 I'm sure everyone's here to see the Jan Eglund video, right? I'm sure that's what brought everybody here. I laughed until I cried, but I'm Dan Rundy. I'm going to ask the panelists to take a seat. The conversation we're going to have today is on the study of the impact of donor counterterrorism measures on principled humanitarian action that's quite a mouthful. But I think if you're in this room, you know what the issue is. How do you balance the very legitimate issue of protecting ourselves from the bad guys, while also trying to answer the very principled and also equally important issue of doing good in the world in some really difficult and complicated places? And in a world of globalization, in a world of diasporas, in a world of money that crosses borders electronically, in the world of global civil society, this has gotten harder and harder. And so I know this is a particularly salient issue for the development community, for the humanitarian response community. I think the study that was done that you have a copy of, I think, is particularly interesting. Our friends at Interaction and our friends at the Norwegian Refugee Council helped make this event possible. And I think we've got a very interesting mix of speakers. So I'm going to ask the panelists to come up and have a seat. But before the panelists start, I'm going to ask my friend Sam Worthington, who's the head of Interaction, to say a few words. Sam, if you'd come up. As I said, the good news is we have a new building. The bad news is we're still working out. Some of the AV issues, we have handheld mics, so it's a little bit like karaoke night at CSIS. So Sam. So good morning. And thank you, Dan, and welcome to what should be an interesting and thoughtful dialogue. I'd like to start with just a simple observation. Ultimately, from a humanitarian perspective, this is about saving lives. It's about the ability to help people in the most vulnerable circumstances, but often environments that have incredible security challenges. And I think that the challenge here is how do we, in terms of the US government, advance our national security while not putting humanitarian programs at risk? And what is the tension between this advancing of our national security and humanitarian imperatives? But I think this framing of either or is not the best framing. It really is ultimately, can we have counter-terror policies which need to exist without the unintended consequences of the implementation or the design of those policies being such that they impact the lives of humanitarian workers or the programs that they're trying to deliver? I am humbled every day by the type of work that is done by the individuals on our panel, whether it's within the US government, the UN system, or humanitarian NGOs operating on the ground. As we know, humanitarian principles and the concepts that underlie them have been reaffirmed by the US government for decades. And this idea that we can provide assistance to individuals in the greatest need, no matter who they are, and this impartial preference to the individual who needs the help, not based on some political interest one way or the other. It is only because of this that we're able to operate in places like Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, and other places outside of the security wire because the security for the NGO community comes through the trust that has been established with local communities, the dialogue we have with all actors, and the reality that we could only implement programs if we have their trust. So I think it's finding a sense of, and this is the heart of it all, is are the unintended consequences of our national security approaches to counter-terror resulting in humanitarian actors being seen as an extension of US intelligence or US security apparatus. And if we are seen as an extension, whether intended or not, how do we operate in environments where the very lives of our staff are at stake and the essence of the programs you want to deliver is harmed? That tension between needing to make sure the resources don't go to the bad guy, needing to make sure that assets are controlled and at the same time providing enough space for humanitarian actors to operate as impartial actors, that is the tension that we're drawing here. We've been in a dialogue with the US government for many years now. I think in this ongoing dialogue, we've come to a pretty good understanding that there is a operational common ground here, but that this and how to implement it country by country and are there norms that we can apply and remembering where I started that ultimately this is about human lives, our ability to save lives, and our ability to ensure that we have a wallet interaction that has several hundred names on it, that that wall does not expand with more individuals killed doing their work going forward. So I look forward for a thoughtful and provocative dialogue by the panel, and thank you to CSIS for making this possible. Thanks very much, Sam. OK, panelists, please come on up. I think you all have or will have copies of their bios shortly. Valerie Amos is the Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and the Emergency Relief Coordinator at the United Nations. Ambassador Dan Freed is the Coordinator of Sanctions Policy at the US State Department. Jan Egglund, who needs no introduction, but is also the head of the Norwegian Refugees Council in his current life. And Ambassador Bill Garvelank, who is here at CSIS, who has an affiliation here, but is also the former head of OFDA at USAID and is also the former ambassador to the Congo, but also wears a hat now at the International Medical Corps as well. So without further ado, I'm going to ask Valerie Amos to kick it off and to share a little bit about the report as well as some additional comments from Jan Egglund. Then we'll hear from Ambassador Freed and then from Ambassador Garvelank. Ms. Amos, over to you. Thank you very much. And can I also, Dan, thank you and also Sam for bringing us all together this morning and also thank my fellow panelists. And I think that this conversation could not have come at a better time, really, because these are issues which are very, very current in a world where we are seeing the spread of terrorist activity and where there are concerns across government in practically every part of the world. But I really want to underline something that Sam said at the beginning in his introductory remarks, which is I don't think that any of us sees any inherent contradiction between countries that have very legitimate security concerns and the aims of counterterrorism measures and the aims of principled humanitarian action. What we are both seeking to do is to protect people from harm. States have a legitimate right and responsibility to protect their people from acts of terrorism. And for us on the humanitarian side, any attacks directed against civilians, including acts of terrorism, are a reprehensible violation of the most basic precepts of human rights and international law. We are also both concerned about preventing aid diversion. That is an important, I think, point of convergence between humanitarian organizations and also many countries. We on the humanitarian side do everything that we can to ensure that lifesaving assistance does not further the belligerent aims of any party to a conflict, whether or not they are designated as terrorists. And can I say to you that doing risk analysis, working on monitoring, all of this is very much part and parcel of the work that we do on a daily basis. And over many years of operating in conflict zones, we've developed robust and increasingly effective systems for managing risks. I'm not in any way saying that more cannot be done to better demonstrate the impact of the work that we have done and the work that we continue to deal with on managing those risks, and also that sometimes we don't need to strengthen that work. But I think that there is a lot that has been done that we don't talk about enough. So there