 Good morning, everybody. Good morning. We'll just let the last few folks take their seats, but welcome, everybody. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president and CEO here at the U.S. Institute of Peace. And thank you for joining us this morning for a really important conversation on the future of multilateral peace building. I'm especially pleased to welcome Ambassador Rosemary DeCarlo. We're honored to have her here today as our keynote speaker, as well as our many distinguished panelists and guests. And I want to give a warm welcome to those of you who are joining us online, and you can follow the conversation with hashtag DeCarloUSIP. You get your own hashtag. Finally, many thanks. I want to give many thanks to the leadership and staff of our wonderful partners for this event. The United Nations Association of the National Capital Area, the Henry L. Stimpson Center, and the Alliance of Peace Building, as well as our USIP staff. So when we were preparing for this event, I'm thinking multilateral peace building. This is such a wonky term for an idea that has been so core to the peace and progress that we've enjoyed for the past 75 years. And yet, we had an extraordinary response to today's event from across a lot of different sectors and disciplines. We even had to close the registration, so thanks everyone for coming. And if we look at our news feeds or we just turn on the news, I think it's pretty evident why this is, as we see headlines that are dominated by conflict, violence, and war. But I'm confident that those of you in this room share the vision that animates us here at US Institute of Peace, which is peace is possible, peace is practical, but it takes all of us. As many of you know, we were founded 35 years ago by Congress as an independent, nonpartisan federal institute dedicated to preventing and resolving violent conflict. And clearly, at 35 years old, we are the younger sister of the many august multilateral institutions that were created 75 years ago. But our history does span those momentous final years of the Cold War through today. And we just launched in October our new 2020 strategic plan. And in the process of preparing it, we thought a lot about the threat of fragile states that's dominated the last several decades, where we've seen record levels of mass migration, pandemics, civil wars, violent extremism. These threats show no sign of abating. And state fragility, I think, continues to be a common denominator that really underlies all of these significant global challenges. Far from being over, state fragility, in fact, is now complicated and exacerbated by rising and major competition between powers. And we see this in places like Syria, like Libya, Venezuela, and the list goes on. And with even greater concern in our strategic discussions, we looked at how the institutions that have served as the center of gravity for international conflict resolution since the end of World War II are now under enormous strain, increasingly hamstrung by rising nationalism and protectionism, resource shortfalls, greater competition for power, and rapid technological change. And what especially seized us as we looked ahead was the rise of global challenges, climate change, new technological weaponry, cyber threats, challenges that fundamentally require international rules-based systems and institutions for global problem solving. So the imperative for collective action to resolve global conflicts has never been greater, while the institutions that we count on to deliver this for the last 75 years are under greater strain than they ever have been. So today's discussion is especially important. We're very pleased that we are able to host everyone for this conversation and have such an experienced and insightful keynote speaker to move us through the discussion. Because even as we face this critical challenge, we do have an extraordinary opportunity. And that's to push our institutions to be more agile, more adaptive, and better able to face the complexities that we face ahead. And so the opportunity is to seize the disruption of today, to enable the kind of changes required to ensure that these great multilateral institutions of the last century remain vital for the challenges ahead. So I commend the UN under the leadership of UN Secretary General Guterres, especially for elevating conflict prevention and peace building, and for introducing the kind of reforms that help the UN be more nimble and more effective in conflict settings. So as we approach the UN's 75th anniversary, this is an essential moment to take stock of where the multilateral conflict resolution and peace building institutions have delivered tangible successes, be very clear eyed about what reforms and innovations can produce better and more durable results and recommit ourselves to the global task ahead. So with that, I'm delighted to introduce our next speaker, Rosemary DeCarlo, who many of you in this room know and have worked with, brings more than 35 years of experience in academia and public service to her role as the UN undersecretary for political and peace building affairs. She's the highest ranking American official in the UN and the first woman to hold her position. She oversees really important initiatives and field-based political missions, carrying out peacemaking, preventive diplomacy and peace building activities in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia and the Americas, pretty much the world. So please join me in welcoming the UN undersecretary general for political and peace building affairs, Rosemary DeCarlo. Well, thank you very much, Nancy. I'm really very pleased to be with you today about the work of the United Nations in peace and security. Communicating about what we do and how we do it is always important, but it's even more important today as many doubt the value of the work of the United Nations. The secretary general Antonio Guterres has been very clear and he said it's not enough to extol the virtues of multilateralism. We have to show results and this is why Secretary General has made a surge in diplomacy for peace as one of the main planks of mandate. At the heart of this approach is prevention, prevention of conflict, but also of the phenomena that lead to social economic and political instability and fragility. The office that I head and I will call it DPPA for short, is the lead on conflict prevention, peace making and peace building in the UN system. Nancy gave a little bit of an explanation of what we do, but let me elaborate a bit more. We oversee special political missions around the world, including special envoys facilitating mediation processes in Syria and Yemen. Our special envoys also support political processes in Sudan, Bolivia and the Horn of Africa. We manage regional offices that serve as a forward platform for preventive diplomacy in West Africa, Central Africa and Central Asia. And we have country-based political missions in Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya and Somalia. And finally, our mandate is worldwide, so we oversee the UN's preventive engagements in countries without a standalone mission. You can see we're busy. Now, our work is difficult by nature. Today, however, we operate in a particularly complex global and security environment. In the international communities, conflict management capacities, be they military, political or humanitarian, are overstretched. And the multilateral system is, frankly, struggling to respond. And yet, the world today is still a safer and more prosperous place than probably at any other time in recorded history. Thanks in part to an effective collective security system, the intensity of armed conflict has seen a significant reduction in the last 30 years. Interstate conflict, one of the central concerns when the United Nations was founded 75 years ago, is not very common in today's world. But there are reasons for concern. First, while the overall number of conflicts is on the decline, those that do occur tend to last longer and cause more suffering, especially among civilians. Second, conflicts that began small and locally are increasingly internationalized. This is due to the involvement of regional as well as global powers, not only as supporters or enablers of local actors, but as conflict parties in their own right. We see this in Yemen. For example, their regional rivalries have manifested themselves in the battlefield. They've also made it much more difficult to find a negotiated agreement to end the conflict. And third, there's a greater fragmentation of conflict actors at the local level. Many of today's conflicts involve a multiplicity of local actors, including non-state armed groups, which often operate in loose and rapidly shifting coalitions. They pursue widely different ideological and political agendas, and may have links to different external supporters. These conflicts also offer fertile ground for violent extremist groups, which are rarely interested in political settlements. The acute fragmentation in Syria is a case in point. These trends make conflicts significantly more intractable and difficult to resolve. Greater polarization at the global level and weakening support to multilateral processes complicate matters further. And nowhere has the combination of these negative trends been more visible today than in Libya. Libya's become an arena for international and regional competition. External actors backing parties on Libyan soil are diminishing the chances for a political solution to the conflict. The April 2019 offensive to seize Tripoli by forces under the command of General Haftar put a spotlight on the overt role of foreign actors. The UN panel of experts, which monitors UN sanctions in Libya, has presented evidence that both parties to the conflict received outside financial and military support in blatant violation of the UN imposed arms embargo. Now, it's encouraging that diplomatic efforts are underway to try to resume a Libyan owned political process. I recently returned from the Berlin conference on Libya, convened by Germany, to bring together some of the most influential international actors. Now, all participants agreed that foreign interference had to stop and that a ceasefire was urgently needed to put Libya back on the path to peace and stability. This was an important step, but the fighting continues. It's escalating on the ground and much work still needs to be done to translate commitments into tangible results. Now, you may ask, what's the UN's response to the challenges that I'm talking about? I think we've worked very hard to make our tools better suited to tackle today's complex conflicts. Our objective is to engage earlier and proactively and not wait to react to a crisis after it's developed. We aim to focus not only on high level political engagement, but also on building anticipatory relations and addressing stress factors in a more effective way. And it's here I'd really like to take a moment to recognize the crucial role played by Lynn Pascoe, who as UN Undersecretary General for Political Affairs spearheaded an unprecedented transformation in the department helping to turn it into the operational and field oriented entity that it is today. Thank you, but improving the UN's ability to prevent and resolve conflicts was also the impetus for the Secretary General's 2019 interrelated reforms in the UN's peace and security, development and management pillars. The reform created a single regional political operational structure. No, that's a really good UN expression here. That's shared by DPPA, my department, and the Department of Peace Operations, which oversees peacekeeping. It gave concrete expression to the priority we give to finding political solutions to conflict, as the Secretary General often says, politics is primary. So today I'd like to highlight several important areas in which the UN has strengthened its capacity to prevent and