 Take your seats. We will resume. Yes, we will resume. Thank you. Thank you very much. So it's now my great honor to introduce the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, actually the acting administrator. So Bonnie Glick is here, and I was telling Administrator Glick that USAID has already been introduced many times this morning. So the crowd is warmed up, Administrator, so this is good. And we've heard the great work that USAID has done in Da Nang and is about to do in Benoit, so this is a great opportunity for us to have the acting administrator here to speak to us next. So Administrator Bonnie Glick. Good morning, everyone, and thank you so much, Ambassador Taylor, for that great introduction. Thank you all very much for having me here today. Thank you too to the United States Institute of Peace and Nancy Lindborg for hosting this important event. The ability to bring together this exceptional group of participants is a testament to your convening influence here in Washington and the value we all see in events like this one today where we can share experiences and learn from each other. Thank you too to Vice Minister Wenji Vinh and to Senator Lehi for your engagement on this important bilateral relationship. Finally, thanks to the great team from USAID that focuses on hard issues and on advancing our engagement with Vietnam. We're here today celebrating the strong relationship between the United States and Vietnam due largely to two tracks of engagement that have transpired concurrently. As the United States sought the return of our MIAs, the Vietnamese sought help with their war wounded, and that is where USAID's humanitarian work played a major role. At USAID, our job is to walk alongside our partner countries and join with them on their journeys to self-reliance, to work toward the day when foreign assistance is no longer necessary. I'm so proud of the work that USAID has accomplished with our Vietnamese partners over the past 30 years or so, which has contributed significantly to Vietnam's strong position today. Our predecessor agencies first came to Vietnam in the early 1950s, and we returned as the United States Agency for International Development in 1989 to engage in humanitarian actions that would lay the foundation for our current partnership and closer cooperation. In 1988, President Reagan commissioned a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Vessey, to develop a roadmap to normalization of relations between the United States and Vietnam. Over the course of the next two years, there were five missions that were made to Hanoi, after which General Vessey's team identified the highest priority of each government and submitted a series of recommendations to the president. The U.S. priority was a full accounting of POWs and MIAs, and a process including on-the-ground searches began in 1991, which led to the uncovering of the remains of about 900 American military personnel over the next two decades. In conjunction with those efforts and thanks to historic legislation spearheaded by Senator Lehi, in 1991, USAID also began a program designed to address the priorities of the government of Vietnam. The first was the needs of Vietnam's war wounded, primarily the estimated 250,000 amputees who had minimal, if any, access to appropriate prosthetic and rehabilitation services. In those early years, USAID's assistance supported the local production and fitting of prosthetic limbs and wheelchairs. The program was designed in cooperation with the Vietnamese government and drew on the services and experiences of American NGOs to develop local Vietnamese government and non-governmental capacities. USAID provided high quality prosthetic and rehabilitation training for local staff, the procurement of materials and equipment, and construction of facilities. Consistent with good development policy and practice, USAID also asked the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics to provide oversight for technical assistance work that was supported under the Lehi War Victims Fund. After the program began, a dictum was added to the USAID supported program guidance, which was nothing about us without us. So we also added a comprehensive program element to build in inclusive social infrastructure in Vietnam, developed along the lines of our own Americans with Disabilities Act to guide all governmental policies and budgets. A lot of barriers had to be broken. A lot of history set aside in the interest of moving forward. But ultimately, USAID's attention to these strategic issues allowed us to develop the necessary trust and confidence of our Vietnamese counterparts for the program to grow and mature. These humanitarian contributions to the Vietnamese people in parallel with Vietnam's help in recovering our MIAs demonstrates how such a mutually beneficial approach has contributed to a sustainable and effective bilateral relationship that lasts to this day. USAID continues to support Vietnamese partners in serving the disabled, like the Disability Research and Development Center, the Action to the Community Development Center, and Viet Health. I'm enormously proud of USAID's contribution to this entire historic process of healing and reconciliation. Since the official normalization of relations of the US-Vietnam relationship in 1995, USAID's programming has grown steadily, while Vietnam has made an extraordinary leap in the span of not much more than a generation from a poor country to a rapidly growing economy. Today we partner with the Vietnamese government and other local organizations in dozens of ways to promote growth, trade, and private industry while raising standards of living. We're fostering investments