 It's very fine, but very... It's true. You're going way back. You know what's going on? Because I remember... Let me just... Come on. Well, good morning, everybody. I understand we have engrossing conversations going on out with the coffee and tea, so people will continue to trickle in, but we're going to get started. My name is Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president of the United States Institute of Peace, and I'm just delighted to welcome everybody here. I'm Nancy Lindborg. I'm the president of the United States Institute of Peace, and I'm just delighted to welcome everybody here. I want to begin by, first of all, thanking our co-host, the League of Arab States, for their tremendous partnership in organizing this event in celebration of the fifth annual Arab American Day. And we're honored to have with us here today many very distinguished members of the diplomatic community, the ambassadors of Jordan, the Netherlands, Tunisia, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, the League of Arab Nations, Saudi Arabia, the League of Arab States. We're really delighted to have this show of support and solidarity. And thank you also for the many additional embassy officials who are here with us from across the Middle East and North Africa. We're gathered here today in both a celebration and a challenge, and it's a celebration of the extraordinary accomplishments of Arab women and a celebration of their determination to advance their critical role in peace insecurity and to celebrate the action plan on women peace and security that was adopted last year. We're also celebrating the importance of Arab women in peacefully addressing conflict that now is quite present through many parts of the Middle East and North Africa, for their role in strengthening institutions and in empowering women to face the challenges that the region faces, particularly with a growing youth population. And it's a challenge, as President Obama said, you judge a nation and how successful it will be based on how it treats its women and girls. And we know that women throughout the region as well as many men are taking up that challenge with strength, with resilience, and with determination. We're delighted to have such an extraordinary panel set of panels today to talk exactly about how that's moving forward. USIP was founded more than 30 years ago by Congress as an independent federal institution. And Congress founded us based on the proposition that peace was very practical, that it's essential for our national and our international security. And so we pursue a vision of a world without violent conflict by working with partners around the world, with individuals, organizations and governments to jointly look at what are the tools, what's the training, what's the education that's critical so that people can keep conflict from becoming violent and to resolve it when it does. And our work has encompassed very necessarily the whole role of gender as essential for understanding and for addressing conflict. And we know that when you incorporate gender perspectives in peace-building efforts and recognize the social and economic empowerment of women, then you're able to build peace and resilience not just from the top down, but from the bottom up. We recently had a symposium called Men, Peace and Security that focused on men's roles in supporting women's rights and gender equality. And I'm pleased to see so many wonderful men with us here today. That event brought together over 200 leaders from around the world and resulted in a series of ongoing activities in countries around the region. Today we have to kick us off someone who is, who perhaps said it best, Ambassador Inas Makawi who is the director of Women, Family and Childhood for the League of Arab States said the region can no longer afford any delay in reaching the representation that women deserve in decision-making circles and in prioritizing women in humanitarian assistance. We're very fortunate to have Ambassador Makawi with us here today to speak about the urgency and the strategy that's necessary to increase women's representation in the region. The ambassador has more than 25 years of experience in sustainable development and in implementing programs for women's empowerment. While supporting the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals with the UN, which is a wonderful new set of global commitments, she promoted women's and childhood rights and helped develop the American agenda. Ambassador Makawi's dedication to gender equality and women's empowerment has brought her here today. Please join me in welcoming her to the stage. Good morning. Excellences, distinguished delegates, ladies and gentlemen on behalf of the League of Arab States, I would like to convey the whole migrating of the secretary general, His Excellency Ahmed Abulghayt, and welcome you in the fifth annual Arab American Day celebration. I would like also to take this opportunity to thank the United States Institute of Peace and the League of Arab States. The League of Arab States' mission in Washington, D.C. for their great efforts for organizing this important event. In particular, I would like to welcome her Excellency Nancy Landburg, President of the United States Institute of Peace, as well as His Excellency Salah Sarhan, Head of the League of Arab States Mission in Washington, D.C. It's an honor to be here with you. To discuss the Arab women main opportunities and the challenges in the region and ways to enhance leadership and resilience I'm also delighted to see brilliant panelists from the Arab region to come and deliver their experience perspectives around us. Ladies and gentlemen, the League of Arab States is highly dedicated to promote women empowerment and gender equality in the Arab region. The women family and the childhood department has developed the Cairo declaration for Arab women and the strategic plan for women empowerment in the Arab region. Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 which were adopted in the 144th Ordinary Session for Foreign Ministerial Council in September 2015. And we are committed to implement this important agenda with the governments and civil society from the region and outside the region. The Cairo declaration and its strategic action plan represent the most comprehensive framework to promote women's status in the Arab region. It's based on the recently adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Typically the goal number 5 on gender equality reaffirming the principles of human rights, treaties with the main keys, messages and the principles addressed in the declaration as follows. We will work to ensure the implementation of social justice policies poverty eradication participation and increased rates of participation of women in all elected assemblies. We will call on increased capacities and support mechanisms for women political participation and increased rates of participation of women in all elected assemblies. The expansion of democratic practices and consultation at the national and local levels to ensure equality distribution of resources and development aid. The expansion of temporary special measures to ensure impact in all areas of women participation. Support to national mechanism of women to be more effective and have significant impact in the implementation of women empowerment policies in the Arab societies. To call for the adoption of public gender responsive budgeting as mechanism for social justice the development of cultural system and social norms to produce more just social patterns through the development of new strategies in education media, positive and smart partnership with relations religious institutions and promoting the exchange of experience between member states. The need to work with men boys and students as partner and the strategic alliance in the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and girls. This is what the leaders from the Arab countries committed to implement by the Cairo declaration the women agenda for 2030. The strategic plan has present holistic framework to promote gender equality and women empowerment through three these pillars. Number one, reforming legislation for gender equality in the Arab region. Two, gender ministering in planning and budgeting. Three, women political participation. Four, women economic empowerment. Five, social transformation. Six, the elimination of violence against women and girls. Seven, women peace and security. And number eight, women and competing terrorists. Ladies and gentlemen, we will continue investing our efforts in order to implement the Cairo declaration and the strategic action plan to promote women rights and the status at all levels. For this, the League of Arab States has established, along with the UN women, RAIDAT network. The women leaders network. For Arab women parliamentarians. Today, we have count around 180 members from the country states to promote women leadership and serve at the platform to push for legislation reforms. Ending discrimination and promoting equality in the region. We were also proud to see the first women elected on head of the parliament in United Arab Emirates. Along with the designation of several women in the Emirate government to reach 28% of women in the government. Several countries in the region have reached the critical mass 30% of women in parliament such as Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan and Egypt introduced a 25% quota for women in local councils. We are witnessing a transformation shift with the participation of Saudi women for the first time in election as voters and electors. We believe that the way of eradicating poverty and the promote sustainable development and the economic growth we need to invest in women. For this reason the League of Arab States has put in place the Khadija Network to serve as a platform for women economic empowerment in the region focused on generating knowledge and advocating for policies reforms. The network was built with prominent business women from the region and other stakeholders from public and private sector in the Arab world. Ladies and gentlemen we have all witnessed the deep transformation that occurred in the Arab region in the last few years. We saw unexpected uprising and revolutions holding great aspiration for human dignity and equality but also erupted conflicts and wars. Many obstacles for human security freedom and human rights. We observed the outstanding role that women have played to defend their nations, lands and to make history in their own countries. Women have demonstrated tremendous courage and remarkable wisdom dealing with all the difficulties occurrence that the Arab region is experiencing but also we observed the suffering of women and girls who undergo through unbearable time of lots of complicated circumstances that occurred in the region. The League of Arab States reinforced policies for the protection of women and girls in the region and for the promotion of their role on advancing lasting peace and security away from conflicts. These efforts are highlighted in our regional strategy protection women in the Arab region peace and security and reaffirmed in our executive action plan on women peace and security after being adopted from the ministerial council September 2015. The executive action plan was based on the regional and international instrument UN Security Council 1325 in 2000 and seven supporting resolution starting from 1325 to 2242 and the SIDAO general recommendation number 30. The four main pillars of the regional action plan on women peace and security in the Arab region is 1. Support meaningful women and girls leadership and participation at all levels of decision making to build and preserve peace resolve conflicts and competitors 2. Prevent conflicts and build prevent conflicts and build and preserve peace resolve conflicts and combat terrorism 3. Ensure the protection from conflicts and all forms of violence against women in all times of peace conflicts and post conflicts access women and girls to their needs of relief and recovery especially most vulnerable to violence our main objective was to put in place regional instrument mechanism that allows to monitor the implementation of the Security Council resolution 1325 and the related women peace and security international legal framework in the Arab region indeed during the global review of the 1325 Security Council resolution in 2015 the League of Arab States has been working with the member states to follow on the regional implementation of the Security Council resolution 1325 we received 11 national reports from the region Iraq with the first member states to adopt a national action plan on women peace and security in April 2014 it was followed by Palestine that recently launched their national action plan and the League of Arab States has then shared the consolidated regional report to be integrated into the global review report on the implementation of the Security Council resolution on the other hand at the Secretary of the Arab Women Committee we are in process of establishing the emergency committee for women in the Arab world in order to increase coordination and to rapidly respond to erupted crisis affecting women and girls in addition the League of Arab States organized last September 2016 the first ministerial level conference on women achieving peace and security in the Arab region and we were honored to come with important resolutions mainly to ensure the participation of women at all level of peace process and peace building association to reinforce the protection of women and girls during conflicts to create a monitoring and evaluation mechanism to follow the implementation of the executive action plan on protection of women in the Arab region peace and security distinguished delegates our celebration today for American days come with the 15 days of activism to end violence against women this particular event is an opportunity to continue our mobilization and to advocate ensuring women and girls protection and response from all violence and discrimination in the region and in the world we will strive and continue to do our best to deliver our commitments and to promote gender equality at all level we work with the member states to federating efforts to achieve the goal number 5 of the sustainable development goals and the implementation of the strategic action plan to promote women's status in the Arab region we strongly believe that the progress of a country or region cannot be reached if women and girls are left behind we also believe that this occasion can be the beginning of strengthening joint collaboration with the League of Arab States and the United States Institute of Peace and a way to create links between the Arab and American sides to exchange knowledge, expertise opportunities and joint efforts to promote gender equality and to end violence against women and girls everywhere thank you good morning welcome and it's a pleasure to be here for the fifth annual Arab American Day I'd certainly like to thank Ambassador Makawi for her wonderful address that will build upon our discussion this morning with our very esteemed panel of course a special thanks goes to Ambassador Sarhan for your leadership in choosing the topic this morning and today which is the role of Arab women we're going to talk about empowering women and building resilience which is an important part of course of the geopolitical landscape in the Arab world I'd like to also give special welcome to the ambassadors from Lebanon, Saudi Arabia Algeria Tunisia Jordan I know that there are representatives from many of the other Arab embassies as well so please welcome Libya I saw Libya so I hate to do this but I did want to welcome all the wonderful ambassadors and thank you so much it's an honor to have all of you and the audience here today so without further ado this panel with our panelists having been experts in this field we're going to talk a little bit about their own personal experiences and then we will allow time for our question and answers from the audience we have our special luncheon speaker that's going to be joining us a bit earlier today so we're honored to have her as well so we'll be shortening our program a bit but it is our hopes that in the words of someone who formerly came from the U.S. government we're going to have actual deliverables from this panel today something of course ambassador McCauley is doing wonderful work but perhaps some other ideas that you might be able to take back with you through the Arab League for your wonderful programs working with the United Nations on this so if I may Naderra you're up first surprise no one ever likes to be first I know you and I spoke over the weekend and you have some wonderful experience as an international development advisor at the World Bank you have done everything in the process of management you've worked in the private sector with respect to financial development you worked all over the world including the Middle East so Naderra I'd like to start with you and have you sort of reflect upon your personal experiences and then a little bit about what we talked about this weekend first of all good morning and does this work good morning and thank you very much for inviting me to this panel it's really a great opportunity to really share my experience about this region and also I'm very honored to be here in this event I have to say that I have recently about three years ago retired from the World Bank and I worked there for about a third of a century to kind of put it very to quantify it how much and I worked on many different regions in Latin America I worked on East Asia I worked on Eastern Eastern Europe and then somebody asked me to come and work on the Middle East I'm originally from Iran I'm Iranian and I first thought well you know it's probably it's going to be very difficult for me to work on the Middle East and once I started to work on the Middle East this was around year 2000 I could not get away from the Middle East because it sort of like drew me in and one of the tasks that I was given to work was actually on women's empowerment and throughout this process I got to know so many fantastic women in this region many more than I had ever ever experienced in my work in Latin America I don't want to say that they are not there but just the caliber of the women that I met from Morocco to Oman from Yemen to Syria everywhere I found always very very empowered, very knowledgeable very powerful women and I kept asking myself well why is it that the world always thinks about the rights or the issues the Middle Eastern women do not have why is it that the world is not emphasizing on what we have and again you know there are no lack of women when it comes to leadership in the region it's just like recognizing them and giving them the space and I'm so delighted to hear about your Khadija network because I think that this is one way of really finding quantifying the number of women that are in this region I just want to maybe finish it with one little anecdote at some point in time at the World Bank it was maybe around 2005 or so I proposed and it was accepted a program in which we wanted to kind of identify people in their 35 to 45 year time span in order to kind of groom them as potential leaders or so for the next generation because we thought that many of these region we didn't even think about the Arab Spring we just thought that some of the leaders in the Arab world were nearing their sunset years and therefore why don't we at least get some group of people who are economically comfortable it's not that they would be looking for business opportunities but who have a vision and so on I have to say that it was not at all difficult for me to find 10, 15, 20 women from every single country in the region the difficulty that I had was to find the men to find the men of that caliber that I was looking for so maybe I want to end it here to say that there are incredible women in the Middle East and the more I work on the Middle East the more I am you know I energize and I go to the Middle East and energize by the women, by the young women also by the young men I don't want to sort of like be tilted in one way or the other but I think that there is a lot of talent there that could definitely come to work on this to really build up our region and I think we have a lot of work to do. Thank you so much for your comments and we will be able to further delve into that with our question and answers from the audience. Next we have Donald Steinberg he is presently the president and CEO of world learning. He also has an incredible background in both the public and private sectors the public sector being the US Agency for International Development you are at the State Department the National Security Council Deputy Press Secretary certainly at the White House you are here at the US Institute of Peace as a senior advisor and thank you and the USIP for their wonderful hosting of the event today and you are also at the United Nations Development Fund so you bring with you many many years of experience in both the public and private sector I know you have some excellent comments today and some recommendations. Thank you and that's a very nice way of saying that I am indeed old I have spent 40 years working on peace building and development diplomacy in more than 120 different countries from this experience as well as data and research now it is easy to come to a single conclusion and that is that countries that respect the rights of women that involve women fully in their economic and political and social life that engage women as planners and implementers and beneficiaries of all their programs. These countries are more prosperous they have higher growth rates they have more equitable distribution of income they are more peaceful they are less polarized they are less subject to ethnic and sectarian violence they are less likely to engage in trafficking in people and weapons and in drugs they are more likely to invest in health education and housing and they are actually less corrupt and this is a fact this is not a political theory this is not some sort of political correctness we know these facts to be true societies of the run with women's participation are better let's just put it simply here but if that's so clear then why don't we see more countries adopting these policies and programs why do we need conferences like this and not just on the leadership and resilience of Arab women but African women and Asian women and European women and American women and we do make a lot of commentary in this regard