resolve conflict and to sustain peace. First, I think we have done a fairly good job of expanding our analytical lens to look at a wider range of stressors that may trigger conflict. We've incorporated a political economic approach to our analysis. We've also put emphasis on better understanding the impact of climate change on security and to developing effective responses. This isn't really an abstract question. It's a present reality in places like the Sahel, where conflicts between farmer and herder communities are exacerbated by climate change. And there may be some major source of instability. Similarly, we're looking more systematically into the impact of digital technologies, such as the increasing role that social media plays in our societies and how it can be instrumentalized for offline harm, as we saw to devastating effect in Myanmar. Second, we're putting inclusion front and center in our efforts to promote peace. Now, the very rationale of the Sustainable Development Goals, which I'm sure many of you have heard of, is to leave no one behind. It's a plan for inclusion. This is crucial for peace processes. Women's meaningful participation in these processes is a major priority in this regard. Progress has been slow. Some might say we're backtracking. But we have to step up our efforts in this 20th anniversary year of Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. Our support, the UN support for initiatives such as the Syrian Women's Advisory Board and the Yemeni Women's Technical Advisory Group, have made a positive contribution to this agenda. Third, of course, elections are effective ways for citizens to express their voices. But at times they expose underlying tensions or even service flashpoints for violence. DPP oversees the provision of electoral assistance to member states, some of which are in fragile or post-conflict situations. In addition to technical support, we work to mitigate zero-sum politics and offer good offices support well before an election takes place. This approach has borne results. In Madagascar, for example, our technical assistance in the lead up to the 2018 presidential election, combined with good office's work on the ground, helped ensure a peaceful transition of power after the election. More recently in Bolivia, we deployed a technical assistance team to complement the efforts led by the Secretary General's personal envoy to overcome the crisis that developed after the elections in last October. The efforts of our special envoy, many of whom you know, Jean Arnaud, include promoting dialogue and building confidence in the lead-up to a new presidential election scheduled for May 2020. And fourth, since 2004, Security Council sanctions regimes, of which there are now 14, have focused on individuals, entities, groups or undertakings. The move away from a blunt economic instrument not only ensures the reduction in unintended humanitarian consequences, but also greater precision in achieving their goals. Fifth, in response to increasing demand, we've professionalized our ability to support mediation processes around the world, whether they are led by the United Nations or a partner organization. There are standby mediation team, we deploy thematic experts in areas such as ceasefires, constitutions or process design and can do so anywhere in the world within 72 hours. Sixth, we place greater emphasis on the leaks between political and development work to address long-term stress factors, such as inequalities and exclusion. In places where we don't have a Security Council mandate, we work very closely with UN agencies on the ground to build local capacities for dialogue and peace building. Now, the recent reforms that the Secretary General has put forward has helped us move in this direction. These reforms brought the UN's peace building support office into what was the Department of Political Affairs, making us DPPA. This was based on the understanding that political analysis, conflict prevention and peacemaking need to happen hand in hand with long-term peace building that addresses underlying conflict drivers. This recognition guides our work, for example, in Burkina Faso today. Their fragility and efforts of the ongoing crisis in neighboring Mali have placed significant stress on state institutions and political stability. I should also note that 2020 marks the 15th anniversary of the creation of the peace building architecture, and a review is underway to look at the impact of our support. When we greatly appreciate that yesterday the Alliance for Peace Building supported the UN in hosting a consultation with civil society and building and sustaining peace to look into the progress that's been made and how we should move forward. And finally, it's my seventh issue. We are increasing our focus on regional dynamics. As the implications of conflict or crises are often felt beyond national borders, we need to shift our focus from country-specific to regional approaches. This is where the Secretary General's reform of the peace and security pillar has come into play. In the Lake Chad Basin, we have been responding to the threat posed by Boko Haram with a comprehensive approach across all affected countries. We've also placed great emphasis on our partnership with regional and sub-regional organizations, which are often better positioned as first responders to emerging crises in their respective regions. Now, I've described some of our efforts to improve our effectiveness, and I hope that I've demonstrated to some degree that the United Nations remains a vital actor in the peace and security arena. At the same time, I have to be honest, our efforts are significantly more likely to succeed when member states are united behind them. Security Council division over Syria has made progress on a negotiated solution that much more difficult, inevitably extending the suffering. A United Council, on the other hand, has made a crucial and positive difference in places such as Liberia and Colombia. The final reflection I'd like to leave you with is this. The UN really needs the United States as a strong partner. U.S. diplomacy can play a vital role in support of collective efforts to prevent crises and make peace. A strong and effective United Nations is in the best interest of the entire membership in the United States, has shaped many of the normative frameworks that guide our work. The Legitimacy Act is conferred by the United Nations, remains one of its strongest assets with the ensuing ability to bring other countries towards a common cause. With the leadership of key member states, like the United States, is indispensable. Thank you very much. Well, good morning. My name is George Mouss and I have the privilege of serving as the vice chair of the board of directors here at the Institute of Peace. And I also have a little bit of history in dealing with issues related to the UN. So this event this morning is particularly satisfying to me. We have, to thank Under Secretary General DeCarlo, first and foremost for her purposeful intention to come here to Washington and to come here to remind us all just how vital a role the United Nations plays and continues to play in this important space of conflict and conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Those of us who have worked in that space, whether we approach it from the perspective of the Humanitarians or human rights advocates or as development experts or peacebuilders all know that absent the context, the environment that the UN and its operations create on the ground, we would be hard-pressed to be able to pursue our work. And so I think it's important to remind ourselves of that and your visit is an opportunity to do that. And dare I say as the response to your coming illustrates your message is eagerly awaited. We have with us panelists who both individually and collectively have enormous backgrounds, experience in these areas of conflict resolution, of conflict prevention, peacekeeping, peacebuilding. And I think therefore an opportunity to tease out some of the important developments that are taking place at the UN right now and the efforts that are being made to build out some of the recommendations of the many reports that we've seen over the last five years. We were privileged to host here on this stage the visit of the high-level panel on peace operations about five years ago, so this has been going on for some time and we know that. But let me introduce briefly the members of our panel. We have with us this morning Acting Assistant Secretary Jonathan Moore, who recently took over the direction of the Bureau of International Organization Affairs. Ambassador Moore has a distinguished career in the Foreign Service, including his service as Senior Advisor at the US Mission to the UN in New York for European Eurasian Affairs and as Ambassador and Head of the Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. We have, as has already been mentioned, the presence of a farmer under Secretary General for Political Affairs, Len Pasco. Len came to the UN after a long career in the Foreign Service having served as our Ambassador to Indonesia and Malaysia. As Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and as the US Special Negotiator for Regional Conflicts in the former Soviet Union. And he's also a member of the UNA Board here in Washington. Next is Ms. Victoria Holt, Tory, as we know her more fondly, who's Vice President at the Henry L. Stemson Center. She ably served for seven years as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs overseeing the Office of Peace Operations, Sanctions and Counterterrorism, as well as the Office of UN Political Affairs. And I think it's fair to say that in her many years at both Stemson and the State Department, she quite literally wrote the book on UN Peace Operations. And last but certainly not least, we have Ms. Uzra Zeya, President and CEO of the Alliance for Peace Building, the leading global network of organizations working to end violent conflict and one of USIP's most valued partners. Ms. Zeya has also had a distinguished diplomatic career having served as Charger d'affaires and Deputy Chief of Mission in the US Embassy in Paris and is Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. So I think it's, as you can see, we've got lots of experience and expertise in this area. And I think it would be appropriate, therefore, to begin by inviting our panelists to respond to, under Secretary General DeCarlo's remarks, perhaps share with us your takeaways from your histories and experience in dealing with issues. What did you hear that you liked? And dare I say, what are the things you would like to hear more? Let's put it positively. And let me start with you, Secretary Moore. Thank you. I can't begin without mentioning the great joy I have in being here with such a distinguished panel of colleagues who have taught me many of the things I know about the United Nations and the multilateral world. I wouldn't try to add up all of the years of experience in the State Department that the entire panel would have. It might go into the hundreds of years. In any case, it's a great pleasure. Nancy, thank you very much for the opportunity to be back at USIP. The last time I was here, I was talking about Kosovo and Serbia. That's not the topic today. I'm grateful for that. We can talk about simple things like the multilateral world. In any case, thank you for the opportunity, Ambassador Moose. A tremendous honor to be with you here as well as the other members of the panel. And Rosemary, thank you for the opportunity. We've been talking about other things and we'll continue talking later today. To answer your question, Ambassador, first and foremost, I think we can say, I can say we liked everything we've heard. We understand and talk frequently with Ambassador DeCarlo in her capacity, of course, is under Secretary General. This is the nature of our work in New York and