is an extent to which there is a shared interest here. Diversion of assistance from its intended beneficiaries, not only the concern of counterterrorism actors. It's also the major concern of us doing humanitarian work. And it's also a contradiction to the basic aims and principles of humanitarian action. But there's a but, and of course, there has to be a but. And it's a pretty big one. Because where the tension comes is in relation to some other core principles that are absolutely fundamental and vital to our work. And every single day, those principles are coming under attack and are at risk. Because the world in which we are operating today is more complex. We are seeing less conflict between states and much of the body of law that has been developed has been to monitor what happens in conflicts between states. And we are seeing more and more conflict within states with non-state armed groups. And there are two absolutely crucial principles which are under threat for us in terms of some of these counterterrorism measures. One is our work to strive to help people wherever they are, whoever they support. It is without political bias. And that's very hard for us to argue, not just with governments in countries where in their terms they have armed groups and terrorists trying to overturn what they're trying to do, but also because you have countries which support others. The other is that assistance aimed at preserving life with dignity is provided on the basis of need alone. And I could not tell you how much we are under attack with respect to that principle. We have governments of countries in which we work, basically not wanting us to work in areas which are under the control of others. We have the groups in those areas not wanting us to give aid to groups of people that they see as being against their aims. Even now, right now in Syria, we have communities that are besieged in areas that are either under the control of government or under the control of the opposition. And we have not been allowed in for months to give life-saving aid. It is an absolute scandal. But these fundamental principles of humanity and impartiality, they're at the very heart of what we do as humanitarian workers. And if they are undermined, there is very little place for us to go. And I think it's important to remember that the United States and other member states of the United Nations have played an absolutely critical historical role in developing those principles, principles which are actually some of them older than the United Nations itself. So the test becomes, how do we continue to apply those principles in these extremely complex emergencies? The study, which was commissioned by my own organisation, Archer, and also with the Norwegian Refugee Council, found that in some cases counterterrorism measures have made our job much more difficult. Where designated groups are active, it's been more difficult to respond to people and meet their needs wherever they are. It's been more difficult to respond only according to need. While the impact of counterterrorism measures varies across different situations in different countries, the study outlines a number of them. Horts in funding, suspension of programs, delays in the delivery of assistance, restrictions on the provision of assistance to particular people or groups, and fear and self-censorship on the part of humanitarian actors themselves. And two very quick examples, and how am I doing on time? Okay, the first is the response to the 2011 famine in Somalia. While many UN agencies and NGOs were being expelled by Al-Shabaab, and that in itself told a story, because many of the communities in which those organizations were working wanted the organizations to stay because the trust had been established, they had seen the work that the organizations were doing and the positive impact that it had on their communities. So that was an extremely reprehensible act which had severe consequences for ordinary Somalis. Islamic NGOs reported difficulty receiving project funds due to counter-terrorism-related restrictions on financial transactions. The remittance system on which communities have relied so heavily, which Oxfam recently found to be comparable in scale to the US government's annual humanitarian and development assistance was also considerably affected. And in fact, we are still trying right now to keep the systems open in Somalia that will enable those remittances to flow in. The study also found that the significant decrease in funding available for major donors in the period following the designation of Al-Shabaab as a terrorist group was a constraint on early action in response to the crisis. Now I want to stress, because there was a huge fuss when this report came out about what happened in Somalia at the point of the famine. The study did not find that delay or suspension of donor funding was the primary cause of the famine in Somalia. It was not. But what the study did find was that difficulties in accessing funding due to counter-terrorism measures were one significant factor inhibiting the response. And of course, Al-Shabaab's own actions, expelling humanitarian organizations, also played its part. Many donors, including the United States, did change some policies and put in place certain exemptions for humanitarian assistance once the immense scale of the crisis was clear. This helped us to scale up our operations towards the end of 2011. But one clear lesson is that we must work together to ensure that the appropriate humanitarian exemptions are put in place at the earliest possible stage, that they are clearly understood and communicated and that they cover the broadest possible range of actors. It's all about trying to think about at the beginning what might be the unintended consequences of our actions. A second example involves the difficulties engaging with designated groups in the occupied Palestinian territories. In the Gaza Strip, the no or limited contact policies imposed by different donors with the de facto authorities seriously affects the quality of programs and the ability of organizations to respond according to needs. Programme design suffers from the lack of data and statistics that are only available from the authorities. Programs are also discontinued. For example, a distribution of food and non-food items to 2,000 families was not carried out because the donor did not authorize the implementing organization to share the list of beneficiaries with the authorities. It must be emphasized that contact with groups designated as terrorists does not confer them any type of recognition or legitimacy. What I say all the time to member states who come up with this concern is that we talk to anyone if it helps us to get to the people who need our help and support. So there are major domestic political considerations and we really have to bear this in mind, which are impacting our ability to do our work. And we're not naive about the political environment in which we work, but there's got to be a degree of trust here about the job that we have been mandated to do by the international community, trust that we can actually do our job in the terms in which we've been asked to do it. It's not an issue that's unique to the United States or indeed to American humanitarian actors. The study found a number of different countries with regulations and policies that limit engagement and negotiation with groups designated as terrorists or that prevented the provision of assistance to people associated with terrorism. Encouragingly, it also found a number of areas of good practice among donors, including here in the United States, that needs to be shared and replicated. Just one more thing before I finish because I saw you look at your watch. The policy dialogue that we are seeking to further here today can't be limited just to a US audience. I'm delighted that we're doing this today. I think it's very important that we have this conversation here in the United States, but it also has to take place between states