HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION TODAY: NEW ISSUES, NEW IDEAS, NEW PLAYERS

Humanitarian Conference Proceedings September 24, 2003

The Hilton New York Hotel

TABLE OF CONTENTS

HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION TODAY: NEW ISSUES, NEW IDEAS, NEW PLAYERS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1

OPENING COMMENTS

Steven M. Hilton, President, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation 4

Ralph Begleiter, Distinguished Journalist in Residence, University of Delaware; former 5 CNN World Affairs Correspondent

CONFERENCE KEYNOTE ADDRESS

“Human Rights and Human Security” 7 Mary Robinson, Executive Director, Ethical Globalization Initiative; former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and former President of Ireland

Q & A 11

PANEL ONE SUMMARY 14

“Expanding the Humanitarian Space: A Challenge for Global Philanthropy” 15 Lincoln Chen, M.D., Director, Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University

“Human Security Through Women’s Eyes” 18 Noeleen Heyzer, Ph.D., Executive Director, United Nations Development Fund for Women

Q & A 21

PANEL TWO SUMMARY 26

“Righting Human Wrongs: the First Arab Human Development Report” 27 Zahir Jamal, Chief of Regional Programmes in the Arab States, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

“Opportunities for Africa in the HIV/AIDS Pandemic” 30 Bob Francis Jalang’o, former Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kenya to the UN

Q & A 32

PANEL THREE SUMMARY 36

“Civil-Military Cooperation—An Impossible Dream?” 37 George F. Ward, Jr., Former Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), Iraq

“The Role of the UN in Reconstruction in Iraq” 40 Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme

Q & A 43

PANEL FOUR SUMMARY 48

“Ending Global Poverty” 49 Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals

“Religion: the Little Girl with the Curl” 52 Robert A. Seiple, Chairman and Founder, Institute for Global Engagement

“Reaching Those in Greatest Need? Current Realities—Future Trends” 55 Todd Petersen, Chief Executive Officer, HelpAge International

Q & A 58

CONRAD N. HILTON HUMANITARIAN PRIZE PRESENTATION 69

Keynote Address 70 His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Acceptance Speech 73 Jens Modvig, Secretary General, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims Background Information 77

LIST OF CONFERENCE ATTENDEES 78

Executive Summary

What is needed today is reflection on how we can continue to develop a positive relationship between those working to alleviate humanitarian crises and those working to promote systems of government, which ensure respect for fundamental rights….Our thinking about the future of humanitarian intervention must build on the notion of shared responsibility for human rights, human development, and human security rather than what has previously been a more reactive approach in focusing on when military force should be used to halt humanitarian crises. In my view, this policy shift should encompass a positive vision of “sovereignty as responsibility.” This implies that when states are unable to provide protection and assistance for their citizens, they are expected to request and accept outside offers of aid. And if they refuse or obstruct access to affected populations, thereby putting large numbers at risk, there is an international responsibility to respond. But we should ask: are the nations of the world, developing and developed, currently living up to the responsibilities of sovereignty? --Mary Robinson, Executive Director, Ethical Globalization Initiative

This international conference was hosted by the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in conju nction with the eighth annual presentation of the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize. The 2003 Hilton Prize was awarded to the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) at a luncheon during the conference. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and recipient of the 1989 Noble Peace Prize, was the keynote speaker at the Prize ceremony. IRCT, a Danish- based global network of rehabilitation centers and programs in 80 countries, supports and promotes the rehabilitation of victims of torture and advocates worldwide for the prevention and eradication of torture.

“Humanitarian Intervention Today: New Issues, New Ideas, New Players” brought together 270 participants—leaders, policy makers, and activists in the fields of humanitarianism and human rights. They represented governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), foundations, corporations, multilateral institutions, and the media.

Starting with Mary Robinson, the repetitive note that sounded underneath all the speakers’ comments was “security.” Robinson called for humanitarian intervention that strengthened the connections between human rights, human development, and human security. The first panelist, Lincoln Chen, picked up the theme and described the “today” of the 21st century: “The world looks and feels very different today— more uncertain, insecure, and troubled—than one decade ago.” Moments later, Noeleen Heyzer was describing why women keep stressing the need for “security, security, security.”

But if it was the threat to security that was a common theme, it was the concept of human security itself that was described as an emerging new idea that offered a refreshing change to notions of security that are limited to military terms. Panelists and participants alike described a security with an increased focus on people and the circumstances of their lives rather than the state of their countries’ arsenals.

Throughout the day, the focus with rare exception stayed with the theme Mary Robinson struck in her opening remarks: humanitarianism in a time of conflict and in the face of terrorism, characterized most specifically by the aftermath of 9/11. Even when the subject was other, longstanding problems, such as poverty and disease, the current situation of conflict following failed states and the chaos brought by terrorism was the backdrop, if for no other reason than it has been realigning potential resources, making them less available for long term problems.

Rather than thematic panels, each panelist chose a subject relating to the overall conference theme:

PANEL ONE - Expanding the Humanitarian Space: A Challenge for Global Philanthropy - Human Security Through Women’s Eyes

PANEL TWO - Righting Human Wrongs: the First Arab Human Development Report - Opportunities for Africa in the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

PANEL THREE - Civil-Military Cooperation—An Impossible Dream? - The Role of the UN in Reconstruction in Iraq

PANEL FOUR - Ending Global Poverty - Religion: the Little Girl with the Curl - Reaching Those in Greatest Need? Current Realities—Future Trends

Before the conference began, Steve Hilton set the tone and direction of the day’s proceedings in his welcoming letter to conference participants:

“The challenge has been, and continues to be, how to best prevent and alleviate human suffering, no matter what. It is the “no matter what” that makes us pause. Starting in 1998 with Humanitarian Challenges in the New Millennium, perhaps at some level we have simply been reacting to a major symbolic change—moving into a new century and new millennium. But as it so happens, the changes have been very real and very concrete indeed. We knew about the end of the Cold War, the collapse of Communism, the proliferation of ethnic and religious regional and local conflicts, globalization in 1998. We did not foresee what else was coming—September 11, a war in Afghanistan, another in Iraq, a world reeling from threats of terrorist attacks and attacks come true. The challenge that brings us together, that in fact makes us seek each other out, is that for all the differences these catastrophes and disruptions have, they all, without exception, demand a humanitarian response. We are all in this together.”

Still reeling from terrorism and its aftermath, still sorting it out, the discussion went forward, and for all the differences, there were common threads and consensus discernible throughout.

The humanitarian space is shrinking. What started to become evident in the 1990s, often seeming an aberration, is now undenia ble as a fact of life. Humanitarians cannot go about their business as usual; they cannot carry out their mandate. Humanitarians are losing the space they had taken for granted along with the belief that all combatants in a conflict situation understood and respected the humanitarian space in which they operated. This subject resonated with conference participants who asked many questions about what a new humanitarian space would look like. No one could answer.

There is a connection between terrorism and poverty. It cannot be demonstrated that poverty directly causes terrorism. Not all terrorists are poor, but it is the climate created by poverty that permits them to flourish. Poverty can create a sympathetic populace that will protect terrorists and provide foot soldiers. With poverty comes an environment of insecurity, alienation, and a feeling of loss of control. Terrorism finds a home here.

A global alliance. There is no longer a question that a global alliance of government, international institutions, foundations, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector, including the business

2 sector, is necessary in any serious effort to address a major humanitarian problem, be it poverty, disease, education, or the aftermath of a violent conflict or natural disaster. And often, the military is a part of government that must be included. The challenge is how to work well together. What evaded consensus on this topic was the question of unilateral versus multilateral intervention, with Iraq visibly hovering over the discussion.

Catastrophic illness, especially HIV/AIDS, is a security issue. Mary Robinson called the HIV/AIDS pandemic “perhaps the greatest humanitarian challenge we face today.” Catastrophic illness not only causes human suffering but the costs of emergency medical care can precipitate a financial crisis, leading to a vicious spiral of impoverishment. In the case of individuals and family units, the barrier between subsistence and poverty is often “one paycheck away,” and catastrophic illness is truly the catastrophe that can turn a family’s circumstances around completely. With HIV/AIDS the same effect can hit an entire community or even society.

In the few short years that the Hilton Foundation has been sponsoring humanitarian conferences, starting in 1998, the world has changed so much that at times this side of the new millennium bears little resemblance to the world we knew so recently. The millennium is a symbolic marker; 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq are markers of a different nature. They are real, and they did not come out of nowhere. They were a long time coming, and now we must live with them and deal with the reality they present.

The challenge has never been so great and yet, as was spelled out more than once during the conference proceedings, these may be grim times, but there is every reason to hope. The world has been moving forward; education and health have improved; poverty has decreased. We know what to do about many of the problems we face. Together, we have it within our means, if not our will, to turn the situation around.

3 Opening Comments

Steven M. Hilton, President, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Steven Hilton has worked in the field of philanthropy for 20 years and was appointed president of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in 1998. The grandson of hotel entrepreneur and founder Conrad N. Hilton, he joined the foundation in 1983 and was named vice president in charge of programs in 1989. In this capacity, Hilton directed the foundation’s grantmaking activities and had primary oversight of programs for the multi-handicapped blind, mentally ill homeless, international water development, and early childhood development. Prior to joining the foundation, Hilton worked for five years in hotel management in Alabama, Georgia, and California with the Hilton Hotels Corporation and was also involved in aquaculture (fish farming) businesses. A graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara, Hilton earned his Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Hilton serves on the boards of both the foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Fund. In addition, Hilton is a board member of St. Joseph Center and the Southern California Association for Philanthropy as well as serving on the Los Angeles Archdiocesan Finance Council.

Good morning everybody. It’s a nice time to be in New York. My name is Steve Hilton. On behalf of the foundation and the Hilton family, we welcome you here today to discuss Humanitarian Intervention Today: New Issues, New Ideas, New Players, and to honor the recipient of this year’s Hilton Humanitarian Prize. The foundation established the Prize in 1996 not only to recognize outstanding contributio ns to humanitarian work but also to focus attention on the importance of humanitarian aid and advocacy, with the hope that more people would become engaged in these critically important issues. Today we will step back for a few hours in order to think out loud with our peers. I’d like to quote someone who I think has some words that are very relevant as to why we are here today: “Man’s mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.” That’s by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

We have an outstanding group of speakers and panelists with us today, and I am confident that between our speakers and the thoughtful questions and comments of this audience, our minds will be stretched as a result of listening to new ideas. Besides the rigorous intellectual exchange that we hope occurs here today, another benefit that can come out of a gathering such as this is a chance to network with such an impressive gathering of leaders within the humanitarian field.

We are very pleased to have once again Ralph Begleiter to moderate this conference. I know many of you are familiar with Ralph’s incredibly rich experience on international issues, but for those of you who are not familiar, I would like to share just a few words about Ralph’s background. Currently he is a professor at the University of Delaware where he teaches communications, journalism, and political science. Prior to his teaching post, Ralph had a nearly 20-year career with CNN as the network’s most widely traveled correspondent and he covered the U.S. State Department, hosted a global public affairs show, and co-anchored CNN’s prestigious international hour, aired daily on CNN International.

4 Ralph Begleiter, Distinguished Journalist in Residence, University of Delaware and former CNN World Affairs Correspondent

Ralph Begleiter brings more than 30 years of broadcast journalism experience to his appointment as a full faculty member at the University of Delaware, where he has taught communication, journalism, and political science for four years. During his nearly 20-year career with CNN, Begleiter was the network’s most widely-traveled correspondent (having visited some 91 countries) and covered the U.S. State Department, hosted a global public affairs show, and co-anchored CNN’s prestigious “International Hour,” aired daily on CNN International. In 1998, Begleiter wrote and anchored a 24-part series on the Cold War. He has covered many historic events of the 1980s and 1990s, including virtually every high-level Soviet/Russian-American meeting; the Persian Gulf Crisis in 1990-91; the Dayton Bosnia Accords; Middle East Peace efforts; and, the aftermath of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Rabin. He has received numerous press awards including in 1994, Georgetown University’s Graduate School of Foreign Service’s Weintal Prize, one of diplomatic reporting’s highest honors. Begleiter has moderated each of the previous Hilton humanitarian conferences.

The theme of this year’s Hilton Prize conference couldn’t be more timely and appropriate. “New Issues, New Ideas, New Players” amply illustrates the challenges of humanitarian operations in a world which seems in many ways to be completely different from the one which existed only six years ago when this Hilton Humanitarian Prize event began. Then, it seemed, we confronted a reluctance by western governments to engage fully in humanitarian operations. The United States, the UN, and Europe were licking their wounds after unhappy experiences in Somalia, the Balkans, and Rwanda, among others. NGOs seemed angry with governments and reluctant to act as watchdogs themselves.

Today, we are confronted by the ongoing aftermath of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, with huge humanitarian rebuilding needs in both cases, and political conflict over how those needs should be addressed. And a third war, still underway—or, perhaps more accurately stated—again underway, among Israelis and Palestinians, with its own looming demands for humanitarian intervention.

In those conflicts, we see one of the bits of wisdom of one of our previous conferences emphasized again: that civilians, caught in the whirlwind of conflict often against their will, have become more often the victims of those conflicts than combatants. That applies to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories, as well as to the Americans and civilians of many other nations who perished in the attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington.

And while those theaters dominate news headlines (at least here in the United States), your organizations confront continuing humanitarian crises in places that have needed your help for years: Africa, Asia, Latin America. And we have seen just a hint of new issues we’re all likely to face in the future as we watched the near-instant spread of SARS during the past year.