in the energy sector, including renewable energy. We've helped with legal case reviews to combat wildlife trafficking, worked to modernize labor unions, and launched a micro-credit project for small, women-led businesses in the Mekong Delta. Vietnam is one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, and conserving its natural resource base is vital to the country's long-term growth and sustainability. So we're partnering with provincial governments and communities to reduce deforestation and restore degraded landscapes in places like Kuan Nam and Tua Tien Hue provinces. We're also working together to build world-class institutions of higher education. Just this past September, Fulbright University Vietnam, with support from USAID, welcomed its first undergraduate class. Other collaborations with engineering, technical, and medical colleges support Vietnam's efforts to develop a 21st century higher education system and produce graduates with skills that employers need to compete in an increasingly global marketplace. The world is eager to do business with Vietnam, so USAID has also helped with its government's rewrite of more than 180 commercial laws and regulations to improve the business, climate, and business competitiveness. Laying the groundwork for these efforts 15 years ago, USAID programming helped support the government of Vietnam in implementing a bilateral trade agreement, which in turn added the reforms required for accession to the World Trade Organization in 2007. That was a major turning point in Vietnam's economic growth as it has been for so many other countries. And of course, there's our partnership to clean up another legacy of the war. In 2012, USAID and Vietnamese partners like Veena Yuesen, Songsa Central, Li Lamma EMC, and BKECC, along with US contractors such as CDM, embarked together on the monumental task of cleaning up soil and sediment at Danang Airport, which was contaminated by Agent Orange. This required processing enough dirt to fill 56 Olympic-sized swimming pools, and by processing, I mean they had to cook most of it in batches above 600 degrees in a two-story oven the size of a football field. That was a technology that was proprietary to a Massachusetts-based small business called TerraTherm. Just getting the oven that hot took several months, and some of the batches had to be heated for as long as two weeks to break down the dioxin. But with skill and determination, I am proud to say this historic remediation was completed last November. Today, Danang is a cleaner and safer city, and the airport sits on nearly 75 acres of cleaned land. I'm even prouder to announce that we have officially launched the design phase of the cleanup of Bien Hoa, the largest remaining dioxin hotspot in the country. This month, USAID selected Trigon Associates, a woman-owned small business based in New Orleans, Louisiana, to provide the master plan for the project, along with engineering design and construction management services throughout the cleanup. We expect shovels in the ground later this year during the dry season. This is a big portfolio, but USAID is only one component of the efforts by the United States to support a strong, prosperous and independent Vietnam, one that contributes to international security and respects human rights and the rule of law. We're a part of the U.S. government's Indo-Pacific strategy, which envisions an entire region that is free, open, secure, and prosperous, and the U.S.-Vietnam Development Partnership is absolutely central to that goal. Our bilateral relationship is one of the strongest bulwarks for peace and security in the area, and our partnerships and the friendships we have made along the way are among USAID's greatest success stories. We're continuing to work together to promote inclusive growth and to further open Vietnam to global trade on a level playing field, including with American businesses. Legal reform, increased transparency, streamlined customs, all of these efforts will help to integrate small and medium-sized Vietnamese companies into the global value chain, increasing their economic self-reliance. In all of this work, USAID is committed as a development agency not only to partner with Vietnam today, but also to ensure that the Vietnamese people have the tools necessary to address ongoing and future challenges in a sustainable way. Our contributions over the past 30 years have been instrumental in building the strong relationship that we enjoy today and laying the foundation for even closer partnership, moving forward in broader regional issues like trade and security. We're proud to be part of Vietnam's development journey and look forward to a bright future ahead. Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today. This progress that we have made is truly a cause for celebration, and I'm honored to be part of it. Thank you. So the next panel, we can please begin moving up to the, there we are, that's all I needed was an invitation, and that's what we have. So the next panel, moderated by Dr. Charles Bailey, who is coming right up as we speak, will focus on the healing from the destruction of war. And Dr. Bailey will introduce his panel members, please. Thank you very much, Bill, and good morning, everyone. I'm moderating panel two, which looks at the physical destruction of war, specifically from unexploded ordinances or UXO and Agent Orange. We have a panel of people with deep experience in this area, and I will introduce them, and they will come in and join me here. Jerry Gilbert. Jerry is at the State Department, where he is Chief of Programs in the Bureau of Weapons Abatement and Weapons Removal and Abatement. Tao Griffiths. Tao is Senior Policy Advisor at the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and for many years she headed Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation programs in Vietnam, delivering services to UXO and Agent Orange victims. Colonel Thanh Thanh Khong. Colonel Thong. Colonel Thong. Colonel Khong is in the Ministry of Defense in Hanoi, where he directs Committee 701, an inner ministerial group that is headed by the Prime Minister and is charged with leading Vietnam's response to war legacies. Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Reng. General Reng retired after many years of military service and is now the President of the Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange, commonly known as Vava. And Chris Abrams from USAID Hanoi. Chris directs the Office of Environment and Social Development in USAID Hanoi, where he oversees USAID's projects in dioxin remediation at Bien Hoa and health and disability assistance to the severely disabled in the provinces that were most heavily sprayed during the war. I'll say a few words to sort of set the scene, and then we will turn to each of our panelists. I'm asking them to speak in the order in which they were introduced and to begin with telling us a few words more about their backgrounds and how they came to be experts in this field. But just to remind, we're talking about two war legacies that continue to be challenges in Vietnam, unexploded ordnance and Agent Orange. During the war, U.S. aircraft dropped explosive munitions over Vietnam and about 10% of them failed to detonate. They lie just below the surface, awaiting contact, even today. The area of contamination with UXO is about 18% of the land area. This is concentrated in the province of Quang Chi. Since 1996, the U.S. has supported and has worked with Vietnam in UXO clearance in Quang Chi. The UXO casual rate used to be 70 to 80 people per year. Last year, it was zero. So I'm going to say that again. For the first time since the end of the war, there were no deaths from UXO in Quang Chi province in 2018. This is a remarkable milestone. And during the war, U.S. aircraft sprayed Agent Orange over selected strategic areas to defoliate forests and destroy crops. They eventually covered about 15% of the land area of then South Vietnam. It was contaminated with dioxin, a highly toxic poison, which is odorless and colorless and can only be detected through modern, sophisticated laboratory tests. Unlike UXO, questions about what exactly had become of the dioxin that came to Vietnam in Agent Orange and what were its impacts on people were subjects of deep disagreement between the U.S. and Vietnam for a very long time. In two breakthroughs occurred during the 2000s. The first was the realization that the dioxin was actually concentrated at three former American bases where the spraypains had been based. And these were the areas that were deeply contaminated and deserved first attention. These are Phukot, Denang, and Bien Hoa, and we'll hear more about them in a moment. This dioxin hypothesis helped clear away the fog of war which had lingered over this subject for many years where there were fears that large areas of the country were contaminated with dioxin. But no, we understand it to be a point source problem at these three locations. There's a similar clarification of understanding. Not so long ago, everyone with a disability in Vietnam might feel that they were a victim of Agent Orange and this also made the problem very difficult to tackle. But we have found that in fact those people with very severe disabilities of upper and lower body physical impairment and mental incapacity and developmental delay are the people that we really should be talking about and we now know more about who they are and where they are. And so in 2007, 32 years after the end of the war, and thanks to Senator Patrick Leahy, the U.S. and Vietnam began to address these war legacies and since 2007, through the USAID programs have benefited, have touched the lives of some tens of thousands of disabled Vietnamese. And in 2007 as we've just, 2017 as we've just heard, the two governments completed the task of remediation at the Da Nang airport. American veterans and their families have also been affected and in fact both Vietnam and the U.S. follow very similar lists of diagnostic criteria for identifying those who've been affected. I'm pleased to see Bobby Muller here. Bobby has worked tirelessly since he came home from the war for the benefit of American veterans and Mills Griffiths also and Fred Downs whom we heard from earlier. We want to thank you for all you did for so many people. I think in 2015, 528,000 American veterans were receiving benefits from the Veterans Administration. Thank you. Our panelists are going to have stories about themselves and in a moment I'm just going to tell you a little bit more about myself. In 1997, I got a phone call from Susan Beresford, the president of the Ford Foundation and she said, Charles, we'd like you to go to Vietnam and had our program in Hanoi. And I said, after gulping, sure. And I said, what do you have in mind, Susan? She said, well, you go there you'll figure it out. This is actually a very nice mandate. And I said, well, how much, what's my budget? And she said, well, $10 million a year. And so that's when I arrived in Hanoi to begin a program in sort of, if you will, in normal mode, funding higher education, economic development, health and cultural programs. But a short time there after I was on a trip to the central Highlands into Docklot Province and I was shown a valley that had been devastated by Agent Orange. And this became an itch that I had to scratch. And it became a program of