in multilateral fora in the United Nations with our NGO partners and others. Issues that we might think through, that dialogue and discussion include a more coordinated approach to counter-terrorism clauses within funding agreements, exemptions for humanitarian action within sanctions regimes, measures to ensure that financial regulations do not necessarily impede the work of legitimate charities. But we as the humanitarian community have also got some lessons to learn because what is very clear from the example of both Somalia and the occupied Palestinian territory and the donor counter-terrorism legislation and restrictions in funding agreements have had what we call a chilling effect. Operational decisions are not necessarily made, strictly according to need, but to minimise organisations' exposure to criminal liability and reputational risk. The minute we start going down that road, we start splitting our community and pitting ourselves one against the other. The lack of clarity around the application of some counter-terrorism measures have contributed in some cases to an environment of fear and self-censorship as a response to counter-terrorism measures. We can't afford to operate like that. We must change this environment by continuing the open and honest dialogue that I hope we've initiated today and that will continue. I apologize for talking for slightly too long. No, this is very important. Thank you very much. Mr Egeland, I'm going to hand the mic over to you now. Thank you. Thanks, Dan. Thanks to CSIS and to Interaction for having us for this very important discussion. I'm delighted to be here with Valerie, Daniel, Bill, old friend from Mound Time in the U.N. I come to this from two angles. As many others come here. I was for seven years the Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway, and I saw very clearly that one of the whole purposes of government is to defend its citizens against threats, domestic, and international ones. And the creeping threat of terror is one that has really challenged modern government the most. My own country, Norway, which is one of the hardest hit countries of the Western Hemisphere the last 10 years from terror. Two years ago, more than 70 youth were massacred in one day by political extremists. My daughter was supposed to be at the island. I was supposed to speak at the island. The children of my friends, friends of my children, were murdered by the terrorist. And the whole lesson was the country was not prepared. The government had not really made what it should. And the whole policies are changed from A to Z. It's a little bit like 9-11 in the United States. Now, I also come to this from the other angle. I've been in humanitarian work for 35 years since I was a 19-year-old as a volunteer with the Catholic Organization, a guerrilla-controlled area of Colombia, Latin America. Today, I'm in charge of the Norwegian Refugee Council with 4,000 staff in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Colombia, Somalia, all of the bad places. The reason we get money from Washington to Oslo, from Stockholm to London and the EU, Australia, Canada, and so on is that we're very good at delivering services to the most needy in the crossfire where terror and bad militias are at their west. That's the vote of confidence of the donors over all of these years. So naturally, it makes us very nervous, as Valerie has said, and as we document in this common report that is before you, that many of the same donor friends, including you as, but not exclusively you as, it's the UK, it's Canada, Australia, Denmark, come with laws that has the unintended consequences that it is more difficult now to help precisely the same civilians, women and children and refugees in that crossfire. It cannot be the intention of the lawmakers and it has to be rectified because it's going to get worse. It's not going to get better, it's going to get worse. We're seeing this with the pilots that have been implemented. You know, it's going to be more and more difficult. Now, we live in these different places by our appearance as being there to help those in greatest needs and not being party to the political conflict. We do not represent any party to a conflict. The moment we're seen as being representative of this or that side or this or that political actor we're out of there basically because we're not, well, unarmed, we're vulnerable, we are easily taken. And let me give some example of what we're talking of. My organization had to turn back to very generously provided million dollars from here, this government, to Dadaab Camp, the greatest, largest, in many ways most miserable refugee camp on earth. It's for Somali refugees in Kenya. We asked for the money to build 2,250 latrines and to maintain another 1,100 latrines and to do youth education work for more than 100,000 youth. When we were asked to hand over the CVs of our staff and our partners, of course we had to say no. The moment it would be known that, you know, did you know that the NRC is handing over our CVs? Do you know who? And then next is of course, do you know that the NRC is now operating on behalf of you know who? We would be targets. My predecessor was attacked and nearly killed on her way to Dadaab in a convoy just a year or so ago. And colleagues were killed by Alshabab. What we do not need is measures that make it more difficult for us to work in Dadaab, where we provide hope for a lot of youth who have a lot of opportunities to go to extremism. We give them other hope. Please do not make it more difficult for us to work in Dadaab. In Afghanistan, colleagues, American, European, other colleagues are now among that hope for something good beyond the drawdown of military forces. Again, we live by our ability to maintain to maintain contacts with political and other actors that we share nothing other with than the hope that we can help the women and children out there in the field. To be tainted as being part of the political struggle is the short end to that lifeline for these people that we all want to help. In a place like Syria, Valerie mentioned, which is the generational challenge. We haven't had such a bad disaster since the 1990s. It's worse since the turn of the millennium. You cannot do anything inside Syria without negotiating with, having contact with very bad types. Some with links to the West, some with links to the Gulf, some with links to the regime, with links to Russians, what not. They're all bad. They're all bad. We have to deal with them. It cannot be... We need to be helped to survive. The Islamic organizations that we need to have as partners are even more vulnerable to all of this. The Islamic organizations, our partners, are paralyzed, we're paralyzed. Another example, I think, where the report is, is Palestinian areas. There is now a lot of self-censorship. Everybody's scared among NGOs, scared of money not being there anymore. We're dependent on donors that ask us to do things. One of my favorite examples from the report is these NGOs who said, oops, we have to stop feeding these toddlers in these kindergarten, because a headmaster may be affiliated to this organization that these donors do not like. When did toddlers become political entities? Toddlers are toddlers, and they need food if they are hungry. These are the consequences we read of in the report. Now, ending, ending. What do we ask for? Well, we ask for dialogue. And I think we'll have a meeting today with friends in the US government to discuss what we do, because we have a common goal here. We want to help these people. We want to be against terror and we want to be in favor of assistance to very vulnerable people. How can we work together to avoid the unintended consequences of all of this? We need to have exemptions for humanitarian work in this crossfire. Since 1860s when the International Red Cross was created, we have survived by being impartial, independent, and being the inter-arma caritas, as it says in Latin, between arms, compassion, between the two sides, compassion. This