around the world. We consult closely. We don't agree on every detail. We do have, of course, a perspective which is grounded in the policy of this administration and the national views of the United States. All of us in one form or another over nearly 75 years of the existence of the UN have seen some impressive successes and, candidly, some spectacular failures. And in my own experience, given the opportunity by Ambassador Moose to comment, I had the great joy and privilege of serving in Namibia as Deputy Chief of Mission, the U.S. Embassy, where the UN helped bring about a very impressive democratic transition. That country is still a very strong democratic leader in Africa. It emerged out of apartheid thanks to the efforts of the UN, particularly Marti Attisari, leading UNTAG. On the other hand, I've spent over six years of my career in the Balkans and some of my closest friends are mothers and widows of Srebrenica, so I don't have to talk anymore about detail about that. But we look at all of these perspectives in a very broad sense. We know that not every effort undertaken by the United States necessarily succeeds. And that's certainly true of the UN as well. The UN has gone through a lot over its 75 years. I think, just as an aside, it's worth pointing out that if you look at the United States, we have a history of varying levels of engagement with the multilateral world. January 2020 would theoretically mark the 100th anniversary of the League of Nations, but there's really not too much to celebrate. So instead, we can look in a few months' time to the 75th anniversary of the UN, where the United States is very pleased and honored to be a host country nation for the UN Security Council, where we have the awesome responsibility of being one of five permanent members, where we are also the host, of course, of the Secretary and the General Assembly. We are keen to find ways working with the UN to build peace around the world and to strengthen that peace and make those opportunities. And we have to look at those in detail. I'm grateful to Rosemary for a specific reference to Libya, which is a very active situation. We find ourselves on one hand, of course, very grateful to the German government for hosting meetings less than two weeks ago to try and improve the situation on the ground, and at the same time, unfortunately, faced with the very sad and tragic reality that things are getting worse in Libya itself, not necessarily through state actors, but through proxies and other means that fellow Security Council members do not want us to sanction or talk about. There are many obstacles to this effort. It's a very comprehensive one, but let me end with the same statement that Rosemary did. We completely agree from the perspective of the United States that the UN is essential. We are committed to its success. We are still the number one contributor to the UN system, and we have every intention. You've seen this from every level of the administration, whether it's engaging during high level week in New York or practical policy discussions at every level. We are very grateful to you for being a part of that system, and proud to be its host. Thank you very much. Len, is your mic on? I think so. It is. Len, you, as Rosemary said earlier, you have been involved, you were involved in many of the building steps that have led to the reforms that Under Secretary General DeCarlo was putting in place that Secretary General Gutierrez is putting in place. How do you gauge the progress that's been made here? What do you see that's been important that's been accomplished, and perhaps where do we go from here? Well, thanks a lot, George. I think first thing I should say is no one on this platform nor in this room has more sympathy for Rosemary than I do. We discussed about the number of times she was in an airplane in a month and such, and it's a part of the job that I remember not very fondly, but the truth is that with the UN you can get into these places if you're working well and get there and move quickly. It's a tremendous help as the situations begin to evolve and as they change. One thing that I was very pleased that Rosemary talked about was the professionalization of the effort. One thing I found and Secretary General I worked for was that Rosemary's work on Kim Moon was that there was an enormous amount of talent out there in the world that the UN can draw on, farmer, foreign ministers, others, but they're not necessarily so good at solving problems as you might think they are without a lot of backup and a lot of help and a lot of support, and so the professionalism of the UN I think is very important for moving this forward. Two other quick comments. One is that the big task, the new task I think that Rosemary has taken on is the whole peace building area which is frankly quite incoherent in my days. You could never, you could get a lot of speeches, a lot of talk about peace building and no money and no resources, and frankly an across the board approach. The arguments about well when is something development, when is it peace building, when is it this, when is it that it seems to go on and I confess it was far from resolved in the day that I left and so I would be pleased to hear Rosemary if you could talk a little bit more about that area. Secondly, as you know, my love of my time was the trying to prevent diplomacy, working on how to resolve issues that were out there and if you've got a couple of successes or so to pass on at that, I'd love to hear it. Thank you very much. You've anticipated my next questions. Tori. Well thank you very much. It's a real pleasure to be here and welcome to Washington again. You know, there's a theory of multilateralism but when you're sitting at the desk and there's an earthquake in Haiti, you realize that the U.S. needs to respond and it was the U.N. who both lost 100 people but then became the U.S. partner for the delivery of the U.S. military deploying. We saw when a bowl of the U.S. military had a U.N. mission but we created one. And this is what I think the undersecretary's job is. It's not clear, therefore, you call her office. Whether it's foreign terrorists fighting, financing, excuse me, or going after a new group of extremists, Molly faced a state failure. We need an envoy. And almost every crisis you see in the world, what I came to realize is we had a U.N. partner, whether they were loud and famous or quiet in the background, you can't find a U.S. military deployment that doesn't have a political side where the U.N. is involved. Often they're delivering aid. They're strategizing on peacebuilding and security and the kind of analytic work that the ambassador just pointed out to us. And so in a sense, there's lots to reform around the U.N. but there's such an invaluable partner for U.S. interests as well as U.S. values. And so perhaps I could ask you, both in your remarks today and widely discussed in capitals including the United States, we see a real shift in conflict, the largest displacement crisis since the end of World War II, the shift in non-state actors, the disregard for IHL and the field and the nature of warfare, which you referenced, greater attacks on civilians. I wish you had a secret closet of a thousand mediators, but I know that when I was at state, it was a roster. And some got paid and some did not. So we want to fly you and your team around the world, but there's only so many human resources. So one of my questions would be how do you marry up that new conflict environment, the rise of authoritarianism, and your own ability to deploy around the world for both high level and more quiet level mediation? And so second, what could the U.S. do to support that role? Obviously there's always a resource question, but there's also human capital and marrying up U.S. bilateral muscle with some of the goals that are played out in the multilateral environment. So a couple of another two small questions to put on your table. Thank you, George. One, I would just sum up my reaction. What's not to like in Rosemary's remarks? I mean, your resolve and your commitment to both transformation and I would say integration in terms of the U.N. approach to multilateral peacebuilding is incredibly inspiring. I would say from where I sit, leading a network of non-governmental actors working at all phases of conflict to prevent, to resolve, to recover from, we want to step up and do our part. And I would say when we consider the future of multilateral peacebuilding, I think it's very important to recognize that the future is multi-stakeholder. So as a non-governmental network, we absolutely want to partner with U.N. peacebuilding support office with DPPA. We're so happy to see that second P there. We were delighted to host Hank Young-Brickman for what was an incredibly enriching discussion of how we came to where we are in 2020 with the elevation and the integration of peacebuilding throughout the U.N. system, but the really difficult question, how do we come together outside the state-to-state system to support better outcomes? And one example of that I would point to is the work that we have done to partner with the legislative branch, to partner with a 67 member coalition of NGOs, many of whom are represented here to achieve the adoption of the Global Fragility Act in December 20th, and it was a last-minute but really game-changing accomplishment of the last Congress where I think you can see evidence that there is a growing bipartisan consensus for elevating peaceful prevention, and what we would like to see is how do we integrate that with the sustaining peace agenda, with the decade of action, and really come forward with the incredible work that Nancy and her leadership team have done for the task force on extremism and fragility to align these efforts towards a better end, and we're ready to do our part. One question I would pose is I really appreciated your emphasis on inclusive peacebuilding and that shaping and orienting your efforts. I do believe that that reserve of mediators of experts is out there, but maybe they're not the usual suspects in terms of former government officials who tend to be the default. The numbers really tell a story where on the one hand the evidence case is there, most peace agreements fail, but when women are a part of those peace processes they are 35% more likely to last 15 years or longer, but the fact is the numbers in terms of women mediators, negotiators, inofficial peace processes are just unacceptable. I think for mediators since 92 it's been 2% and 8% for negotiators, so I would say on the part of the alliance and our partners we're really ready to help fill those gaps and bring in a more inclusive approach players who I think can help deliver better outcomes with you. I think that sort of sets our agenda for the rest of the day, but let me start. I think it's always useful to be reminded and of course we look at the landscape and we see how many challenges are out there and note that we are not succeeding in all of those as well as we would like or at all, but it's important I think to remind ourselves of where things are working and where we can point to actual success in the application of the tools and the experience and the knowledge that we have and maybe we should start there and perhaps just to roll that into the second part of the question which is now that you have this new structure in your office which brings together the old political affairs now with the peace building which I think many of us agreed was sort of floundering for many years. It was kind of what wasn't really connected to this continuum of conflict and peace building. How do you see that as enhancing your ability, UN's ability to be effective in this role? Thank you. Well let me say it's really wonderful to be up here with former colleagues, all of whom I've worked with at some point over my 35-year career and I'll try to respond to your questions and