on the question of social values and social norms and cultural practices but in reality I think the real problem is that institutions don't know how to do it governments don't know how to engage women in the political and economic lives of their countries nor do large institutions like the World Bank the United Nations and from my experience working at USAID as deputy administrator working at the National Security Council the State Department now with a organization called World Learning I think there are four keys to this process the first is institutions have to adopt specific programs for women's empowerment and gender equality that means training and support for women it means if you're putting together for example a process of involving involving women in peace processes it's not enough to have them at the table they have to be empowered we have to look at the factors that keep women from participating in peace processes which include the fact that they're expected to stay at home with their families and so they need stipends for support the fact that they tend to be very vulnerable we all know that one of the most important and dangerous roles in the world is a woman peace builder and so for example when we announced at USAID a program to enhance women's participation in peace processes which I had the pleasure to announce at a FOD University that great school in Cartoon for Women we had stipends involved we had physical protection and we had training that was all permitted here and let me say there is a tendency for us to downplay the importance of quotas and in this country the notion of a quota is pretty much politically unacceptable but I would remind people that more countries globally have quotas for women's participation in political life than do not and so it isn't for countries that have them to explain why they need them it's for countries that don't have them to explain why they think that they can do without them the second aspect is that gender considerations have to be mainstreamed and integrated in every program yes I fully support the idea of women's ministries women's organizations but I also want the finance minister and the minister of health and the defense minister and the prime minister to be thinking about gender every day we instituted at USAID a requirement that every single project that we implemented has a gender impact statement and the first gender impact statement that came back it was about a dam we were building and said well 50% of the water will go to women and I went back and I said well that's interesting but you're going to involve mostly man in constructing the dam what is that going to do to the labor market you're going to be displacing the entire population of this region what is that going to do to gender relationships you're going to be providing electricity is that electricity going into houses in which case the women in the society can stop cooking with firewood and for those of you who are not aware 4 million women die each year from inhaling smoke and respiratory illnesses from cooking inside so those are the factors that we need to consider the third consideration is that institutions have to be thought leaders and public advocates they need national action plans they need to promote research and accumulation of sex disaggregated data they need to include references to women's empowerment in all speeches they need to sponsor conferences like this and for me the most important aspect is they need to draw on the wisdom of women themselves in the societies and the human expression we use nothing about them without them and then finally we as institutions need to walk the talk I've seen so many institutions that have adopted great policies for their programs and their projects and yet you look at the leadership and they're all men you look at the hiring and the promotion and the salary and evaluation practices and they all include biases you look at women who step forward in those institutions and it is not a safe space for them to be expressing concerns many of those same institutions do not have family friendly environments they don't have support for daycare and maternity and paternity leave as well and so it's absolutely vital that they walk the talk within their institutions if I can conclude with one quick story we are as an institution world learning operating in many countries in the Arab League we are in Iraq training teachers and Lebanon working with women who are displaced from Syria we have a great program going in Algeria and I had the privilege of meeting with the ambassador last week about some of the programs I'm going to start Jordan but I have to confess that my favorite program is our one in Egypt and I know I'm not supposed to have favorites it's like a parent loves all the children equally but this is a remarkable program we are doing STEM education science technology engineering mathematics at the high school level for girls and we have identified about 400 girls who go to a particular school and we have now five different schools these girls come in the first day and they are from about 15 years old and they say where are the classrooms and we say there are no classrooms where are the textbooks no textbooks what's the curriculum, no curriculum and they sit for the first two weeks and figure out what they bring with themselves what are they worried about in their society and the group that I met with was focused on urbanization they were frightened by the cities and the crime and the lack of transportation and the environmental degradation and so everything they study is about urbanization they do the history they do the English language they do the arts they do literature and then we give them digital fabrication laboratories and 3D printers and we give them the capacity to do data peluses and hackathons and crowdsourcing and we give them a project and in this case we said build a house that can accommodate eight people entirely environmentally friendly and do it all for $10,000 and they did it and these are 15 year old girls who are snapping selfies with me and behind us is their mock-up of a house now let me tell you about this house it is gorgeous I want one of them it uses no water all the water comes from the air and it's condensed even in Egypt they can do this with a relatively dry environment I said that's great except it uses up too much electricity they said yes that's why we have solar panels and biofuel and biogas no energy from the outside I said that's great but it produces too much CO2 and they said well that's why we have these carbon fixing plants in the entire setting and oh by the way they're edible I said well it seems cooler in this house they said yes we have air tunnels wind tunnels that use no electricity they use barometric pressure to keep the house 10 degrees cooler in the day 10 degrees warmer at night they can produce the whole thing for $8,000 the government was so excited they came to us and said start another dozen schools many of the countries from the Arab League are coming to visit this school and saying hey we want this sort of system what's most exciting even is I went out to the university of Nile 100,000 students at the university level the 15 kids from our school who have already entered the school are changing everything they're walking into classrooms with 400 people in the class and the teacher writing on the board and they're saying no no no you're not teaching me this isn't how I learned with you just writing on the board teach me and now the faculty at the university of the Nile wants to be educated in how to teach in this way and I'll just say one last thing if we can do it in Alexandria Egypt why aren't we doing it in Alexandria Virginia as well that's great fabulous thank you thank you so much Donna thank you for reminding us of the successful programs like this in the Arab world often times people have a stereotype certainly of women and girls in the Arab world and we sometimes forget here in the United States we have our own challenges too as women so thank you for the great work you're doing and I particularly have a bias towards Egyptian for obvious reasons so thank you we are so delighted that our next speaker on the panel is Manal Omar we've known each other for quite a long time she right now is the associate vice president for the Middle East and Africa here at the US Institute of Peace you have a background in humanitarian issues with Oxfam and Great Britain thank you for all the work you've done in Palestine and Lebanon I know you've also been on the Libya stabilization team in 2011 you've done a lot of work with UNESCO and others so we are so interested to hear from your personal experiences what you have to say about this particular topic Manal great thank you Rhonda I'm going to pick up a little bit on what you said in the previous speakers in terms of how we role model and as you pointed out we're very good about telling the region what they need to do so what I want to do is kind of flip it and in my 20 years working in the region and really listening to women from the region what they've been telling us as an international community we need to do and I think first of all and first and foremost is you're not going to find any victims here over and over women will tell you that we're not victims and if you're coming to save us you might as well go home because we've got this what we don't have is the resources and the technical expertise and if you want to come and match our vision and our solutions with resources then you're welcome so I think that that's kind of the first point that I've always heard over and over is that we're not victims and we need to be part of the design don't come with your projects pre-design and use this as contractors or implementers but invite us in and we'll design solutions with you the second point that I think is always important and something that I emphasize over and over is that women really are canaries in the mind and we've already heard the facts and the statistics that illustrate this and so when we talk about women and engaging women it's not a nice thing to do what I say over and over is it's necessary it's strategic you're not doing anyone a favor when you invest in women what you're doing is stabilizing your country you're investing in over 50% of the labor force and again you're being able to pay attention to the red flags that are raised and we've seen this over and over in conflict zones I mean if you remember very early on in 2003 the personal status law that was introduced in Iraq Iraqi women were very clear this is not ours we've never had such a monolithic interpretation of Islamic law the way we're seeing now and if we had paid attention as an international community we would have picked up on all the regional powers that were playing in Iraq very early on but we chose to ignore it and we chose to dismiss it just as a women's issue so it's the canaries in the mind strategic for us to see the third area and I'm sure all of us have heard this over and over is women will urge us get outside of the capitals the capitals do not represent I mean we have learned this the hard way in the US Washington DC does not reflect the entire country and no capital ever does so get outside of the capitals and part of that is have Arabic translations, have Kurdish have multiple languages don't depend just on English and on high tech we'll only get a very specific group that don't always represent the grassroots which is where real change in behaviors and attitudes will come so the third area is get outside of the capitals I think the fourth area and again this is something that if you look at the larger the UN and a lot of other things we don't do very well is treat women leaders the same way we treat the male leaders and think about it we often get into meetings and you'll treat you'll have one-on-ones with male ambassadors or male ministers but when it's time to meet with the women we tend to put them in groups so we'll meet with 30 women versus the one-on-one we often hear oh we're not finding qualified women I've literally sat with parliamentarians who are illiterate but because they come from a particular male because they come from a particular area they get automatic seats in parliament whereas when it comes to women they have to be PhDs, they have to be political science major, the expectations even from other women is completely unfair to what we expect from male leadership so treat women equally and that again means us role modeling that treatment the fifth area and I've seen this over and over is everyone including the international community will use women's issues as a negotiating chip particularly if we're negotiating with a tribal or religious group and they raise women's issues usually in the form of personal status law which is the law that deals with inheritance with marriage and with divorce which is what really impacts women's lives we're willing to negotiate negotiate away very key issues that involve women for appeasement or for doing some political alliances so a lot of times what we're missing is the political will and that again comes not only from local governments but from the international community as well. The sixth area and this is often a little bit hard and it kind of goes into tying into getting outside of the capital is really respect the power of the invisible you know I've met some women who are powerhouses who are creating change who will be sitting for example in Najaf with the office you'll find some top women leaders who are not visible but they're sitting and whispering in the ear you find that us hiring Cairo as well some women will say don't push us in the limelight we're creating change in the back by whispering through people's ears so we need to be able to respect because we're very good at hugging women activists to death right we bring them many times we put great big targets on them because we're good at promoting them but our weakness as an international community comes to protection and we've seen over and over whether it was Libya or Iraq the first targets were the women leaders so we need to also improve our protection if we're going to do promoting and the final thing that I'll end with is the international community tends to have an extra dose of religious and cultural relativism which can at times be very dangerous and I'll illustrate this with the story I remember when I was in Khartoum I was sitting and I was talking to internationals not locals who were explaining to me that in Islam there's something called forced marriage and that when you're in war you can go and you can kill the men and you can force marry women and this was in relation to Darfur that is rape and that is genocide and no matter how much sugar coating you put on it and try to put in religious and Islamic whatever tribal customs it's really important that the international community stays strong on the universal human rights that we've all agreed on and on the international conventions that we've all supported because often times it is not rooted in religion and often times it's not rooted in culture you're talking about the region that gave the world the rule of law through Hammurabi you're talking about the region that promoted women's rights pre-Islamically through the queen of Sheba which is Yemen so when people try to say these are western ideologies no this region has deep roots and powerful women and has always had it through its ancestry and I think that's something that the international community needs to embrace and build on because it's the only way forward terrific thank you thank you Manal we now have the honor of having Habakk Osman who's the founder and CEO of Karama a movement to end violence against women and promote women's participation in public life across the Arab region Habakk has very practical experience on the grassroots level she works with activists in 14 Arab countries she has a security network and she also was an advisor to the United Nations so Habakk we're very very pleased to have you here today thank you very much I haven't slept for a couple of hours I came all the way down to Egypt and I never follow rules so my friends I'm going to exactly make my statement and I think we are living in a time of interesting time in the United States and I think for me the reason I came was again to sort of revive my relationship with the US because we are all panicking what's coming to here and it gave all of us another definition of what democracy can be so you know we are really Chinese one day the Chinese one they want to curse you they say may you live in interesting times and I think interesting times I want to acknowledge Dina Kawari you know people say Arab women and I want you to know that when Arab women are in a place they know how to push the envelope Dina was an incredible ambassador in New York and she pushed the envelope and made all the access meetings at the National Security Council and you know and gave us all the access that we needed and it's extremely important for us to you know those Arab women who really make it a real woman that are just appointed so Dina thank you so much for all the incredible you know work you have done with the Arab women in New York and I want to acknowledge Ambassador Ines Makauhi was incredible the Arab region the women's department in the League of Arab States did more meetings, more trainings more access and she has been an incredible ambassador so I really want to acknowledge and I think the League of Arab States now is building the relationship with civil society and bringing them closer so it's a woman like Ines who really have done that and Iman Bargagiz who is absolutely your Twitter in everything and making you know the voices of Arab women also is absolutely fantastic so you know that's what happens when you have one woman somewhere it really makes you know the difference and all the other ambassadors and glad to see that the man has a woman all the men ambassadors sometimes you have to take a second see so I'm going to make my statement I'm not going to come all the way down from Cairo to answer a question so bear with me if I bore you Last week you know it's a great pleasure to address you on Arab American day at a time when the Arab world faces unprecedented levels of conflict and instability last week thanks to the incredible support of the UNDP, Ford and others Karama took part in the launch of the 26th Arab Human Development Report published by the UNDP the report demonstrates the sheer magnitude of the region's strife despite being home to just 5% of the world's population the report shows that nearly half of all terror attacks target people in the Arab region it hosts almost half of the world's internally displaced and well over half of the world's refugees and nearly 7 out of 10 of the world's recent battles that's occurred in the Middle East and perhaps its most startling section the report suggests that if current trends continue in 30 years 3 quarters of citizens in the Arab states will be living in conflict amidst this dire situation we know that women suffer disproportionately in conflict women are more likely to be victims of sexual violence women are more likely to be displaced by conflict 80% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon are women and children and when they are displaced women find it far more difficult to have their health needs met and become far more vulnerable to practices such as early marriage, FGM and trafficking it's because we know that conflict so disproportionately affects women that the UN and its member states formalize resolution 1325 and its subsequent resolutions that was a critical point but 15 years later where are we where is the implementation of 1325 sadly I can report that only two Arab states have so far published national action plans for how they will implement the women peace and security agenda national action plans are absolutely essential if we are to not only elevate the suffering of women in conflict but to ensure that women are part of the political and diplomatic solutions we need to bring a lasting peace we know that the UN has the Syrian advisory board to the Mastura but the fact of the matter is they are not at the table they are outside in the corridors but it looks good for the UN and others to say oh we have women who are participating in this sorry but there is good news on this point and we must pay tribute to our host the League of Arab States earlier this year Kramo was the civil society partner at the League of Arab States and the UN's first ministerial meeting on implementing women peace and security in the region ministers and government representatives from 18 Arab countries met in Cairo as part of the League's women peace and security strategy to understand how the region can implement the agenda the first in that is significant while we may have had to wait over 15 years of this first meeting to happen I take it to mean that this will be the first of many ministerial discussions on women peace and security in the region it will need to be if we are to develop women peace and security response for the region we have always said that the greatest obstacles to achieving peace and security are the lack of political will and lack of dedicated resource the third part about 1325 which has the four pillars which Ambassador Makaoui said was the protection and women's participation and prevention but the third part is first there was no political will now there is a political will but there are no resources so to think that governments who are at war with terror and who have refugees and displaced would basically set aside money and say we want women to be really participate politically it ain't going to happen so the idea yes there is a solution there but its implementation is one that the international community needs to really think we cannot say that we cannot now say that the League of Arab States lacks political will when it comes to the issue and I want to pay tribute to their excellencies of course Ambassador Makaoui again and to those who really put together the agenda for women peace and security the situation in the region faces the situation the region faces means it's critical we develop a coordinated and comprehensive response to conflict and stability and threats that women currently face in doing so the League of Arab States international agencies supportive governments and all other interested parties will find their most powerful ally in civil society despite the difficulties we face civil society in the Arab region is organised as it has never been before since the revolutions