exemption has to be given so we can continue. And you have to have trust in our own due diligence measures. Maybe I'll just say that the list is long, but what do we do as the NRC and our US and other partners? We do systematic needs assessments before delivery. We monitor and have site visits all the time to see that it really goes to the beneficiaries. There is no aid diversion. We have internal financial controls and procurement procedures. We have extensive checks and balances. We have extensive use of external audits, internal audits, and evaluations. We have a staff code of conduct where we really follow, control, and vet our staff. We have anti-corruption policy and regulation. And we have internal screening and vetting, which is there including personal interviews and reference checks with everybody, especially in these areas. And we are internally also vetting everybody vis-a-vis the known lists of terrorists because we really don't want to apply anybody who has a shady side. So we do vet ourselves against the UN list and the member states list that are there before us. We also have internal vetting and implementation, implement the organization's supplies over $20,000 already. And we have inclusion of standard counterterrorism clause in contracts for all implementing partners. This is what we have done for so many years. I think this is what should be there, as with all of the other high-quality organizations, have the trust in us to continue our work as now. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Eglin. Thank you. My friend Ambassador Freed from the State Department, please. Great. Dan, thank you very much for organizing this. It's been useful in this discussion. Well, the attendance here suggests, demonstrates the importance of this issue and the intense interest and the importance of the issue, the intense interest and the difficulty of dealing with some of the problems that have been raised. And I appreciate what Sam Worthington said, plus Valerie Amos has remarked and Jan Eglin. So we're off to a good start. I want to start with two basic propositions which outline the U.S. government's approach to this. One, the United States supports UN, NGO and other international organization partners in their efforts to provide humanitarian assistance. And we do so mindful of the fact that where there are humanitarian needs, there is usually a lack of security. And there are various dangers on the ground. And that work is all the more noble for the circumstances under which it is carried out. There is an imperative, both a policy imperative, but dare I say a moral imperative, to facilitate as best we can humanitarian aid to needy populations in the real world. And in the real world, terrorist groups can be and are active on the ground. That's the real world. That's what we have to face. And that's the first proposition. The second proposition is that counterterrorism policy is a deep, serious concern which also has the standing of an imperative. Jan Eglin got everybody's attention talking about the real world consequences of terrorism in Norway. Okay, that's right. I was in the White House on 9-11, 2001. I spent the afternoon there in the situation room. And I won't forget that afternoon either. So both objectives, the counterterrorism objective and the humanitarian objective are legitimate. Our job is to bring those together and deal with the consequences when you do. There are unintended consequences. And one of the laws of policymaking is that it seems like a good idea when you write it down in a simple three-page decision document or an options memo, and then you deal with the consequences of what you didn't see. And I'm not a believer that human institutions are perfect. So we have to learn as we learn as we go. And we learn from things we could do better. We learn from our mistakes. We get smarter at things. So our job is to deal with the unintended consequences in the real world. Now, one of the unintended consequences of having humanitarian and counterterrorism policies is bureaucratic stovepiping. In our system, when the humanitarian providers and policy makers and the counterterrorism people exist in their own worlds, in their own frame of references, you get less than optimal results. We are addressing that. And in fact, we've done a lot to bring the groups together to address humanitarian consequences of counterterrorism decisions and to have the humanitarian people in the State Department in AID aware of the counterterrorism imperatives. Now, as an example, I'll cite two examples of how it can work. Democratic Republic of Congo, there was a great worry about M23 and a suspension of operations of humanitarian operations or on the other hand, a diversion of funds. We worked this through, we brought together humanitarian providers, policy makers, counterterrorism people and humanitarian operations were able to proceed unabated. In Mali, Ansar al-Din was, earlier this year, was a big problem for us. We dealt, we had learned lessons from the past, we dealt with humanitarian consequences and again, we were able to work things out. A debate at the level of high principles makes for fireworks and good seminars where people shouted each other. It doesn't necessarily make for good results. Solutions in the real world are apt to be individualized, tailored, fitted to the circumstances to solve real world problems on the ground. They will not be pure in terms of theory. They can't be when you have two very different and legitimate objectives to reconcile. Policymaking, if it's done right, is dealing, means dealing with the complicated, the imperfect, sometimes the inelegant and stuff that doesn't always make for perfect op-eds or Sunday morning talk show presentations, but works. The measure should be, does it work on the ground? Does it help get food to people who need it while withholding resources from terrorist groups who want it? There are all sorts of solutions and ways to approach problems. I don't know whether there are any of my colleagues from the Treasury Department today, but I'm going to give a shout out to OFAC, which, for example, issued recently general license E for Iran, which authorizes NGOs to transfer up to half a million dollars to support humanitarian projects in Iran. This was a general license. There are also specific arrangements that are worked out on the ground. The United States provides about five billion dollars annually for global humanitarian assistance. That's a lot of money. Even these days, when we're talking about budgetary cutbacks, that's a good chunk of change. That's good. I'm glad it's out there. We provide resources around the world. We're a large bilateral donor. I believe the world's largest by a lot. It means that with that amount of money comes a great responsibility to get things right. I liked the fact of the study. I liked even more the conclusions of the study that suggested that dialogue and working out problems on the level of practicality is the way to go. I think that's right. There are risks. Working out solutions to difficult problems will take time. As we get better at it and as we learn to work together, it should take less and less time. My own office in the State Department is responsible for sanctions policy worldwide and what my office's job is in theory is to bring a strategic look at sanctions policy and to bring in from outside of the sanctions world different concerns. I work with my Treasury colleagues who have already been doing this for some time. We want you, the NGOs and the UN organizations to reach out to us with specific problems. I'd rather my office hear about them earlier than later. We want to be able to work on solutions in a practical way. I welcome this panel. I welcome the discussion. I welcome the opportunity to make progress on some tough problems in a tough world out there. Thank you. Thanks, Ambassador Garvely. Thank you. I will make just a couple of short comments and offer a couple of suggestions. I hope I'm going to disagree just a