first of all on the reform and on peace building. From my perspective, I think the integration of the Department of Political Affairs and the peace building support office is the best part of the reform in terms of the peace and security pillar. There are many things that we are able to do now in coordination that we didn't do before. I shouldn't say we were able to do that we are doing now. It's not that we couldn't have done this before, but we didn't. But the fact that we are one team, we're able to exchange information and have a better sense of, we have a better sense of the tools that the peace building support office, the peace building fund can bring to conflict prevention in particular or conflict resolution, but also the office headed by Oscar Fernandez Taranco, who many of you know, has more information about what we're concerned about and what we're trying to do. A lot of the work that DPPA does is very much behind the scenes. A lot of conflict prevention work never, never hits the news, the pages, doesn't even get briefed very much to the general membership. But we've been able to work far more closely and I'll give you a couple of examples. First in is Burkina Faso. We've been very concerned about the fragility of Burkina Faso. Not only this spillover of terrorist acts, but various inter-communal tensions. And together with Oscar, we've pulled together some peace building support funds and other voluntary contributions to set up five regional presences in Burkina Faso. Now, normally in the past we would have just set up another political mission in the capital with all the trimmings that come with it. We don't have those resources anymore and it isn't always the best and most effective way of dealing with an issue. So we've set up five regional presences, has represented us from various agencies including a political officer as well. Working with communities on inter-communal dialogue, local peace initiatives to try to deal with the issues that are exacerbated even further by the terrorist acts that are happening in various parts, in particular along the borders of Burkina Faso. We're very pleased. The government of Burkina Faso is very pleased. Okay, it's too early to say are we making things better, but we certainly have the intention to do so. We do see some greater dialogue. There's an upcoming election in Burkina Faso. We're trying to create more inclusion in the society in particular and attracting people to elections. We think we'll help going forward. That's one example. Another example when you talk about successes, it's both successes and peace building together. This is Columbia. We were charged with verifying the peace agreement between the former FARC. First part of it was disarming the former FARC guerrillas. Second part was working on reintegration with the government. I think it's perhaps our most successful mission, I should say. We've done, I think, extremely well in working with the former FARC, working with the government. We've set up reintegration sites around the country. The little small businesses helped to put forth various small businesses in these communities. We started off with a very modest $400,000 of extra budgetary resources from my department and then added 4 million from the peace building support fund and it's growing and growing and growing. I think it's been both politically and in terms of peace building one of our more successful businesses. Lynn asked for other examples of success. Well, I think it may not sound like success. First, it's hard sometimes to say that if you hadn't done something, something really horrible would have happened. But you feel it's going to happen, so you've got to be out there. You can't prove that negative. I think we have done it in diffusing tensions around elections, not just in Madagascar that I spoke about earlier, but our regional offices and the two in Africa I think have done incredible work in diffusing tensions over the last few years, particularly the regional office in West Africa that works with ECOWAS, the regional organization in terms of elections, whether it be in Mexico or other places in diffusing tensions so that there's more or less a peaceful transfer of power. Another success I would give you is and when you know this one well, is resolution of the name issue. The agreement between Greece and North Macedonia, 27 years we had an envoy who worked for 27 years and it finally got resolved a year and a half but that's, I think, a very important step and it shows persistence really pays off. And I think the last thing I would mention and success and again, these are small steps. We have a brewing conflict in Yemen, no doubt. However, the agreement that we did reach in Stockholm to redeploy forces from the port of Hadada has enabled the United Nations to bring in humanitarian assistance to avoid a famine to really help people in need. It's a small step. We still have a conflict to resolve but we certainly at least are able to get humanitarian supplies in. It's interesting that two of the examples you cited are examples where the Institute of Peace is also very active both Burkina Faso, which suggests that there is the opportunity for a whole community effort here and of course we're both so interesting. But let me any thoughts or reactions to... Yeah, Glenn. Yeah, if I could, George. I just wanted to re-emphasize one thing that both Tory and Rosemary mentioned. And that is the one thing about sitting in New York which is not obvious when you're sitting in Washington is the reach and power of the United States to be helpful on involving world events. I know there's a lot of people out there that think we shouldn't worry about the world. We shouldn't do it. But darn it, nobody's going to do it if the U.S. doesn't do it. And when you're sitting in the U.N. and this was from my staff always non-Americans and others and I'm sure Rosemary's had the same experience. They say, well, what can the Americans do? Where are we going? What's going to be done? Because only the United States has the reach around the world and frankly the reputation to be able to help and work on a lot of these issues. And I could give a dozen examples too. And I'm not going to. But of places where when you get the partners working with you, you can do a lot. The problem that Rosemary faces, which thankfully I didn't, was a growing split in the Security Council that's getting worse and worse with the Chinese and the Russians going off on their own which we were actually quite helpful many times in my day. And when you've got that kind of split it makes it doubly hard for the U.N. to do things. But it makes it even more important that you have the U.S. and others that are out there helping you on issues that the whole world needs to be resolved. And I know one thing that this audience or this group has heard me say this before but when I was there when I would tell my wife that we were doing this and she'd say, I never heard of anything like that. It never appeared in the papers. We don't see anything. Washington's silence on the U.N. is shocking but it's tied to the decline of kind of newspaper reporting on international events. I mean there aren't journalists out there. People don't cover these the way they used to but there's an enormous amount of things going on out there that don't appear. People don't hear about it. You don't get a tagline if you read newspaper articles you will notice that they always say what the U.S. is doing but even if the U.N. has been in the lead they won't particularly say what the U.N. it's not malevolent, it's just the fact of life. So I think it's very important for an audience like this to understand the kinds of things that Rosemary the U.N. Secretary General are actually doing on this such and you have to dig a little bit to find it. I'll admit that but it is very important and thank you Rosemary and thank you for that, Lynn. Tori, please. I just want to react to that a bit and emphasize how important what you said is we've mostly talked about what the U.N. does in the world but I think we have a real challenge in terms of the U.N. and the administration has currently been focused greatly on the rise of China in playing a role and kind of competing for both values and interests and I think one of the remedies gets to what you're saying Lynn. The U.S. needs to go forward on the new ambassadors because having a small team in New York is like tying one hand behind your back and I think our values and our interests are promoted better when the U.S. is there fully engaged across the board and I think that's been a challenge also on the resources it's sort of funny I hear the elevators are shut off at a certain hour and the U.N. is a sign that they have a financial crunch and the U.S. delay in paying the regular budget comes without a message of why and I think that can undercut important diplomatic work whether it's on Libya or elsewhere so I really hope that that gets squared going forward but a slightly different question many of the conflicts that DPPA has to handle whether you've mentioned Libya, Yemen Iraq, Afghanistan Syria, Colombia, Mali etc start with a premise of a peace agreement. Everybody signs something, they have a great meeting, there's a press release to a community people to work through both a peace building but maybe a political mission on a special envoy. What happens when the presumptions of that peace agreement decay? I don't know if your analytic work is to say you know what we don't have freedom of movement anymore the parties aren't holding the meetings, we're not extending state authority they stopped talking to civil society the disarmament's not working so there's an iterative way to almost have a trigger to recognize when you've gone to a place where that presumption of a future peace agreement decayed and it needs to fundamentally be revisited because I think some of the tougher issues on your list come from that problem and informally it's raised back up or you try to go to the council which is now as pointed out much more stymied by the internal politics so I welcome your thinking on that and if it's something your analytic units looking at or your mediation team can help with or how you handle it internally Mr. Njidjou, while you were reflecting on that I would just second and welcome your points on the difficulty of proving the value of conflict averted but I do think some important work has been done on that space by the Institute for Economics and Peace which is shown for every dollar invested in peace building you save $16 in terms of conflict averted I think another successful example of peaceful prevention was the lessons learned from the electoral violence in Kenya of 2008 where you had a governmental, a multilateral and a non-governmental peace building effort that I think locally led helped avoid a repeat of that scenario one other success that I recall that I worked on personally in my career at the State Department was East Timor which in the grand scheme of things is not on the headlines by any means looking at the transition that the UN led from a series of atrocities a referendum that had immense potential for a further and catastrophic explosion of violence to look at where it is now I think you'd have to put it in the success category Would you like to address the presumption of peace presumption of peace I think, Tori, you've actually hit on a very good point in that, I mean in some cases it's because perhaps the peace agreement that was brokered did not take into account the complexity of the situation so we started off probably with something that was going to be very hard to implement in other cases I think there is often a tendency where things start slipping certainly we do periodic reports to the Security Council our envoys and special representatives do briefings and highlight some of the problems that they are facing but there is often I think a lack of