we have seen extraordinary developments in the organisation of women's groups in local NGOs right across the region under Qaddafi organised civil society simply did not exist in Libya as the protests against the regime grew women came into the streets and to the forefront of the demands and greater democracy they began organising campaigning exercising their influence when draft electoral laws proposed a gender quota for just 10% women's groups flexed their muscles and significantly improved the women's guarantee representation women in Palestine face the daily struggle and humiliation of life under occupation yet it has been the Palestinian civil society women's groups that has driven forward the development of the only women's regional second national action plan on women peace and security in Tunis the incredible work of national dialogue was recognised last year with the award of the Nobel Peace Prize though much has been achieved there remains much more to do in order to bring lasting peace and equality across the region civil society stands ready to do what is necessary to end conflict to end violence against women and to end inequality and it has and it is because we want such progress to be lasting that civil society has such an essential part to play in this lasting change needs to be firmly rooted it needs to come from the ground up to be resilient against the forces of reaction change must be must be led by resilient movements one of the reasons that has become more organised than ever before is because it has had no choice women activists in the region have faced threats violence and even being targets of assassination increasingly we have seen governments making the working environment for civil society ever more hostile often through the abuse of broadly drafted anti-terror legislation or through specific laws on civil society throughout this women activists has shown extraordinary resilience but this is the resilience of people who want to continue their struggle it's the resilience of last resort today we need to be more ambitious we need to support a resilience that will allow women to flourish in adversity and not merely to survive amongst chaos and catastrophe this is the resilience that support for civil society can achieve if we fail to support women activists then I'm afraid that the region will carry on down its current path as I mentioned the Arab human development report shows it's about that will lead to population living in conflict civil society and women's groups in particular represent the region's greatest defence against this fate in Syria it is groups like the Syrian women's forum for peace that has been reaching out across political, ethnic and religious alliance marking a way forward on peace building and reconciliation division has brought the most terrible consequence in Syria in Libya and Iraq and Somalia in Yemen across the world we must be alive to the forces trying to drive our communities apart Arab Americans have always been the most integrated of all expatriate Arab communities and I hope that they will keep their place at the center of American society whether they have immigrated to the United States or they have been born there they see themselves as Americans they are treated as Americans they are Americans American Muslims have not faced the same discrimination the same level of suspicion and mistress that European Muslims have faced Arab Americans American Muslims all Americans must be vigilant to any attempt to so deficient the great threat posed to national security is that the community becomes alienated becomes estranged that words and crime of hatred make Arab Americans and American Muslims feel as if they are no longer Americans we have already seen an increase in hate crimes committed against American Muslims if we do nothing to stop the spread of this culture then the violence will not stop at the doors of Muslim homes and American mosques if Muslims are allowed to become diminished in the midst of so many then so will Mexicans so will Hindus so will Jews so will Sikhs and other minorities we cannot allow this to happen it was of course Arab scholars who saved the Greek classics for the world and spread their wisdom for generations to come and if I may I want to end with an illusion to the odyssey don't worry I'm finishing the rhetoric of division that we are hearing across the world the cry of authoritarian populism is a sirens call it is a call that will drive us into the rocks and drown us all over we left thank you so much for coming all the way from Cairo to join us I'm now going to open it up to questions from the audience I would ask that when you approach the microphone or the microphone is handed to you please identify yourself your name and your affiliation and direct the question to a particular panelist or panelists please we have some eager people oh yes the ambassador please very much ambassador of Algeria thank you for the panelists we have learned a lot from you and I'm happy to share your optimism particularly the ladies but I do believe that any country in our region needs to do much more to improve the situation of women and particularly to make sure that women are fully part of the governance of the country and I believe in much more a voluntary approach that's why I agree with Donald when he says that the quota is a good idea and let me say about Algeria before 2012 we didn't have any low on that sort of quota and the participation of women was really reduced to the very minimum and when the law came in 2012 and by the way I would like to correct what ambassador Mekawi said the quota in Algeria by law is 30% and not 25% okay thank you so 30% has improved a lot that's true at the beginning the political parties were not that happy but they had to do with the law and after 5 years or 4 years people have been normalized with the participation of women into the process, political process in the country next April we'll be having the legislative elections already women are participating on a normal basis like men that is thanks to the quota and the quota is extremely important I believe, otherwise our society are still conservative and they are not that ready to open the way for the participation of women and there are two important aspects for the participation of women the process of political decision making that is important to have women participating there and the economic empowerment of women that's absolutely fundamental and I'm sometimes surprised when I see here our colleagues here in the United States saying that equal salary or equal pay for men and women we don't have such problem in Algeria because by law the salary is not linked to gender the salary is linked to the job so that job whether it is for a man or a woman it has got the same salary so I really believe in much more role of the government through much more voluntary approach and by law to increase the participation of women and I really do believe that without a real participation of women we would not really get to the governance which is expected by our peoples, thank you thank you thank you very much do we have more questions from the audience yes absolutely so first of all I need to congratulate Algeria on the new constitution that was adopted in a region where too many of the new constitutions are backsliding on issues related to family law and related issues this one moves forward and I'm very excited about that I also wanted to comment briefly on the United States and the questions here because let me assure you that most Americans are thinking the exact same thing we are concerned we are worried we are a pluralistic society we celebrate that and yet we are fearful that minorities in our society and in particular people of color and in particular the Muslim community will be susceptible to increased violence in addition to being president of an NGO I also am president of a university and we have signed letters to the president elect saying we will hold him personally accountable for establishing a climate and an environment in the United States that does not allow these things to happen and let me just pledge right now that should there be a registry for Muslims in the United States I will be the first person to register now my I've already explained that to my Jewish mother who is a little concerned about it but she will be the second person to register oh great thank you thank you God Madera you wanted to comment I wanted to maybe take make a few comments on something on what my esteemed co-panelist have mentioned I think that there is a lot of misperceptions about the quality or the quantity or the caliber of women in the region when it comes from people inside the region as well as when people look from outside into the region I mean you mentioned the issue of STEM education I did a research at one point in time looking at the possibility of the Middle East becoming sort of like the India of for Europe when it comes to offshoring and of course in offshoring of knowledge intensive activities and one of the things that I looked at I wanted to see how many engineers and scientists are graduating from the universities in the region in comparison to other regions in the world and what I found out is that the number of women engineers not the percentage because percentage could be very misleading but the number of women engineers in the Middle East I mean far exceeded by about like 50% or more the number of women engineers in western Europe and we always think about western Europe to be a very very technologically driven and very sort of like open environment so for instance just looking at once at one indicator you see that we do have the capabilities we do have the the talents coming to the point that Mr. Ambassador mentioned about economic contribution when we have certain laws on the books unfortunately we still have them on the books that in one way or the other give rise to interpretations to hold women back in whatever means it is economic implication and there have been many many studies again done for instance the most latest one by the IMF the IMF has gotten into the business of gender issues in a very very outstanding way I have to comment them on that to measure what could be the contribution of women would women have had the chance to participate in the economy the same way as women have elsewhere in the world I am not talking about equality between men and women but just in terms of if the women in the region had the same opportunities and everything as elsewhere what would be the contribution to the GDP which is important and we found that these reports and I would be happy to give the reference to anybody who is interested after the session it found that between the piece the economies of this region could have increased between 30 to 40 percent more can you imagine every single person in our region having had an income by about 30 to 40 percent more this is an incredible incredible I would say cost to the region it could be it could go so much further to stem you know the feeling of deprivation as feeds into the extremism it could go to being able to have better education systems have better health systems be able to fight against climate change a lot a lot a lot can can happen and unfortunately we choose and somehow in the process it has been seen as well if we give more equality to women then we are going to lose but not everybody is going to gain through this process and I think that that is something that we need to really focus on across all of the sustainable development goals that this equality is going to help everyone in the region and that's what I wanted to talk about the interesting thing is there's not going to be any equality or human rights or democracy if we don't find a way to stop the wars the same countries that are basically promoting human rights and democracy and all of this are the same governments that are selling weapons right and left governments are spending more money in weapons than education so we have to find a solution and a way to stop all these wars I was in Portugal and on a panel on refugees the Europeans are still talking about migration and migration I don't think the Americans thousands of Syrians are leaving their families behind and everything they have grown up so that they can really come on tourism to Europe absolutely not they were banned out of their houses so until we are citizens of paying taxes in the United States and in Europe question our governments to stop selling and giving weapons to to war infections nothing is going to happen and we have to be accountable also to you as people who are paying weapons paying taxes you have to ask where your money is going to and if I was American I would even be freaking out now where my money is going to so the point is we all are accountable to what we do and our actions and our inactions we have to stop the war in Yemen stop the war in Libya stop the war in Syria and Iraq and everywhere it's not a question of bunch of boys you know calling whatever misinterpreting the you know religion it's beyond that and we have to be accountable but the fact that we are just leaving it and saying well you know all these men with suits are going to bring peace you know in Geneva and New York it's ain't going to happen so I think we have to we you know we are mobilizing in our in the Middle East women are mobilizing communities are mobilizing against the war and corruption and all of this and I hope that you guys would stop you know exporting weapons to our freedom thank you I see the gentleman in the middle here it's nice we're having the men ask questions thank you for coming and participating thank you so much my name is Siobhan I work for the Middle East Research Institute a think tank based in Erbil I'm here for sorry louder can you speak louder yes thank you my name is Siobhan I work for the Middle East Research Institute a small I really commend the this very timely event and practically for Miss Manals recommendations which I believe are very effective for researchers and policy workers my question is actually is there any sorts of engagement from SDG point of view or from USIP point of view to engage the Kurdish government or the Iraqi federal government as the tremendous need of psychosocial support and post-traumatic disorder that the displaced women are in big need and especially the Yazidi survivors and my second I would say an observation is actually throughout my lifetime I have experienced war five times I think the one way to stop this renewed cycle of conflict is from Western governments and also United States especially to help nation building and I'm not sure if US or other western countries have the appetite to help the Arab region or MENA region to address those challenges because we need help to institutionalize and address those very technical issues with policies and bills that are liberating and are helping our women and finally I would say eventually for peace and prosperity to prevail. Thank you so much. Now would you like to take that question? In terms of the first question I think it's a really essential question the psychosocial and the trauma and it's very much tied in my opinion to the ending the wars because if we're negotiating just from interest and we're not seeing the trauma and we're not seeing kind of the historical trauma that's tied to seeing over and over people are not negotiating an interest and what's missing from a lot of the negotiation table is often Syria, Libya and Yemen it's usually interest of individuals not interest of the country but on the institution building it's a really tricky slippery slope because what we've seen is when the international community does nation building it tends to be a checklist, add water stir, there isn't the proper investment in terms of what we're talking about which is institutional building and I would say I appreciate so much of what you said and in particular the idea of the political war to stop the war because that is essential but the reality is it's not different than needing the infrastructure because that's what resilience is is when countries have institutions that are resilient then if you have the protests in the street then if you have other issues that happen then the institutions in some governments have actually been able to be proactively responsive and we've had Edward Said said I can die in Alayah Hamel he did die and come back in a hundred years and start with the current crisis in the Middle East we have to get out of the mindset of crisis response we have to actually dig really deep and build the institutions that are needed to be resilient when we saw through the 1930s it was Arab revolt after Arab revolt after Arab revolt I mean this is not something that is only happening in the last decade we saw it right after the only thing that put a stop to the Arab revolt was the dictatorships and that's what gave birth to the strong man myth that that's the only way to have stability in the region which is a myth the real way of having it long term is to invest in fragile states is to invest in resilience building which is I think a little bit of what you're saying in terms of helping KRG helping Lebanon help let's not sacrifice the war because we're chasing a lot right we have allies that need as much support as possible that would be considered fragile and if we're not investing them proactively then we come running with the crisis and wanting to stop things and it's too late and it's a whole of government approach that's needed and I don't mean specifically the US government I mean each government needs to be looking if they're going to be involved in defense then we should be demanding that they're involved in diplomacy and development should be a requirement you have to be able to invest in terms of really building in and I think something that has been said by this administration that I hope will continue is it has to be region led again this region knows war it knows conflict in countries like Yemen it knows poverty which means it knows its solutions so if we take our cue from local actors and regional players and really follow and allow the design to happen from the region I think we will see dramatic difference in the challenges we're still doing it in capitals we're still providing prescriptions and your point which is I think absolutely solid is we're not providing resources we have tons of advice but such little resources to actually make change I think in this I have to acknowledge that Dutch have been really excellent in terms of working with the communities directly and supporting movements and all that so they're more involved than anyone I know I think the young woman behind the young man who has the question has a question for us I thank you for calling me young so my name is Patty I work for the director of national intelligence and as many people know in this room our job is to try to put a holistic picture together and the way I interpret it is so we can do a whole of government so we can do defense diplomacy and development and have a common sheet of music for understanding what is it that the people really need what is it at the heart of the drivers of conflict that we can begin to unravel and I've sort of had my own personal commitment for years now which I call intelligence support to soft power which I don't think we do a good job on obviously not just the intelligence community a lot of other actors even more so have the right knowledge but I can't remember I think it was Menal that made a comment about go to the local understand from their perspective so I just thought maybe you had any of you might have some ideas about what we might be missing in the United States in terms of understanding how to get to that heart of the conflict how to pick the most appropriate ways to intervene that are not fueling violence they are turning back strategically towards a new way we can be a better partner great thank you for that question and thank you for coming we really appreciate your presence here and I think that's a great question which is somebody from the US government asking panelists advice about the best way to do that perhaps through vehicles or other ways so Don would you like to start sure I'll ask each one of the panelists to respond I think they're doing a better job than we have in the past I think the idea that policies are made in Washington or New York or Beijing for that matter are appropriate in local settings is something that I think we're rebelling against I know that for example at USAID before any project begins there are civil society consultations and indeed an attempt to get out of the city and to talk to local populations in local languages my first experience with development occurred 40 years ago when I was asked to start a development project to stop violence in the Central African Republic and I went out to the region with $2 million a year for the next three years and talked to the generals and the governors and the mayors and they all said we need more arms we need to put down rebellions we need better training and then that night my Peace Corps volunteer friend said let's go out to the marketplace tomorrow and what we found was that the real problem of violence was a lack of commitment by people to their society which resulted from poverty, which resulted from bad education and mostly from health conditions everyone had malaria, everyone had schistosomiasis, 40% of the kids were stunted there was a failure in maternal and child healthcare and so over the course of the next three years we implemented at the leadership of the women in that society projects designed to build local capacity so we trained midwives and we assisted the creation of clean water sources and then trained people how to take care of the wells and we trained people how to drain the swamps and get rid of the snails schistosomiasis and weigh their children and put together small health huts over the course of the next three years infant mortality fell by 2 thirds as did maternal mortality you looked at every condition of social wellness and it improved and there was never to this day another act of violence in that region or rebellion and so if we're looking at the real causes of insecurity they come from this kind of social value and again for me the single lesson is nothing about them without them listen to the local voices great lightning round here we'll go with each panelist as we wrap this up but basically advice, advice to the US government with this new incoming administration it's all the more important we are suspecting if she gets confirmed and I hope she does Governor