Ford Foundation grantmaking that went on for 11 years. And I moved from being a grantmaker to more an advocate for the possibilities and the opportunity of bringing our two countries together to put this terrible war and this awful legacy behind us the sooner the better. How are we going to do that? First, eliminating the future threat of unexploded ordinance and dioxin by clearing up the former and cleaning up the latter. Second, caring for those who have already been afflicted. Our panelists will address both of these needs. So I'd like to begin with Jerry. If you could just tell us how you came to this work and then I'd like to know more about what you found works. Obviously, we have a wonderful success in Guangqi. How did that happen? Good to go. Okay. Thanks very much for that. Real briefly about myself, I joined the State Department about 16 years ago in that time I've had the opportunity to work on a lot of different foreign assistance programs and other things that the State Department does. But when I had the chance to join the Office of Weapons Removal and Debatement in 2012, I really jumped at the opportunity because it's extremely rewarding to know that you're making a difference in so many lives and you're helping some of the people around the world who need that assistance the most. Being able to say to other people who ask what you do for a living that you save lives, that's a pretty remarkable thing and something that I hope I'll be able to continue saying that I do for years to come. In terms of what we found has worked in terms of clearing UXO in Vietnam and what's made the program effective and efficient, I want to hit on a couple of points. First off, it's about a great and true partnership that we have with the government of Vietnam. A lot of times we say, oh, we provide foreign assistance to a country, but we're not necessarily assisting that country. We're really doing whatever it is for them. In Vietnam, that's not the case. In Vietnam, we have a national government that is committed at its highest levels to clearing UXO. And that commitment goes all the way down to the very working level and the provincial governments. It's a true commitment. It's a true partnership, which Vietnam shows through the substantial national resources that it devotes on its own to clearing UXO. Vietnam by far is responsible for the majority of UXO clearance operations that take place in the country on a year-to-year basis, mainly through their Ministry of National Defense and their national operators such as BOMISIN. When it comes to partner governments with whom we work, and we're active in about 60 countries around the world today, Vietnam is definitely right at the top of that list when it comes to governments that are as committed to devoting their own resources to the effort. And when you have a government that's that committed, it makes it easy for your assistance to be effective because you really are assisting them with something that they're already doing on their own. I think the second thing that really has made for a strong and effective program in Vietnam is the open-minded approach that we've seen from a lot of our government partners there, especially the provincial government in Quang Tri. Quang Tri provincial government has never been afraid to try new technologies or look at new ways of doing things and experiment with new methodologies because in Vietnam they want the same thing that we want, and that's to stretch our assistance dollars as far as possible to clear as much UXO as we can with the money that we have while we have it. So in places like Quang Tri, it's led to some new and innovative approaches to clearing UXO. One of the things that's really been a tremendous success story for Vietnam with implications for how we clear UXO around the world is the development of what we call the cluster munitions remnant survey methodology. And cluster munitions remnant survey methodology is all about focusing on the kind of UXO that causes the most casualties and it's the most dangerous and unstable. Those are cluster munitions, cluster sub munitions that failed to detonate as intended. We found that they by far were causing the greatest number of casualties due to UXO incidents. And if you could find cluster sub munitions that are unexploded, you're also likely to find a lot of other types of UXO unexploded artillery shells, unexploded mortar shells and that sort of thing in the immediate vicinity. So by focusing on cluster munitions and doing that in a systematic way, we're able to deal with UXO in a way that's manageable and through strong partnerships with the national government and the Vietnam National Mine Action Center and it's through the commitment of the Quang Tri government that we're able to say that we think we are on track to making Quang Tri, which was the most heavily contaminated with UXO, free from the impact of UXO by 2025, the end of 2025. It's a big goal to say that we're striving for, but it is something that is definitely achievable with the resources that we have today. We really want to point to Quang Tri and making it, you know, this success story that it's become as a model for how you effectively run UXO program, not just in Vietnam but around the world. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Tao Griffiths. Tao? I was born after the war ended, the Vietnam War. And I was born and raised on the border town on the northernmost part of Vietnam, China. And my first introduction to war legacy issues, stories about accidents in my own community on the border where cattle stepped on landmines and cattle died and people died. And that's how I got to know about war legacy. And President Clinton came to Vietnam in 2000. During that time, I grew up in my hometown in Hazang and I hear his speech where he pledged that the United States of America would help Vietnam to address the consequences of war and particularly the issue of UXO on a national level. And with that came with an advertisement or newspaper. I applied for it. I got the job with Vietnam Veterans America Foundation, with Bobby Mueller. And I ended up working there for 16 years without knowing it. And when I started 18 years ago, I didn't know much about the vast consequence of the American War in Vietnam, as we call it. And through the work that I learned about, I wish I would have one particular story that is very vivid in my own memory. And that happened in the New Year holiday in central part of Vietnam. And that was in the first week of 2014. So it's a few years ago. And there was an explosion right in Dong Nai, which is near the Bien Hoa airbase where you heard about. And one person lost their life and it's Ming and he's 17 years old and he was tending cows on the field. A few days later, there was an explosion in another province in the coastal city of Vietnam called Binh Toa. And it took the lives of two young men. Both of them were born after the war, same age with me. I didn't know them, but the story was very familiar. And then of that same day, later in the afternoon, there was another explosion in Quang Binh province, which is in the northern part of the DMZ. And the boy was digging earthworms so that he could go fishing. His name was Dun and he's only 13 years old and he was quickly taken to the hospital in Hue for surgery. So within a few days, during the New Year holiday in Vietnam, four Vietnamese people came into contact with explosive ornaments left from the war more than 40 years ago. Three of them died. One was severely injured. I thought it was a lot. But I'm glad to hear now that in Quang Chi, you have a model that has zero impact that we could work toward 2025. There can be no more impact in Quang Chi. And let's hope that we could replicate that model to other provinces in Vietnam. And the impact to be like so is not only in Quang Chi or only in central Vietnam. It is also in southern part of the country and also in my hometown on the border with China. But I want to also share another story. And that is about many of you might remember stories on the front page during the visit of the USS Carson, where after docking, soon after that the crew members and sailors came to visit a center of children with disabilities and children could be affected by Agent Orange. And those images, those broadcast all over Vietnam and also in the US, it was very moving. And I had the opportunity to work in that center for many years, work with them. And it is a local chapter of VAVA, Vietnam Association of Victims of Agent Orange. And over many years of going there, I came to meet with a little boy called Huy. He came from a poor family living in close proximity to the Da Nang Airport, which was still contaminated by dioxin up until two years ago, or one year ago, two years ago, 2017. The boy had many deformities. I came to know him and he got to come to the center every day, have a special education, learn to sing, to dance, much a lot. He's very happy for him that center is a place of joy. I really hope that model of excellence could be replicated throughout the country and with the support of USAID. The boy kept telling me, I mean he's deaf and also moot, but he told his friends that I am not very smart because he tried to teach me how to communicate with my sign language I couldn't. But he thought it was fun to play with me because I was able to do much a lot. But I keep coming back. His story reminds me and inspires me that we could do a lot more to help people like Huy in the center where he feels that he belongs to. Thank you. Thank you very much, Tao, for those moving stories. And now we turn to Colonel Tan-Kong. Sir, we'd love to hear how you first heard about these war legacies and more particularly about your work and what you have accomplished at the Da Nang Airport. Thank you. Let me introduce myself. I was born in the 1960s. When I was young, I witnessed the bombings of the US to the northern part of Vietnam. And therefore I understood the heavy consequences of the war. And especially when I grew up and up to now, I realized that the US consequences is quite heavy with the maps of US uncontamination revealed by the US and about the diocese in orange. It is not publicly announced in the media. But in 1995, I was lucky enough to study at the Environment Center, belong to the chemical corp. But at that time, those data is also not published. But in 2010, I officially was assigned to work on the environment management at the MND and specifically to manage the thousand remediation process of the hotspots and especially with the support of the US. Those are the activities and work that we have been doing. So far, we have been involved in the project at the Da Nang and we basically completed that project. Those are very short descriptions of my work and my experience. The question about the public health benefits from this work and how you achieve these same benefits at the much larger Bien Hoa project. Well, about the health issue based on the researchers, the exposure to diocese at hotspots is mostly through their food and mostly originated from the air bases. So in order to remit that the diocese at Da Nang airport, we completed already, we contributed to the prevention of spreading of diocese from the airport to the outside areas, especially through the food train, because we understand that diocese, that's not the result of water, but through the