action to take action to see how to turn things around and I don't just mean by the missions in question in some cases it's our missions but in some cases it is the Security Council that has had a very hard time holding the spoilers accountable frankly that's an area that needs to be seriously addressed I just want to respond to Azra on women I mean we agree completely obviously that women need to be involved in peace processes we see that peace agreements last longer they take into account not only the concerns of women but the impact of the conflict on women and as I said I think in some cases we see backtracking today rather than moving forward so we have to redouble our efforts what we have tried to do when it's a UN-led peace process we insist on a certain quota of women to be at the table and when we cannot get the parties to bring women we bring our own and we did this on Yemen in Stockholm we created this women's technical advisory group they were there advising the special envoy who was trying to negotiate an agreement on Hodeidah and while they weren't at the table they were just behind and very much having their voices heard through us in Syria we also created the Syrian women's advisory group some of those women are now part of this constitutional committee which unfortunately is stalled but we ensure that that we had 20% of the committee female and this is something we do routinely when we are in charge if we're not leading a peace process it's extremely hard I've been in international meetings and with countries that have far greater representation of women in political and work life and seen all men at the table so just briefly first of all yes we absolutely agree from every perspective that women's security council can speak with one voice can work together Colombia is an outstanding example of that type of success that's a wonderful thing the difficulty you face and we all face is that the security council is not often able to reach agreement on even on issues that seem direct and obvious to all of us to the media and of course the victims of conflicts and problems going on around the world not to steer the discussion directly away facing very active efforts by the People's Republic of China ongoing efforts by the Russian Federation both of whom of course are two of the P5 together with us France and the UK whether it's the coronavirus and not being sufficiently transparent about what is affecting people's lives all around the world right now that's not a security council issue but some of the discussions that have gone on about the humanitarian needs in Syria I don't think there's ever been a case where the P5 of the permanent members all abstained for different reasons because every effort we undertook to make sure that the people who have humanitarian needs can be reached by the good offices of the UN that did not move forward and just in six months or less we're going to face a more difficult discussion of that with regard to sort of the broader issue of where the administration is very briefly walking into this beautiful facility where the administration, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones, comes to mind my colleagues used to work and I still do across the street in the rather less glassy building the reality is is that some of the frustrations that are felt and they're felt on Capitol Hill and they're felt by the American people and they're felt by many people in the administration it's not about the UN being fundamentally bad obviously that's not the issue at all we helped establish the UN and again are very proud to host it and by the way Democratic practices of each member state getting a vote where we go around and lobby and are constantly doing whip counts even for general assembly resolutions that have no weight at all the commitment is profound we still feel and this is a growing problem that other countries including some of the ones I've mentioned are subverting exactly these Democratic principles and standards for national goals like the so-called Belt and Road Initiative and obviously any number of other issues so we do want to work together on mutual peace building efforts very encouraged recently by conversations and developments on the ground in Sudan looking at the practical aspect of turning a very specific peacekeeping mission in Darfur into some form of a broader special political mission which would be under you and your team working very closely with the Prime Minister of Sudan and others on the ground to see how the UN can best make that evolution so yes again bottom line when we're able to work together which isn't as often as we'd like we do bring about some successes thanks to the tremendous offices of the UN I think there is the reminder here of course that we look to the UN to do to solve so many of our problems and many of these complex situations that the UN continues to deal with are there because we want you to continue to deal with them in part because we have not figured out other solutions to them but it's also reminder that at the end of the day without the political engagement of key members of the UN starting of course with the Security Council and the P5 it's very difficult if not impossible for the UN to resolve those and we talked about that there we have sort of have to disaggregate this there are certainly going to be situations where we are not going to find the kind of agreement that we would wish to have amongst the principle political international political actors in order to move something forward but yet we have found specific situations in which in which it is possible and what's the UN sitting where it does and often called the integrator the coordinator of this point us in some directions where we would like to see some greater where you think there's potential and where you would like to see some greater involvement on the part of political actors such as well I think I mean first of all I don't want to blame everything on the Security Council and I some of us are like and we you know the Secretary has you know its own responsibility to take risks we're a very risk averse organization I think most bureaucracies are so I think we're trying to do better at that it comes with certain complications perhaps donors don't particularly like to see their money wasted when you keep trying trying trying and nothing happens but sometimes you just got to do it you have to try but I do think that you know we need support and we need support from players and small players it's not just the major players I mean I can echo what Lynn has said I can't tell you the number of times when colleagues at the UN will walk into my office and say your country needs to speak up you got to get in the game and to solve X problem, X problem, X problem I think frankly sometimes over estimating that the U.S. can play but I do think it's important for the U.S. to be engaged on issues like Libya, like Syria I'm not saying they are not, they are but also trying to lead and forge a consensus the other area I think is really important is let's look at some of the thematic issues and that's where I think we've got a lot of strengths women where the U.S. has been a major player in driving some of the resolutions and the tools that we now have at our disposal to promote women not only in peace processes political processes but empowering women very important I think in the area of innovation you know we are really again we're an old bureaucracy and we are trying to not only look at the impact of new technologies on peace and security but how do we use them how do we go about using AI how do we use big data to help us all help us to have better analysis and move forward and I think this is a role and something that the U.S. really as a leader in this area could really be very helpful with and speak more about it in multilateral fora very good thank you very much I sense the audience is getting restive and they're anxious to put their questions to the panel and to you as well so why don't we open it up for questions and if you could introduce yourselves number two be brief in your questions and if you have a particular destination for that that would be useful do we have microphones thank you very much my name is Cornelia Weiss I'm retired U.S. military colonel and I serve part of my time in Columbia and so with regard to Columbia I am curious as to why I've heard a lot of discussion about women here and I thank you for that but I also ask that we also look at the reality and why is the reality that all of the heads of the U.N. mission to Columbia have been men and all of the deputy heads to the mission have been women why in the implementation of the provisions of the peace agreement have the ones that specifically address women why is there lesser implementation or no implementation of them as opposed to others and I thank you very much and one last point and I don't know if this is something that the U.N. can do but it seems to me that in terms of for the Colombian people that it would serve Columbia to go ahead and ratify optional protocols to the various U.N. conventions so that the people of Columbia have access to outside judicial processes to bring their concerns thank you. So a reminder that despite all of our collective hard working Columbia the task is not yet complete by any stretch of the imagination and I certainly know that. Are there other questions we'll take a couple and then we'll yes Steven down here in the front Thanks very much for a wonderful panel. I'm Steve Mosley I'm the president of the United Nations Association of National Capital Area. You talked about taking a greater regional emphasis within an area by the U.N. but no one's really spoken to what about the other regional institutions multilateral institutions the African Union the OAS thinking about Venezuela I'm thinking about the problems in East and West Africa where the African Union is expected to play much greater role in peace keeping in the work and in diplomacy but not necessarily in long term peace building I could go on but you get the gist of it could you talk about how you envision your new office which I think is a wonderful integration how they can how you can relate with that integration to those other agencies to maybe think about some new and future ways of operating. Thank you. I thought I saw another hand over here yes right many hands Hi my name is Clio Rogers and I just graduated from American University as a student of peace and conflict resolution who's interested in mediation what is your advice to us that are interested in entering the mediation field. And let's not have the entire burden of this fall on Rosemary. Should we try one more right behind you there. Hello my name is Bushra Raji I'm a mediator in Maryland and also a MOLUN coordinator in my local middle school my question was are there any efforts in terms of building internal resilience to foreign intervention so you know as as Ra mentioned the importance of mediators on the ground but are there other efforts to help build this kind of resilience like we don't need to seek the help of a foreign nation to resolve our internal conflicts I'm thinking of countries that have minorities that seek help from foreign nations. That speaks to the report on fragility that addresses precisely this issue what we can do proactively and preventively to build resilience in fragile societies so that they don't wind up in conflict and interested to see what the UN does so who would like to start us off. Just to be nice to Rosemary I'll do one of them the one about Steve's point about dealing with other countries other regional organizations and such one of the things we've built into the structure very much so from my early days of working on it was to really build up our contacts with other organizations and while we were trying to make the mediation efforts and the professionalism of the UN grow we had lots of