little bit with my friend Dan on a few points. I'm coming at this from spending most of my career in USAID and in the disaster business. I've dealt with these sanctions and some of the other counter-terrorism measures for about the past 20 years when they first appeared some of the material provisions that came in 1994 and have expanded beyond that and then with OFAC it's been around since the 50s I think or if you look at some other legislation since the 40s. From my experience in the office of foreign disaster assistance, some difficulties. As Dan said, we're learning from experience and we learn as we go and that's the important part here and we're going to end up at the same place. But a couple of my concerns and I'll just mention two and one relate to sanctions and licenses and another couple of comments on the partner vetting system and then a couple of suggestions. You know, the sanctions are a difficult thing for most NGOs to deal with. As Dan mentioned, there's a general license and then there are specific licenses and those licenses are a little bit different from the material support clauses. So there's a fair amount of disagreement or misunderstandings about what these are and I think one thing that we can do collectively is have a much better understanding of just where we stand when those kind of licenses are being issued. I've heard myself when I was in the government and after you hear comments from the State Department and USAID that don't jive with what Treasury is telling you and that puts NGOs in a very difficult position in terms of the risks they're taking and the speed with which licenses are issued and I understand the care that has to be taken but that's kind of a slow process. You get a general license and then ask for specific ones and certainly in cases I've seen it takes months to get them. That's too slow for responding to humanitarian imperatives and needs in a tough situation. Valerie mentioned Somalia and of course this was a factor and among many other things that delayed the international response to Somalia and there are ways to deal with that but the result of the various licenses, the material support provisions of other laws and the way the licenses are issued results in a certain amount of confusion and uncertainty which leads to inaction and delayed response and there are ways I think that this can be speeded up but it is a fact of life or at least it has been from my experience. The other issue I just mentioned very briefly is the partner vetting system. This puts NGOs as both Valerie and Yanov said in an untenable position of having to do work on behalf of the United States government and that doesn't make any sense to me at least and in fact I guess one of the things that I've thought about for a long time is that we've got to synchronize our policies here. One of the pillars of U.S. foreign policy since I've been around is humanitarian assistance. We provided it in Armenia, we provided it in Iran with an earthquake we're doing it in Syria now and the vetting procedure undermines that. One of the other things that has been a policy certainly of USAID is USAID Forward to work with local organizations, to work with local governments Well, the vetting process makes that very hard to do to build confidence and trust in local organizations when you're responsible for vetting their background and environments like Somalia, that's a dangerous thing to do and I can see why organizations on both sides do not want to be a partner with that so we've got to synchronize our policies a little bit here and make sure we're in sync from Treasury to State to aid to the NSC and I think in theory we are in practice we are not. A couple of suggestions, when I worked in the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance when a U.S. Ambassador, I'm talking U.S. stuff here when a U.S. Ambassador declares a disaster the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance can begin to provide assistance it would make sense to me as if at that same time a fast-tracked vetting system was put in place for general and specific licenses not that you'd get the answer you want but you'd get a clear and precise answer within a discrete period of time as long as that disaster declaration is in force ambassadors don't declare disasters lightly and it's a serious thing to do and it has to be done in consultation with the government and it would seem to me that as AID's special provisions kick in for a disaster response it might be an appropriate time or mechanism to have that applied to sanctions and the licenses that come with them as well just something to think about and then the vetting system that's a very difficult process for an NGO to do so why not have something like direct vetting if you're going to deal with different organizations the NGO is not the one that does the vetting it either has to be done by the State Department or the Embassy or somebody else but get the NGO out of the mix here so that the NGOs can claim their independence and neutrality which goes by the board with the vetting system as it has been used since the early 2000s in the West Bank and Gaza as the pilot programs and changes have taken place since but I think there are better ways to do it and as everyone here said both the NGO community and the governments have the same objectives in mind they want to assist people but they don't want to give an open door to terrorists so I think we're all working on the same issue here and as the report recommends and everybody talked about I think if you get a group of state aid and treasury folks together with representatives of the NGO community you've got a lot of smart people here who have come together with some very reasonable solutions to deal with this process and so I'm very hopeful it will all work out now as Diane said we learn from experience and we've got a lot of experience now and unfortunately we're probably going to get a lot more so it's incumbent on us to put our heads together one more time and work through this thing and then we'll have a group of decisions that are acceptable to both sides and with that I'll quit Thanks Ambassador Garvelink I don't want to put Ambassador Frieda in the spots but I'm going to put Valerie and Yan on the spot and just respond specifically to what Ambassador Garvelink's suggestions were and I might also put Sam on the spot and just ask the three of you to respond quickly in just a minute or less to what you thought about Ambassador Garvelink's suggestions as a way forward and then I'm going to pose a question to you that's in a different direction but if you could each answer that Diane, don't give me a pass I'm watching out for my friend maybe I'll ask you to if you're open to responding to that I'd love to hear your take on that too then please but please Valerie if you'd go first it's going to be open mic night at CSIS is that better? I think the people who can most effectively respond to our NGO partners that this would apply to but I think it makes a lot of sense for us to explore any ideas or possibilities that would help us to negotiate this terrain Diane? Indeed, if I've understood it correctly in the US constitutional practice as in most European constitutional practices there is executive authority to grant exemptions to humanitarian actors and or in specific crisis in the face of acute humanitarian emergencies like Syria today and in Syria I would in a nanosecond declare that now for Syria we really need to get in to the civilians there and with all of the regulation with all of these donors we may be ending up with such a mess that we will, historians will really criticize us for not reaching the people in that and the greatest need Can I just say one other thing very quickly about sanctions regimes which is a bigger issue which is that and this is the whole sort of unintended consequences thing which is that even with humanitarian exemptions in sanctions regimes what you find is that particularly major corporations they sort of self-select out