Nikki Haley who will be our UN ambassador we're waiting for our secretary of state obviously let's hear your advice to this new incoming administration on this issue I think that part of the reason again when I compare this region to other regions is that there's very little serious research being done by people from the region in this country as well as in the universities and inside the region and so very often we depend on anecdotal evidence or small this NGO versus that NGO saying I think that in order to have very well grounded policies we need to do really good research and that is missing and I say that as a because somebody asked to write a big report on women's work and I was looking everywhere to find good pieces solid rigorous analytical pieces that were done and it wasn't being done enough in this region in comparison to other regions so my advice to incoming administration please do invest some in creating the think pieces inside the region but we have very few think tanks we have very few good research institutions that is the area where people can kind of bring from the bottom up through service through really very good service what really the issues are and then be able to arrive at some conclusions the few pieces of research that I did was sort of like I came up with totally counterintuitive findings than what I had been led to believe in my you know just reading the newspapers or media so the real very good political, economic social all sorts anthropologic every discipline we need to really invest in these in these areas in the region from people from inside the region across the region so that at least we can come up with really informed policies great thank you so we've got three minutes left a minute and a half now my main thing is I'm going to go back to political will I mean you know I was in the room in Benghazi when people not just women people were spelling out I want to smack my head when I think about how much they predicted what would happen they spelled it out the moment triply is liberated this will happen and we were in the room including US government including the UN so I don't know the answer I think that's something that we really have to challenge ourselves because I think we're being heard and I think that's what we're seeing a lot you're seeing the right recommendations being made institutions are large so changing the institutions I think are incredibly slow so you know 1325 outlines beautifully we don't need talking points we have them but if you look at you know how many heads of mission for the UN are women how many negotiators in these large conflicts are women and despite that it's the UN that's reporting all the wonderful statistics about the power of women at the negotiating table yet we're not role modeling so in short that would be my message every government every European government every US government the UN League of Arab States we need countries what to do and we need to start showing them what to do and the power when women are at the head I hope there's going to be American foreign policy you know let's hope there is a foreign policy and I think the second thing is to really listen to the locals to involve them and of course women are the core of the society and involving women of course every study shows that you know women are more committed to peace and I think that's very important but I think the municipals and the local groups and you know the elders and all of this should be involved because what happens is governments are talking to governments that are legitimate who are instigating the war to begin with so and supporting opposition that they have never been to the countries they're supposed to be fighting for so I think it's extremely important that the US government or Europeans or others who have a vested interest a to have a priority for peace and you know and me to make sure that they are dealing with the locals and I agree with you Manal everyone talks about women you know 1325 and involving women and it's the United Nations they don't even have one woman as a peace envoy to any country of conflict so they definitely are not leading by example so more women and yeah I think the answer will be with the locals because they have a vested interest politicians only think about tomorrow right the locals will stay there for the long term so I think this is a way and have access and credibility with the locals because locals would not talk to governments that they don't necessarily you know respect and I think that they're after their interest thank you thank you thank you for telling us your real feelings you are what's needed here in Washington we hope you will continue to do so ambassador Sahran we're giving you the last word here as we're wrapping up and we would ask everyone to please stay in your seats because we are honored to have our keynote addressed here right here in this room immediately after the ambassador's remarks thank you very much and I would like to thank you all for coming today and panelists and Mr. Stenberg you are the only gentleman here we are ladies thank you for your braveness to come and address this issue woman really I would like to thank the United States Institute of Peace for hosting us this morning and in this forum and my special thanks to Ambassador Inas Mikawi for being with us today she made her way from Cairo unfortunately she is going to leave this evening this is not a good news but we are trying to keep her but we really appreciate her coming the issue is very interesting we are in the Arab League we try to get what issue should we what theme we should discuss in the forum we have refugees we have women we have other issues but we decided to have the women the role of women in Arab women to be discussed my last question maybe we don't have time somebody have touched the problem of refugees come for the Arab women how you are dealing with it or the question for Ambassador Inas Mikawi how the Arab League or any initiative or any NGOs approach these refugees can be they are full of women and children so if we can highlight some point on this issue please thank you thank you thank you Ambassador Mikawi we have our last comment thank you your excellency and and I have to thank all the panelists for this an an extraordinary session it is a clear obvious negotiation concerning one of the most important issue in our region the women's status concerning the refugees initiatives it's part of the implementation action plan for the 1325 it took a big pillar to be discussed but as a League of Arab States we used to visit the refugees camps in Iraq Jordan Lebanon and now in Djipouti we are with Hibak deciding to have a visit to Somalia and I think after two months we'll be there Hibak I have to know but we endorse an important report concerning the women refugees in the Arab region and we consolidated some remarks and important remarks and we are working with the women especially for empowered women in the refugee camps we have a lot of projects with the UN women and part of the initiative for Khadija it was to empower women in refugee status how to collect how to put all the women businessmen together to target some project for these women which they are working with and how to engage the institutions and the financial institutions especially some Arab African and Arab European Bank to make some project and we started already thank you please join me in thanking our panelists for the wonderful discussion today welcome as I mentioned please remain in your seats as we welcome our next keynote speaker to the stage all right everyone thank you for your patience as we've made some small adjustments to the schedule we thought that it would be better to keep you here in this auditorium for our keynote speakers remarks as she is on a tight time schedule and getting you out to lunch and seated would have taken up time that we would rather have you being asking questions and doing Q&A so apologies for that but we are very pleased to have Ilhan Omar with us today my name is Linda Beshai I am the director of North Africa programs here at USIP and it is my great pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker Ms. Ilhan Omar the newly elected Minnesota State House representative for the District in Minneapolis Ms. Omar is the first Somali American Muslim woman to hold an elected office at this level but she comes to this office with plenty of experience and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone who knows her in addition to having experience as a progressive activist coalition builder and educator Ms. Omar has recently served as the director of policy initiatives at women organizing women where she encouraged East American women to serve in local leadership roles and then proceeded to set a terrific example she has been active and interested in politics since the age of 14 when she attended the local Democratic farmer labor party caucuses with her grandfather her exposure to grassroots advocacy at that early age got her hooked on politics and the Democratic process lucky for us and she believes in working to make her community and her state better than anyone. Please join me in welcoming Representative Elect Ilhan Omar. It's really exciting to be here I was thinking about coming here and I'm at a conference for state innovation for state leaders and last night I gave a remark a woman who is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants came up to me crying and she said it hadn't done on me but it did tonight that for the first time when we talk about firsts in anything it's usually men and for the first time they're not saying Ilhan is the first woman elected Ilhan is the first elected ever and as we talk today about the role of women leaders it is important for us to remember that we need to uplift our women and encourage leadership. For me that wasn't always the case when I first decided to run people told me it's impossible for you to win Ilhan nobody believed that someone like me could connect with communities other than East African immigrants nobody believed that someone like me could inspire disenfranchised groups of people to get involved nobody believed someone like me could be an incumbent who has been in office for 44 years but voters in my district believed in something different in Minneapolis they were ready to make a change to elect not the first woman but the first Somali American lawmaker in the US and in my district we increased voter turnout by 40% it was a historic campaign not only because I was the first but because of what we've been able to do in mobilizing people our campaign mobilized over 400 volunteers and were able to knock over 100,000 doors that kind of political energy hadn't been mobilized in our district or in our state for years voters in my district made history because they were able to choose a candidate that shared their values and understood that issues from a lived experience when voters are able to see themselves in a political candidate they're able to realize within their communities and when communities are empowered to make their voices heard we can fight for a world we all want to live in and we can win democracies need to be a reflection of the voices of all of us in order to flourish but too many women are being told the same things I was it's impossible for you to win there is no path forward I know in many parts of the world including the Arab region women are drastically underrepresented in parliaments in an average parliament women leaders number less than 20% in my own country in Somalia we are just setting a quota for 30% and I am praying that we get there we can't expect to build a healthy democracy if our candidates don't reflect the communities they serve we need to actively support female leaders in order to create a system of governments that engage all of our voices to understand the role of effective democracy in my race it is important to get a clear picture of where I live so I want to take you in on my journey and how this all works out in District 60B it's unlike any other in the state of Minnesota and in our nation retired couples live next door to college students immigrant communities live in high-rise apartments on the same street as single family homes I represent the most diverse district in the state and possibly in the nation which was our campaign's biggest challenge and the key to our success the three largest communities in my district are longtime residents East Africans and students most people assume that those groups have nothing in our race most people did assume that it was impossible for all of those groups to rally around a single candidate but by emphasizing on the strength of our communities not our differences our campaign was able to build unity we didn't rely on one community to outfold the other instead we performed intentional outreach in every group in order to connect to our shared progressive values our campaign tapped into pre-existing networks to accomplish this we engaged current community leaders and empowered our supporters to become leaders themselves we believed in offering everyone an opportunity to be part of something bigger than ourselves we worked hard to make sure that East Africans students and longtime residents could see themselves as reflected in our campaign our campaign was grounded in building inclusion many people assumed that women and people in areas where everyone looks like us and shares our identity but not in our district Somali women and especially just Somalis are actually in the minority of that population to increase the number of female leaders we all need to believe in the good will of voters to elect someone who shares the candidates vision not their identity this is what happened in my district and it could happen everywhere across the globe including the parts where we all come from and the Arab region diverse coalitions are the future of democracy and it is possible for women like us in this room to create them increasing the number of women leaders will build power in both voters and in systems of government democracy depends on diverse voices and in order to build a strong democracy all parts of the world must start to depend on its women leaders we know that it's not going to be easy each one of us has too many experiences proven intolerance in all around the world in Minnesota we are all working towards building an inclusive community a Minnesota where a child is physically emotionally and relationally safe and that is what I want for all of us to work with and I want to have a chance to have a chance to have a chance of the world a Minnesota where every child has an opportunity to achieve their full potential and a Minnesota that puts a greater hope in the future of our children in the memories of the past a Minnesota that is finest which we can represent as Americans and strive to be united in diversity in all and I hope that we will get more out in the questions is to realize that for many parts of the world women are often marginalized but that happens so much here in the United States it is one of the things we really don't talk about women are very much underrepresented here in our government a lot of people write the fact that they're excited that a woman who is Muslim hijabi can win office here where she wouldn't be able to win in her own country for me I know that's not the reality and I know most of you in this room know that what we need to start to do is to believe in that power of knowing that we've overcome so much and we can continue to overcome that and we need to be creative that says we need somebody to give us something and instead of knowing that we can take it so I thank you all thank you so much for your remarks I do not want to take up too much time although I would love to just join Ilhan for coffee later and pepper her with questions what I would like to do what I propose to do since I suspect there will be many questions I would start thinking about what you might want to say and I'd ask Ilhan if she could address a general theme which I would like to propose which is if there are young people in the audience today or who are watching the webcast or watching your career what advice would you give them for what they need to think about if they're interested in becoming an international organization it's knowing that this is a critical moment for the country and for young people to be involved what could you say what guidance could you give them so chew on that and let's take a couple more questions to add to that one right here good morning I am Hajir Nadia I work for the international organization for migration with 65 million people displaced around the world and half of them being women and women of power even though they are displaced and uprooted maybe you can share a little bit of your experience here coming to the U.S. and remaining confident and empowered throughout the years until now I mean so I was going to take another question right here in the front yes you want me to yeah go ahead my name is Sahar Khabis I want to congratulate you Ilhan on this great victory and on the night of your victory it was a very momental night not just because of your victory but it was also the elections night and we all know what that means so I actually did a post after the election results were out saying that if somebody wants a moment of you know some kind of a positive thing to look up to and to find some kind of hope and some light at the end of the tunnel look at this video of Ilhan Omar the first Somali American woman who won this important seat but here is the very important question now this turning moment right this moment of the elections results also now I heard you say in your speech that you know we have to think about what we can do and our own ability but I can hear the voices of some skeptical voices saying wait a minute but now we are after the elections results are out on November 8th this turning moment in U.S. policy in U.S. administration the new reality imposing itself on the ability of other young people other women people coming from the Middle East from other parts of the world women wearing hijab like yourself reaching their full potential and what kind of advice can you give in this regard thank you so to to the question of empowerment I actually I'm going to be a little controversial I reject the idea of empowering women I think we need to just remove ourselves from being married to that idea and allow women to step into their power and so I think you know when I was I was 8 years old when the war happened in my country Somalia and we fled and lived in a refugee camp for 4 years and I'm the youngest of many children and in our family we were raised much of with gender neutral identities my father and grandfather really didn't believe in the ideas of men and women and gender roles and so I was fortunate enough or maybe unfortunate I don't know to not really be bogged down by the limitations of what I could do as someone who was gendered female and I think you know as I reflect back on that time in my life and in the refugee camp and what life was like it was always the women who did most of the chores who did most of the registration with the agencies who were the planners of the strategy on how they were going to get their families out of that space at least in my observation it sounded like because of the stresses of what was happening the man checked out remind you I'm 8 but that is what I was observing and I think we need to remind ourselves that in moments of crisis it is the women who step up and so I think in knowing that in many of these cases that the women are the leaders of their families and continuing that narrative that allows them to see the power that they have in that decision making process I think it's ultimately what will generate more of that power and believe in knowing that they are the saviors of their own selves to the question of the despair it's a difficult time although I'm an extremely optimistic person I do realize that it is a time that is going to be very challenging for us I love history and what I know from history is that people who look like me and share many of my identities in this country have overcome many obstacles and have faced many challenges and as I tell young people when I have visited universities and high schools since the election is that I grew up in post-911 US with Bush administration and I survived and I know that we will survive the fascist presidents that we are unfortunate to have but the way that we do is by allowing and seeing the opportunity that we have at this moment we have an opportunity to rise up we have an opportunity to show up in our communities more than we have you know if I just address myself as a Muslim what I do know is that most of us oftentimes are insular in the things that we advocate for and the things that we work towards and I think this is a particular opportunity for us to practice solidarity for us to make sure that we are showing up for others that share our other identities so I am Muslim but I am also black I am also an immigrant and I am also a woman and so showing up in all of those causes and making sure that I do take an active role in fighting to fighting for all marginalized communities not just the one that shares my main identity and I think that is what I am hoping that we collectively do regardless of what our main identity is and I am hoping that our white allies also understand that this isn't a time to compromise this isn't a time for us to think about what is what is politically safe for us to have a conversation about and I say fascist and I get in trouble all the time because people are like it is the president that you call fascist and I said he calls me terrorist so I have every right I have every right to call that out and I think when we normalize things bigger problems happen and we know that from history when we say it's not going to be that bad we are going to be okay with this this kind of behavior because they don't really mean it not everyone is going to go along with it we know we get a president like him and so I am going to be vigilant I hope everybody is and I am going to be active and I hope everybody is and this is how we get through it and I think and I was in DC two weeks ago for a new Americans leaders economy where we had 33 new elected who are immigrants like me or first second generation and and that provides a counter narrative and it only happened because we were having that kind of a national election people saw what was happening with the national election and said I need to step up as a leader I need to do something