programs out there with other organizations we helped the African Union for example develop a whole mediation area which they had not had before the theory behind it at the UN was the problems that we get the problems that the UN deals with and I think Rosemary as someone pointed out sort of dumped on them because nobody else wants to do it or they're so bad that they can't be enough way to figure out how to settle it so you need all the help you can get believe me and the secretary generals down through the have convened all of the groups together they do it regularly and down at the lower level we're constantly trying to work all the way through if you look at our successes and I think a little bit out of date but if you look at our successes in West Africa virtually everyone has been a combination of UN ECOWAS and the AU working together and part of that is we have more mobility we have people that can do this but it is that combination that has made these things change and again lots of them never appear are to be heard I used to say it doesn't make any difference who gets heard if we can solve some problem at the local level and save some people's lives one if I could just mention one more success along that same line that nobody has heard about has been a Ghana which was a Ghana I'm sorry Guinea which was on the verge of a civil war and through the work of these three organizations we managed to avoid a billion dollars a year peacekeeping and lots of other things and I don't think there were two or three words of it ever appeared in the press but it is that kind of success where the UN does it and mostly it is with working with other organizations you can talk about Central Asia working with what's the organization OSEE working in other areas all around the world we can almost every time you can point to the work with local organizations or international NGOs very briefly on the same point working now I can tell you that sitting down with the AU is extremely important we doubled the number of people attending the AU summit so we can engage in a host of issues from peacekeeping to upcoming leadership races throughout the UN system ASEAN is in very good hands now there's the very fortunate coincidence that Vietnam is also a brand new member of the Security Council for the next two years an elected member chaired, excuse me, presided over the Security Council from the first day January 2nd is also chairing ASEAN we've had very comprehensive discussions both with them and other ASEAN members on issues there throughout OAS of course is very well known throughout this hemisphere and the discussions are very active a broader point would be to say that at the State Department now there's a multilateral nature of so much of the world the bilateral multilateral worlds are really intersected that we have the strongest partnership I've seen in my career I couldn't go back quite as far as some of the distinguished panelists of very close and immediate collaboration between the geographic bureaus and the Bureau of International Organization Affairs on all of these issues from what's happening at the Security Council to leadership races throughout the UN system it's very close, it's very strong in this which existed institutionally in the State Department before oh that's not important, oh let New York or Geneva deal with that is gone for necessary reasons and because of a policy focus very briefly to the person from American University not to confuse with the African Union there's more than one AU Barry Goldwater had a third one but in any case as an alumnus of American University who sent his daughter to the Comfort Peace and Resolution Masters Program SIS, I would just say public service is very important Colonel had a question on Columbia I unfortunately don't have the knowledge to address look at different ways to enter the system, Foreign Service Civil Service there's so many opportunities it's possible to find out all these things online we have various mentorship programs with all of the universities in the Washington area and throughout the country there are all kinds of ways you can bring your skills to bear serving your country and very much encourage that thanks very much I'll take the question on women first of all Secretary General has a policy of gender parity working toward parity at all levels not just at senior levels at all levels he's managed to achieve that at headquarters 50% of senior officials are women from various parts of the world he's working on that in the field right now we're at 41% that are female in various missions in Columbia you're right it's been headed by a male but in Iraq that mission is headed by three women this is not common everywhere it's taking time but we're getting there we're at parity at a number of levels also at lower levels in the secretariat in New York this is a policy that is one that the secretary general is very committed to and there are really qualified women out there there's no question can you talk a little bit more about again that Lynn has highlighted this is an unsung role that the UN plays that is absolutely vital which is serving as the convener particularly in the field to bring all the actors together to who have something to contribute to resolving or dealing with whatever challenges can you say a little bit more about how that and how the restructuring perhaps of your office plays into your ability to well certainly I mean we are the convener on many instances and that's one of our I think one of our good assets and one of the roles that we can play by getting a number of people around the table we do it a lot in New York we do it in the field we've got a lot of regional initiatives where we bring like-minded from different countries together on specific issues for example if it's on counter-terrorism or conflict prevention various aspects of dealing with other issues, etc we can do that and we do do that I think the key here is working in partnership and I think Lynn has explained all the work that we do do with regional organizations we also we deploy with contacts from regional organizations I went to Libya with the peace and security commissioner from the AU Jean-Pierre Lacroix who heads the department of peace operations has made numerous visits to the Central African Republic for example and South Sudan this is very much our role but it's also our role to be the convener as you've said we've been convening meetings in Sudan we're also very engaged in Sudan with other countries that really want to see Sudan move through this transition and come out successfully as a civil democratic society civilian government democratic society our convening role we convene in Afghanistan we've been convening the international community since that mission was established we do so now we're always very happy to host Zail Halazad when he comes through to talk about his recent negotiations so I'm going to put a just bit of a fine point on it because as I heard you earlier you also noted that you did not have the ability to do all the things that deploy all the resources so tell us a little bit more about what that deficit looks like what that gaps looks like and again what is it that you're looking for what do you need from us first of all there are serious resource constraints most of the conflict prevention work that DPPA does is funded by voluntary contributions access budget will fund a special political mission somewhere or a peacekeeping operation but the kinds of things that which you do a lot of and that can make a real difference in preventing a conflict unfortunately we've got to go and find the resources for so that's a constraint that's one second constraint there is a concern about domestic affairs that some countries have the concern that they might become they could become an item on the Security Council's agenda they're very happy to accept her help but they don't want to be the subject discussed routinely in the Security Council so they're a little cautious there are concerns by member states who feel that it's overreach on our part to go in and try to prevent conflict because they don't see the conflict brewing we do the early warning signs and then there is another really huge concern and that's security to be operating in certain places Burkina Faso is one security is really a problem we have some resources obviously to deal with this but certainly the resources are limited sorry did you have anything from your long perspective in dealing with this that you'd like to add to that well perhaps I'll answer the question a bit about how to help groups that are seeking support if their human rights are being threatened I mean this is really hard everybody thinks conflict prevention is the easy part but it's exactly what the Undersecretary has just said it's actually feeling it's one of the hardest things to do because hi we're here to help or we think you have a problem it's not a very easy message for any nation to hear but the UN's made a lot of progress the community's made a lot of progress but what we think about Security Council is a horrible situation with these wretched vetoes blocking even the most basic human humanitarian access we also know about the Rohingya and what's been going on there and there's a mediator from the UN but that also would be blocked in Security Council let alone talking about Uyghurs and other groups but there is a wider range even beyond what this panel has touched on of access to potential options for Rohingya to see the ICJA case raised by Gambia getting international attention is I think a hopeful sign and something that has lifted it up above the noise and not something that was expected so maybe a question back to my good colleague what else would support both early warning and analysis of where not just there's a few violations of human rights but where you see a trend towards greater violence like in Burkina Fasa we all wish we'd seen Syria a little earlier is that something that your analytic unit is turning to do more of and how can governments how can outside civil society help you do that effectively and while you're reflecting on that why don't we turn again to the audience for some additional questions I have one down here on the right my right my name is Myle Mohamed I'm from Center for Policy Analysis in Horn of Africa I would like to ask the question you visited Somalia for example January I think last year and Somalia has one of the I think nearly 10 years more than 10 years they have a peacekeeping mission and is still their own reach their goal let me say for example when the mission was established was to at least to restore the peace so my question is do you make a review the missions when they have or do you allow them to continue in long time without reviewing if they accomplish their goals or not because some people they believe that the contributing countries they are not going to achieve that goal thank you thank you for that question go ahead thank you very much Mike J.G. it's formally a USIP currently teaching at George Mason University and my work there focuses on spoiler management so I'm particularly appreciative of the comment that Undersecretary General Decarlo made about the need to deal with accountability issues for spoilers in my own work it seems that the reason spoiler well it's related to Khafi Anand's statement that 50% of UN interventions revert to conflict within five years so this is a tremendous conflict prevention necessity not opportunity and the way to address that is to properly assess whether or not spoilers are going to be a challenge so that the mission can come armed with the authorities and capabilities so that we don't squander the golden hour so my question is in 2014 the integrated assessment of planning handbook said that the UN had no agreed methodology for assessing risk to missions has that been addressed or is it being addressed my second question is