rain, it's spread to the other areas. And in those lakes or rivers, we raise a fish and with the food selling out to the market, that's one of the sources to affect the health of people living nearby. And therefore the remediation of the diocese at the airport and nearby areas will help to prevent the exposure and the spreading of diocese to the local communities. And we also have to admit that the high contaminated soil has been remedied already, but the low remedied soil is isolated. But we also have an agreement to isolate them to minimize the spreading of diocese. And we will continue to observe the environment of the isolated area as well as the soil under the lake. Otherwise, we still have the risk of diocese contamination by the animals living nearby. Thank you. Our next speaker is Senior Lieutenant General Witten von Ring. Sir, would you tell us how you first became involved with this subject and what are in about your work with Baba? Thank you very much for the question. I was used to be a soldier fighting in the southern battles of Vietnam from 1967 to 1975. And during the war time, I witnessed with my own eyes the US Air Force spraying missions and forestry by those spraying missions. And I also see that the animals living in those areas curled by the toxic chemicals and were stationed in the location without the cover of forest. In 1968 of the Ted Offensive campaign, my artillery location was, and I myself command that unit. And for the first time, we directly exposed to the toxic chemicals by the US Air Force to our battlefield. And among the Asian orange, we are soldiers. And of course, with our bare eyes, we could not realize either it's toxic or not, but in reality, many of our soldiers exposed heavily by Asian orange, even with food, water, or so exposed to those toxic chemicals. And I can see that after a few days, the forest lost its leaves and died after that. And our soldiers got high fever, several diseases. And it can be said that the fighter also was there fighting after that. And after the war, I have several times met them again. And I realized that for those veterans who were exposed to the Asian orange, they still bring in their body acute diseases. And especially the children were born with deformity. And many kids could not take care of themselves. And they cannot do anything for their society. And even a mother say that I like you to call me mama when you were born. But after 30 years, he could not say even mama. And that's the compulsion of women to her baby. But for our veterans, many of them died because of severe diseases. And among the 17 diseases that the US Institute identified, our veterans have all of those acute diseases. And hundreds of them died. And hundreds of thousands of veterans living a suffering life. And maybe even they do not want to live that way with their life. Our final panelist is Chris Abrams. And Chris, how did you find yourself in Hanoi doing this kind of work? And then I have a couple of questions to follow up with you. Sure. Well, thanks. Thanks, Charles and my fellow panelists. I am Y-Work with USAID. And I'm the Foreign Service Officer, assigned as the Director of the Office that manages our Asian orange remediation programs and our support to persons with disabilities. And it's been my privilege to be there for the last four years. Though, of course, all the work that I do is building on all the people that were before me. And I think it's a very exciting time as we see a lot of these projects move forward in advance. As you've heard today, we had the project at Danang, which I find is one of the most technically challenging projects of my career. It was very interesting to be part of. Not just in terms of politics and diplomacy and working with our partners at the Ministry of National Defense, but just in terms of the actual technical complexity of bringing dioxin up to 335 degrees or soil, up to 335 degrees Celsius, to actually break apart dioxin and recognizing how tough this challenge is to really return the environment to what it was before and how it was contaminated with Asian orange. I have two follow-up questions. First, what is the funding plan for the full remediation of Bien Hoa? How long will it take and what is required? Sure. So we talked a lot about Danang, which was a big effort. It was one of the largest remediation projects in the world. Bien Hoa is vastly larger. It's roughly four to five times the size of Danang based on a fairly comprehensive study that we did with the Ministry of National Defense. We recognized that the concentrations and the quantity of dioxin contamination there is much, much higher. And also over time, that dioxin has migrated off base over time into the surrounding areas around that air base. So a project of that size and scale could go as much as over a billion dollars depending on the types of technologies that you would use to approach it or how you manage the different types of concentrations of soil. So it was a big effort when you go to work to muster the will of the United States government to contribute and working internally between the Department of State, USAID, and Department of Defense. The United States has managed to make a commitment of at least $300 million towards what we've estimated to be about $390 million to accomplish the mission there, which will include cleaning the areas off base and on base. And what that entails, as Colonel Kong mentioned, is essentially taking low concentration material and permanently storing it and keeping it out of harm's way and taking high concentration material and either thermally treating or using other technologies to manage it. Thank you. I'll go on and talk about the other