The wisdom of another of our conferences continues to haunt us, too. In Iraq, attacks against the United Nations headquarters and against UN personnel remind us that humanitarian workers whose aim is to help are increasingly targets of political conflicts being waged globally. For the first time in many years, Americans, who have considered themselves immune from some of these concerns, find themselves worried about human rights and civil rights in the aftermath of 9/11. That concern might result in healthy new attention to human rights issues around the world. Might.

In virtually all of our previous conferences, the crucial role of women—as catalysts for change, as tireless workers for justice, human rig hts, and peace—has been cited. I am quite certain that will be the case again here today. Increasingly, world organizations are recognizing the vital role women play—and in some

5 cases could play if they were permitted to do so. The World Bank recently highlighted the vastly- underused potential in the Arab world of the social and economic power of Arab women.

Today, we have before us a menu of issues and people of incredible intellect, experience, and diversity, to help us explore the new issues, new ideas, and new players of the humanitarian world. We’ll hear from experts on the rebuilding of Iraq and what it will mean for that country’s people. We’ll hear from others about problems of health care and women, and of a newly-emerging challenge of the ageing, a special problem in places like western Europe, Japan, and the United States. Let’s take full advantage of the opportunity, both to acknowledge and celebrate what has been accomplished as well as to dig into the challenges ahead of us.

A couple of words on mechanics of the day: We have a very full schedule, and you’ll want to be part of it all. So there may be moments when I seem impatient and eager to move along. I’ll be doing that in your own interest, to be sure there’s ample time in our day to drink heartily from the tankard of expert opinion and experience we have before us.

We will be privileged to hear at midday from one of the icons of the human rights arena: the Dalai Lama of Tibet. And in order to make that experience the best it can be, we’ll ask you to move promptly next door at lunchtime. The Dalai Lama will speak first at lunch, so you’ll want to be sure to be in your seats on time. The ballroom next door will open at 12:20 p.m.—no earlier. So we’ll make sure you have time for a quick break before you find your luncheon table.

6 Conference Keynote Address

Mary Robinson, Executive Director, Ethical Globalization Initiative; former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights; and former President of Ireland

Mary Robinson currently directs the Ethical Globalization Initiative, which works to integrate human rights norms and standards into a more ethical globalization process, a position that draws on her experience and leadership in the field of human rights, her extensive network of contacts among world leaders, and the respect accorded her by governments and human rights activists. From 1997 until September 2002, Mrs. Robinson was United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, where she emphasized integrating human rights concerns in all activities of the United Nations. She traveled extensively as High Commissioner—including trips to China, Rwanda, South Africa, Colombia, and Cambodia —and strengthened human rights monitoring in such conflict areas as Kosovo. Prior to joining the United Nations, Mrs. Robinson served a distinguished seven-year tenure as president of Ireland from 1990-1997, developing a new sense of that country’s economic, political, and cultural links to other countries and cultures. Before her election as president, Mrs. Robinson held the office of senator for 20 years, when she became the lawyer of choice on issues of sexual discrimination, equity, and human rights. A brilliant law student and debater at Trinity College, Dublin, she won a postgraduate fellowship to Harvard in 1967. In 1969, at age 25, she became Reid Professor of Constitutional Law at Trinity College, Dublin, and she now serves as chancellor of Dublin University.

Human Rights and Human Security

Good morning. It’s an honor and a pleasure to address this conference and join with all of you in honoring the recipient of the 2003 Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT). During my term as UN High Commissioner, I was aware of IRCT’s vital work to support victims of torture and I was a great admirer of its global campaigning for the universal ratification and implementation of the UN’s Convention Against Torture and its optional protocol. Today, as some voices dangerously suggest that resorting to the use of torture may be necessary in winning the war on terrorism, the work of IRCT to promote international legal standards against this practice is more critical than ever. It is richly deserving of this year’s Hilton Humanitarian Prize and I would like to pay my own personal tribute to the jury of this Prize for their extraordinary intelligence and brilliant planning because they went to a beautiful part of Ireland, Adare Manor, for their decision this year. I had the pleasure of meeting them just after they had made their decision in July and they told me who the awardee was going to be and my lips had to be sealed for weeks and weeks so I’m so pleased that the burden of that is lifted, that we all now know who has won this year’s prize.

The theme of this year’s conference, “Humanitarian Intervention Today: New Issues, New Ideas, New Players” as has been said, just could not be more timely. Four years ago almost to the day at the start of the UN General Assembly session, Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on world leaders to reflect on what means the international community can and should use to respond to human rights and humanitarian crises.

As he put it then, and I quote, “From Sierra Leone to the Sudan, to Angola to the Balkans, to Cambodia and to Afghanistan, there are a great number of people who need more than just words of sympathy from the international community. They need a real and sustained commitment to help end their cycles of violence.”

7 The Secretary-General urged us to think in new ways about a broad concept of humanitarian intervention covering a wide range of actions, including as a last resort the use of military force in cases where states were unwilling or unable to end massive violations of human rights. As I’m sure you know, a Canadian- sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, co-chaired by Mohamed Sahnoun who is here today, in its report, The Responsibility to Protect, developed guidelines for determining when such force should be deployed. What should not be forgotten is that the Commission’s report emphasized prevention of conflict and of human rights violations as being the most important of national and international obligations.

Four years later, in the shadow of 9/11, after wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have raised fundamental questions about the role of international law and international institutions in maintaining peace and security, and with continuing humanitarian crises such as HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty impacting on millions of lives, it is right that we think again about our current approaches to humanitarian intervention. Yesterday at the opening of the General Assembly, Kofi Annan challenged UN members to reflect on the dangers of preemptive military strike without UN sanction, and called for new thinking about the UN’s role.

Some in the humanitarian field have raised legitimate concerns about mixing international political and military management of crises under the flag of “humanitarian intervention.” They warn of dangers in blurring the lines between humanitarian and more political intervention. As one expert put it, “Without a way of distinguishing between political and humanitarian intervention, both conceptually and organizationally, humanitarian aid may well become more politicized and thus struggle with acceptance and safety, not to mind legitimacy…”

What is needed today is reflection on how we can continue to develop a positive relationship between those working to alleviate humanitarian crises and those working to promote systems of government which ensure respect for fundamental rights.

As a first step, I believe we can find common ground around the importance of prevention. Leading humanitarian agencies are already taking steps to ensure that through their own programming they are providing assistance in ways that mitigate, rather than exacerbate, the suffering of civilians. Humanitarian agencies, as I know from my role as President of Oxfam, are leading efforts to identify how assistance can be provided so that, rather than worsening a situation of conflict, it helps local people disengage from fighting and develop systems for settling the problems which prompt conflict within their societies.

What this signals is that our thinking about the future of humanitarian intervention must build on the notion of shared responsibility for human rights, human development, and human security rather than what has previously been a more reactive approach in focusing on when military force should be used to halt humanitarian crises.

In my view, this policy shift should encompass a positive vision of “sovereignty as responsibility,” as has been put forward by Francis Deng, the Representative of the Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons, and as it happens, also a member of this (Hilton Humanitarian Prize) distinguished and wise jury. This implies that when states are unable to provide protection and assistance for their citizens, they are expected to request and accept outside offers of aid. And if they refuse or obstruct access to affected populations, thereby putting large numbers at risk, there is an international responsibility to respond.

But we should ask: are the nations of the world, developing and developed, currently living up to the responsibilities of sovereignty?

8 Where no one can deny that we need a much deeper and more responsible engagement by all countries is in the fight against HIV/AIDS, perhaps the greatest humanitarian challenge we face today.

We in the developed world are only beginning to understand the devastating impact of AIDS on family life and human dignity in a growing number of countries, on social structures and institutions of governance such as education, housing and justice, and on economic productivity. Throughout the last century, we assumed that without war, life expectancy would continue to rise inexorably. In this new century, some African countries must face the fact that their citizens may expect to live only into their late 30s, and that average life expectancy is dropping by 20 or more years.

What would a new strategy for humanitarian intervention in the fight against AIDS look like? How, in practice, would we go about building a new sense of global community with human security for all at its very heart?

The new project which I am developing in partnership with the Aspen Institute, Columbia University, and the Geneva-based International Council on Human Rights Policy—The Ethical Globalization Initiative— seeks to address such questions by strengthening the connections between human rights, human development, and human security.

On the issue of HIV/AIDS, we start with the knowledge that those countries which have had most success in controlling the spread of the disease have been those whose governments have taken a human rights approach through encouraging public discussion and public education, freedom of expression and assembly, and taking steps to protect those who come forward for testing and treatment, or who are suspected of carrying the virus, from being stigmatized or marginalized. A human rights and strong gender approach is the best way to tackle the problem of HIV and AIDS.

So one of the first projects we have developed, in cooperation with the International AIDS Trust and the University of Pretoria [in South Africa] and others, is to engage with African parliamentarians to reduce women’s vulnerability and to combat stigma in the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa.

We began with a meeting in Botswana, co-organized with European Parliamentarians for Africa, which brought together African parliamentarians from around the continent to build greater understanding among leaders and AIDS experts that the disease could be more effectively addressed by emphasizing the extent to which it is also a women’s rights issue, both from the perspective of women as victims of the disease as well as primary caregivers for the sick and orphaned. I must say we were encouraged by the results of this initial meeting and we are now working to develop follow-up activities to support parliamentarians in their own countries to take leadership on these issues.

If I might digress for just a moment, we had a very, very good paper by Mary Crewe of the AIDS Centre at the University of Pretoria, analyzing what parliamentarians could do—it was sort of a “to do” list for parliamentarians. Then being a very smart academic, she said—and this is all too true—when you ask parliamentarians to carry through a program of changing the land law and inheritance law and various policy issues, they always say we don’t have the resources. So she said I think we can meet that problem as well because there are African graduates from a human rights master’s program and she was offering them as interns to the various parliaments or parliamentarians. We actually have experts that can help you with the job—which I thought was a very good approach, not just analyzing what parliaments should do but actually trying to give them the resources. I hope that program, which we will certainly support, will go ahead.

Yet despite the encouraging evidence of what can be done to address AIDS at local and national levels through leadership and women’s empowerment, responsible assistance from outside is also needed.

9 At the General Assembly’s Special Session on HIV/AIDS in 2001, you recall that Member States adopted the Declaration of Commitment, which contained a number of specific, time-bound targets for fighting the epidemic. Through the creation of the Global Fund Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, significant new resources have been pledged.

And yet, as the report of the Secretary-General to the Assembly makes clear, we are failing to reach a number of the Declaration’s objectives. You probably read in yesterday’s New York Times the very poor scorecard and Peter Piot’s very outspoken views on the poor response to the Declaration of Commitment. Based on current projections, we will not succeed in reducing the scale and impact of the epidemic by 2005. Both developing and developed countries are to blame for this situation.

As the president of the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Juan Manuel Suarez del Toro, stressed in his address to the special meeting on HIV/AIDS, and I quote, “We know what we need to do and we know how to do it.” The challenge is to muster the political will to scale up resources for prevention, care, and treatment programs and to break down the barriers of silence, stigma, and discrimination which keep those affected from seeking care.

Accepting the importance of a preventive approach to humanitarian intervention would bring us back to the commitments made at the start of this century in the UN Millennium Declaration. We have the shared agenda of implementing the Millennium Development Goals by 2015—that’s in 12 years time. That agenda was costed in Monterrey, at the Conference on Financing for Development, as requiring an additional $50 billion U.S. dollars a year in global development spending. This is a large sum, but not really so large if it is placed side-by-side with global military spending, and even with the figures that we are so familiar with now in the context of the aftermath in Iraq and also continuing in Afghanistan, if we recognize that the spending of it will in fact achieve greater human security.

So let me conclude by saying that a new approach to humanitarian intervention must focus on preventing conflicts and threats to human life through shared responsibilities—the responsibility of sovereignty. And it must embrace, as has been recommended by the Commission on Human Security, led by former UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, and Nobel Prize winning economist, Amartya Sen, the values of protection and empowerment.

Protection and empowerment are core human rights principles. If we are willing to embrace them as part of a new approach to humanitarian intervention and demand that our leaders do the same, I believe that that can make all the difference.

Thank you.

10 Conference Keynote – Question and Answer Session

Begleiter. Mrs. Robinson has agreed to take a few questions. I’m sure there is food for thought here. Is there someone who would like to throw out the first challenge, perhaps on HIV or AIDS, perhaps on her comment about whether the world’s nations are actually living up to their responsibilities, perhaps on her reference to the politicization of humanitarian aid. Please identify yourself and your organization.

Q. Carolyn McAskie, United Nations. I’m the Coordinator of Humanitarian Affairs in the United Nations. Mary, you touched on what I think is a very critical problem for all of us working in these fields and that is how do we translate all of the pledges and the good words and good intentions into action by government? Certainly in my own business in humanitarian affairs it is a constant frustration, although I’m now in the business of fund-raising for humanitarian affairs. I spent 30 years in the government of Canada, so I was on the other end where we had to make decisions about where the money goes and what we need. Given the fact that you yourself have been on both sides of the fence as president of an important member country of the European Union, how do we break this deadlock? Do you have any idea as to how we can go to governments and help them to understand, or help them to make the decisions that they need to make in order to fund things which are so obvious and which will have such long-term benefits? I look at my own country, I’m a Canadian, and we have X number of dollars in the pot each year for humanitarian response, and it gets divided up no matter what, and the money that we could use for example to solve problems in Liberia, in Côte d’Ivoire, in the Congo, just isn’t available. But then Iraq comes along and I can raise a billion dolla rs in a month for Iraq and $10 million dollars in six months for Liberia. How do we make governments understand these issues are real investments that have to be made, and particularly the one you mentioned HIV/AIDS, that what sounds like large amounts of money is really very small amounts of money?