because they worry that they will somehow be punished despite the humanitarian exemption and not be allowed to practice in certain jurisdictions so in all kinds of places we're finding that people can't get health materials and facilities and all sorts of things not because they're not able to apply the humanitarian exemption but because they are fearful that through having a financial transaction with a particular country they're essentially going to be blackboard Sam I'm going to give you a chance to also chip on I think after five years of open frank and candid dialogue with AID, State Department and others I think there has been a greater space for common understanding of how to wrestle some of these challenges I think the State Department's move towards direct vetting AID's move towards direct vetting have reflected that I think the challenge is as we see currently in Afghanistan is actually a move away from direct vetting towards an approach of vetting that was sort of counter to what we've worked out over a five-year period so I think this local imperative to get it right we may find it getting it right in Washington but I think our challenge is how do we do this on the ground and just one last point the challenge of timeliness from a humanitarian perspective you're talking about needing to move very quickly and if you're finding your organization and legions of lawyers in your organization saying you could step forward because of this interpretation but you can't step forward because of that interpretation of U.S. policy you find organizations unable to move and that ultimately counts lies okay Dan I've got a couple of reactions one on timeliness that is critical we have gotten much better I think U.S. government has gotten much better I won't claim that we are perfect in that respect but there is no problem at all we are responsible with fast reactions I think we've done that we've proven we can do that but my practical suggestion is when a situation arises let's deal with that in the moment rather than have an abstract debate but I accept the principle of the timeliness responding to humanitarian disasters is important humanitarian exemptions again this is most effective a case-by-case basis with the understanding that it has to be timely that's our view you move fast, you move in a way that's appropriate to the situation I cited a couple of examples where we've done alright the issue of vetting there is a big whole history on this and there could be a subgroup easily devoted to it and the issues it raises I'm not sure that I accept the stronger characterizations that vetting undermines humanitarian programs that it is untenable for an NGO to participate in any kind of vetting I don't know that bold statements of principle are the best way to approach a process which should leave room for practical solutions now that said I realize that vetting can be difficult but I also realize that that some of the bad actors are going to look with suspicion on any NGO that receives money directly or indirectly from the United States so if an NGO is receiving money from the United States it already has an American connection in the eyes of someone inclined to look at the American connection as damning therefore we're dealing with the details so let's deal with that and try to resolve it as best we can the issue of legal uncertainty is one I'm familiar with in different contexts there I accept the need to work with either corporations or NGOs to give them as straight an answer as we can possibly give them John Englund made the point about trust trust has to work two ways also lawyers hate giving promises in advance but when I don't know the case I can't think of cases where the Department of Justice has actually gone after legitimate NGOs look at the track record we do exercise decent judgment on these matters the trust should... building trust doesn't happen by itself it happens through honest dialogue it means getting policy people together with lawyers in the room but getting the policy people together and more discussions just like this I want Bill, Valerie and Jan to respond to Dan but before you do I want each of you to put your hat back on having been in government you were in the UK government you were in the Norwegian government the US government and let's fast forward six months and there's an exemption in Syria and an NGO on the ground as part of its operations by mistake or by some other there's some sort of a boo boo that happens something bad happens some bad guy group gets money indirectly and you're called up before the House Appropriations Committee or you're called up in front of the equivalent committees in the UK or Norway what's your answer to somebody who may not be that exercised by the humanitarian set of issues but may be very exercised about counter-terrorism because it hits a lot, often times a lot closer to home and has a hard time understanding why hard working taxpayer dollars are going somehow are ending up in the hands of bad guys so I know you want to each respond why don't you each respond to Dan's comments first but then at the end of each of your comments and responding to Dan's statement I want you to then pivot just spend 30 seconds talking about what's your answer and if the answer is well there's a little bit of leakage and that's just the way the business works I'm not sure that's going to sell I'm not sure I can take that home to my parents at Thanksgiving which is next month and say well please keep supporting the 150 account but there's some boo boo's happen and we just got to live with it I don't think that's a sellable premise in this day and age so Bill why don't you respond first to Dan's comments and then pivot and answer my you're on the hill and you're being asked to testify and what's your answer I'll figure out how to pass the buck on Just a couple of comments and you know I've worked on this system these issues from both sides for a long time and I understand how difficult they are I would argue though that being a U.S. organization does in fact put you at risk a little bit but it's not the same as being intrusive into somebody else's business I think that's a little bit different maybe it goes a step or two too far so I guess I disagree with you a little bit on that when the other issue is you mentioned a couple of times we ought to deal with this on an ad hoc basis and each system is unique true enough but I think what would also be helpful is a process that people do not have right now to work through so you got to deal with each one separately of course but there has to be a process that people are comfortable with and know about and can engage in to get to that too so a little bit of both I like that and now this other question that's a tough one one reason is there are people who feel very strongly on both sides and no matter what you say you're not going to change people's mind and so that's sort of a given but if this sort of situation came up to me I would want to know first of all very clearly if this was a mistake and if it was a small amount of resources it should be taken with an understanding of how humanitarian assistance works everywhere I don't care where you're working in the perfect setting if you're delivering food you're going to lose a few bags here and there a small percentage of it and you're always going to have that happen and if it's a modest amount within what normally happens anywhere in the world I would argue that it's not a serious issue but the NGO is incumbent upon them as soon as they find out about it if it's more than just a passing thing like that they've got to investigate it and inform authorities and work very closely with authorities on this as well I wanted to take us back slightly because I think that the issues we're grappling with are both practical but they're also cultural and the reason I say that they are cultural is because we have to and it comes back to a point that I think you made then which is about stove piping so if you have a situation where as