NATO organized a conference and workshop in October the NATO stability police center of excellence to develop spoiler assessment methodologies inviting the senior police advisers office from the UN the European Union African Union they're going to have a follow up workshop in April to discuss their progress and lay out a way ahead is there someone in your office and then for assistant secretary Moore someone in your office who would be interested in participating in the development of a spoiler assessment methodology this is looking at enlarging the analytical lens that we apply and as we are assessing what are the needs of a peacekeeping operation or a peace mission let's take one more over here on the left behind you I'm sorry there we go I'm Jeff DeLorentis it's nice to see so many of my former colleagues on the stage my question is a mechanical one about peace building I saw an article in the economist this week last week about all of these independent mediators track 1.5, track 2, track 3 actors, Jonathan Powell San Egidia and while they're involved in these activities to get to a peace treaty I'm wondering or peace agreement I'm wondering if there's any synergy in bringing them into the peace building side afterwards and whether there's any thought about that within the UN peace building operation thank you why don't we pause there and stop okay first of all I'll take Tori I was going to look at Tori because she was talking about her recent conversations with NATO and I'm hoping maybe she will shed some insights into that but go ahead I'm trying to remember all the questions now Tori's question was what more do we need we're trying to expand we're trying to expand our ability to deal with some of the drivers of conflict now and we need partners and it can be a member state it's more often a non-governmental organization or university we partnered with MIT for example and trying to teach machines how to read Arabic dialects so that we could have a better assessment of what the population was thinking about on a certain peace process recently one thing that we really need to find more partners with is on the impact of climate change on security one thing that we're toying with is how can we analyze satellite photos to see where droughts are coming so that we can anticipate that there could be movement of people and therefore potential tensions but again our resources are limited and we need partners and we do partner with in particular a number of non-governmental organizations and universities in this regard but we are always open to partnership on this another question I was going to just invite Uzra to say a word about that because I know that the Alliance embraces a whole range of organizations which developed since the Rwandan genocide exactly precisely this analytical work go ahead and on the partnership piece that Jeff DeLorentis raised I would say that the role of track 2 even track 3 and beyond dialogue supporters is critical to making breakthroughs possible it was something that occurred behind the scenes in the peace process in Sri Lanka certainly was a major factor behind the scenes in Colombia but post-agreement in that very fragile implementation phase where research shows that most peace agreements do fail I think the role of peace building expertise and partners and from an honest broker analytical aspect as well as critical in fact in the Columbia Peace Accord one of our Alliance members the Kroc Institute Notre Dame is a part of the agreement in monitoring the 500 plus commitments in it in an objective way and reporting back to all of the stakeholders so I think this is an innovative but a good example of how you need that sustained commitment and the partners beyond the UN and the governmental actors to help anchor an accord let's perhaps come back to this issue of spoilers which is really complicated and this is also there's an intersection here it seems to me because we've talked you alluded to Nancy in her opening remarks alluded to the changing conflict environment where we have of course a fragile states states that are challenged to deliver to their own people are still a major source of the intrastate conflicts that we see but that that landscape is now becoming much more complicated because it's overlaid with the behaviors of external actors and we see that often reflected in the way in which external actors then relate to internal or local actors and some of them could certainly qualify as spoilers could you talk a little bit about that and how it's, dare I say, complicated your challenges I think it's very complicated for example and we had heads of state in government agreeing to communicate that I said no foreign intervention absolutely promoting a ceasefire among the parties but we see fighting on the ground and fighting with sophisticated weapons we see mercenaries on the ground still we don't, I mean we don't really have a good mechanism for fighting with the spoilers even in the case of let's say a security council sanctions committee there are sanctions but then when someone is violating an arms embargo what happens they can get called out there may be a letter but there are very few let's say serious actions that can be taken with the spoilers and it's something we really do have to work on sometimes just calling people out is helpful but there's even a reluctance at times to do that can I just answer the question on Somalia yes I was there a year ago January I was there just after seven mortars hit the UN compound in Mogadishu and it's a mission I've been there twice now since I've been in this job and it's a mission that is definitely under review we usually are mandated to review our missions like a strategic review every three years by the security council we also do our own internal reviews and to fine-tune to see what could be different we've got two things going on we've got the UN political mission but then we have Amazon which the UN is also partially funding both trying to make some headway within very very difficult circumstances as you are well aware could I make a comment on the spoilers because frankly many times the UN can babysit and solve some of the problems at a lower level but often and I'll be very blunt about this it takes big guys with enough pressure to bring people around and if you really want to know from my point of view what happened on Libya is nobody threw their weight around and said stop it we saw what was going on one of the countries that was funneling money into people I remember they were funneling money into the bad guys in Somalia when we were working on the other that was at a level that I think I managed to stop because I complained very hard about money being funneled to the opposition to Shabab in that case back in the days but the fact of the matter is after Libya nobody stepped up to say you stop it we didn't have the power to do it it got out of our hands fairly quickly with the fights that were going on so that this is where we're talking we're not talking only about money and we're not talking only about saying nice words and nice speeches we're talking about somebody saying stop it or this is going to affect what you're doing in the world and your relationship with us so when I tell you that the US is important in this game I mean it and just one more comment on spoilers when the spoilers are sponsored by one of the permanent members of the security council that is actively sending them to multiple countries on the African continent and elsewhere it's all very well to tell them stop but they're not interested in what we have to say and obviously they would block or veto any sanctions or any pressure through the security council so spoiling is done in various ways it happens involving that same country on the European continent to the extent that the UN is not even able to engage so yes it's a very comprehensive issue with regard to the question from the professor from George Mason our office of peacekeeping operations is actually looking at a revolving speaker scheduled to bring people in and talk about that we're always open to ideas and perspectives and of course it's very easy to say but the fact that we do have these complicated relationships among major powers including the permanent members of the security council actually puts an added burden on all of us to say how can we address amongst ourselves the issues that are contributing to the very complex situations that we're trying to control on the ground is there some way of framing these issues in which we all come to some understanding that frankly in the long term these kinds of conflicts and instability don't serve any of our interests so it's a continuing challenge for UN diplomacy but I think it's also a continuing challenge for US diplomacy Tori do you want to add to that? much more sort of practical point certainly as pointed out when major powers are behind spoilers we know it but people assume the US knows everything I remember saying well there was a report to the council so you of course know this and the one area I'm really keenly aware of is when the sanctions experts panels come back my staff used to say I can't read 400 pages I go through all this and yet it is gold it is sometimes the opposite of peace building they are reporting on who is violating the arms embargo and running guns and flying without permission and they are targeted and so one thing I thought in my fantasy was the DPA had this vast resource where they could track every recommendation figure out who is doing what and say what the follow up was and then you suddenly discover no the human capital doesn't exist there and I could say in my old job I had amazing people who would tell me what was going on but it was like you know a handful so I do think not for the series maybe but to the point by Michael J.Jic if we are looking at spoilers wrong run even absorb the information we are getting and track on it better and just to kind of put a bow on it if we are looking at fragility conflict and violence and the World Bank and others and USIP has led on this want a more complex understanding of conflicts then we've got to figure out how to take what we know and integrate it back in our bilateral diplomacy and our economic partnerships etc so I don't have an answer for it but there is another aspect of the problem maybe more people to track the sanctions and integrate them back in both bilateral diplomatic efforts across all the governments on and off the security council that would help out DPPA let's take one more round of questions here before we wrap up, up in the back all the way up well we've got two, the woman in black hi oh that's loud hi my name is Rowan O'Day and I'm the executive director of an organization called New Story Leadership that brings leaders from Israel and Palestine to Washington DC every summer I myself am Palestinian American and yesterday we witnessed two political leaders create a plan and at the same time back home in the West Bank and in Gaza there was a complete shutdown by the Israeli military Israelis didn't feel safe basically I think it's going to destabilize the region and I've seen this time and time again with leadership on the top level creating plans and making decisions and not incorporating civil society because New Story Leadership is a part of that civil society and what I've seen specific to Israel and Palestine the peace building world the peace building field is looked at like the little kids table we look at you so we can feel good about Israelis and Palestinians working together but when it goes to decisions on how we move forward and how to create a feasible peace process we're left out so my question is what is the role in the UN in creating more intersectionality between civil society and political leaders and peace in certain countries like Israel and Palestine has now become a negative term and how can we how can we reverse that thank you