A. Robinson. I think it is a very pertinent question, not an easy one to see the way through. But that is partly why I was trying to emphasize the importance of the connection between human rights, human development, and human security. I think it’s human security that catches the attention of those who must make decisions to allocate money, and I think it has been important that the AIDS pandemic is now seen as a human security problem by the Security Counc il. I think Secretary of State Colin Powell was referring to it in those terms in recent days and that helps, because human security is very important in that sense. The other way of trying to gain greater attention is to really dwell on sovereignty as responsibility—responsibility to protect and if you don’t, we are going to take action, not necessarily military action, but we’re going to poke into your situation. If we could have much more of a positive, preventive, proactive approach to the responsibility for human security, as the Human Security Now report suggests, then this might mean that there would be a greater willingness to allocate money.

I also think it’s important to feed back the success stories and you’re in a position to know these success stories. I would just give you one example from my personal experience very briefly. I’m on the board of the Vaccine Fund. I attended the first meeting that I was able to attend recently in South Africa, chaired by Nelson Mandela. What I had understood up to then from the paperwork that I had been sent was that the Vaccine Fund—with the new Gates money and the linking of all the UN organizations and a whole lot of NGOs and a whole lot of grassroots organizations—was that it had been very successful at immunizing. One of the figures that I retained in my mind was reaching an additional eight million children who would not have been reached and that’s a great success. For me, what was even more impressive was evidence that in the countries where the Vaccine Fund is promoting immunizations, the health systems of those countries are being supported. That seemed to me to be part of a government’s reinforcement because you have health systems which can’t reach rural areas and can’t tackle disease. I think it’s important that we realize that that money has made a really significant difference in a significant number of countries. The country that the Vaccine Fund members were visiting was Mozambique. Graca Machel was able to speak personally about the difference she could see in rural areas because there was a resourcing to build a sustainable, better system locally of district nurses and parents. Medical services

11 and families are all in a link now on immunization. It just seemed to me that in the embryonic situation that we face with HIV/AIDS I know it’s much more difficult because it has to be life-long treatment and care for those infected, but if donors knew more about the fact that this can work, then that would encourage more support for access to treatment.

But I do think that what really engages is human security. It is stunning how when it’s a military issue, security of homeland, millions will flow into military budgets, and we have to make that argument and advocate it and drive it home.

Begleiter. Mary, are you suggesting that humanitarian issues somehow be funneled into military budgets so that you can tap some of that?

A. Robinson. No, I would like to move some of that money that is going into military budgets, and I think that the argument for it is that this would really promote human security. As we know, the UN’s Human Development Report from this year showed that in the ’90s, 54 countries got poorer in sub- Saharan Africa and in the former Soviet Union. When countries get poorer, with the pandemic of AIDS as well, then systems break down. You’ll have more failed states. What are failed states? They are breeding grounds for despair and the possibility of this being manipulated into acts of terrorism. So there is a security reason. I find it really very compelling that having decided on the commitment of the Millennium Development Goals—and you will remember the wording in the Millennium Declaration of the heads of state and governments that it was their priority to make globalization work for all of the world’s people —that’s from the text of the Declaration and that’s why we had the millennium goals. That’s why we costed them as an additional $50 billion dollars a year, and it seems to me that we need a world public opinion focused around that because people want more human security. Human rights doesn’t necessarily have the same compelling (message) that human security does.

Q. Janina Ochojska, Polish Humanitarian Organization. I represent a little organization from Poland. We have a permanent mission now in Chechnya and Iraq. When the war finished in Afghanistan, I believe that the intention was to help the Afghan people. I think that people care that these people, need our help. I’m asking what we can do, the humanitarian world, when there is another war like Iraq? We are now in Iraq and our money is now in Iraq and I’m asking when do we take the money from Iraq because we are now in Iraq and Afghanistan? In Iraq, it’s easier to help but I’m asking how long? Are we convinced really that with humanitarian activity we can really change this war, this country and make a better life for these people?

A. Robinson. Thank you for the question as it does raise a number of broad issues. I do believe, and I believe this was part of the thrust of your question, that Afghanistan is quite a litmus test for us because that was an intervention sanctioned by the United Nations. It was supported by the Bonn Conference. It was very much in the aftermath that the world came in in support of the Afghan administration led by Chairman Karzai, as he was then, and further legitimized by the Loya Jirga. And yet we are not fulfilling the expectations of the Afghan people for the resources needed to help them build. Nor are we fulfilling the responsibility to protect properly human security in Kabul and beyond into the rest of the country. I know there are plans to extend security measures, but there are so many parts of Afghanistan where people do not feel secure. The refugees who come back are living in desperate circumstances. The Afghan administration does not feel that the commitments have been fulfilled. If things were to go badly wrong in Afghanistan, if the Taliban were to get toeholds over the country and human security were to get worse, I think the negative impact would really get extremely serious and, again, I think the best way to try to argue it is in the context of human security.

Personally I find the situation in Iraq much more difficult because it lacks that legitimacy and we see that this is now being debated at the UN level. Until there is a new configuration—and it won’t be easy at this moment because there have also been attacks on the UN itself—but there needs to be a new configuration

12 that gives the sense that the world is behind the Iraqi people in rapidly bringing about a situation where they can be a government that is acceptable to the complex population in Iraq. So I certainly encourage the commitment you are showing from Poland. I think the issues that you raised are issues that this conference needs to discuss.

Q. Liam Mahony, Peace Brigades International. The question I have is related to humanitarian intervention tomorrow perhaps; it may be a little optimistic to think about today. But in the link between human rights and human security one of the lost success stories is the fact that large-scale UN unarmed missions in war zones have had incredible successes, particularly in the 1990s in places like El Salvador, Cambodia, Guatemala, etc. Even smaller scale NGOs doing protection such as our organization in places like Colombia have shown that a presence on the ground can help protect people even when you don’t have an ongoing negotiation or peace process. My question to you because of your experience with the High Commissioner’s office and your close connection with Colombia, especially during that period, what kind of hope do you see for the future in terms of the UN or the international community in general learning from the success stories of large-scale unarmed missions and trying to implement them and putting more resources into them in the future in either peace processes or in war zones where there are not peace processes?

A. Robinson. First of all, I do agree with the comments you made about the importance of presence in situations of great difficulty and conflict. I heard that over and over again, not least in Colombia, about the importance of the presence of the Office of High Commissioner, the presence of refugees, the presence of NGOs and the fact that it was then possible to bring the issue to Geneva, even though the circumstances of doing that were not always easy. There was a scrutinizing of behavior both of the military and the paramilitary, etc. in that context.

I think you do need, as I mentioned and you affirmed, that there are quite extraordinary success stories and that they do depend on all sorts of interventions. Again I have a recollection and it’s one that I think is relevant to your question. I remember it was in June of 1999 we had had the huge crisis in Kosovo and then I went as High Commissioner to Sierra Leone, but I knew there was anger, not only in Sierra Leone, about the extent in which both military and humanitarian support was available to Kosovo because it was part of a “whiter” Europe and, quite frankly, because the people were white and could be identified with. There was seething resentment in many parts of Africa and particularly in Sierra Leone. I led a distinguished delegation—which included the former president of Botswana, and we went very deliberately to show a face of caring. We got a lot of criticism but we also got appreciation because we had come. While there, I signed a human rights pact—it literally was a human rights document which was signed by the government, President Kabbah, the UN presence in Sierra Leone, me as High Commissioner, and the NGO forum. It became an important basis for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, for human rights commissions being established, as a link between the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the special court, and all kinds of structural differences. It just helped to make a difference.

So while we are in a very anxious and troubled time in the world, I think it is important that this conference brings out that intervention does help. The point I was making earlier is that I think it isn’t enough anymore to talk about stopping violations of human rights because people say, look, there are always violations of human rights. It is not enough to say you need more humanitarian aid because they say, look, a lot of it is wasted, there is a lot of corruption. I believe that there won’t really be a momentum of the kind of resources that are needed to enable this work to make a difference on the ground until we make that link with political leaders about human security, about their security, about the interconnections now. And because of what we’ve seen about how easy it is to have attacks, and since 9/11, we’ve seen attacks in so many different parts of the world, it is a global problem. There is a global interconnection and at its heart there is a political concern about human security. That I think is the message we should try to get across.

13 Panel One Summary

Both speakers talked about humanitarian intervention in terms of human security, linking humanitarian intervention inextricably to human rights. The first speaker brought our basic impulse to intervene in human crises back to the very basics of our makeup, genetics. The second brought women into the equation and made their presence a prerequisite for lasting results.

Expanding the Humanitarian Space: Challenge for Global Philanthropy. The humanitarian work of the past 150 years, with its covenants, laws, institutions, and boundaries, is changing fast. As a result, the humanitarian space, that is the space in which humanitarian players can intervene and those in need of humanitarian help can receive it safely, is shrinking. In the 21st century, civilians are targets; humanitarian agencie s are seen as partisans; neutrality is equated with partisanship with the other side; and laws are dismissed. What endures, however, are the values that propel us toward humanitarian intervention—human empathy, the capacity of every human being for sympathizing with the plight of others and to extend a helping hand to people in distress.

The case can be made that human empathy goes back to genetics, that empathy helps collective survival and human security. Whether or not it goes back to the origin of the species, it goes back at least to Cicero and the Roman Empire. In the first century B.C. Cicero spoke of two ethical obligations, to desist from committing injustice and to act to correct injustice. This is where we find ourselves today.

Human Security Through Women’s Eyes. In speaking of security today, there are four messages: our lives are increasingly intertwined; global security is integrally linked with national security to the extent that there is no way to think of security realistically in unilateral terms; human security must be based on human rights and human development, not on terms of military and weapons-based security; and, fourth, women, peace, and security belong on the agenda together because women are no longer willing to be vic tims of war; they know they are necessary for any solution leading to lasting peace and security. It is more than a matter of what women want; by now it is known that involvement of women in peace- building and reconstruction is a major key in returning to stable peace with sustainable development and democratic engagement. Reconstruction offers more than getting buildings rebuilt and the economy moving; reconstruction is an opportunity to reconstruct natural constitutions, legal systems and government institutions. This can be done in ways that link human security, human rights, and human development. In many instances, Afghanistan being a case in point, women know that their participation in the electoral process and in economic development provides the moderate ground on which to address the rise of fundamentalism. Women, as was stated, “would like to be the space whereby you invest as a way of addressing extremism, because no women benefit from extremism and no women would like to suffer under extremism.”

14 Lincoln C. Chen, M.D., Director, Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University

Lincoln Chen is a distinguished professional in international public health and development. In 2001 Dr. Chen founded the Global Equity Initiative at Harvard after servin g five years as executive vice president for strategy at the Rockefeller Foundation. Over the previous decade, Dr. Chen was the Taro Takemi Professor of International Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and director of the university-wide Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. From 1973 to 1987, Dr. Chen was with the Ford Foundation, first on its staff in Bangladesh and later as representative in India. In Bangladesh, Dr. Chen for several years was seconded as scientific director of the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh. Dr. Chen is chairman of the board of directors of CARE/USA and a member of the Global Commission on Human Security. He is a member of the advisory committee of the Center of Economic and Social Rights, the Center for Sciences and the Environment, and the Synergos Institute. He graduated from Princeton University, Harvard Medical School, and the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health.

Expanding the Humanitarian Space: Challenge for Global Philanthropy

The world looks and feels very different today—more uncertain, insecure, and troubled—than one decade ago. We are inundated daily with news reports of humanitarian “hot spots” around the world. Conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Liberia are new types of wars without precedence. September 11 reminds us that terrorism can reach into even the wealthiest and safest society. There are also the continuing crises of poverty and turbulent political transitions. A “third wave” of HIV/AIDS is now exerting devastating social impact. In sub-Saharan Africa, infection with the HIV virus (some 30 million HIV positive) moves in 5-10 years into full-blown AIDS (already 15 million deaths) that exerts profound social consequences—killing people, tearing apart families and communities, crippling social services, slowing economies, and weakening democracies.

Humanitarian intervention is ultimately based upon human empathy, the capacity of every human being for sympathizing with the plight of others. Humanitarianism expresses a basic human impulse to extend a helping hand to people in distress. Covenants and laws and clear divisions of labor crafted over the past 150 years to guide humanitarian interventions, however, are breaking down. The “humanitarian space” is shrinking. Innocent civilians are not simply collateral damage but often targets of intentional violence. Humanitarian relief workers no longer enjoy the protection of neutrality. Many have and are being killed, including the recent murder of United Nations staff in Iraq. The neutrality of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is increasingly disregarded by combatants and politicized by governments. In the battle against human suffering, health workers (like relief workers) are exposed to unacceptable risk. In Africa, many health systems are being decimated by the loss of health workers to AIDS. We should recall that it was frontline health workers in medical facilities who absorbed the lethal burden of the SARS virus.

How are the contours of the humanitarian space changing? What will it look like in the future? The ultimate shape of that space is being contested in public policies and action on-the-ground. It will be determined, in part, by new issues, new ideas, and new players. Steadfast and unchanged, I hope, will be the basic values of humanitarianism and the fundamental principles of humanitarian action.