someone who is a trustee or on the board of an NGO you feel that you can become personally liable for the decisions that you are taking with respect to humanitarian response it puts a whole new dimension on the decisions that you are taking so the issues around accountability and everything else become about a culture in which you are just fearful that you are going to be fingered for the decisions that you take not necessarily by USAID but by another bit of the government administration hasn't had the conversation with those guys over there that have said actually we think that's okay but you don't actually know given and I come from a country where the judiciary says we are completely independent and you guys have you can't instruct us same here so culturally you can get all of the all the bits of the administration say the bits that sort of matter in terms of giving the money and so on and so forth but the other bit that may take you to court you don't have that reality of being told that it's okay so that is a huge issue if you are on the board of an NGO that's raising money and you're trying to do good and then you're basically your lawyers say because their job is to look after your back their job is to say to you actually we're not sure about this so this creates a huge tension and uncertainty so we can do all of this practical stuff in a way I mean I'm not making it sound as if we can do it tomorrow but we can do all of this work on a practical level trying to discover which bits we could work it doesn't fundamentally take away the fact that there's a piece of legislation against which you could be held accountable in a court of law and you actually don't know if you have anything to hold up and say this protects me on your second point I'm a politician that's always believed in you have got to talk the public through the complexity of political decision making I've never been one of those people that thinks you stand up there and you say it's all okay I know that there are people who come from that shade of politics I do not and it's not something that necessarily my colleagues would agree with either so in the UK context I've been a development minister I've made decisions that have been unpopular I've always gone out there made it absolutely clear why so I would be when I made the decision to give the money I would be saying remember guys this is a war zone it's really difficult I would try and think of a couple of UK specific examples that people might be able to relate to so when six months down the line I'm called in front of there's a presenter called Jeremy Paxman who basically just says why did you do that you say I made it in the full knowledge that this might happen there are people who are dying I know that the British people as I do care about them I do everything I can with our partners to protect British taxpayers' money I have to tell you I told you six months ago it doesn't mean it's going to save me I could be axed the next day by the Prime Minister but that is always the line that I think you have to take the public aren't stupid they know that operating in a war zone is complex they see it all the time good for you how I mean it this is right I have to tell you I did not get the sack as a politician but it's an everyday reality you could you can I could not agree more I could not agree more there is indeed a very big difference from taking US money which we proudly do and which we would like to see more of US is the biggest donor it's the most important donor it has been a standard set now for a generation of humanitarian relief but it's a very big difference from us to take money to Kenya operations and to ask up people in the front lines in Dadaab camp to say go and find out the name of the father of each of the latrine diggers you know their number they come from where they live etc and handed over to this superpower so that they can give it to the intelligence system it's crossing the rubric on and I think what we say in this report is that there are some donors who are really concerned with terror creeping up in all of these places and say listen organization we got to sit down and you need to explain to us your quality control your monitoring, your evaluation, your vetting your on-site hands-on programs and then we say it seems that you Mr. Olson and Mr. Peterson have to go back home and say you need to do your homework but these three organizations are actually so fine that we trust you with our tax-paying money kind of a dialogue you need to go into and discontinue both the vetting system I think the material support clause is also very dangerous and just give one example if now a doctor in, as I've understood this now the material support provisions say that you can hand you can't give medicine to anybody now that it's exempted but if you would treat, if a doctor would treat a person that actually was a wounded al-Nusra soldier it turned out he or she could be punished it's in the law which is incredible but I thought so too, I reacted like you it is there already as potential material support is an issue in Syria if you can alleviate a fear it will be good I'm glad to have you and discuss it don't let your lawyers worst scenarios like I've learned and that's what I hope and you are alleviating some of my fears finally the message to the message to Congress and to the people who are watching at dance you know you're all invited I know I think we also have to say we are doing emergency humanitarian relief here we're digging latrines we're not assembling stinger missiles we're digging latrines it's a very apolitical thing I would say try to go to the toilet here it's not the political statement no it's not so I think it's also a kind of a thing to say these are blankets these are baby food this is a catch up classes for refugee children and so on and we monitor it I think there is something there is this unintended thing that you think it transfers to shady groups it's doing life saving emergency relief and also a message to the table do you want to have more bureaucracy for these humanitarian works in the field or do you want them to really concentrate on doing life saving work what we're ending up is doing a lot of reporting vetting to report on all of these procedures in addition to the actual quality control of seeing that the emergency relief gets to the beneficiaries okay we're going to take two or three questions we're going to get rewarded for their brevity and trying to frame it in the form of a question I'm going to ask people to identify themselves speak briefly and we can get two or three thoughtful questions so that the panel can respond I know there's a lot of people who have opinions and want to share but let's self manage and go for brevity okay so let's see some hands okay I'm glad the admonishment worked okay so this woman back here this woman here and this gentleman here okay these three so this woman here the woman had a hand back here this woman here and this gentleman here okay Lauren Plock-Lanchard with the congressional research service for you on best practices in Somalia Al-Shabaab was taxing food aid coming into its areas what have been sort of the best practices learned from that effort how do you deal with taxation of food aid some organizations in order to continue operating found sort of a work around but it still really ultimately ended up with somebody collecting taxation from a trucker with food in it at a checkpoint or with sort of a layer of removal but how do you deal with that okay I'll get this person and you're going to get that gentleman back there please Melanie Nezer with HIAS and I just want to say this actually links into what I wanted my comment was actually Mr. Eglin is exactly right the bars to admission the terrorism bars actually do include providing medical support or any kind of medical assistance that's been in the law for ten years and it's actually barred refugees from admission for ten years until a year ago were we able to get an exemption and I just want