very much for raising the question I would have been very disappointed if we hadn't gotten to this issue and of course in this conversation and I thank you for the way in which you framed the question in particular so let's take a couple more before we over here on the on my mind Hi, excuse me I'm Nellie Mecklenburg I work with the Institute for State Effectiveness and I'm a former student of under secretary general we've heard a great deal about coordination amongst actors and across organizations but I'm curious to hear a little more about the DPPA's role coordinating within the UN across agencies obviously the merging of these two functions is a huge step but fragmentation within organizations not only the UN is a big issue particularly on the ground and so I'm curious how this office is leveraging its sort of dual man or its multi-sectoral mandate thank you that's somebody who's very interested in UN institutions it's near and dear to my heart I have a question over here take two one up there go ahead please and then one down here thanks hi there my name is Teresa Welsh I'm a reporter with DevEx as Ra mentioned the Global Fragility Act which we saw passed last month I'm interested Ambassador Decarlo to learn a little bit more about how you see that intersecting with your approach at the UN particularly with the regional focus that you mentioned in your opening remarks and sort of how you see the prevention approach working with the new US strategy laid out in the GFA thanks thank you for that because I do think we'd like to hear what kinds of an opportunity this might create to build a larger constituency for the work that the UN is doing right down here in the front thank you hi my name is Augusta Nacho I work with Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors I'm from American University my name is Augusta Nacho I work with Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors my question is to Rose I am asking about the efforts of the UN to work about post-election issues knowing that sub-national entities entities after election contribute to some of this destabilization in some regions talking about West Africa and some countries I would think is very stable but I enjoy negative peace in Nigeria for instance talking about the judiciary that undermines the efforts of the UN during elections when the UN leaves then the judiciary starts obtaining things to follow up with post-election concerning the judiciary and other sub-national entities thank you thank you for that question I think that's going to more than the rest of our time would you like to start us off? I can start on civil society I think it's very clear civil society needs to be engaged it's not just women that need to be in peace processes civil society engaged and included we have tried on several occasions to do this not only in consulting with civil society before we go into a peace process but also having them at the table I mentioned the Syria constitutional committee which is unfortunately now stalled but one third of the delegates to that committee are from civil society which were selected by the UN to represent different aspects of civil society we had one third was opposition one third Syrian government another third civil society extremely important to include in Libya again not that we've gotten anything off the ground we've been trying the national dialogue that we tried to have before the violence really broke out and even in the plans that we have to try to bring things together there's going to be a predominant one third role for civil society I think it's important to have that included sorry no did you want to pick up on some of the we had a question about the internal working what is that change in your office signal for better integration change in my office just in the peace and security pillar obviously we're much better able to deal with regional strategies now that we're with the department of peace operations that is former peacekeeping department of former DPKO because if we're looking at DRC we've got to take into account the neighbors we are responsible for the neighbors DPO is responsible for DRC so we've got to work together just on that but broader and more important I think is the fact that Secretary General came to the UN he has been very clear that we've got to work interagency task force and fortunately or unfortunately DPPA co-chairs many of them often with UNDP because we have to marry up the development aspect of any kind of issue conflict potential conflict kind of links then to the last question which was about the follow-up so once we get to you've done the peacekeeping and we're have the election what's the continuum? just leading up to the election we've learned that it's not just about providing technical assistance biometric verification it's also about good offices so this is why we do have regional offices in Africa in particular working with various countries to look at some of the issues that could be triggers for instability some kind of conflict I don't mean violent conflict but disagreements coming up to elections and then follow through as well so the good offices plus the technical assistance that provided the good offices that are there to help resolve some of the problems but also build up some of the capacities in the ground let me turn to Uzra to talk a bit about the Pregility Act and the possibilities you see there and how it relates to this conversation absolutely I believe it is integral to the approach the UN is trying to carry forward and I would underscore the Global Pregility Act it's not a panacea it's a pilot so what it calls for is for the US administration to establish a strategy in the coming year that would identify a minimum of five pilot countries or regions a minimum of two would be prevention cases as part of the process towards making that decision and identifying countries it calls for an intensive consultation process that engages civil society as stakeholders but also quite obviously with international and multilateral partners as well it calls for greater coordination of efforts and opens, authorizes the creation of a multilateral fund which was part of the recommendations of the USIP high level task force on fragility and extremism I think on all of these lines of effort I mean so much of what Rosemary has described and I think the overlap between what USIP what the US government is already doing really calls for again this integrated on all fronts approach it's a start and I think the imperative is to really engage these conversations now as the executive branch is shaping its strategy over the next eight months and obviously the other important dimension of that it was a bilateral initiative a bipartisan initiative 46 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle in congress which suggests that there's both a recognition and awareness and appetite for these kinds of initiatives so with that Rosemary do you see possibilities what would you wish to do with this opening that's been created I think obviously the opportunities for coordination are there and necessary I would think and I'm really pleased to see that it's such an act that is bringing together the various resources that the US government and US society have for us this is absolutely key as I said we cannot do anything alone political work inevitably involves development work and also humanitarian work as well so very pleased to see and looking forward to hearing more about it and there is a very substantial funding commitment I should mention it authorizes 1.15 billion in funding over the next five years as the US develops a strategy so important piece of the puzzle any other comments from the panel before we give Rosemary an opportunity yes Tori please I'll just say I think much of this conversation is about the functions of the UN but I just want to recognize what everybody's commented on which is the world's really in a shifting place whether it's the displacement crisis the rise of authoritarianism attacks on rule of law and governance and the long-term crises which the undersecretary talked about in earlier speeches she's given about the endurance of some of these conflicts that are not just taking care of in a few years and so in a sense what we're talking about today is what are US interests and how does that intersect with the revitalized UN and I will say I've never seen the UN be able to sit still it's easy to criticize so let's have our imagination focus on what the future should look like and I think that's the question we're all grappling with to address the challenges you're saying but without US leadership that's really hard to do so I'm very pleased today that I think the administration is trying to do that and we can, that'll serve our interests and our values so just a short comment on the moment we're in Jonathan and I just want to say at the end in addition to being grateful for USIP's invitation it is a tremendous honor to serve in an interim capacity as the leader of a team of hundreds of distinguished American diplomats civil and foreign service and political appointees in six missions around the world as well as the Bureau of International Organization Affairs like Rosemary said a lot of the work goes on on song and behind closed doors I can assure you excellent work is being done by some very distinguished professionals and it's a tremendous honor to serve with them. Thank you very much. Then any last thoughts before you wrap up here? I'm sort of reminded and what Tori was saying here that in 2004 that's a long time ago that USIP was honored to be able to host a task force which produced a report which is entitled The United Nations in American Interest and I had the occasion to go back and relook at that document not long ago if anything the arguments in that document are even more true today than they were back in 2004 we desperately urgently need the capacities and the enhanced capacities of the UN to help us manage this burgeoning agenda of international tension and conflict I'm going to give you the final word under Secretary General. First of all thank you, thank you to USIP Stimson Center Alliance for Peacebuilding I'm really pleased to be here I don't get to Washington often so it's very nice to be here to speak with you and I'm really happy not only to be with former colleagues here on the panel but also to see so many of you in the audience I just want to say that look the UN is not perfect and we all know that but we've got our strengths and our strengths really are enhanced by your support I think that is really key and when I say support I'm not just talking about the US government I mean support of Americans extremely important we're looking at celebrating the 75th anniversary of the UN this fall at the General Assembly and the Secretary General said that he did not want to be just talking about all of our past glories he wants to look forward so there are consultations going on around the world to ask in particular young people what they think the UN needs to be in the future what do they want to see the UN do what are the needs that various segments of society feel it's necessary how should we be evolving and I think this is going to be fascinating when we finally see the products that come out of it some of it will be written some of it will be videos but I think we all need to think about that because as Tori said the world is changing and we have new challenges but we also have new opportunities and where are we going to put our efforts and what is the new consensus that the international community has on the way forward thank you thank you very much please join me in thanking Under Secretary General DeCarlo her visit was indeed timely and important and we hope that it will not be long before she returns we need to continue the conversation and please join me in thanking our panelists extraordinary talent and thank you all for coming