15 Human Security One such new idea is human security. I had the privilege of serving as one of the twelve members of an independent Commission on Human Security co-chaired by Madame Sadako Ogata and Professor Amartya Sen. The Commission’s report, Human Security Now, articulated four basic principles. First, human security is people -centered, prioritizing security according to the perspective and agency of people, not of states. Human security does not replace state security but complements state action to protect its citizens in a borderless world. Human security also strengthens the more established concepts of human development and human rights. Second, human security is comprehensive, promoting freedom from both violence and poverty. A mother is not consoled if her child is killed by bacteria rather than a bullet. One type of insecurity may generate another. Poorly appreciated, for example, is that catastrophic illness not only causes human suffering but the cost of emergency medical care can precipitate a financial crisis, leading to a vicious spiral of impoverishment. Poorly recognized is that even in the United States, as many as a quarter of personal bankruptcies are due to catastrophic illness. Third, the strategy for human security is protection from above and empowerment from below. These are complementary, synergistic, and offer guidance to institutional actors.

Finally and most importantly, human security is interdependent. My security ultimately depends on your security. I am unable to achieve my own security at the expense of your insecurity. In research for the Commission, we examined the relationship between poverty and terrorism. Violence and conflict, including epidemics, retard and set back economic development; poverty is worsened. Claims for the reverse—that poverty directly causes terrorism—are not supported by evidence. Poverty, however, can breed a festering environment for sympathizers or footsoldiers of extremism. An interesting recent study examined commonalities among all suicide bombers. Only a minority were Muslims; all were well- organized, not random individual acts; and all depended on a popular base of sympathy for their cause. Importantly, all lived in environments of human insecurity, alienation, and a loss of control living in occupied territories.

Global Alliances and Philanthropy The Commission called for a global alliance to carry forward the human security agenda, based on the three pillars of social action—government, business, and civil society. At this time, these three legs of a stool are rather shaky. Government is essential for providing human security; no other institution can assume this responsibility. Yet governments everywhere are being “downsized”; many humanitarian crises are associated with “failed states”; and governments are in a crisis of deteriorating multilateral cooperation, challenging even harmony within the UN. Business generates societal and personal wealth, but its conduct depends upon political stability and physical security. The corporate sector is also experiencing a crisis of governance, which hopefully will be transient. Civil society expands popular participation. NGOs are challenged by transparency, accountability, and social effectiveness as they attempt to operationalize their mission while securing requisite funding.

An important driver of global action is what I call “private social action for public good”—good humanitarianism, for human security. Business generates private wealth that can be invested for social good, supporting action by civil society and strengthening the performance of government. The creativity of social investing, therefore, is an important force in shaping the humanitarian space.

Philanthropic players are expanding and diversifying. Established foundations and international non- governmental organizations continue to evolve and pursue worthy activities. Annual giving by the American public approximates $200 billion, 2-3% for international work. To these established activities, new and generous philanthropists have joined. More than 200 billionaires in the United States have benefited from the global economy, and some are giving back to advance global social good. In the U.S., diaspora philanthropy, contributing back to countries of origin, is growing among Hispanic and Asian groups. In the late 1990s, one quarter of the Silicon Valley start-ups were owned by Asians. My

16 colleague, Devesh Kapur, has reported that diaspora remittances may be approaching as much as $70-100 billion annually, nearly twice the volume of official foreign aid flowing from richer to poorer countries.

Private social investing could spark innovations in humanitarianism and human security—through one or a combination of strategies. Social investing can be devoted entirely to charity, e.g. feeding the hungry. Strategic philanthropy can attempt to address the root cause of social problems with sustainable solutions, e.g. teaching the poor how to fish. Strategic philanthropy can also engage the public through education to promote public policies and social action.

Humanitarian Values Essential for guiding these social investments are the basic values of humanitarianism. Even as contexts, issues, and players change, the basic principles of humanitarianism must remain steadfast. Fortunately, these principles are deeply rooted in human history. Some scientists, indeed, claim that “empathy” is genetically-based, selected in human evolution for the survival of the species. Instinctive empathetic behavior improves the prospect that individuals and groups will survive against adversity. Cicero, a Roman philosopher of the first century B.C., spoke of two ethical dimensions. The first is to desist from committing injustice and also to act to correct injustice. The second is that while our moral obligations are strongest to our dearest and nearest, we also have obligations to distant strangers as members of a common humanity.

For its principled humanitarianism, I would like to congratulate the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), this year’s Hilton prize winner. In your work to heal the suffering of torture victims, you have demonstrated that humanity can speak to abuse, truth can speak to power. I also congratulate the jurors for their wise selection, and the Hilton Foundation for a prize that exemplifies strategic philanthropy that engages the public through education, promotion, demonstration, and reward for outstanding achievement. Both the IRCT and the Hilton Foundation are actively contributing to expanding, shaping, and invigorating the humanitarian space in our changing world.

17 Noeleen Heyzer, Ph.D., Executive Director, United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)

Noeleen Heyzer is executive director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), which promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment worldwide. Since 1994, under her leadership, UNIFEM has nearly tripled its resources, vastly expanded its field presence, and successfully advocated to put gender equality high on the agenda of the UN system. Heyzer established the UNIFEM Trust Fund in Support of Actions to Eliminate Violence Against Women, supporting initiatives to combat gender violence in countries throughout the world, and inaugurated the Fund’s biennial Progress of the World’s Women, which monitors governments’ progress in implementing commitments to women worldwide. She has also pioneered the effort to showcase the impact of war on women and women’s role in peace-building by bringing the lived reality of women in conflict areas in front of the Security Council. Before joining UNIFEM, Heyzer directed the Gender and Development Program of the Asian Pacific Development Centre in Malaysia and was policy adviser on gender and development to various Asian governments. She has served on numerous boards and advisory committees, and has published on gender and development issues in magazines and journals around the world. Born in Singapore, she holds a doctorate in social sciences from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.

Human Security Through Women’s Eyes

It is a real honor for me to be here today and to participate in this panel with Mary Robinson and Lincoln Chen. As we think about our world today, I want to stress four messages that are more important than at any other time. Message one—our lives are increasingly intertwined. So connected that decisions made in New York, in Washington, and Vienna affect the most remote villages in the world, and decisions made in the far corners and caves of the world affect even the most secure places in our world, as we saw with September 11, 2001.

The second message is one that Mary has spoken about many times over: that global security now more than ever is linked with national security. There is no way in which we can think solely in unilateral terms.

The third message is that human security can no longer be equated just in terms of military and weapons- based security. Human security has to be rooted and intertwined with human rights and human development.

My talk today takes these three messages one step further, to a message about change. It starts with the year 2000, when many women from around the world came to me and said we need to put the issue of women, peace, and security on the Security Council agenda. They told me that the nature of warfare has changed, the nature of security has changed, and women are no longer willing to be seen only as victims; they must be recognized as part of the solution.

The nature of warfare has changed not only because the targets have changed, and casualties are now mainly civilians instead of soldiers, but because the nature of the battlefield has changed. Warfare is no longer fought only between armies but is fought in our homes, our schools, our communities, and increasingly on women’s bodies. The use of violence as a weapon of war is not just to hurt and to violate women; it is a weapon of war to hurt the other side, to destroy the enemy’s men and morale and to ensure that whole communities will be so devastated that they will have no capacity of revitalization. It is a way of destroying the future.

18 In addition, there is an intermingling of the militias with the civilians, so that it is extremely difficult to provide the necessary protection and security and it is extremely difficult to allow the everyday rhythm of life to take place. That is why women keep stressing the need for security, security, security.

Which brings me to the fourth message. At UNIFEM, the Women’s Fund of the United Nations, there is one central message that we have learned in all our work: that involvement of women in peace-building and in reconstruction is in fact a major key to assist countries in returning to a stable peace with sustainable development and to democratic engagement. Unless we take this lesson seriously we are going to lose out on the possibility of long-term peace and stability. Yet this lesson that all of us have learned from the ground, keeps falling off the agenda whenever decisions about resource allocations have to be made at every table.

UNIFEM’s work has been to constantly strengthen women’s groups in the communities of conflict on the ground, making sure that they can provide a community of hope, that they will continue to be infused with enthusiasm and able to cross barriers of clanship, of ethnicity. However, this is more and more difficult because resources are not committed to helping women to organize at that level. Women are our last threshold of hope in many difficult situations. I have seen in all of my visits—from East Timor to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Rwanda—that when this community of hope breaks down, that is when the children are recruited into becoming soldiers. There is no longer any protection.

So it is very important that these issues that the women know about and talk about are brought to the table. We in the international community are more comfortable having warlords at the peace table than women who hold these communities of hope together. Yet when women come to the peace table, the issues that they bring are very different. They are the issues that have broken through the culture of shame and blame—issues that are crucial to the rebuilding process. These include issues of rape babies, issues of traumatized communities, issues of inheritance, issues of education—all issues of truth and reconciliation, of being able to find new understanding or forgiveness in order to put the past behind and to rebuild a future. In fact, in some of the communities that I visited in Rwanda, it was very touching for me to hear the Tutsi and the Hutu women saying to one another, let’s adopt each other’s orphans because these are the children of Rwanda. That in fact is the depth of forgiveness that they have come to.

Equally important is the role of women in reconstruction. The brutalization of women in Afghanistan under the Taliban was a very good indicator that the breakdown in women’s security was the best barometer of the breakdown in national security, and yet nobody wanted to heed the early warning signals and take necessary action. We had to learn that lesson in a very hard way. Yet today if we look at the press, we see that again women are being forgotten in the reconstruction process and that there are not adequate resources to help them.

What do women do? What are they asking? What are the messages that they are bringing to the core of reconstruction?

The crisis of peace and security has provided an opportunity in many places for change. First, the reconstruction process provides the chance for people to reconstruct their national constitutions, their legal systems, their institutions, in ways that build the foundation for the interlinking of human security, human rights, and human development. Therefore, it is an opportunity that we need to take, and UNIFEM has done a lot of work trying to help women engage in the process of putting their concerns on the constitutional agenda.

Second, and equally important in a reconstruction phase, there is an opportunity to allow women to engage in the electoral process, to vote, to stand for election, and to actively debate the issues that will shape their society. When I was in Afghanistan one issue hit me very strongly when I went outside of Kabul and many women said to me, “We do not even have an identity card. We have no identity.” The

19 registration process is so important precisely because it will determine who is recognized as a citizen. In many post-conflict situations, the peace is very fragile, the borders are very, very fluid and there is an array of militants and extremists moving in and out. Women are eager to participate in the electoral process precisely because they feel that they are the moderate ground to address the rise of extremism. In fact, investing in women is a way of addressing extremism, because women never benefit from extremism or bad governance.

Third is the opportunity to invest in economic security. To bring about human development and human security it is necessary to strengthen economic security from the perspective of people, and here the whole area of globalization, market engagement and the ethics of cooperation is extremely important. When we bring the private sector and the public sector together, a people’s perspective is so important to the ethics of engagement.

The final opportunity is that of truth and reconciliation. Many women feel that there is a lot of hurt, a lot of blame, that has got to be put behind them, but at the same time, they know that truth and reconciliation have to rest on social justice, and there has to be an end to impunity to the kind of violence that is used against women.

In concluding, I would like to emphasize the word community. The word community rests with a common unity of purpose—a purpose that has to be rooted again in the coming together of human security with human rights and human development. We are in fact at this time of human existence the richest we have ever been and yet the way in which we use our resources, as Mary has said many times— is outrageous. The worldwide military budget is now approximately $840 billion, just one-quarter of what is needed to achieve all of the Millennium Development Goals. I run the Women’s Fund of the United Nations and I have to say I’m constantly trying to sell the eggs to buy the shoes to keep many of these initiatives alive. Can you imagine a world in which women have all the money they need and the military has to have a bake sale in order to buy their weapons?

Finally, the human species is the only species that can foresee its own future. It can foresee its own death and because of that we can shape our interventions in such a way that there is a future for all its children. Thank you.

20 Panel One -- Question and Answer Session

Begleiter. Both of you spoke about redefining the humanitarian space in slightly different ways. Can each of you give us a little bullet list of the elements you would like to see in this new humanitarian space? If you could try to think of three, four, or five elements that would be different from the way things are today. You mentioned, Noeleen, that one of those characteristics should be that the military has to hold bake sales and humanitarian organizations don’t, so that’s on the table. In the new space, what will it look like? What should it look like?

A. Chen. I have to be frank, I do not know what that new space will lo ok like. I think it depends on all of us, how much we stay steadfast to the fundamental principles and values of humanitarianism and negotiate and navigate the space. I can see all sorts of scenarios; for example, the military has been increasing its budget for training and budget for relief work now for well over a decade here in the United States. I taught at the Kennedy School last year and many students come from the military and, by the way, it’s one of the few groups that has both the lift capacity and the control of violence capability that is needed in some of these places. The problem is that the multilateral organizations and the humanitarian relief organizations are finding their lines increasingly blurred in difficult situations.

Begleiter. So you would see the new space having military involvement in providing the lift and violence suppression capabilities for humanitarian goals. Is that fair to say?

A. Chen. I think that even for natural disasters that there are some things that the military can do well. For example, lift large volumes of food.

Begleiter. Ok, well we’ll see what the reaction to that is from humanitarian organizations in a minute. Noeleen?

A. Heyzer. I would see the space actually as a space that has to get out of compartmentalization. Increasingly what we are seeing is the need for linking humanitarian space with the prevention space. How do you begin to rebuild but from the very start with the prevention of conflict, the preemption of conflict? We need to bring in the development activists so that the continuum of relief, humanitarianism, emergency actions, and response builds up the development space and interventions as well and also helps with the prevention of conflict.

Begleiter. Ok, how about some comments or criticisms from our audience?