in my own communities and I think more of that will happen and I hope that in in 17 for a lot of municipal races that we get more minority communities running for office and in 18 we do the same thing and you know in 19 and 2020 well as you can see her answers are not boring so I encourage you to ask more questions let's take from the other side of the whole I just hope you edit it when you tweet my answers no one on that side okay yes in the middle Salam alaikum congratulations actually during your campaign there was five of us who are whispers or campaigners in hiding including and I'm really glad that there's younger generation right now getting involved in politics because that's where the whole game is being rigged against newcomers and immigrants in general and my question to you you tied up we mentioned that there is election going on in Somalia right now and there's a lot of people that we know are there already from all over the reason that you succeeded and campaigned successfully because the rules of campaigning are clear but Tayib you know that she withdrew last this week because the rules of campaigning and the dates it keep changing and shifting every second for the last five months what do you suggest for our international community supporters since Minneapolis is the capital for us at this time temporarily when it comes to political campaigning to do to make sure that the efforts and the resources dedicated for political stability and inclusiveness are really adhered to by many many corrupt many of the discussions today have been addressing or talking about corruption there is violence there's other issues lack of resources but also there's a lot of corruption that sometimes hinders any improvement and development we do thank you very much let's take one or two more gentlemen and white at the back and do try to keep your questions concise yes sorry first of all congratulations on your elections but I want to bring you to the other side of your role now you are an elected official from Arab descent all others that have been elected in the US have kind of find a strategy of not highlighting their Arab identity and so that as their way of survival so how do you think you can with your successful campaign lead a national movement where we can have a political power where we can have a lobbying power the Arab American community is extremely talented with all the needed resources but is extremely underrepresented and we cannot influence the policies that are targeting our home home countries how do you think can we start that how do you think can you lead this national movement into having political power and let's squeeze in one from Ronda thank you for joining us today my question has to do with I'm assuming you haven't been seated yet as a legislator but I wanted to know what your priorities are for legislation itself within the Minnesota house and just a quick if I might sideline as I worked for president George W. Bush I was in his administration so I have to say he still holds the record for the president that appointed the most Arab and Muslim Americans to senior policy making positions and I was one of those and I'm very proud of that so I think history tends to forget some of those good things that he did you know we also visited a mosque and called Islam a religion of peace right after 9-11 when we dearly needed it so I have to say many good things about my old boss with respect to that thank you so to to the question of corruption so I I have to say I don't really haven't really followed much of these Somali elections because they were happening the same time I was running for but we you know I think let's see how do I say this so you know Somalia is coming out of a civil war and I think we have the first the first government in place that is not part of a transition I think right four years I think isn't often times enough to set up systems that can fight corruption and so I would say that there is an opportunity for us to advocate and suggest some anti-corruption measures I think we want to make sure that we are not only providing lip service into talking about the fact that we want to get rid of corruption but that we are actively doing something about it and I think the Somali diaspora and in the way that we fund political candidates for Somali elections have to bear some responsibility for some of that corruption and I think it would be interesting for us to have an honest conversation so I don't really know if I have good answers not being fully informed I don't want to dive into that because I pay attention more here this last year than I did in Somalia my husband now would have a different conversation with you I think you might have some suggestions so the idea of advocacy is something that I've actually been thinking about a lot when I was first having conversations with people about running you know there is there was to talk about what part of my identities that I needed to talk less about and what part of my identities that I needed to normalize and make less visible I remember sitting with a community leader and he said you know I know Ilhan you wear a headscarf but just for a couple of months through the caucus process maybe you might want to just take off your headscarf and then I remember the ones that were like you can't wear a nose ring it has something to do with class and some people will see you as classless if you kept your nose ring and I oftentimes in most of my speeches begin with either a passage from the Quran or Hadid I did last night and they said you know it's just the headlines Ilhan there's just going to be headlines I don't know if you want to keep doing that but what I believe is that people oftentimes need to have an identity and I really love who I am and everything about me and I wanted to fully and boldly show up as myself there are the days that I have my abaya on and I will show up at that rally with it if you're uncomfortable that is you vote for me that's two votes I probably shouldn't have and so I believed that in order for you to set a path that others can follow that you have to bear that burden of having those uncomfortable conversations and so that is why I chose to more visibly be my full self and I think it is important for us to remember that as Muslims and Arabs citizens of this country that our citizenship is not conditional and I will say a lot of people think our citizenship is conditional they will say you can't say this you will you know you can't do that it is controversial there are certain things that you have to do and certain circles that you have to move in in order for you to be acceptable and for me I don't believe my citizenship is conditional and so I feel like when my father took the oath I became a citizen as a kid so I didn't really take the oath that gave me the full rights of this country and I am going to practice my first amendment right to freedom of speech and to religion and everything and I think once we recognize that then we can go about how to actively push for policies that we care about policies that affect us not only in this country but affect those that live in the countries we all come from and to tie it back to the bush administration you are right there are some pluses and some negatives for me when I say I survived the bush administration not policy wise it's the rhetoric of what surrounded you know, post 9-11 and having someone like him as a president but if we are to be honest as a Muslim there's a lot more policies that negatively impact those that I care about that came through the Obama administration right and so knowing that it is not okay for us to be complacent in feeling normalized because we have someone who cares about our identity someone who kindly speaks to us and is actively doing something that would make a lot of us who are Muslim really want to cast a ballot because you are actively supporting those policies by voting for this person right and so we need to have a process where we are informed of all of these harmful policies and realize that as full citizens we get to advocate and have you know conversations with policy makers about how we feel about these certain policies and actively block them that is a right that we have oh and my policies so I'm in the minority I will be in the minority going in and so I ran on affordable and accessible college and reform and criminal justice system and getting rid of mandatory sentencing and re-instituting a parole board in our state and getting rid of the grand jury process so full reform and supporting small businesses and fostering entrepreneurship so I feel a little confident in knowing that my counterparts on the other side are actively engaged in criminal justice reform and so I will find partners in pushing for some of those and small businesses is the model of the Republicans so I'm looking forward to having those conversations and hopefully getting some of those done I don't know about affordable college so we'll see where we can make headway and where I can find partnerships and I think of myself as someone who is interested in working on behalf of the common good and I know that there are a lot of Republicans in Minnesota who care about the common good and so I think we'll put our partisan hats to the side and hopefully work on behalf of Minnesota and so I'm optimistic we have one final question the last word to Ambassador Sarhan Thank you very much Elhan, thank you for coming over I appreciate it very much really you are very proud of you and you are a very good example for Arab and Muslim women in your place I would like to convey big congratulations from His Excellency's Secretary General of Arab League Ahmad Abu Ghayt and he said congratulations for your election really, as I said you are a very good example and I'm sure you will have some challenges and even your work you will find a way just to clear a way is a bad image about Muslim about terrorism, about things and Islamophobia you know Islamophobia now is a kind of a tendency in this time and I think you have a big role to play on this and to clear this bad image should we take a question I think that this has provided us plenty of food for thought there is also food for digestion and after we leave the stage please exit the auditorium dinner sorry lunch is set up in the great hall outside and please join me in thanking Representative Elect Ilhan Omar it does seem brighter it does that's so interesting do you want to turn your seat a little bit more and we can see each other yeah let's just make it our own living room alright good good and we'll wait till they come on board I'm not sure if we're ready to begin but we're all ready and so I'm looking at our organizers good afternoon and welcome back from lovely luncheon I hope you had time to catch up with colleagues or to meet some new colleagues my name is Kathleen Kinest I am the senior gender advisor here at the US Institute of Peace and it is my pleasure and honor to welcome you all this afternoon we have a wonderful young and very energetic panel to discuss really looking at the future but I wanted to begin with just a thought on some of the conversations from this morning and the word invisible kept coming up and how we made visible and I think of that is very much what I do every day as a gender advisor is trying to make the invisible parts of our gendered identities that is for men and women visible so that we understand more of our opportunities for peace building in the world and this afternoon we're really going to look at the national level to the grassroots and how young Arab women are really looking at the future how they are looking at their own leaderships whether it's within a country or within a community and how they are in fact networking and helping to empower one another we're certainly going to talk about breaking barriers as representative Ilhan Omar just spoke about certainly breaking barriers in the national House of Representatives and certainly here in Minnesota we're also going to be looking at assessing Arab and global initiatives focusing on women and really making recommendations for the way forward so I want to introduce you all to our three panelists and to welcome them on my left is Marwa Alkaru she is the manager of Partnership Development International Youth Foundation she is here in the United States where she has been working since 2012 with the foundation previously she worked with the Carter Center as an elections consultant in Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt as well as South Sudan she received her masters of arts in Arab study from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and is a regular speaker on a lot of different panels here in the States we're going to come back in a few minutes our second panelist here this afternoon is Esmar Ayari she is with the US Institute of Peace as a program specialist in Tunis and thank you very much for stepping in for our panelists who unfortunately was unable to make it this afternoon Esmar has long been engaged in issues around civil society she was founder and president of Amina an organization working on issues of gender and sexual harassment and she is previously a facilitator with the International Republican Institute IRI elections mission welcome our third panelist is Hajar Shawarif she's a co-founder of Libya man Nabni I hope I said that pretty well yeah she is she has been making a lot of Li as she was appointed by the secretary general of the UN Mr. Ban Ki-moon as a member in the advisory committee for the progress study of youth peace and security you may be aware that there is a new Security Council resolution 2020 to 50 like we have called it women peace and security this is called youth peace and security so we'll hear more from Hajar about this effort but she will also talk about her life as a young woman amidst the Libyan revolution in 2011 and how her efforts on the ground to look at the role and more directly in youth and peace building so to get things started I've asked each of them to take five minutes to actually talk about where they came from and when they wake up in the morning what the issue is that's first on their mind and how their own background they're very young people but what was that kind of spark in their lives and I'm going to start here with Mara Thank you Kathleen and it's a pleasure and an honor to be with everyone here today thank you for giving us the opportunity USIP and the League of Arab States to speak on such an important issue related to Arab women at such a critical time in our history and especially in the Middle East and North Africa with the situation that has befallen in the past several years my name is Marwa Marwa is a unique name that was given to me by my grandmother my grandmother comes from the north of Iraq my family comes from the north of Iraq from a city called Mosul which I think is not too unfamiliar to many of us today because of the current situation in Mosul in the United States I'm a complex hybrid of Iraqi American Arab Muslim woman and that identity has really shaped who I am what I believe what my passion what my spark is in this life I had the fortune to have a mother and a father who pushed us and wanted us to go to Iraq every year of our lives so my year time school year was spent in the United States and in the summers it was in my grandparents homes in the north of Iraq and Mosul while I would go to Iraq and I would drive these crazy 12 hour drives between Jordan Jordan borders, Iraq borders go into Iraq, drive from Baghdad up north to Mosul I saw this amazing nation during the 90s which as many of you remember is when the sanctions were imposed and I saw a lot of suffering, I saw a lot of difficulty I saw a lot of potential that could be that existed but was untapped because of the situation that was there those early days of my life are really what formulated why I wanted to go into a field that was linked to international relations a field that would take me into the nonprofit sector so that I could help young people people in Iraq in the Middle East and North Africa to maximize that untapped potential from then I decided to take on my bachelors my masters in the field of IR in the field of Arab studies and I tried everything from research to elections to consulting on various democracy programs but really at the end of the day what I saw was the strongest was the power of youth and the potential of youth and what they are doing and what they can continue to be doing so I focused very clearly on working in youth development and which is why today I'm currently working in the International Youth Foundation where we believe in the extraordinary power of young people to accomplish great things young women, young men and I hope I can use some of that experience today to speak with all of you about the important issues around Arab women Thank you so much for getting us going and really opening the blinds if you will into how your own childhood began to help you figure out and choose what it is you do every day now so thank you Esma tell us a little bit about your background I was born in Tunis and if I travel a lot around the region the Arab region but I always when I go I hear, well Tunis you have it not good and in part I personally was affected by this propaganda that I believed until it wasn't true and I started seeing that it's the first thing in front of me that is hindering the change because you cannot change when everyone is convinced that all is well and this is specifically for women I have six other sisters so yeah I have many siblings growing up with my sisters the more I grew up the more I know that my middle middle class family has protected me enough the privileges I had I wasn't protected because I was protected in the country I was protected because I had something that backs me up with the economic family privileges and the more I grew up the more I separate from those privileges the more I am prone to what everyone else is prone to violence mainly and discrimination so that's when this was a transition from high school to college where I I was open and out there for everyone and I figured what has protected me so far is no longer there and this the case for a large percentage of other girls and this is when I wanted to not be affected by the propaganda and the publicity that we're good we're fine with the most dedicated in the Arab world with the most free and this is what the state has been working on to promote because it serves the image and it serves the regime mainly and on the politics but it's shutting down any other voice that says otherwise and hence there weren't any changes happening and I felt it personally so before right before the revolution in 2010 I decided to tackle one specific issue which was sexual harassment in school settings initially my idea was very broad it was meant for everyone it was answer to power dynamics mainly school teachers and students in general but the closer I get the more at least statistically and number wise I know it is a bigger issue it is a woman issue that our gender dynamics is very much included and that's when I started formulating more defined rhetorics as opposed to I want to fight sexual harassment I figured that it's being a woman is not that easy and I had to join current efforts to tackle that so that was a marking point of my life when I figured that things are bigger than problems are bigger than what I thought and that's when I was confronted mind you this was 2010 so right before the revolution the civil society formats were different you had to have several permits and several licenses before you get your association to register and right there in all this process the revolution happened so the organizations I looked up to the people I wanted to join I've long heard about a big feminist organization that I wanted to be a part of when the revolution happened we all stopped for a second and we wanted to redress to relook at things they had the chance and we had it too but at some point we all lost contact and the people I so wanted to join they don't represent me anymore because they didn't acknowledge that there is something that happened and that can be seized and it's a huge opportunity for everyone to reassess and rework but they didn't do that so we reached a point I think in 2011-2012 where we have two activist communities one that sees the other which is the younger generation as overly critical of their work too radical and overly demanding and one on the other side which is the older one has too submissive they didn't reach further when they could and they tell them what was enough for you is not necessarily enough now and you need to acknowledge this point of time that things happened and things changed and we all just to jump in on that moment and see so in this respect there is something very minor at the time I think sorry 2013 there was a face group called Women and Letters literally for women who write things poems be anything and eventually it evolved into something called Collective Shamil Shamil is a grassroots collective that is presently governed they well we were radical where we objected to any form of structural organization as we saw from what we inherited from older organizations that we too organized we end up being the institution of activism hinders activism so we were the first representation of grassroots we do acknowledge the successes they left for us and what we learned from them keep it short sorry I advise you all to go on Shamil blog that can tell you anything Shamil has a two-liner definition says it's a group of Tunisian women who wanted a change and it's free and it's open you can see anything in that but the more we grow up and the more we five to six years since revolution but we still we acknowledge the fact that scattered effort doesn't lead anywhere and we want to join in forces but there is this gap that we still need to bridge between to come back to that gap and try to figure out if we have some common spaces here thank you so much Hajer you're also doing something called extremely together about what you all can do to counter violent extremism you have another group called together we built it you've been busy tell us a little bit about your life day to day right now you know I've been traveling for the past couple of months attending meetings and conferences and everyone is asking me this question please tell us your story like this you can hear you don't want to lose any of your words I don't think it works so you have to bring it back like this I'm trying to find the technical support what I was saying is that for the past couple of months should