to say the other angle of this is that this does have an impact on refugee resettlement around the world so all the humanitarian assistance that you're afraid of providing also applies to refugees who seek admission to the United States and then has an impact on that as a protection mechanism in other countries so I just want to say as you go through thinking about an exemption process talk to those of us who have been working on this for ten years with refugees because we have dealt with DHS and state and DOJ and may be able to actually coordinate with you a little bit on this. Okay. Thanks for the panel. My name is Blake Selzer and I'm with CARE so we do humanitarian work and have dealt with this issue but I had a quick question for Ambassador Ford and anyone else on the panel mentioning the legitimate issue of stove piping and the bureaucracies that are involved. Do you see the process has it improved significantly since 2011 in Somalia famine and do you think that the process currently is there enough of a formal structure, tax force, etc. Finally I agree your point on establishing trust and when we were trying to get into southern Somalia and we had many meetings with OFEC and others I'm a policymaker so I said hey they told me that they've never prosecuted an NGO so don't worry about it but our attorneys that didn't quite cut it with them so okay so why don't we just go across the panel and respond to any or all and I suspect we'll cover those three. Bill why don't we start with you actually? Well I don't have a whole lot to say on both issues so I'll pass. Okay. Dan? With respect to stove piping the general answer is yeah we've gotten it better but I want to be modest about that we'll know how much better we've gotten it when we're trying to work the next emergency issue that's coming along fast and then we'll see so it's a fair question. We are much better than we were five, six, seven years ago there's no question there's been a change of culture which started around then with respect to look legal risk you need input from your lawyers and then you're going to make a decision there's just I'm struck by the irony of organizations including the US government that accept risk do our best to mitigate it but we accept risk out in the world and in Washington there's nothing more frightening that a lawyer furrowing his or her brow but it's important to demystify these issues and to be able to have honest conversations so you know what the environment is my advice is to you and others is don't ask for something no lawyer can ever give ask for a reasonable history, ask to understand where people were coming from and then make a judgment and that will require a habit of dialogue and honesty look a real world example in Burma now we are in the happy position of moving slowly, carefully, methodically away from sanctions and we are reaching out and developing the trust that is needed among all the players to make this work so it can be done, it just takes a lot of effort on the ground thank you, thank you for the refugee we will follow up on that on this point about best practices and about the problem became that as organizations we all said we are not going to pay the tax but then what then essentially happened was that they were shaking down the drivers to pay the tax so we then discovered that the sort of members of the local communities who were doing the distribution on the ground or who were driving the vehicles were being shaken down for tax so then organizations say we cannot we can't continue to do this because this is putting our local people at risk so then the local communities that the relationship had been established with turned on Al-Shabaab in those communities so that's the lesson it goes right back to the point I think we've all been making which is you need to be working with the communities you need to establish the trust because then those communities become part of your advocacy and they're the ones and I'm not saying it can work every time and it can work in every single community but that is the core of what this report is saying and of course particularly if you work for the United Nations as I do the UN organizations are at particular risk because the UN plays so many different roles in a country I'm all very conscious of that but not putting our NGO colleagues who are our main partner organizations on the ground at risk is a key element of what we have to work for and I think you know all of the examples show very clearly that the establishment of that trust is critical and I'm sure that Jan will say a bit more about that Jan no exactly what Valerie says I think frankly Sumalia is a case where everybody did bad over 20 years it was bad assistance it was bad donor practices it was bad security policies it was bad UN US all of these you know some this you know some that it didn't really work and we ended up yes with the system that was not good and with aid diversion among other things and and we need to learn from that and that's precisely kind of a dialogue quality control of course there are also dilemmas in this what are you then willing to say okay these women and children will die because some of the food will ultimately be eaten by some of these militia soldiers you know we will probably as maybe this is a very Norwegian thing we will probably say yeah maybe we'll be a little pragmatic here and because we really don't want these these people die but more than anything we want to come around it and perhaps work with humanitarian diplomacy with the elders and others and say can you please undermine those militia people who undermine your whole community and that will be humanitarian diplomacy where we speak to everybody because when the worst places on on earth okay folks we're coming to the end I'm going to ask each of the panelists they want to have a 30 second closing thought I'll give each 30 seconds to give a closing thought about this discussion we'll start with you Bill well just one comment that we really as not part of this study we haven't really talked about but I think we ought to also remember that these counterterrorism measures also affect remittances and certainly in the case of Somalia a billion three a year which is far much more than the international community provides an assistance and if that stops which it seems to be doing that raises the urgency of providing more humanitarian assistance and makes the situation worse so just an observation that part of the equation also is a remittance issue that affects all of our work in the humanitarian area Dan I'm going to give you the last last word I'm going to have Valerie and Yango and then I'll have you speak last Valerie it's going to become more not less complicated as crises become more complex and intertwined so this is a conversation that where we're going to be finding solutions in particular places but where the policy challenges I think will become greater which is why starting the dialogue now is so crucial Dan I will end on the optimistic note that we do now have dialogue established many places Washington DC we had events in London, in Rome in many of the other places with the donors with the NGOs, with the UN and OSHA and NRC are proud to have initiated much of this and since we have the same goals which is to fight terror and help people in a principle impartial humanitarian manner according to each old humanitarian principles I think we will dig ourselves out of this hole which we have now temporarily ended up in in some of these places where we see that we have currently big problems okay Dan, the last word I'm heartened by the level of the discussion today and the fact that everybody recognizes that we have got to go through the process of balancing different objectives in a real world situation to do it seriously to do it fast this has been an excellent discussion it should be the foundation for further dialogue but also a basis for solving problems in ways that help us achieve our shared objectives on the ground thank you to the panelists