Q. Todd Petersen, HelpAge International. I’m going to ask a question and perhaps even Mary can give a response along with the other two. Beginning with Mary, all three of the speakers gave a very powerful voice for the need for intervention as a global community. Yet when you look at the results of the intervention, especially over the last several decades, the results are pretty abysmal. You have greater economic inequality globally today then ever before, greater disparities in income. Lincoln talked about the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the increasing rates of tuberculosis. You have a greater number of poverty- related diseases, a greater proliferation of national and regional conflicts, increased political and religious extremism. The results of our intervention really haven’t sown a lot of positive affirmations. What can you tell me, someone who has worked in this field for 20 years, is going to change something for the better? Because I don’t see the work that we are doing, the interventions we are doing globally, changing things for the better.

A. Chen. The main comment I would like to make is that intervention really begins at home first. In other words, humanitarianism and empathy are of your immediate nearest and dearest first, so the basic concept of humanitarianism does not necessarily call for international intervention. I think once you move on to the question of international intervention, I think it’s debatable and that is exactly what Mary

21 Robinson was speaking about when she spoke of responsible sovereignty, because with responsible sovereignty the intervention would not be necessary.

A. Heyzer. One of the reasons I think things have not worked is because we tend to use a firefighter approach. We intervene in order to respond to emerging crises but do not look at the transnational and national processes that create these crises. And in a sense we are in a situation where our institutions are not capable at this stage of responding to some of these new emerging crises because they are transnational. Even within the United Nations we tend to work with nation states but increasingly many of the problems we are confronting, from economic issues to the issues of HIV/AIDS, are problems without borders. They are problems that do not locate themselves solely within national boundaries. People come to the United Nations and make policy statements and so on, but in terms of the action we have yet to seriously act as an international community. I think herein lies the challenge to seriously act as nations united because we have not done that, even though we think we have. We are still individual nation states acting out of self-interest. We need to put that behind us and seriously realize that this is an opportunity to rethink human solidarity.

A. Robinson. I think you’ve raised a fair question and I don’t think it can be answered in the context of the subject of this conference. We’ve been focusing on humanitarian intervention but actually we should remember that there is a whole other dimension to international relations. I was in Cancun wearing my Oxfam hat and Cancun was to be the continuation of the Doha development round. The Doha Declaration was a commitment to phase out export subsidies and to help countries to trade out of poverty, which most developing country leaders want to do. They don’t want our charity, our compassion; they just want fair trade. It is remarkable that despite the Doha Declaration, which was supposed to focus negotiations on development issues, the focus of the developed world was on the Singapore issues. Can we widen the discussion? They didn’t want to fulfill the development round and there was a lot of anger.

What I was pleased to see, and I think this was shared by many of the representatives of the development agencies in Cancun, was that developing countries are not taking this anymore. They grouped into a group of 21, which later became 22, and the AUACP and LDC countries also grouped into a 90-country grouping and that was to stop being marginalized and bullied by the developed world and their smart lawyers on the details of trade. It was a pity that the discussions broke down because, frankly, I think there was also a slight problem of chairmanship, but they needn’t have completely broken down. What we were hearing was, “Well, we’re coming into an election year so there can’t be any change on cotton.” The EU was saying, “Well, we’ve done an awful lot. We had a mid-way assessment and someday, sometime we might do something about agricultural subsidies and these would be so significant for developing countries.” So there is actually a lack of trust now and I think that is undermining the real impact of humanitarian intervention because the developed world is doing much less really by blocking on trade.

What we’re trying to do, just to make a point because it is new thinking, is we’re saying look at the 146 members of the WTO—116 of them have ratified the covenant on economic, social, and culture rights, so they have committed to progressively implementing the right to food, safe water, health, education, and shelter without discrimination—but they can’t do it when you have trade barriers. All of the countries except the United States have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Now the difficulty is that for a very long time rigorously developing countries see any attempt to link human rights and trade as a new conditionality, as a new stick to beat them with, to have them have environmental standards that are at a Western level, etc. So there is a huge cultural challenge as to how we change that debate and say, no, actually the legal commitment to human rights that the whole world has made can help to balance and bring about more fair trade. I think we’re only beginning that argument, but that to me is one of the reasons why on the humanitarian side there hasn’t been more sustained impact, because on the trade side we’re actually inhibiting and keeping countries in cycles of poverty.

22 Q. Bhogendra Sharma, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. I’m the newly- elected president of IRCT. First of all I would like to thank the Hilton Foundation for choosing us and take this opportunity to tell what it means to the torture treatment global world.

There are several humanitarian issues we are facing and I want to focus on the issue of military aid and there are two issues related to this. One is that it has become more difficult for people working in the grassroots because military also provides aid and the humanitarian agencies go there and the people who are in the crossfire don’t understand who is who. This creates a great risk. On the other hand, we have to make a distinction between militaries. Some military are involved in heinous crimes, crimes against humanity, so I think we have to differentiate between two kinds of military because some have some ethical values from some countries who have good military training. The time has come to create a strategy to delegitimize the military providing humanitarian aid and the time has come for action. How do we do that?

Begleiter. So how do we delegitimize the military and should it be delegitimized?

A. Chen. At CARE we opposed U.S. military dropping yellow meal packets in Afghanistan for the reason that you spoke of which is the vulnerability of our humanitarian workers, in addition to the fact that yellow was sometimes the same color as land mines and also the fact of high cost structure. One meal prepared by the military and dropped out of a helicopter was the equivalent of the amount an NGO needed to feed a family for a week, in addition to this issue of people confusing political military objectives for humanitarian. In a way of balancing my earlier comment in saying that yes there may be some roles for the military, I want to say that I think that maintaining the integrity of humanitarian operations is paramount.

A. Heyzer. I would like to make three kinds of differentiations in terms of the military. One is the military role in protection. I have seen that especially in the areas I have visited in Afghanistan that the ISAF force have protected the area around Kabul and apparently now is expanding its reach. The peacekeeping and protective aspect I think is extremely important, but I would like to differentiate that from the military as an industry. I think one of the reasons that it is so difficult to have peace in the world is economic and the fact that there is an industry that provides the arms, an entrenched interest that one needs to look at if we are serious about this. And third is the military as an employment sector. Here I mean not only the people who are employed by the military but the militias that are springing up in many places, because there is a spread of arms and small arms everywhere, an illegal trading of arms that is virtually worldwide. When I was in the Great Lakes region of Africa what many women said to me is that there are transnational networks of militia. We are dealing with conflict as though it is a political, diplomatic negotiation, but we need to look at the economics of conflict because these militias are going from one place to another to destabilize our peace negotiations. That in fact is the challenge. We need to look at the formal side, the industrial side and the illegal criminal sector as well.

Begleiter. Only at a conference like this would a casual reference to the Great Lakes refer to central Africa.

Q. Allen Keller, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture. I too would like to profoundly thank the Hilton Foundation for their support of the work with torture survivors worldwide. I think that the award and the comments of the speakers is a reminder of this crucial inter-relationship between civil and political rights and socioeconomics and how you can’t separate these out. I would like to ask a question specifically about Afghanistan. I think Mary Robinson so powerfully articulated that this is a litmus test and many of us fear what color the litmus test is turning with regard to Afghanistan. What specific signs in terms of hope can we see in what has happened in Afghanistan and what specific initiatives can and are being taken so we don’t see a complete fallback to more horrific things happening?

23 A. Chen. CARE was in Afghanistan before the war, during the war, and after the war working on girls’ education. The most hopeful story is that when we were working with community groups during the Taliban period, the Taliban would come into the community asking that the girls’ school be stopped. It was during this period that many of the community groups said, “these are our schools, the girls are staying in them, leave the village.” Most of these schools stayed open through the entire period and are being built upon further. That is an illustration of what I would call community control and involvement, which continues to grow before, during, and after the intervention.

A. Heyzer. When I visited Afghanistan I went out to meet with women who were internally displaced and with some of the refugees who had come back. I asked them why did they come back and what hope did they have because of the change? Many of the elderly women said they came back because of their daughters. For the first time, there is hope that their daughters can be educated.

Increasingly many women are also saying that the situation is an opportunity for them to participate. When UNIFEM brought a group of women here to New York recently, many people asked them if it was dangerous for them to participate in the public arena. The women said, “No, because it is an opportunity that we need to take. We were victims of violence under the Taliban and this is a hope for us, to participate in the shaping of our constitution, in our elections.” In fact, we managed to train 160 women last year to participate in the Loya Jirga and this was a breakthrough for many of these women. What they are asking for now is support. They’re taking a major risk to participate and they are asking that this risk be respected.

They stress the fact that the international community is very fickle when we switch from one crisis to another based on media attention and it is extremely important that we are there for the long run. It is critical that the media tell the story from the perspective of the women as well and because of that we have invested in the role of media in peacebuilding and in conflict resolution.

A. Robinson. Just very briefly on initiatives. I agree with what has already been said. I think the real focus is on human security and there must be more strategic effectiveness of the ISAF force outside Kabul. It doesn’t have to be large numbers; it can be done by strategic helicopters, quick in and outs, but a presence that matters. I absolutely agree with Noeleen about the importance of supporting what women are doing, and women are doing so much on the ground. I would also stress the importance of securing girls’ access to schools, fending off threats, and really protecting that situation and reinforcing it. In addition, the importance of building roads that connect Afghanistan so that it can begin to benefit from its position and build up its economy. It’s a very, very, very poor country and it doesn’t have the kind of oil that Iraq is sitting on and it’s going to need much more resourcing over the next few years than I see coming—not the least from the recent announcement of the $87 billion, very, very little of that is going to the rebuilding of Afghanistan, and yet that is a human security issue.

Q. Laurie Becklund, Parents International Ethiopia and Kembatti Mentti Gezzima-Tope. I’m a journalist and consultant from Los Angeles and am here representing an organization that works with women in southern Ethiopia. The question I would like to address plays in part off of what Noeleen just said. We’re talking about entrenched interests and I don’t think anyone in this room was surprised at some of the actions that have been taken unilaterally this year and have led to a decrease in security rather than an increase in security. Yet I don’t think that we’ve ever debated in a country here where American voters have disproportionate input into what happens in the world and perhaps a disproportionate knowledge in some places as to the notion of human security. I’m wondering if whether or not what we are talking about here is a need for popularization of these issues and if in fact there is any kind of long- range planning to make that happen, if there is such an initiative, and if there isn’t, why not?

Begleiter. Popularization of the issues, how big a priority and is anybody doing anything about it?

24 A. Chen. It is a huge priority. In our commission work, America was much less interested in human security than many other parts of the world. Indeed, human security initiatives at the governmental level have usually been led by medium powers with very progressive social records like Norway, Canada, and Japan. I think we need a massive educational effort in the United States for people to understand how their own security and those of their neighbors relate to the larger world.

A. Heyzer. It is extremely important and that is why the role of media as a tool of transformation is so important. Herein lies the control of media and the media industry. We need to make sure that we are able to get the messages from the ground out to the public and that many of these issues need to be discussed and understood by the public. In addition, we need to have very informed citizenry and citizens who understand the impact that decisions that are made in one country have on another. We need to increasingly understand the interlinkages of our lives and that is the kind of thing the media can help society to do.

25 Panel Two Summary

Out of two disparate topics, speakers identified a common factor for ultimate success—women’s empowerment and equality between men and women. The opposite, the status quo for much of the world, especially for countries in the Arab world and sub-Saharan Africa, leads to more than injustice. The absence of women as a contributing factor to development in the Arab world has been a major factor in the backwardness of the region. The low status of women in so much of African society has contributed to the spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the high incidence of infection among women. A change in women’s status and empowerment would bring a significant, and almost immediate, reversal to the current situations.

Righting Human Wrongs: the First Arab Human Development Report. The speaker linked the phenomenon of terrorism and the safety of the world with the results of the groundbreaking Arab Human Development Report that defined the crisis of Arab development as a crisis in governance and identified three cardinal deficits as obstacles to development for an entire region—deficits in freedom, women’s empowerment, and knowledge. The speaker, and the report on which he based his remarks, looked toward human security and declared that a safer world depended on political regimes and their supporters working to narrow divides, where pluralism and democratic representation mediated internal tensions and where economic growth presented opportunities for all of the people. In the absence of these factors, terrorism can flourish—the final breakdown in communication between marginalized people and normative society. The individual terrorists are only a symptom of a larger problem that is structural—a world where economic security, political expressions, and hope do not exist. In their absence, depression and despair serve as a breeding ground for terrorists.

Opportunities for Africa in the HIV/AIDS Pandemic. The HIV/AIDS scourge has fallen hardest on Africa, more than on any other continent. We need go no further than to report that Africa, with 10% of the world’s population, has more than 70% of HIV-infected people. It has over 90% of the world’s AIDS orphans. Out of a situation so profoundly bad, perhaps we will be forced to think anew in a way that will benefit human society beyond the immediate goal of preventing HIV/AIDS from spreading. It is females, due to biological and social factors, who are most vulnerable to HIV infection, a by-product of male domination of society. This may now offer a unique opportunity. Promoting gender parity may well be a way to reduce the scourge of HIV. Promoting gender parity provides a focus on how to strengthen natural relationships between boys and girls, women and men, to enhance a state of partnership between them. What is needed are new symbols of manhood and womanhood, where nurturing and caring attributes mark out the new heroes. The necessity of fighting HIV/AIDS and the realities of how to do it, by promoting new symbols of real men and real women, of promoting, in other words, nurturing and caring attributes, will be in the long run better for everyone’s survival and well-being.