I hold it like this for the past couple of months I was traveling to different places attending conferences and meetings and mainly everyone is asking me this question please tell us your story they don't know much about Libya they don't know much about women in Libya and let alone they don't know much about youth in Libya however me myself honestly I'm tired of hearing my own words and I'm tired of hearing my own story therefore today I want to share someone's else story today I still have the privilege to talk with my voice I still have the privilege to write I still have the privilege to protest I still have the privilege to be present here a dear friend of mine from the east city from Benghazi from the east of Libya his name is Tawfiq Bansoud and for the Arabic speakers you might understand already that this is a guy and even though our topic here is about women's empowerment really important for us ourselves to remember that women's issues are not women's issues gender equality is a society issue therefore today I want to share his own story when I met Tawfiq I met him when he was 15 years old that was in 2012 at that time I was 19 and this is after the Libyan Revolution since then I worked with Tawfiq closely on issues related to women's rights in Libya peace and security empowering citizenship among youth raising their awareness however in 2014 Tawfiq gave me a call it was in the summer and that time there was two huge armed conflicts taking place one in Tripoli and the other one in Benghazi and then he called me he said well I think at the moment we need to get our voice out to the international community they can really know how they can help us and then he suggested that we can write a joint article together on peace and security so he said well you take the part on the role of women and I will write about the role of youth and I remember myself telling him at that time I said well are you serious what do you think this will add and in the background I'm hearing the bombs I'm hearing the clashes and then for me I was even though that I'm an activist and I'm the one who's promoting for this yet there was this moment where I just gave up on that and then he said well civic work should never stop only the war should stop these were words of like a guy who's 18 years old three days afterwards Tawfiq was assassinated by an armed man until this moment we don't know who well for us I won't say we don't know why because it's so obvious why full of days ago I was reading his blog and then I came across what he wrote personally before he was assassinated he said I'm Tawfiq Ben Saud I'm 18 years old well he wasn't even 18 years old he was just saying that he was 18 because everyone considered him too young I'm a student at Benghazi University law faculty I'm working so hard to be a change maker this is how I see myself in 10 to 20 years he wrote this the year he died this is how I see myself in 10 to 20 years this is my goal in life I'm also very interested in youth rights and decision making I believe that change in my country will be led by youth so I'm looking forward to create the first fully youth government I'm talking about a government led by youth this is big isn't it last year 2015 the security council adopted the 2250 resolution which is a resolution that literally can make Tawfiq's dream come true the resolution basically talks about youth participation in the political process youth participation in the peace building process it's very wide and concrete that it tackles our current issues at the moment the resolution and I think we should all be proud of it was led by Jordan before the resolution was adopted I joined the group of international organizations mainly youth led groups who pushed the security who was advocating for the security council to adopt 2250 resolution so the biggest asset about the resolution that it's not just a resolution from the security council it was youth that demanded the security council to recognize the role of youth in peace building with their own language therefore today as Jordan made the lead for this resolution to be adopted I pledge on all Arab member states who are present here please support this agenda because as was mentioned earlier Arab and in particular Muslim youth were being stigmatized were being stigmatized as terrorist extremists if we are lucky enough that we don't yet look terrorist then we will be identified as potential extremists or potential terrorists and then I always get the question well do you feel safe in Libya and well the honest answer I would say no however I don't feel safe anywhere to be honest I don't feel safe when I'm passing a security checkpoint at the airport and seeing those huge men and women holding weapons I don't feel safe when I'm going around anyone who's holding weapon and that's the reason why I don't feel safe in Libya it's not because of the Libyan society it's because something external it's because the weapons that are existing there you mentioned that well I do have contributions with extremely together it's an initiative that led by the former secretary general of the UN Kofi Annan to empower the role of youth in countering violent extremism and peace building in August I was appointed by the secretary general Ban Ki-moon to join the advisory group on 20 to 15 and I can tell you being accomplishing this at the age of 24 is really good it feels so good however being in that loop and then today being brought here by the Libyan embassy being supported by my own people by far and I'm not saying this to be political correct I'm saying this from the heart being supported by men and women from my own country this is what we need as Arab youth we do have the international community who keeps supporting us and then they keep supporting different groups from different regions however it's really it means a lot and this is not just you know a spirit talk and inspiring talk no no no it really means a lot to be to have our efforts recognized by our own people thank you for that beginning and I think that really kicks off a common thread of youth in transition each of you are in some sort of transitional country identity transitional in terms of generations you talked about asma let's talk about that a little bit and I'm going to suggest that this is a theme that intersects with gender and so I'm going to ask you each just again to kind of give me the brightest spots that you see going on right now to help empower and articulate this vision of young people men and women for the future thank you I guess I'm very fortunate that at my work every single day we hear stories that are very similar to my colleagues who are sitting to the left of me who are inspiring, amazing young Arab women who are doing monumental things to change their communities, their countries their nations for the better when I see that and when I hear that and when we witness that and we program that and we write proposals for it every single day our hope and confidence increases we have a program called youth action net I encourage my colleagues to the left of me to apply to this program because it is a network of 1400 young men and women from all over the world including the Middle East and North Africa who are doing monumental changes in their communities whether it's through social enterprise whether it's through gender equality projects whether it's through community engagement projects etc etc it's a long roster of things that they're doing and what you see when you meet them, when you speak with them when you hear their stories is that there are current projects already happening so many times when we talk about this issue it's a futuristic issue but it is not a futuristic issue it's one the issue of the role of women and what they have been doing universally has always existed they are doing, they have been doing they will be doing sometimes to put spotlight on it and I believe the representative said this her critique of the word empowerment is one that I share already there is no reason to continuously go on to empowerment and to focus on this term and I think that's what we see and that's what we're going to continue to be seeing and I think definitely definitely definitely we have there's two that we like there's three actually I'll go quickly one her name is Lina Khalifa she's from Jordan she's an organization called She Fighter She Fighter is the first martial arts studio for women in Jordan and the Middle East through that she wants to teach women self-confidence, self-defense and how to basically fend for themselves in their communities the second one is Rehab she's from Egypt she does Catherine Exis Catherine Exis basically works in a protectorate in South Sinai where she tries to bring the Bedouin community in order to restore their community to bring back its identity to bring back what they can contribute and have contributed to their communities and then based on what you just said which is such a critical point is we can never separate the critical role of men in all of this we have Ayash Lal from the north of Iraq living in Erbil he is a mixed breed himself of being Syrian and Kurdish and Iraqi and everything most of his life he is part of an organization and leads an organization and speaks on its behalf which is all about gender equality so a part of the voice of speaking on behalf of Arab women is the integrated voice of the entire community coming together men and women alike and believing in that future and acknowledging what already exists great that really gives us some ideas to see how they're being developed every day in the region Asma, can you also give us some of the work that you're doing in Tunisia it's hard when you look for success stories that are a lot but also unless we're asked we always forget so when we hear of this we know that we're not the only people people try and people have succeeded and we'll all keep on succeeding I second everything you said particularly about empowerment not because we're already empowered it's because you don't need someone to come and empower you it's an action that comes from within so I recall two people that when I look up to them I see whatever I will do after can be done and it bears success and recognition is also possible I think in Tunisia it's not we don't have the room for youth to do something it's because they fear this invisibility and this recognition not paying off afterwards but I think the civil society has reached a point thankfully where recognition is not the aiming itself but they believe in the impact their initiatives have been producing so far and slowly surely they are seeing something that can be that can channel eventually into something long-term and sustainable and that in itself is being mainstreamed around active circles and it serves for these two bright stories I want to mention my Iraqi Kurdish friend Amir Ashour I didn't mention Tunisian because Amir is a success story I heard about it while I'm still in Tunis before I actually met him unfortunately we have to always meet in different countries he was in Iraq and it jeopardized his life he had to leave but the impact is still in in Iraq in particular and I also recall who is unfortunately I have to say she also had to travel and live in France she's Tunisian but she was the founder of the first young feminist art festival in Tunis that was on an extremely low budget last year but it got so much endorsement when it happened in a very close club center that this May it had second edition and it was international the first international feminist festival that it was the first space for women artists to have they don't have to pay fee they don't have to send anything they just come and display their art and it kind of moved art and women voices from what we are used to which is artisanal and crafts usually in Tunis these women take a certain grant to produce something artisanal so they kind of restrict women's artistic powers so this festival is also a huge success story for a group of young women who've done it it sounds like it's one real example of making other concerns and ideas very visible and it's possible and those things when we had because I know I'm sure you share this but at some point we had a moment of frustration you think that you're fighting everyone else and fighting everything else nothing is accomplished when you take a moment and you think of this and I'm pretty sure I will remember the story of your friend for a while when you remember these things it gives you hope and it gives you stamina to go on well stories definitely or what bind us and what you so well just said gives us the memory of and often the inspiration Haja who inspires you we heard about your friend and who else inspires you well of course and the top list of mine it's always him Taufir however I won't go through names but I would say the young women in my organization and again I'm 24 and I still consider myself the older generation in the organization we have no seriously we have young women who are 18 and 17 and you know when it comes to topics such as peace and security it always sounds abstract it always sounds something that it's not relevant to the society how can you be living in an armed conflict country and then you would say well women don't know anything about peace and security or you don't know anything about peace and security earlier the Security Council Resolution 1325 was mentioned quite a lot and I don't know how many of you have read the text of the resolution however we have three of our members who are 17 years old who first joined us and they knew already that we are talking about something that's called 1325 with the Security Council what they did they let Chile sad and they read the text and most ironically is that they interpreted it and translated it to their own language and afterwards they came up to us and they said well this is how we see women peace and security in Libya and believe it or not those young women were talking about women's participation women participation in the security sector reform which is again even if you ask an old man anywhere what is the security sector reform most probably they won't have any idea about it so as an example when I see those young women and men when I see that they are doing an effort to actually empower themselves even though that they already know they have the capacity empower themselves to have the capacity to speak the language that for example the international community speak or speak the language of peace and security yeah I also want to open it up if you want to ask each other questions or comment and I'm going to now ask if there's anything you would like to share or ask your fellow panelists I think one thing that strikes me is after revolutions and sometimes I do this when I say revolutions because I worry about what ensued afterwards and I know as my work from Iraq we always ask ourselves what was better the time of Saddam or the time that we're enduring right now and people in Iraq and Iraqis will have all sorts of opinions and ideas and discussions I probably won't state my own right now but and please of course if you're not comfortable I want to ask now in light of what has happened in Tunisia in Libya where do you think the direction is going for young people and what do you see what hope or no hope for example do you see in the direction of young Tunisians young Libyans I was recently in Tunisia a ministry of labor a lot of young people from Ghastri from Sidi Bouzid sleeping in front of the ministry and left me feeling a little bit confused so I want to ask you your perspectives just to go back to what's better before or after it's a question that naively I try to answer like when first happened and I think it's the wrong question to ask the thing is that you just acknowledge that something happened be a revolution or not there is something that stopped to that ended in Iraq and started a new one that does not need a reflection which one is better especially when we were when we witnessed this right of the threshold of our lives we witnessed this just got into college at least personally in my generation I think it's futile to be stuck in comparison I think we live it we all live it in our house I hear my parents all the time they have strong opinions but we have to understand them also but it's a question I don't want to dwell on it's just something happened and everyone should acknowledge that it happened regardless of what it may be called and it has implications but at least if it has one thing that we can say it has the the open it has opened for options and there is nothing you cannot go back from there the way we see it how the format, the procedures the policies all to be defined yes but it marked a point where something allowed for more options and it's on everyone else to better to think how to make the most of it what's the direction for you in Tunisia I think it's in their hands and they get to decide and I'm not usually a very optimistic person but at this point I am I tend to get on the cynicism side but I've seen a lot of signs that tell me there are possibilities there are options and it's in our hands well this is a really valid question and I think everyone is asking themselves this question but if we think of what is the difference between a revolution and a military coup a revolution is not something that is just it just happens or is just there what is the revolution? it's actually people it's people like Taufiq it's people like many as him and then doubting that sometimes it really happens even on a personal level when I think that well I could have met him in another setting and he could have been alive right now and maybe at university we were both studying law but then when when I look at those people who really sacrificed their lives sometimes it's really too late or we don't have the full say on that in 2014 I volunteered to work with the elections committee for the constitution drafting assembly elections monitoring the elections and then one of the families when they came and they gave their votes they brought a cake with them and on the top of the cake they wrote thank you from our marcher and apparently this is a family who lost their son and imagine like their personal loss and yet they managed to overcome their own personal feelings and their own personal loss for the bigger image when I get asked this question or when I think of it myself I just remind myself that well the revolution happened for the long term it didn't happen just in 2011 or to make a change in the short term that's why I try to keep myself well hopeful as much as possible that yet those are not the outcomes those are the obstacles of any revolution that can happen I mean looking at the history what happened in Libya afterwards these security struggles it happened everywhere so I just keep reminding myself that well this is not the outcomes of the revolutions these are just hopefully temporary obstacles that will be overcame in the future that's a great set of questions and I'm going to turn it back to you before we open it to the audience if you have any questions of your fellow panelists well I would love to chat later on and get a deeper Haja you have something I would want to hear a personal story of something that it was really the breaking point when it comes to your own rights as a woman something maybe when you were a child something most recent anything like that would you be willing to begin? oh well that's why I asked the question so I won't answer it myself but we try not to cry so I started by saying but maybe not giving too much detail about traveling to Iraq every year of my life and I will say that those were probably the best memories of my life and ones that I don't think I could ever replace in my heart again and when I see now what's happening in Mosled and what could potentially happen in Mosled and the potential demise of that nation of that city that provokes in a way good memories of my childhood of my family of my grandfather's homes but at the same time I get scared it is probably the only thing listening to you gives me hope going to my work and hearing the stories of young Arabs like yourselves doing amazing things gives me hope but for some reason when I look at Iraq and Mosled it's maybe the one thing that does not give me hope and I remember in 2004 June 19, 2004 I went to Iraq like any other summer and I was my dad, Baba, my dad's first time to go after 28 years of not going that whole entire time and rather than celebrating we ended up witnessing the death of my aunt and my uncle and until this day I get probably nightmares just seeing the blood splattered seeing their bodies on the floor and knowing that that's not the story of only my family but of thousands of families and hundreds of thousands of families in Iraq and in the region so to me in a way it's a story that moves me that keeps me going every single day but in a way it's a story that scares me because I don't know what's going to happen and it's one that conflicts me and I'm saying out loud that it conflicts me as well so there's hope but I feel that we have to continue working for that and we have to all together collectively see our narrative as one narrative a narrative that wants change, that wants good, that wants commonality that wants just universal goodness to be happening and when I think of that I think okay we're going in the right direction I always find it hard to answer a question after such a moving statement but if I would say something that touched me as a woman and it kind of fired or inspired everything I do now is that there was an organization the most prominent feminist organization in Tunis struck me with its elitism and exclusion that I know by law, by their internal law that if I joined I will be accepted if my mom did she won't for the simple reason they had a certain criteria for what women they think are eligible to be part of their work and this is the most prominent feminist organization and later on when my sisters also started wearing hijabs I also know they couldn't join in as well so I had I believed in what they did but also I was torn apart between I can be working for women from the same organization that doesn't acknowledge my mom and my own sister's right to be involved mind you they do accept them as victims for example of domestic violence they will never make it to the board they will never be included or engaged in their decision making so the board is strictly designed for a certain type of women that is not inclusive of my mom or my sister so that sort of fueled my passion for inclusion and intersectionality and all