very important, I would say even more important part of your program which is health and disability assistance. I understand that it is now focused on helping or reaching and positively impacting the lives of the severely disabled and their families and you're currently working in seven provinces that were heavily sprayed during the war and according to your disability surveys there are about 95,000 people who were classified as severely disabled in these seven districts. How are you going to reach them and what kind of help can you offer? Sure. So USAID's support to persons with disabilities, as Charles mentioned, is now we're trying to focus that on provinces that were heavily sprayed by age and orange during the war. In fact, we've identified up to 10 candidates, but we're currently working in seven based on the resources that we have. And when it comes to the challenge of improving the quality of life of persons with disabilities, you need to work with a variety of partners. So we work with the Ministry of National Defense on de-action remediation and soon on helping us coordinate support to persons that were affected by age and orange organizations like VAVA, lots of NGOs, many people that are here today. And the Ministry of Health, Provincial Authorities and other, essentially, you have to create almost like a community of services to support persons with disabilities. And we really need to work together with Vietnam to build a system that will deliver those services long into the future. But at the same time, as Charles mentioned, a really important element that we need to get at are focusing on persons with severe disabilities and there's a need today. So roughly we've kind of split our resources. 50% of those go for direct services to persons with severe disabilities in these provinces, while the remainder works to build the rehabilitation system for service delivery. And that includes developing occupational, physical, and speech and language therapy programs at the university level to build the next generation of Vietnamese health practitioners to deliver these services. And then also recognizing the social support. So I guess you could say palliative care, but really making sure that caregivers and disabled persons have access to social services within their communities. And that's where organizations like VAVA are fantastic. They have this network that can go down and work at every commune and really kind of create sort of a community of support for persons with disabilities. Sort of a medical rehabilitation support framework and then also getting directly to the houses of those with severe disabilities with direct services, assistive devices, home improvements, and other methods. And that's what we're... Thank you, thank you very much. We now are going to turn to you, the audience, for your very good questions. And there are people with microphones circulating around. We have about 15 minutes for questions. This gentleman in the middle here. Here comes the microphone over to your left. Will you please give your name and your affiliation? Sure, George Black. I'm a journalist. And I've written for a lot of publications about Vietnam, including on Quang Tri and the York Zone, Agent Orange Problems for the New Yorker and the nation and others. I'm really interested in the question of how the binwa cleanup is different from Da Nang, not in respect of scale or complexity, but in terms of the military significance within the broader relationship, the fact that it is a military base, and the fact that the Pentagon is now very significantly involved. Let me ask, you're directing this question to which... Really at anyone. I mean, I think everyone might have a view, but can you restate it as one question? How binwa is significantly different in respect of the involvement of the Pentagon in the project? Chris, would you like to... Sure. Well, I think... Well, one is I think that the Department of Defense has always been very supportive, and USAID and the Department of Defense work well together in the countries that we coexist together within. I think one of the big reasons that Department of Defense has joined USAID in supporting binwa is the sheer scale of it. So Da Nang being smaller, and this does speak to some of the complexity, USAID could provide enough support to achieve that goal along with our partners in Vietnam, but binwa, given the scale, really required a joint effort between several U.S. government agencies, and that's how the State Department, DoD, and USAID created this group and sort of collective funding and resources to approach that problem. And I think that DoD in particular has a lot of interest in Vietnam, and they've been working with the Vietnamese for many years on this, and it's an important issue for the country, and it's an important thing for the U.S. government to do, and maybe that's the key point. It's the U.S. government, just USAID happens to be the technical expert in that project, but it's really our whole government that's making this commitment. Other questions? Yes, in the back there. Hi, I'm Jerry File. I was visited Quang Tri Province in 1967, the United States Marine Corps, and I was wondering the receptiveness of your programs with the mountain yard tribes and the other tribes in Vietnam. And your question is for which panelist? The gentleman that is in Quang Tri. Okay. Well, I'm not sure which one. General, perhaps General Ringwell answers that question about Quang Chi. Maybe could you restate the question for the interpretation? I was asking about the receptiveness of the mountain yard tribes and the other tribes that live in the mountains, up in the Que Son area, and the other parts of