26 Zahir Jamal, Chief of Regional Programmes in the Arab States, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

Zahir Jamal oversees regional programmes in the Arab States in Mark Malloch Brown’s UNDP administration. He works directly with Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, the regional bureau director and former deputy prime minister of Jordan. His most recent project with her is the series of Arab Human Development Reports. Jamal, a veteran of UNDP, has served as senior policy adviser to three UNDP chief executive officers; as secretary of the organization’s top decision-making team and as a senior strategic analyst, among other postings. A graduate of Oxford University where he took First Class Honors in English, he was senior lecturer at the University of Nottingham, United Kingdom, and worked at Newsweek International before joining UNDP. He is the editor of the English translation of the second Arab Human Development Report, launched in Cairo at the League of Arab States on October 14, 2003.

Righting Human Wrongs: the First Arab Human Development Report

Good morning and let me say what a pleasure and privilege it is to be here today. My thanks to the Hilton staff and Hilton Foundation for their very kind invitation and please let me add my very warm congratulations to the winners of this year’s Humanitarian Prize. One can’t imagine a more fitting awardee at this point in our political history.

Now my remarks today are going to try and connect the profile of the Arab region that emerged from the first Arab Human Development Report with those fundamental questions about the safety of our world that you’ve already been discussing. Time is short so let me go straight into it.

The 9/11 tragedy destroyed innocent lives against all human and heavenly laws but it also destroyed a dream of comprehensive security. It ended that dream and in its aftermath, our worst fears about human security are personified by demonic terrorists loose in a world of universal vulnerability. The faces of these villains bring the otherwise alien world of terror within our human compass and they provide targets for retribution. But personifying terror in this way can also obscure the fact that its motivations are often structural. That it finds its recruits in situations of conflict, oppression, and despair where people lack economic security, political expression, and hope. The destruction of terrorists is an interim solution. As long as the sources of terrorism remain, the conditions remain ripe for further figures to emerge with their followings.

In what some of you have already characterized as an unjust world order with rising inequality and millions on the wrong side of the inequality ladder, denied voice, or ownership over the direction of their lives, terror is often the weapon of the weak against the powerful. It’s a desperate resort espoused by murderers but also by those who have plumbed the depths of hopelessness. It’s a response quite different from anger, which after all is an invitation to dialogue. Terror in fact is the final breakdown in communication between marginalized people and normative society.

What carries anger over into the abyss of terrorism is often the accumulation of grievous human wrongs. Righting such wrongs is in fact what the first Arab Human Development Report was all about. Written by Arabs for Arabs, it was unusually outspoken. It was drafted well before the tragic events of 9/11, but it spoke directly to the circumstances surrounding that horrific event. It portrayed the spectacle of a stumbling Arab development scene as a crisis of governance behind the high walls of the collapsing state—a crisis reflected in frustrated human capabilities and opportunities. It epitomized the results of its findings in three cardinal deficits—in freedom, women’s empowerment, and knowledge. It underscored that these primary deficits are holding back an entire region’s prospects.

27 It illustrated its analysis by exposing the significant backlog of human deprivation in the region that doesn’t always get into the public eye. For, after all, the common perception of the Arab world is that Arabs are rich. The data pointed the other way. Sixty-five million Arab adults, two-thirds of them women, are illiterate. Output in growth in that region has stagnated for 10 years. Worker productivity is less than it was three decades ago. Some 10 million children between six and 10 years of age are out of school. Unemployment at 15% is the world’s highest and in a region which has the most youthful population of any region in the world. Labor force participation for women is among the lowest in the world. Three out of every five unemployed citizens are under 25 years of age. More than five million new jobs are required each year to absorb the large cohort of new entrants to the labor force stemming from the youthful structure of the region’s demographic profile. This job creation requirement is estimated to be three times that required for Latin America which has three times the GDP.

In an age driven by fast communication and wide technology, the Arab societies are on the other side of the digital disconnect. Despite having more personal computers per person than any other developing region except Latin America, Arabs have less Internet access than the citizens of sub-Saharan Africa. The report underlined that this backlog of deprivation is the result of a decade of stalled growth, deteriorating public services, and failed governance. It underlined that today the Arab state is the scene of a tussle between legality and legitimacy. You have states that have the legal power to enforce laws but increasingly lack the legitimacy to be able to see that through with their people. Apathy and exclusion are widespread among unemployed youth and undervalued women. This is a region which, according to the Freedom House index and the Kaufman database, has the lowest indicators for political voice and representation in the world and which ranks bottom on indicators of accountability.

In effect, what the report was proclaiming was the end of the poor political bargain struck between Arab regimes and Arab citizens for the last 40 years—a bargain that is sometimes characterized as scant representation in exchange for light taxation. Instead the report insisted that a new inclusive and rights- based social contract was needed now to guarantee essential freedoms and to liberate capabilities across that region.

So the first report’s central message was rather simple and compelling and it speaks directly to the question of a more secure world. What that report said was that a safer world in the Arab region is one where political regimes and their supporters work to narrow divides, where internal tensions are mediated through pluralism and representation, and where people -centered economic growth presents opportunities for all of the people.

The report made several practical and far-reaching proposals. In governance it underlined that a new reciprocity between state and citizens was overdue. It asked leaders to demonstrate accountability, to engender their policies and laws, to mediate civil and religious differences, to forestall the further hijacking of Islam by extremists, to ensure social justice for minorities and to reform their constitutions. It insisted that over-dependence on oil rents was a thing of the past that has to give way now to economic diversification and more value-added production. It argued that a wisely-managed regional and global integration platform offered the only way forward for the region in the future.

In exchange for these reforms, it called on the Arab people to repair damage to social values, reinterest themselves in education, adopt a new work ethic, and open up to a new cultural pluralism and exchange with the outside world. This was a daring and an audacious report for a generation of Arab scholars not noted in the past for speaking out. One of the novelties of this report is that its audacity came at the right time. It came just when eyes on the Arab world had returned, this time to find out where the root causes of the September 11th horrors lay. If you look at the proposals they make for the economic reform, I think you’ll see that these were very progressive ideas for a region which for 20 years has been very slow to join global integration.

28 Those economic proposals underlined a more dynamic business environment—one favoring local entrepreneurship and local innovations; a diversified production base aimed at creating high skill employment opportunities to absorb those cohorts of the young; a 21st century education program starting at early childhood and focused on cognitive development to create those inquiring, probing mindsets and skills that go with problem-solving, initiative, and lifelong learning; attractive and well-sequenced trade and investment policies that will allow Arabs to come to the Doha round to talk as a team, as a region, from positions of greater strength; governance reform to create transparency and eliminate corruption; and increasing decentralization and job creation through smaller micro-enterprises. These proposals are not themselves novel. What was novel was that they were being made by Arabs who in the past have not been able to articulate a complete program that they can authentically own themselves and put forward to the international community.

Although these proposals might not seem original, they remain very difficult to implement in the context of failed governance in that region. They are therefore long-term, but history, demography, and the crumbling status quo are on their side, and the expectations and pressures of a rising generation could rapidly tip the balance in their favor.

The report was very clear that none of these purposeful changes was likely to take root so long as other deep-seated threats to human security in the region go unaddressed. I refer to regional peace and security, of course. With violence now returning to Iraq and the burning question of Palestine back on the table, conflict once more dominates the Arab landscape. This is the zone where super power and regional politics intersect, it’s well known. It’s a zone that has impact on many aspects of Arab life. The Arab report was clear that the occupation of Palestine, for example, has diverted governments and people from creative approaches to human development. It has aborted the lives and destroyed the rights of Palestinians, obviously. It has inflicted casualties and suffering on both sides of the conflict. It has stunted the evolution of governance toward pluralistic democracy by giving autocrats pretexts for delaying democracy. Liberation first, democracy later is a familiar slogan in the region. It has driven away foreign investments and promoted capital flight and it has alienated literally millions of otherwise moderate Arabs from those whom they see as bolstering this human catastrophe.

Peacebuilding and reconstruction therefore are also areas where the rest of the world can play an important role today with the Arab world. We take the example of the United States, a nation widely seen by Arabs as being pro-Israel and anti-Palestine. Changing that perception would have an enormous impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of U.S. relations in the Middle East, and it could be done by engaging constructively and even-handedly in the peace process again, despite the recent setbacks. For this will not only bring a lasting and just peace to the region, but it will refurbish the image of the United States in other parts where it can be effective.

The evidence in the Arab street suggests that Arabs admire American values; what they detest are American policies toward them, and it is the gap between policies and values that has caused them the greatest frustration, a perceived disconnect that they find time and again reflected in military intervention and in the appropriation of natural resources. Bridging these perceptions has become even more important with the challenge posed by the occupation of Iraq. That occupation is seen by most Arabs now as a chance to remap their region from outside. By contrast, the series of Arab Human Development Reports is an attempt by Arab elites to rethink and re-envision their future from within— something completely different. I believe that this vision of self-determined change which the reports represent, a vision that is owned and sustained by Arabs themselves, is infinitely preferable to methods that risk deepening polarization, subverting progressive platforms, and perpetuating the cycle of counter-violence that you see in the region. I therefore believe that the Arab Human Development Reports represent an important new starting point for a sober, intellectually honest, self-critical appraisal of Arab development priorities based on self-determination—one that is key to the whole question of our global human security in this millennium.

29 Bob Francis Jalang’o, former Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kenya to the United Nations

Ambassador Bob Francis Jalang’o served as Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kenya to the United Nations in New York (2001-2003.) For the period 1997-2001, he served as Ambassador of the Republic of Kenya to Italy, Greece, Pola nd, and the United Nations in Rome. Ambassador Jalang’o also served as the Ambassador to Zambia, Malawi and Botswana (1993-1997). Earlier in his career, he served as an elected member of the Kenyan Parliament (1988-1993). Prior to that (1974- 1988), he held the post of Regional Information Technology Manager for Caltex Services Mid -Africa and Caltex Oil Kenya.

Opportunities for Africa in the HIV/AIDS Pandemic

Distinguished delegates, ladies, and gentlemen, I feel greatly honored to have been requested literally at the 11th hour to present a paper by Dr. Miriam Were, who is the chairman of the National AIDS Control Council of Kenya. Dr. Were is also the chairman of the international board of AMREF (African Medical and Research Foundation) and her paper today addresses opportunities for Africa in the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As perhaps most of you are aware, Dr. Were is currently attending the international conference on AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases in Nairobi that started on Monday.

The HIV/AIDS scourge in Africa Hardly anyone in this audience needs to be reminded that global though the AIDS scourge is, the head of the hammer of the HIV/AIDS scourge has fallen hardest on Africa more than any other continent. This becomes abundantly clear when we realize the following: Africa’s population is about 10% of the world’s population, and Africa has over 70% of HIV-infected people. Africa shoulders over 80% of the world’s AIDS-related deaths and Africa has over 90% of the world’s AIDS orphans. It is estimated that by the year 2010, the number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS will reach 40 million.

Given this grim picture, how can I present a paper entitled “Opportunity for Africa in the AIDS Pandemic”? The other side of the equation is opportunity and there are opportunities for Africa and her partners in this crisis. Those of us working for the containment of the HIV/AIDS pandemic are increasingly aware that the dynamics of its spread, as generally understood, are so person-dependent and that it takes the involvement of the person to have success in this war. We must focus on a people - centered approach and I wish to pose the following questions: - How does the person get involved in intimate relationships? - How do people talk to one another? - What is of critical importance to them? - How do we elicit their active participation and involvement? - What keeps them in the struggle to survive? It is tapping into these expanded benefits that I see as one of the wonderful opportunities that is accompanying the HIV/AIDS scourge.

I think it is safe to say that most societies are male dominated even if some societies are more male dominated than others. While the vulnerability of females to HIV continues to be much higher than that of males due to biological and socia l factors, the tremendous opportunity that promoting gender parity provides is a focus on how to strengthen natural relationships between boys and girls, women and men, to enhance a state of partnership between them. This gives Africa and the world an extremely good chance to deliberate on new symbols for manhood and womanhood. Which nurturing and caring attributes would mark out the new heroes? What would someone need to do to promote these new symbols of real

30 men and real women? Would not the promotion of nurturing and caring attributes in the long run be better for everyone’s survival and well-being?

Dr. Were wishes to give the following examples of how the opportunities are being tapped and how they can be approached. The first one is AMREF’s community-based health care. Development work in Africa has tended to be dominated by practices that tend to undermine the importance of the network of human relationships as the focus turns to technology. The alienation of the individual as well as the social and mental suffering from this alienation takes place even amongst those with full access to technology and material well-being. Without intentionally doing so, most highly developed societies seem to have ignored the need to maintain this human connectedness and paid a high price for social alienation. We are beginning to see Africa still has this network of human relationships and communities more or less intact and with very little technology. With the current situation in Africa, the world has an opportunity to try another approach to development: grafting technology onto a viable base of enhanced community life and supportive human relationships. Maybe the human race would fare better with this approach?

The AMREF mission is improvement of the healt h of disadvantaged people in Africa as a means for them to escape from poverty and improve the quality of their lives. The community-based approach offers the greatest opportunity in Africa for sustainable development through a people -centered approach. It provides the modality for hitting several problems at the same time. This is particularly important since over 70% of Africa’s morbidity and mortality comes from a handful of conditions with well-known interventions, and these are childhood illness, malaria, maternal conditions, and sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS.