this that we wanted an alternative and every now and then whenever I attend something I feel a little proud when we talk big words and everything but I also feel a little embarrassed and touched aside because I know whatever I do is separate and is not translatable in my own household and that always gets me where I it's sort of my meter or my the way I measure all the things I'm doing are right or not is this for everyone or it's not because I still even though I come from this family I still enjoy a lot more privileges than my sister do so whenever I do something that is the my scale I remember is this for them too and when it's that that affects all my efforts and it makes me better judge things well I don't want to sound like the grumpy person trying to get out all the sad stories but I have a sister she's 13 years old currently she's in the UK and one day well after the American elections and we know all what happened I don't need to reflect on that but when she came back the second day from school she said well our teacher said that it's got like this is the end of the world and me and my mom even that we think it might be but we were like no no no this is that's not true it's not normal as this and she started talking about the nuclear weapon and she was like believe it it's only four minutes and he just blows us up so then my mom was telling her well her name is Susie my mom was telling her well Susie this is history this is what happens like if you look at Europe if you look at the US in itself well it's just it happens and then after a couple of years people will get progressed again etc and then my sister was like I know it's normal in the history but I just don't want to live it and she was absolutely right when she said like I just don't want to live it it doesn't mean that it happened before it needs to happen again so for this this was like couple of weeks ago but yet such such a thing it just makes me feel responsible that well they're in the long term we still actually need to continue our work every day every day everybody in our families and this audience as well and now I would like to turn to the audience these three young amazing women have been very forthcoming about their lives their struggles and their hopes and their fears I would like to open up the floor now and I'm going to also take about three questions which gives the panelists a little time to think about it I see one hand here and then I'll go to this side is there a hand on this side right down here just so we're ready and then is there another person and then you'll be number three could you stand and tell us yes tell us who you are they're up here all by themselves and tell us who you are and if you could just kind of get your point my name is Mara Cronenfeld and I have the good fortune of working with Marwa at International Youth Foundation and what I want to ask is maybe perhaps slightly controversial so I'll say that in advance which is Marwa and I and our colleagues at IYF often have discussions about this whole terminology especially sitting here at the United States Institute of Peace of countering violent extremism and we find this acronym as we all know it now as CVE is as difficult and hard to swallow sometimes even saying these words especially at IYF where as Marwa said we see youth as assets and as the youth bulge is a dividend that's going to help the future if we cultivate young minds and young talents and I think there's probably a better way we can talk about such issues that don't make it about extremism which in turn make it about religion which in turn make it prejudicial against Islam there are all sorts of religions where extremism exists but when we talk about CVE we're talking about one religion usually and I'm just curious for your thoughts on if you've been have had the same feelings if there's any sort of sense in which you would like to complicate that as well or if that's just on our perch here in the US being hyper critical of our own development sector great thank you for that question and it's really important to hear what our colleagues not only how they synthesize that but what kind of advice they might give to international relations field I'm going to go though to our next audience member if you would stand and I'll give them a little time to think about it I'm a professor in the department of communication at the University of Maryland first of all thank you all so much I'm so proud of every and each one of you I think you set excellent role models for Arab women, young Arab women and of course there were all of these great moments when women were active very much so in the Arab Spring like you all mentioned women's work has been done and much more work still has to be done and we saw what happened in terms of the way that democracy has been derailed in many of the quote and quote post Arab Spring countries politically there have been so many obstacles but I want you to specifically address what really went wrong when it comes to women's movements like you mentioned something about the lack of sufficient inclusion for example what other gaps or caveats should have been really looked at more carefully in terms of evaluating the role of Arab women and Arab women's movements and what could have been done differently to reach a better and more effective outcome thank you great thank you so much for that question I can't wait to hear the answers to that as well it's important your view and your analysis on this I know there was one last hand up here thank you so much the mic is coming to you thank you very much very dynamic we are very proud of all of you I am Amal David and I am with Arab America media and we Arab women have achieved so much in this country many of us are very professional and very productive in this society and just it takes my heart that we talk and we write articles and we make our voices heard whenever possible but it's still not making a dent what can be done I need your suggestion what can be done to make a huge difference in this country because every time we tune into mainstream media all what we hear is negative aspects of Arab women thank you for that great question you have three very serious questions in front of you you don't have to answer all of them the first one was really looking at this idea that and the language the framing of countering violent extremism and what that does or does not do for youth and our future in this region the second question is very simply what went wrong with the women's movement in this region and I would add did something go right and then the third question is how is it after this long we're not making a dent and from your youthful perspectives as young women what can be done who would like to begin I can go with the E question I absolutely agree with you and I use countering violent extremism myself even though if you would ask me what is countering violent extremism I would say well it's peace building and in the international community the discourse of countering violent extremism doesn't only always refer to building peace establishing security however I was in this conflicted situation before and not only would count with the term countering violent extremism but with a couple of other terms and then I get to the conclusion that we need to be realistic the ones who come coming up with those terminologies are the ones who have the resources the political resources the financial resources the military resources if we don't get into that discourse and try to change it ourselves then as long as there would be funding and money there would be someone else who will just try to fit on the criteria that they are using however it doesn't mean that we cannot challenge it me myself well you mentioned I'm with the coffee and non foundation on extremely together and the reason why it has been called extremely together it's because we really wanted to use a word that is used negatively and then we said okay let's just say extremely together because if extreme means something negative then here's 10 people who are working on different fields I'm working on promoting peace building through gender women's participation in youth other people like a colleague of mine from Somalia she's working on this armament and rehabilitation and even though again the discourse is really strongly led by well the bottom line how you know the silliest question and pardon in French is that when they ask us how can you identify a potential extremist and I just I just feel that a potential extremist looks like me because if you want to know how a potential extremist looks now yes it's a young person from the Arab region Muslim and especially if it was a woman then wearing a head scarf and even though I'm the one who's walking around saying that I'm working on extremism I still get stigmatized myself especially at embassies and when I'm asking for visas I get asked questions such as are you with an armed group and I say well no what like is there anything on me that might show that I joined in our group have you served in the military before and I can just see that those are questions indirect questions just to know that if I have any affiliation to an extremist group I completely agree with you however I was in that conflicted situation before I still believe that as long as the term is there then we need to use that we need to identify what countering violent extremism is about and I've been in meetings with politicians from the EU and the US and everyone who's now so obsessed with CVE as they call it and if you would ask them please identify it in one sentence they won't be able to do so because but in the other hand I think there is an opportunity as long as there is a vacancy that they don't know what it actually means then maybe it's an opportunity for us to interfere and give other solutions thank you I mean I Mara noted that we work together so we are I mean in the field of youth development when we look at young people we look at them as positive change agents so the word CVE is very problematic for us of course on a philosophical level because it is mean it is not accurate it has a lot of assumptions and misperceptions that go along with it as baggage and that need to be unpacked before policies and programs are designed around it because it could actually lead to more pain it could actually lead to more complexities then it could actually lead to solving and then on a second level when we do work with young people if you go to a young person and try to say to them you are a potential terrorist let us train you and let us put you on a job so that you don't go do something that is never a way to treat people in positively training them bringing them up having them be strong positive citizens if you look at them from the positive perspective believe genuinely believe internally of their positive potential that is where actual actual good movements and changes can be made for these young people. Do you want to talk about what went wrong with the women's movement in the up here? Yes. Just to finish up on the terminology and linguistics of it the term gender translates into the type of society in Arabic and for 80% safely no one will know what that means so it is directly linked to our activism where not only on a linguistic level we have been translating everything the way we take it and I will say something personal I am writing my thesis on political correctness and translation of subtitles of movie subtitles on gender sexuality and race and religion if I could fit it in a chapter so this has showed me that if I write my thesis in English it will be longer than if I write it in Arabic because we have 10 years difference of what we call political correctness and that tells you everything everything that is wrong with our activism is that at some point we acknowledge the need that we want and we start reaching out outsourcing references that we lacked and that we didn't have in a way we ended up translating the references and thus the actions and that created that should the activism ground and made people not sure what they did that is also linked to funding because we get the funding from EU and US mainly and the funder states their term assuming assuming that people understand the thing so as soon as you see what is the theme the trending theme is it gender what the money is going to now so it's gender and they adopt they adopt the terminology they adopt the fixed definitions and that reflects on our activism afterwards and I don't blame them I understand but this circle must be broken that is added to the fact that even local organization that don't necessarily they're not a result of this funding terminology conflict but they are a result of lack of collaboration of communication in this gender gap because we want to make sure to incorporate the revolution as an event within our new thinking it's not included yet we have people who think they can continue on doing and they still have the regime as an entity as opposed to other people who do not acknowledge the regime we had times where we didn't even have a government and people that the older generation had frameworks we don't have frameworks so that affects so you have like certain multiple groups doing different things that are somehow the same but in different places and in different ways and that is that affects the impact that affects the result so that is something what's wrong with with our gender work. I like this term outsourcing I think that's going to be something that in our analysis I would just finish a refer there is one study that I have read that was happened in Beirut unfortunately I haven't seen anything like it I've seen things but not in that scale between feminist movements and women based activism between two different generations organization and I would be happy to share so everyone can read afterwards. Thanks Esma. You have the last word of this panel and we're going to wrap it up. How do we make a dent? I will combine the terminology problem with what went wrong I believe that when it comes to gender or when it comes to development or when it comes to peace and security there is also the fact that it's not just there sometimes it's structured and we do need the science even those terminologies they sometimes come out of studies social studies that the institutions conduct etc the barrier there is a problem of the language barrier between those who are working let's say in the development sector and those local even organizations not on the grass root however I think there can be a solution as in terms of civil society organizations who have the capacity to understand technologies and then translate it to what doesn't mean in the local community because there is also the fact that well gender equality peace and security development these are universal matters and it means different things in different places that's why we need a common language that can be afterwards interpreted on the local community I've mentioned we've been working with 1325 for almost 5 years now and what we've did we've established a network called 1325 network in Libya where we gather civil society organizations from different cities and we were delivering training for women activists raising their awareness on what is 1325 and the reason for that it's not because it's a nice number it's just because well there is this framework out there that structures the topic of women peace and security however a week ago now we are conducting research on a community called Libyan woman perspective on peace and security and what we did we established we created the quiz we called it quick questions and they are a set of insecure questions and it talks about purely peace and security but it also make it valid to the local community so very briefly an example of that was that well this is one of the questions imagine yourself going through a security checkpoint with a kidnap what would you do would you post it on Facebook will you take a selfie with the kidnappers or no I'm smarter than that I will do this and this and that and even though that at the beginning and there were another nine questions at the beginning we really didn't know how this will work out within two days more than 1,000 women took that online quiz however in the other hand we were criticized by some women's rights activists in Libya it's too simple you can't make it this simple if they don't understand it then we need to work on making them understand it and I think if a problem is a society issue and if women or any sort of groups within the society if they don't understand it then it's our problem then our language is not valid but it doesn't I don't agree that well we need to change the discourse of this language on the international level for an example and will you have a final comment I just wanted to comment on Ms. Emel David's question on Arab American women it's an honor to meet you I know very well how much you do for the Arab American community and women in the United States so thank you it's a critical one but I think right now Ms. Emel David is the time for us to seize the opportunity to join a universal movement in the United States worldwide but first and foremost at home in the United States to come together as women together because we have just finished an election where women were unfortunately not in the positive light of things with a new administration that is going to test us on many levels so whether it's Arab women or black women or Latina women or any other women Muslim we're going to have to somehow come together and I think see how we can address these issues I think women's issues are universal issues I think they're contextualized they become region specific based on our own cultures but at the end of the day at the basic level we're all pretty much the same and I think there are movements happening now there's a I don't know if I can say this publicly but I will there is a protest the day after the inauguration of women coming together to march in DC for women's rights and I think if we all join that together and be a part of that one voice we'll start seeing significant differences for all of us for all women, thank you It's a final word I personally in my context I haven't lived in other places than Tunis but I think we don't see the dents that we're doing the good dents because when people are trying to camouflage your problems they will not tell you your successes because it will mean it's a recognition of the problem this is personally this is what I see in my community they wouldn't say something good happened because it would tell them that something was bad and their endeavors of hiding what was bad they also will hide what was good and that goes for mainstream media if they don't publicly say women have been beating beaten and there is domestic violence they wouldn't say that there is a change of percentage or something that's only my opinion Well I'm going to ask the audience to join me in thanking these very courageous, articulate and thinkers of the future I just want to say something Thank you Kasli, thank you very much and thank you for the young ladies who attended today and accepting my invitation I'm Ambassador Salah Sarhan from Arab League and I really appreciate you coming today and really we had your experience it's a very successful one we are proud of you just my advice to you, just keep on and keep your say loudly and be patient Thank you very much Thank you, thank you very much You can take a moment And as our panelist Lee we have two final speakers this afternoon and I'd like to introduce you to the first one Actually I'm going to introduce you to them I'm going to introduce you to them consecutively First we'll hear from Dr. Sahar Muhammad Kamis an expert on Arab and Muslim media and a professor at the University of Maryland as a media commentator public speaker and human rights commissioner for the Human Rights Commission in Montgomery County, Maryland Dr. Kamis will be addressing the role media can play in the empowerment of Arab and Arab American women and second we will hear from Amy Shled Shedel Bauer the director of the Office of Regional and Multilateral Affairs in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. Department of State She served as the department chief of mission at the Embassy of Algiers from 2014 to 2016 and held diplomatic assignment at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad She has also led the Bureau's Office of Egypt and Lafond Affairs at the State Department and so without any delay welcome please Good afternoon It's indeed an honor and pleasure to be with you today in this important event thanks to the Arab League and thanks to the United States Institute of Peace for this kind invitation We did here today a lot about stories of Arab women their resilience empowerment, resistance, activism and engagement and I was asked this afternoon in the closing remarks of this important event to talk about the role of the media The role of the media is extremely important because the media are indeed the platforms, the venues, the tools through which these voices of resilience, resistance, activism and engagement could be heard and amplified When we talk about media we have to talk about two different types of media and to explain the difference between them the first one being the mainstream media and the second one being the new media or the so-called social media Mainstream media have traditionally been to a large part and large extent controlled by regimes in power and therefore following the agenda of whoever is in office However this phenomenon started to change in recent years with parallelism By parallelism I mean not the disappearance of the regime controlled the regime controlled media but the establishment of also private media venues that might represent a different or even in some cases an oppositional voice However in most cases mainstream media in many parts of the Arab world also mainstream media outside of the Arab world that is in the west and elsewhere did not do enough justice to Arab women because in many cases their images and their stories were either untold they were marginalized, they were invisible or if the stories were told they were not represented in the right light or in the right form and by that I mean either they were shown as being helpless and powerless, weak and marginalized entities or completely invisible wearing a black cloak covering them from head to toe or the diametrically opposed element of invisibility in my opinion which is over sexualization showing them as sexual objects and sexual beings maybe as belly dancers or otherwise and in both