Vietnam, how receptive they are to these programs that are being introduced. In Quang Tri Province, maybe the three best, the most affected by Iwa Siu and also most affected by the Dalai Seng, they have more than any other provinces. So the impact of both Iwa Siu and Dalai Seng to the livelihood of people is very severe. And I can say that they do not know when they, and how long they can live and when they die. They do not know about that. And that's why our government pay very special attention to those communities. And we invest a lot of resources to overcome the USL consequences to free the lands for production. And at the same time, we can eliminate threat to their lives. And for those of us, we also got support from USAID. And the second about the children in Quang Tri Province, they also receive special attention from our government to build the centers to neutral them, even for the tribes in those areas, both the minority groups and the kin groups. And we also built vocational training centers also to support their livelihood means. And I can see that, you know, Quang Tri is the forefront of the world in Vietnam and the place where the two sides wishes to get their strength in order to finally win the world. And that's why during the world in Quang Tri Province, they are the heroic people. And they stood firm during the world and currently they gradually overcome the difficulties and challenges to build a better life as other provinces do. And thank you. I'm going to share with you the experience that I worked in A Lui District, Huy Province near Hesang that you mentioned. A few years ago, with the funding from Boeing Company through Vietnam Veterans America Foundation, we went to A Lui and built two schools, one primary school, one kindergarten, for the community there. And the community, as you mentioned, they're mountain yard people. We call it ethnic minority, they're Van Kieu people. And for most people who are young, born after the war, so they were overwhelmingly happy that they have new schools in the community for the children to go to school. But for older generation who remember the war, when they ask us who we were, we say, I mean, I'm not Americans, but I represent Vietnam veterans and friendship that they extend to people of Vietnam. And also companies, the Boeing Company, the B-52 manufacturer coming back to Vietnam. And so it means a lot, it's a friendship and it was very well received by the mountain yard communities that I have visited and worked in the past. Thank you. We have time for one more question. Let's see right here. Hello, my name is Brandy Whirl and I'm with the Children of Vietnam Vets Health Alliance. We're a nonprofit organization of children who have medical conditions linked to our fathers or mothers exposure to Agent Orange. And tomorrow is the fifth anniversary of my father's passing from metastatic lung cancer due to Agent Orange exposure. It was written on his death certificate by the VA. So my question is, being amnesia or mixed race, my mom's from Long An province and I don't know how much Agent Orange was dropped on Long An province during the war. Before she had me, she had suffered several miscarriages and a stillbirth. Can you form your question, please? Sure. So I know we have tracked illnesses from vets and illnesses from Vietnamese. Do we have any compensation or tracking for Vietnamese immigrants in the United States? I don't know that anyone on the panel can answer that question. Because obviously it would affect them. Yeah. I know that there are, first of all, I very much respect what you are doing with the Children of Vietnam Veterans Health Alliance and it represents a need and an opportunity that I think we Americans have to address. And the way to start is what you're doing, organizing and standing up and speaking on this subject. In Vietnam, they talk about intergenerational and we've been talking about these effects here in this panel. We are not quite there yet, I would say. Maybe that's an understatement. Anyway, thank you very much for your question. We have to end our panel now and I would just like to say that what have we learned? We've learned one thing that I learned in Vietnam is that the Vietnamese are very good at organizing models, small pilot projects, which they want to see if something works before they expend the time and effort to take it to a larger area. The most famous example of this was Nguyen Van Ling, who did experiments on commercial agriculture, small-scale agriculture in the Mekong Delta in the early 1980s, and that ultimately became Doi Mui, the reform and renovation movement that created modern Vietnam. We have here also models. Quang Chi shows us how you can both educate people on mind awareness and clear up the UXO, and this is being spread to other provinces. We have Da Nang, which we think has been an unqualified success and there has been a lot of learning which we couldn't have tackled Bien Hoa. We should have never tried to even think of tackling Bien Hoa without doing Da Nang first simply because of the scale and the complexity. We have also seven provinces where USAID is cooperating with Vietnam, beginning with Taining Province, and all of these are going to build programs and implement projects that will take us to the next level. The victims of Agent Orange and UXO in Vietnam are often described as a humanitarian concern, which we're doing something about, and this is true, but these are just not nice projects. These are fundamental to the future of the relationship between our two countries, between Vietnam and the U.S. In closing, I would leave you with five words. Progress, partnership, a shared future. Join me in thanking our panel.