The community-based approach to health care provides opportunities to address each of these problems and offers Africa the fastest route to the attainment of health equity so that her people may live economically and socially productive lives. This would be particularly the case if there was systematic coverage of geographical areas that constitute an administrative unit. However, in many areas in Africa’s community-based health context, the administrative areas are not systematically covered to fully bring out the benefits of the approach, and I think we need to address this issue. The new players in this field who will rise up to meet these opportunities are actually the old players who are working outside the box. The best potential seems to lie in coalition building for greater effectiveness such as the following examples:

Partnerships between the usually separated public sector and private sector players: An example of this is in the area of health systems. Most research in traditional healing systems is sponsored through government initiative, but maybe the private sector needs to rise to this occasion. Some private firms have shown that they are also concerned about contributing to social development rather than having an eye for profit seeking only.

Enhance partnerships between the public sector and civil societies: The HIV/AIDS pandemic has brought this to the foreground most forcefully. For example, the implementin g agencies of the funds that come from time to time to the National AIDS Control Council in Kenya are NGOs. AMREF and the indigenous NGOs are playing an important role and it is possible to foresee a situation where the public sector would request an NGO, or group of NGOs, to be the executing agency of its programs in a particular area. One hopes that in the Kenyan situation this could be a reality once the new government has addressed the financial liabilities inherited from the previous regime.

As I reviewed Dr. Were’s paper, I see that there are three major opportunities that she has identified, but the most important one is the to approach the HIV/AIDS issue on a community-based and people - centered approach. I believe that if both the private and public sectors take this approach, we may be able to address this very serious problem of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

31 Panel Two -- Question and Answer Session

Begleiter. We’ve got the whole Middle East issue and the Iraq issues coming ahead of us before lunch. We’ve got a perfect transition with the presentation made by Zahir Jamal so I don’t want to break the flow. So questions, comments for our presenters on the panel now?

Q. Musimbi Kanyoro, World YWCA. My question is regarding the new issues, new ideas, and new players both covered in this morning’s session and the session we just had. Where is the new space and the new structures that we shall use to implement these ideas? Here I give an example: if indeed the opportunities that have been pointed out for HIV/AIDS are true, and if the new idea is that HIV/AIDS is a security issue confirmed by the Security Council, then it is not being implemented in the same way that other issues are that are coming out of the Security Council. Where is the new space that will be had? Or if the discussions are failing, I think one of the reasons is the issues under the structure we discussed, which is very much the same structure we discussed before we had the issues that we now have, who will be listening to the new issues coming out of the Arab Human Development Reports?

Finally, I would like to illustrate an opportunity coming out of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. Probably if there are 14 million orphans today, then it means to me that in the next 20 years, the world will be negotiating with leaders who are part of this group and there is an opportunity to shape new leaders. Sometimes in the way in which we deal with and care for the orphans, it’s not because they are orphans and children forever, it is because we are forming a big group of people that will take up the leadership in the future for the continent of Africa. I wish that the new space would include media opportunities in which we begin to tell the success stories that we know—some of which were pointed out by Noeleen and Mary Robinson—but really would get heard because they are not coming out of the old players, but are coming out of the new players—new leaders who can claim the work and handle the financials and the funds for Africa without being associated with the corruption of the past.

Begleiter. I’m going to ask each of you to respond to the core question which is, “What is the new space in each of your respective areas?” Perhaps you could comment on who’s going to be listening to the new proposals on HIV/AIDS and who is going to implement those? Likewise, Zahir, if you could comment on who is going to be listening to the new developments from the Arab Human Development Reports?

A. Jalang’o. From what I have experienced in the last ten years as an Ambassador, starting in Africa, then in Europe and finally at the United Nations, there have been major changes in the political scene in Africa, and specifically in the last five or six years. We have seen that the old leaders who took power in the ’60s at the beginning of independence struggle, are now gone except for perhaps two or three who are still clinging to power. The new leaders in Africa are today taking the fight against HIV/AIDS as their priority. For example, during the conference that is taking place in Nairobi at this time, the First Ladies of African presidents held a parallel special session to discuss the role and concern of women in the combined effort to fight HIV/AIDS. The outcome document was presented to the main conference by the first ladies of Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Guinea who were at the conference, but also signed by the first ladies of Burundi, Gabon, Cameroon, Swaziland, Malawi, Senegal, and Benin who were not able to attend the conference. There are other signatories of the document whose names I cannot remember off hand. However, as regards the question as to who will listen to the message of the seriousness of AIDS, I have to state that a firm and open position has been taken by African heads of state first to speak publicly and openly about HIV/AIDS, and to support all HIV/AIDS programs and initiatives. The message starts from above and is conveyed to the people by administrative officers up to the grassroots in the villages.

The high statistics of orphaned children left behind as a result of death of parents caused by AIDS and other related diseases, is of great concern in Africa today. For example, there are 4.9 million orphans in seven countries in Africa: Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Rwanda, and this number constitutes 44% of the entire orphan population in Africa. Furthermore, a recent study

32 indicates that by the year 2010, the number of orphaned children in Africa alone, is expected to reach 40 million. This is a very serious and alarming situation, and calls for leaders to discuss it, and to work out tangible programs to handle it.

A. Jamal. The crises of governance within the Arab world mean that the structures we need to deal with these crises are not quite there. What is happening in that region is a series of processes, so those of you who feel impatient with the report’s analysis, which will probably remain unimplemented for several years to come, have reason to be so. The fact is we have three actors at the moment that need to come together. We have regimes on the run facing credibility crises of enormous proportions. Those economic and socioeconomic statistics I gave you show the extent of the problem in the region. These regimes need to conciliate new, more vocal and more discontented groups among youth, among women and in civil society. We have an increasingly active legal and civil society community that is more aware of its constitutional and legal rights. We have youth unable to accept their future as they see it today and voting with their feet. Those are the actors who together have to create the new structures.

At the national level, these parties will probably come together in both formal and informal structures and parliamentary groups. At the regional level, many more new initiatives are needed in trade bodies, between businesses and inter-firm associations, and an effort is needed as well to revitalize the Arab League. I believe the leadership needed to change these institutions or to create new ones is there in the Arab elite, the ones speaking to us through their report.

Q. Patricia Sprague, Safe Child Project. I have a comment and a question for Zahir Jamal. First, I’m very glad that you highlighted the recommendation from the Arab Human Development Report, in particular the focus on early childhood development fostering curiosity and probing that, as you said, encourages young people to learn how to question authority. I don’t think we can overestimate the importance of learning these fundamentals from the very start. Also the question of the availability of knowledge; knowledge in particular is an important lacking element in the Arab world and I think the more child development awareness of families, the bigger the impact is going to be on all of the development principles in that report. It has enormous implications, not just for democracy but also for human security.

My question is you mentioned the crumbling status quo; can you tell us how you see that playing out, for example in Saudi Arabia and Jordan specifically?

A. Jamal. Thank you very much for those remarks about the seminal importance of early childhood. The second Arab report launching in a few weeks has an entire chapter on the importance of education starting in early childhood as an instrument of socialization. It’s a fact documented in the report that the dominant family stance on the upbringing of children is the authoritarian stance accompanied by the over- protective. Those two things together smother curiosity and dampen the urge to question authority, so it’s very important to deal with the problem right there.

Now what do I see behind the crumbling structures in two very different situations, Jordan on the one hand and Saudi Arabia on the other. Clearly the competition for resources in Saudi Arabia is intense and it is a set of different economic factors in Jordan, a non-oil exporting country. The political structures in Saudi Arabia are still very much dependent upon the prominence of certain conservative groups and the importance that their version of Islam plays in community and cultural life. You have a society where medievalism and modernism are at war. The medieval forces are at the moment winning and every time there is another eruption in the region the forces of reaction gain hostages and medievalism continues. I think it’s a long haul in Saudi Arabia for the forces of moderation to play out and much depends on how the scramble for resources is managed. What attitude, for example, will the strategic allies of the country take toward domestic governance issues and human rights issues?

33 Jordan has everything to gain by pursuing a knowledge path. This is a middle income country with a very promising population that has a beautiful setting that has been in the past a place of tourism. A modern- minded, enlightened young king who wants to bring ICT to the fore in colleges and schools and has a demographic gift on his side. He doesn’t have a very large population, five and a half million Jordanians. The prospects there are much brighter in the long run. In the short run, like many Arab countries, the problem with reforming the Arab world is that it really goes in fits and starts; for every step forward, two steps are taken back the minute rulers are given pretext. It’s such a volatile situation to manage that even the most enlightened rulers in the Arab world have to resort at times to repressive actions—censorship, police actions, etc.—to maintain short run stability. Jordan’s leaders, like other Arab leaders, need some political space in which to maneuver.

Begleiter. Can I just follow up on Saudi Arabia real quick. You talked about the struggle for resources, the struggle over allocation of resources but what about the diversification of Saudi Arabia’s resources? However long oil is going to last, at some point the Saudis are going to have to learn how to work and how to do something other than pump oil.

A. Jamal. Absolutely. It is an interesting fact that many of the patents registered in Saudi Arabia are all from outside. They are not Saudi patents and that tells you right there that there is no innovation in the country. There is no real industrial infrastructure that is natively owned and that is capable of supporting a large economy or producing innovations. Clearly in the future the focus has to be much more on linking universities with industries to create a knowledge-generating industry within the country, and the basis of that is there because there is a relatively well-educated middle class that can be mobilized.

Begleiter. So there is an opportunity I think for your organizations to penetrate in areas that are virtually untouched in Saudi Arabia.

Q. William Canny, International Catholic Migration Commission. My question would be addressed to Ambassador Jalang’o or others in the room who might respond. Recently in the AIDS area we see a new goal of getting anti-retrovirals to about three million infected people. You have some donors in the World Health Organization beginning to define how to get there but clearly with a limited pot that would be perhaps at the expense of care and maintenance of people infected. It would be at the expense of taking care of orphans, as was mentioned earlier, or prevention. How do governments or organizations like WHO provide an ethical framework to breaking down the limited amount of money available within this area?

A. Jalang’o. When you start to talk about the ethics, the subject covers an area that is extremely difficult to define and handle. I think that is related to the explanation that I gave earlier about the role of government on one side, about the ethics concerning the fair distribution of donated funds, equipment and drugs. It narrows down to the same issue that has been raised over and over again, of corruption in Africa and how the leaders are handling the issue. These are some of the ethical issues that come from time to time and they have to be handled directly without fear. You may recall that one of the elements of the New Partnership for Development in Africa (NEPAD), has been the creation of a “peer review process” to improve standards of economic management and decision-making process in the continent. The goal of the mechanism is to get African leaders to subject their governments to ongoing examination by other Africans in such priority areas as peace and security, democracy and political governance, and economic and corporate management. A section in that new framework subjects African leaders to rise above corruption that has hurt the continent for so many years. Corruption is not only a major issue in the fight against HIV/AIDS, but also in development programs provided by donors, the World Bank, etc.

We are starting to see new leaders who have committed themselves to the new partnership, and are fighting and handling corruption in the same manner as it is done in some western countries. For example, in the case of Kenya that was raised earlier, the new government has declared zero tolerance on

34 corruption and other countries are doing exactly the same thing. We have a lot of new leaders who have taken corruption head on, and I believe that the NEPAD approach is the only way in which we can handle the problem of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. Thus, as I said, the issues of ethics are always difficult to handle, but I think that fighting corruption is taking root in Africa today.

Begleiter. Allow me to ask you to focus on the other side of the ethics issue for a moment. What about the ethics problem in the industrial world—in the Western world—in dealing with solutions that may be available, that may be at a greater expense, that may be at lesser expense—is there an ethical side to that question as well or just a business decision?

A. Jalang’o. I think it is a business decision more than anything else. There was a time, about two or three years ago, that it was thought the new HIV drugs could not be well taken by African patients; specifically that the anti-retroviral drugs could not be dispensed properly in Africa. But there was a paper a few months ago that contradicted this Western theory and concluded that, as a matter of fact, Africans are as well prepared, concerned and ready to dispense and use [anti-retroviral] drugs as their counterparts in other continents. I don’t know if this answers the second side of the ethics issue.

Q. Ami Dar, Idealist.org. A question for Mr. Jamal: in many of these countries the poverty, the resentment, the unemployment is very often referred to as a boiling cauldron and the governments like to see themselves as the lid that holds the boiling cauldron down. If you remove the lid, the whole thing would explode. Given that perception, how do you envision a peaceful transition where you can kind of play with the lid a little bit and in a country like Egypt, for example, how do you imagine the transition to something else? Again if you remove the repression, you get basically an explosion. How do you envision a peaceful transition to something else?

A. Jamal. That is an excellent question, thank you for asking it. Transition has to be mediated through several processes. I think the first is public participation in those decisions that really affect people’s lives—housing, schooling, water and whether roads are constructed in their neighborhoods or not. Next, leaders have to understand that the revolution they fear will be upon them unless people are given more access to power now, so power has to be released in bite-size chunks to community groups. The power to allocate resources is particularly important—the power to select where investments are made. These are all, by the way, proposals that are on the table in various Arab countries and what is missing now is the courage by the leaders to take that first step, to dare to take the lid off in steps.

I said earlier that I think history, demography, and the burgeoning Arab youth are on the side of these changes and I believe more leaders are beginning to see that. So I think you will see more leaders willing to take the risk to take the lid off on decisions to do with allocation of resources and decisions affecting people’s basic living conditions. The bigger questions of representation are tougher to solve. Admitting women to electoral registers and to parliament has proven to be a real problem. It still is a region with the lowest representation of women anywhere in the world—3.5%. But there have been signs of progress on legislative reform. Qatar has a new constitution. Oman has expanded voting to all adult citizens. Bahrain has its first popularly chosen parliament. Jordan is organizing historic elections this year. Saudi Arabia is slowly introducing local elections. These bright spots are encouraging.