cases not doing them any kind of justice because it's not really reflecting the reality of these intelligent, smart, hard working resilient, powerful Arab women that we've been talking about all day. So that means that we have a void, we have a vacuum that the real stories and real images of Arab women are not really being shown through the mainstream media another problem with mainstream media has been also the issue of tokenism sometimes known as elitism or even the first lady syndrome where you see first ladies on TV all the time or people who are members of the elite classes of society speaking about women's issues but we don't hear a lot from women themselves speaking about their own issues in their own voice and telling their own stories and because of all of these problems and all of these gaps in the role of mainstream media there was a need for a different and alternative type of media to be born so with the coming of new media and social media Arab women started to have different venues and different platforms to tell their alternative stories and to tell their alternative narratives in their own voice and with their own words and in their own definitions and language for the very first time often times I get asked the question especially here in America and other parts of the western world what should we do for Arab women or Muslim women I call this save the Arab women syndrome or save the Muslim women syndrome oh these women are so helpless and weak and we really need to do something to help them I say listen my friends these women are not weak thank you so much they don't need the help they need to be seen they need to be understood they need to be heard they need to be respected and appreciated they're not weak or marginalized or vulnerable as they are shown in many of these media misrepresentations and if there's anything at all that you can really do to help it is giving more education I always say education education education is the key to any kind of positive change in any society period without good education you cannot hope or dream for any kind of positive change so coming to the role of social media and new media it is no secret that specifically with the Arab spring uprisings that swept many parts of the Arab region we started to see these alternative faces and alternative narratives about Arab women which culminated in of course offering the Nobel Peace Prize for the very first time to an Arab woman Tawakul Karman who was known as the mother of the revolution in Yemen an activist and a journalist and I always say that's a nod for the Arab spring movements in general but specifically a nod for the role of Arab women in the Arab spring movements in particular that's all great and I had the privilege of interviewing a number of smart young talented women who are activists and journalists just like the excellent panel we had the privilege of hearing a few moments ago and all of these young women activists and journalists and writers they all said two very important things they said the social media and new media are now our new windows and by that we mean windows through which we can see the rest of the world but also allow the rest of the world to see us so it's a two way process right seeing and also being seen and also they said they are important bridges again they're double bridges bridges that connect us to the rest of the world and connect the rest of the world to us and specifically the role of citizen journalism the process whereby people themselves write their own stories in their own words and tell their stories with their own talents and skills is very very important because here it's giving these women who were traditionally marginalized in the media and not given enough visibility or space or time or accurate representation are for the very first time there in the open telling their stories in their own words and not only that but stepping up to positions of power which made them opinion leaders public opinion leaders and role models and it's not only being role models for other women it's being role models for men as well so many young men in many of these Arab countries said I look at this 20 year old or 25 year old young woman and she is there in the heart of the Harir Square chanting slogans or she is in Manama the capital of Bahrain she's chanting slogans and she's so outspoken and she's so courageous and she's not even afraid she became my hero my heroine my new protagonist my new role model so they're becoming role models and this is very powerful not just for other women but for men as well and with that comes the chattering of many of the negative stereotypes we have been talking about earlier of these invisible women who are completely covered in black or who are belly dancers and overly sexualized because now you are seeing the woman in a different role she's the fighter she's the freedom fighter she's the activist she's brave she's calling for her rights she's facing bullets with her bare chest she is going to jail she's being arrested she's being exiled whatever it may be and she's doing all of that without any kind of hesitation and with a lot of courage and resilience many of the young activists I interviewed and the journalists and writers and activists said we use social media for three very important functions mobilization education and documentation mobilization means rallying people rallying people behind a certain cause whether it is political or whether it is social of course the political aspect is understood these were revolutions and uprisings and you need to have social media in order to rally people and people support behind these causes to create some kind of transition towards democracy and towards human rights and towards reform but they also used that for another parallel revolution which is a social revolution as well so I always say these Arab women had a dual struggle or a double struggle there is the political struggle which is understood in terms of shaking authoritarian regimes and asking for freedom and democracy but there is a parallel struggle going on side by side which is the social struggle the struggle too talk about issues like sexual harassment issues like domestic violence issues of women's integration in the public sphere women's better representation in political context all of these issues are really very important yes I do agree with a lot of the panelists to detach or separate women's issues from the larger framework of human rights and the condition of a society as a whole will affect every citizen whether it's a man or a woman but there are also specific issues and struggles that are specifically relevant and related to women in particular that's why I say they were launching a parallel revolution which is social and political at the same time and they were using social media for the purpose of mobilization mobilization also was used to help women in particularly difficult conditions like for example women who were refugees in refugee camps women who were rape victims harassment victims lost their spouses or their male providers and were really in dire need of help and many of these women went to their social media tools or weapons and they started their twitter campaigns and their twitter fights their cyber fights or cyber wars to try to really get help and get resources for these women who are in dire need of help that's the function of mobilization the second function is education as I said before no positive change can ever be achieved without education and we always know the very famous saying if you teach a man you teach a person but if you teach a woman you teach a nation and it's very true but these women were not just trying to educate other women they were trying to educate society as a whole educate society about why an issue like domestic violence is harmful to everybody men women children everybody right sexual harassment why it's important to respect the woman and the woman's body and what does that mean it's important so all of these issues became very important in the role as quote-unquote educators and finally the third function is documentation we talked about citizen journalism so they started to use their cell phone cameras in their own digital devices as their own new weapons so one woman activist said if I ever get tear gassed or somebody tries to harass me in a demonstration or tries to arrest me I'm gonna take my cell phone camera and launch my own fight again it's this person and in a split of a second the whole world is gonna see exactly what was happening to me so it's not only sending it to a local audience or a regional audience in this case you're talking about an international or a global audience and that's the power of citizen journalism this is all great it's a very rosy picture but here comes the question I asked the last panelists which is really what went wrong and we have to talk about the positive side but also there are certain limitations of social media as well and I always say social media are great they're powerful tools, they're helpful tools but they're not magic they're not magical tools and they will not bring about social and political transformation all by themselves you have to take account of other factors as well it is indeed a reality that there is still a power vacuum that needs to be filled in many of these so-called post-Arab Spring countries there is still a need for more civic engagement civil society, activism more NGOs, more opposition movements, more women's movements more solidarity between different groups more coalition building, you name it all of that is still missing in many of these post-Arab Spring countries and they always say, there's a famous saying ousting a dictator from office is easy but figuring out what to do next is not, right? you're left with a task, a very big task what do you do next? how are you going to take things from here and what direction do you want to go to and I think these are questions that could be asked of societies as a whole but when it comes to women's movements in particular they also have their set of challenges that need to be addressed they need to be better organized they need to have more solidarity they need to have more inclusion they need to reach out across the board and to include everybody this is all resistance, resilience empowerment and activism and engagement that we have been talking about all day and it's indeed my hope that they're going to do this very effectively very efficiently in the very near future, thank you so much thank you, it's a pleasure to be here with you this afternoon and to join USIP and the Arab League for this discussion the US government very much values our partnership with the Arab League and appreciates the League's continued efforts to resolve regional conflicts address the status of women and girls and improve economic and social development region wide and I'd like to congratulate Ambassador Sarhan and Lubna Hashem from the mission the rest of the Arab League mission and USIP including USIP President Nancy Lindberg and the event organizers Sarah Reichenbach and Kiana Atherly for their success with this event today so it's my office that is sort of the bilateral partner of League mission here in Washington and so that's one of the reasons I think Ambassador Sarhan asked me to give the closing remarks here today but today's panels have really reinforced the vital role that women play ensuring the success of our joint efforts to promote peace, stability and prosperity across the region and indeed a central message of today's discussion is that the success and the resilience of Arab women will be at the core of the region's social and economic development and efforts to promote security and stability and just recalling the two panels from today and the emphasis on local communities, grassroots level, reaching out at that grassroots level it's something that is vital in all of our work and particularly as a diplomat it's always something we talk about trying to get outside of the walls of the embassy and go and find out the ground truth so it's a lesson I will continue to take and I thank the panelists for emphasizing it today also the emphasis on gender inclusion and youth outreach particularly in the last panel that's something that I think has really become sort of mainstreamed in the work that the State Department has been doing over the last year and I'm confident that will continue going forward and these messages are also a core part of our US policy towards the region and even as we focus on resolving the conflicts the urgent conflicts of the day we continue to work with our partners in the region to advance social and economic development and central to both efforts are policies to promote women's economic and political participation and to address barriers to that participation such as gender based violence and legal and societal discrimination the United States recognizes the tremendous challenges that women and girls face due to the ongoing conflicts in the region including displacement and increased vulnerability to sexual exploitation and violence and we're working side by side with the Arab League States to advance the UN women's peace and security agenda through the full implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and 2242 we are working together to make women's participation and leadership a central part of peace and security efforts to protect the human rights of women and girls during and after conflict especially in the context of emerging threats and violent extremism and to ensuring financing and resources for the women peace and security agenda we commend the Arab League for launching its Cairo declaration and then its regional action plan on women peace and security in 2015 and just this past September several Arab States including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain joined with more than 40 other countries to launch an international focal point network dedicated to advancing the development and implementation of national action plans research as you know consistently shows that women do better that when women do better countries do better economies do better communities do better it's been said again and again today and we all know it's the truth that women has real results and strengthens the economic and social fabric of our world and economies grow when women's labor force participation increases a 2012 booze and company study cited by the World Bank and the IMF estimated that if Egyptian women worked in the formal economy at the same rates as Egyptian men Egypt's GDP would be 34% larger at state we have many programs helping women access economic opportunities and participate in the workforce giving them the opportunity to better their futures and the futures of their families and I'd like to give you a few examples of that work we're supporting an international labor organization program that addresses gender imbalances in employment and entrepreneurship in Morocco and Algeria in Morocco another program of the State Department's Middle East initiative we call it MEPI it has a program called Empowering Youth Through Entrepreneurship in Morocco and it helped Asma Rezouk a 32 year old woman who had struggled to find work realize her dream of building her own business and she eventually opened her own clothing shop and since its inception that program that Asma was part of has trained 486 youth in micro enterprise development supported over 300 youth as they developed business and launched successfully 250 businesses in Lebanon a state department project is contributing to conflict prevention by encouraging economic opportunities for women the project has provided business training for over 200 women entrepreneurs and facilitated access to markets and networking opportunities developed agreements with leading financial institutions that provided services for women entrepreneurs and also offered risk management training on how to adapt and sustain a business during instability in addition the MEPI program SMEs and women's cooperatives in rural areas in Lebanon continue to train and learn with fair trade Lebanon to reduce their costs of production expand their market linkages increase sales and enhance knowledge and skills and product and business development there are also many opportunities in the region for women to be more involved in peace and security efforts which as research shows decreases corruption and leads to safer communities this participation can take many forms whether from peacekeeping missions and peace negotiations in areas struggling with ongoing conflict to political decision making in government for this very reason in Yemen we've been actively supporting the inclusion of women in the peace negotiations at the last round of the peace talks in Kuwait UN women brought a delegation of Yemeni women to the peace negotiations and we strongly supported their participation and recommendations to the two sides I was in Kuwait at the time working with our Yemen affairs unit and heard directly as these women articulated to both sides of the conflict their hopes and aspirations even though they did not necessarily share the same political aspirations they found common ground and urged both sides to move forward and find solutions unfortunately they haven't yet in Israel a State Department project facilitates Israeli Arab women's access to the country's political institutions at a local level the project has significantly increased the number of women serving as advisors for Israeli local councils a position that was legislatively mandated but rarely filled and currently that project has enabled 42 women advisors to be placed in municipalities and mostly in Arab majority areas and the project also assisted the first Arab woman to be elected member of a local council in Taipei in Israeli Arab majority city a year ago in Algeria female parliamentarians achieved a milestone with the successful passage of a law criminalizing violence against women nearly 80 women parliamentarians mobilized across party lines spurred by the formation of a multi-party women's parliamentary forum which debated and sponsored this law Algerian women's civil society organizations trained and supported by a State Department grant had campaigned publicly urging female parliamentarians to tackle this issue of violence against women and this law represents a concrete coordination between civil society and the parliamentarians and a step in strengthening protections for women I was in Algeria when this women's parliamentarian forum came together and I heard them speak and work together at a lunch and they didn't necessarily come from the same sides of the political spectrum but they united on this one law to pass it and are working together on other issues as the members of the global coalition to counter ISIL we also recognize the importance of including women and girls in these efforts and work to create opportunities for members of vulnerable segments of the population to participate on the national and regional levels as we work to defeat Daesh lastly the United States government also focuses on reaching adolescent girls and survivors of gender based violence research shows that when adolescent girls have the same opportunities as boys and I'm not telling you anything new you know this they're able to better contribute to the economy and reverse cycles of poverty and disease in their families and communities they're healthier and more better educated and that means their kids will be more likely to be healthy and educated and we also know that education is essential to economic growth and making young people employable so we are promoting the first ladies initiative let girls learn to address the the range of challenges presenting, preventing adolescent girls from attending and completing school and from realizing their potential as adults and Morocco is a leading participant in the let girls learn initiative we're also funding programs that assist survivors of Daesh captivity and brutality with economic opportunities and psychosocial support in Kuwait our embassy works with a local NGO to bring greater awareness to the issue of domestic violence in Kuwait throughout this past year participants have worked to create a plan to open the first domestic violence center in Kuwait we're also undertaking a new effort in several of Syria's neighboring countries impacted by the refugee crisis to help prevent and respond to early enforced marriage particularly amongst the refugee population so there's a lot we're doing but there's always a lot we can do more we can do but we're proud to be supporting this Arab League in their goal to build regional peace security and stability and to that end the department's bureau of civilian of conflict and stabilization operations and the US institute of peace recently concluded the first of its kind conflict resolution training in Cairo for Arab League secretariat staff and we were pleased that there were 16 women and 10 men in this training and the women took a highly active and dynamic role throughout the training I understand and this capacity building program should help the League identify more ways in which it can support efforts to resolve regional conflicts lastly as you know we heard throughout these panels on the local level there's so much space for what we can do to leave even a greater impact leadership resilience and eventually change on a vital level all begin at home between mothers and fathers families in their communities and women here in the United States and throughout the world have always risen to the challenge of assisting others and we must empower those who need a voice so we at the State Department look forward to continuing to work in close partnership with USIP the Arab League and all of you as we move forward together thank you thank you very much Bill Bauer and Professor Kamis those were brilliant summary remarks and also very inspirational for the way forward so thank you for taking the time out of your very busy days well this wraps up what I would say is a very very successful celebration of the fifth annual Arab American Day we want to thank the League of Arab States for such a great partnership we've been working on this for months it's been a delight to work with your team with your experts Ambassador Sarhan thank you very much for your generosity Lubna Hashim Dima Mamoud Claire Chen all the speakers and a really lively participant audience thank you very much on behalf of the US Institute of Peace my colleagues who led so much of the efforts thank you I want to bring this officially to a close thank you very much