents, there were always difficulties. So we worked on the national identity cards and that helped us to build up trust and I'd also like to thank USAID for having helped us with these operations. So to build trust we worked a lot with the communities and the key members of the communities and that also led us to the implementation in the field and we worked a great deal with civil society organizations and there were also organizations from the community area and that helped us to work in each and every community and in terms of the security situations, the international organizations couldn't reach these areas and they couldn't reach all of the communities. So we needed to go through community-based organizations who had much smaller areas of intervention but which meant that they had greater access and were more respected in terms of speaking to people in the field. So that helped us to reduce the issues of lack of trust but if the actions for building security don't take place rapidly and there's a feeling that there is a lack of capacity with the security and defense forces to meet the security needs of the populations then we'll lose that confidence and that will be translated into massive displacements of the populations or situations where those populations will cooperate with the terrorist groups because they feel that that will be the way in which their security can be ensured. So that's what I can say in response to the questions we had. Thank you. Thank you very much, director. As I don't have any other request for the floor, I would say just to conclude, well, first of all, to thank all the panelists. I think we have had a very interesting discussion. These are clearly very complex situations and somebody said deep-seated underlying structural issues and I think this is a very good definition of these situations. There are a need for clearly for comprehensive solutions that link the humanitarian response, the security response and long-term development needs and that try to bring different populations that sometimes have different needs and different interests together, trying to find common ground for them. I think the panelists also raised and ICMC also raised the important that different actors play and it's not only at the national level, different agencies are involved at the international level. We have also a variety of agencies that are involved but also the importance that civil society brings into all these and also the fact that there are different agencies or institutions within civil society that have a role to play. And the role of affected populations and the affected communities is clearly essential. In finding, I would say, longer-term solutions and sustainable solutions and we know perfectly well that without those that are affected, we are never going to find long-term solutions. There is clearly no magic solution to this but I think I leave this panel very positive in the sense that we have heard of excellent good practices that are taking place now in developing countries which are facing important challenges and despite that, there are things that are working and measures that are being taken. I think we all have understood that comprehensive responses are necessary in these cases and governments have looked at finding those comprehensive responses but also at the level of the international community, donors have also understood that the piecemeal approach is not the right one and that we need to really connect these things. So, if there are no other requests for the floor, so I would like to thank very much the panelists. It has been a very interesting panel. We have a session that is coming announced at five o'clock that give us 50 minutes of a short break so I will invite everybody to take a breath outside and then come back at five to resume the plenary session of today. Thank you very much again and a round of applause to the panel, please. Thank you.