A. Jalang’o. Following the end of my contract with the government about three years ago, I have now established a not-for-profit Organization that is based here in the U.S., and partly, will be undertaking studies to see how information technology can be used to enhance the work other agencies and NGOs are doing in Africa on poverty alleviation, humanitarian issues, and the fight against HIV/AIDS. I would appreciate it if any of you would like to talk with me later on this my new role. My contact telephone is (551) 404-5836 and my e-mail address is “[email protected].” Thank you.

35 Panel Three Summary

Talking about the war in Iraq and Iraq’s reconstruction, the panelists, one having represented the U.S. government in Iraq and the other representing the United Nations Development Programme, found much to disagree on, but they both acknowledged a common reality in the foreseeable future—that in dealing with failed states and international terrorism, civilian/military relations in humanitarian efforts are critical and essential. The problems they bring, however, are many and troublesome.

Civil-Military Cooperation—An Impossible Dream? Why, despite much experience, do civilians and military personnel often fail to work together well as partners in humanitarian efforts? Why can’t all the players recognize that humanitarians come in all shapes and sizes and that each has an appropriate role? And what can be done about it? Citing recent experience in Somalia, the Balkans, Rwanda, and Afghanistan, as well as Iraq, George Ward answered his own questions by describing the cross-purposes under which both operate—different cultures, different mandates, different interests, and different languages. The coalition model—of governmental organizations, international organizations, non- governmental organizations, and military forces—is here to stay when it comes to dealing with failed states and international terrorism. To make it work, at least at the level of U.S. entities, a standing authority at the White House-level should manage U.S. participation; government agencies should reach out to NGOs and provide them early access to planning efforts; the military should incorporate civilian government representatives in its humanitarian centers, and seek acceptance of the coalition model at the UN and involve the UN in consultations and joint planning.

The Role of the UN in Reconstruction in Iraq. While accepting the absolute necessity and importance of civilian/military relations and stressing the indispensability of the logistical capacity of military operations, Mark Malloch Brown underscored the increasingly disturbing phenomenon that the space in which humanitarians can safely work is narrowing. “We’re losing our space,” he said, “that we had all taken for granted along with the belief that all combatants in a conflict situation understood and respected the humanitarian space in which we operate.” Dialogue with the Taliban in Afghanistan or the opposition in Iraq is not possible. Beyond the extremely violent nature of the conflict is the fact that the situation is so polarized that there is no neutral space in which conversations or negotiation can take place. Recalling the situation in Northern Ireland, long treated as a military operation against terrorists, Malloch Brown reminded people that the resolution came only when a political dimension to the conflict was acknowledged. The problem, he said, is not so much the terrorists themselves, as the broader support they enjoy within a civilian community. That is a political problem. In the meantime, humanitarians are targeted; there is no middle space, only polar opposites.

36 George F. Ward, Jr., former Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA), Iraq

Ambassador (retired) George Ward served as coordinator for humanitarian assistance in the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance for Iraq from February through April 2003 while on leave from his position as director of the Professional Training Program at the United States Institute of Peace. The training program focuses on providing professionals with the conflict management skills needed in peace and stability operations. Ward joined the Institute in 1999, following a thirty-year career in the foreign service, which concluded with his appointment as United States ambassador to the Republic of Namibia (1996-99). In Namibia, he managed a successful humanitarian de-mining program and initiated a campaign against gender violence. As principal deputy assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs (1992-96), Ward helped formulate United States policy on multilateral peacekeeping and managed the policy process on United Nations political questions. During his assignment as deputy chief of mission in Germany (1989-92), Ward played a leading role in the negotiations that led to German unification. He received the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award for his service in Germany. Prior to his foreign service career, Ward was an officer in the United Sta tes Marine Corps and served in Vietnam. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from University of Rochester and a master’s degree in public administration with a concentration in systems analysis from Harvard University.

Civil-Military Cooperation—An Impossible Dream?

I’m very happy to have the opportunity to address this distinguished gathering. I should say at the outset that my remarks will represent my personal views, not those of the U.S. Government or the United States Institute of Peace.

I would like to discuss two questions, both of which relate to my work earlier this year in Iraq. First, why, despite a great deal of experience, do civilians and military personnel often fail to work together as partners in humanitarian operations? Second, how might we create a more effective civilian-military partnership?

Tensions and lack of mutual understanding among the partners in humanitarian operations lead to poor planning, inefficient operations, and disappointing results. Currently, we are focused on difficulties being experienced in the reconstruction effort in Iraq. This is, however, only the most recent example of a recurrent problem that we have experienced in Somalia, the Balkans, Rwanda, and Afghanistan.

What’s right and what’s wrong about civil-military cooperation in humanitarian operations today? The record is by no means all negative. All four of the major communities engaged in humanitarian operations in complex man-made emergencies—governmental aid organizations, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and military forces—have taken steps toward more effective cooperation.

The military has developed sound doctrine for civil-military operations and has created appropriate training programs at every level of command. Civil affairs units, although stretched very thin, have often worked in very effective partnerships with civilians in coordinating the delivery of humanitarian assistance. Civil-military coordination and operations centers have become more sensitive to the concerns of civilian humanitarians.

Civilian aid agencies are also promoting teamwork. Within the U.S. Agency for International Development, two offices have taken the lead—the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance and the Office

37 of Transition Initiatives. The former is able to put into the field Disaster Assistance Response Teams, or DART teams, that function, in effect, as the shock troops of the civilian humanitarian community. The Office of Transition Initiatives, a Clinton Administration initiative that the current administration has wisely preserved, aims at filling the gap between emergency relief and longer-term development assistance by jump-starting projects in fields such as local governance, human rights, and economic reconstruction.

International organizations, which provide the center of gravity for humanitarian operations, have also come a long way since the time when components of the UN system sometimes acted without coordination, or even at cross-purposes. As experience in Iraq has again demonstrated, the World Food Program is without peer in organizing the provision of mass food relief. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees leads in its field by providing both operational expertise and international legitimacy. Overall management of humanitarian operations can still be a challenge for the UN, but progress is being made. After initially taking an arms-length attitude toward cooperation with coalition forces in Iraq, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance promulgated general guidance for interaction between UN personnel and the coalition that provided an excellent basis for cooperation.

Non-governmental organizations are the fastest-growing elements in the humanitarian field. Benefiting from increased private and governmental support, these organizations have prospered and proliferated in number. NGOs today have the capacity to manage large-scale humanitarian projects, and are often asked to do so by governments and UN agencies.

Despite this progress, problems in civil-military coordination have continued to arise. In Afghanistan, military forces were felt to be infringing upon the responsibilities of NGOs and international organizations by distributing humanitarian assistance directly. The wearing of civilian clothing by military civil affairs operatives has been criticized for potentially endangering the lives of civilians. The decision by President Bush to place responsibility for coordination of humanitarian assistance and reconstruction in Iraq in the Department of Defense elicited protests from several NGOs.

Likewise, initial contacts between United Nations headquarters elements and coalition representatives in Iraq were not, at least from the coalition point of view, fully satisfactory. Although UN agencies in the field, months before the conflict, were cooperating with coalition military and civilian agencies in order to avert a humanitarian disaster, the same cannot be said of elements of the UN secretariat, which refrained from regular contacts with the coalition in the field until mid-April 2003.

The lack of a clear UN mandate was certainly a factor in the UN’s initial reluctance to coordinate on an operational level with the coalition. This contributed to the delay in commencement of reconstruction efforts and affected cooperation in the crucial area of security.

Aid agencies, for their part, often seem betwixt and between. As government agencies, they are expected to reflect policy interests, but they sometimes seem to yearn for the independence of non-governmental agencies. Why can’t all the players accept the fact that humanitarians come in all shapes and sizes and that each has an appropriate role? I think there are three reasons: different interests, different cultures, and different languages. Different interests equate to different organizational imperatives, including the desire to survive and prosper in the increasingly competitive world of humanitarianism.

At least in the U.S., some tend to present the military as a one-stop problem-solver for our concerns abroad. This is more likely to be claimed by civilians than by generals, but in any event, military capabilities have infringed on areas that traditionally have been the domain of diplomats and aid workers, including in the humanitarian field. Over time, military budgets for these activities have grown, tending to crowd out civilian efforts.

38 For their parts, civilian aid agencies and NGOs tend to prosper organizationally when there is a public perception of great humanitarian need. Without detracting from the sincerity of any humanitarian, I believe that some in the field operate with a bias toward seeing the glass as half empty, not half full. This tendency is sometimes unconscious. For example, a senior NGO executive acknowledged to me the absence of a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. He said that he would be preparing a report on the situation. When pressed about the content of the report, he said that he did not know, but that it would definitely be “critical.”

Cultural differences run quite deep. The military, with its focus on mission accomplishment, sometimes fails to realize that other organizations have different objectives. This came home starkly to me in Iraq when a senior military colleague asked me about the acceptable casualty rate for humanitarian workers, clearly assuming that there was such a figure. On the civilian side, humanitarians too often project the sense that only they truly understand the plight of the downtrodden. These attitudes, when mixed together, can produce an explosive mixture.

Differences in interests and cultures are exacerbated by the inability to communicate. Sometimes the problem is technical—incompatible radio frequencies, different equipment, and different forms of reporting. Often, however, words have different meanings in different communities. Civilians think of a “permissive” environment as one in which they can operate freely. In military terms, a “permissive” environment assumes that a threat—and the prospect of casualties—still exists.

What can be done? We need to re-define humanitarianism in a way that recognizes the legitimacy and indispensability of both civilian and military roles. To accomplish this, we need to recognize the existence of both shared and diverging interests. The following are some concrete suggestions of what might be done here in the United States:

- Inside the U.S. Government, we need the equivalent in humanitarian terms of the Goldwater-Nichols Act that more than a decade ago forced the armed services to work together jointly. Ad hoc structures for coordination of humanitarian operations no longer suffice. A standing White House or National Security Council level authority should be established to manage U.S. Government participation in humanitarian operations. This authority should also have responsibility for establishing a training and exercise program that would guarantee the availability of civilian and military experts. Clearly, this reform will not come forward from the concerned agencies. As with Homeland Security, the initiative will need to come from the White House, or Congress will have to act. - Second, even before a central structure has been established, government agencies should reach out in a more organized fashion to non-governmental humanitarian organizations. Representatives of these organizations should be provided access as early as possible to government planning efforts. NGO representatives should be eligible to attend government training programs for peace and stability operations. - Third, the military should go even further than it already has in incorporating civilian government representatives in its humanitarian operations centers. Civilian government officials should function not just as liaison offic ers, but also as integral members of the staffs of the centers. - Finally, the United States should at the United Nations seek greater recognition that the coalition model of dealing with failed states and international terrorism is here to stay. This will not always be the model that is followed, but when it is, it does no one any good for the UN to appear to stand on the sidelines. At the operational level, this approach would require a much greater willingness to engage in consultations and joint planning well in advance of operations.

None of these steps alone would remedy the coordination problems we face. Taken together, however, they would move us several steps toward a possible dream—constructive civilian-military cooperation in humanitarian operations. Thank you for your attention.

39 Mark Malloch Brown, Administrator, United Nations Development Programme

Since 1999, Mark Malloch Brown has been the administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the UN’s global development netwo rk. He is also chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee comprising the heads of all UN funds, programmes, and departments working on development issues. At the request of Secretary- General Kofi Annan, Malloch Brown is leading the UN system in developing a strategy to support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals: eight time-bound development targets which were agreed to by world leaders at the UN Millennium Summit. During his tenure at UNDP, Malloch Brown has also overseen comprehensive reform, making UNDP more focused, efficient, and effective across the 166 countries where it works. Prior to his tenure at UNDP, Malloch Brown served at the World Bank as vice president for external affairs and United Nations affairs and was lead partner in an international consulting firm. He is also the founder of the Economist Development Report, of which he served as editor after working as a political correspondent with the Economist magazine. A British citizen, Malloch Brown received an honours degree in history from Magdalene College, Cambridge University, and a master’s degree in political science from the University of Michigan.

The Role of the UN in Reconstruction in Iraq

Thank you. I apologize: given all that is going on at the UN, I was a little late this morning and only caught the tail end of George’s speech, but I have a feeling that I’m going to disagree with him a lot. Maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t hear the rest, so I can innocently do it.

Let me just say before launching in, that you’re right, Ralph: I have been here before, and I have been here before because I think this is a wonderful award and a wonderful day, an important day in the humanitarian year. I’m thrilled always to see the competition that goes into winning the award and the quality of this seminar. For all those responsible for this, my heartiest congratulations and thanks.

I only have one observation. I hope one year it’s going to be different, and maybe this year it will be, but every year I get asked to write references for the award and, as far as I can tell, I’ve never yet backed a winner. I don’t know if I’m just going to have to start telling my friends to stop using me as a reference because it seems to bring terrible luck!

Anyway, I’m nevertheless thrilled to be here today. Let me start with a clear statement of support for two things. One, I do believe civilian-military relations in humanitarian actions are absolutely critical. We have discussed this here before—the indispensability of the logistical capacity of military operations, the indispensability of the military dimension in many failed states’ post-conflict situations—so I continue to believe strongly in that. I also want to say, on behalf of the UN, that in the areas of reconstruction and indeed in support of the political process, we believe that we worked very, very closely with the coalition, so what I am about to say is not, in that sense, an attack in any way on the coalition.

However, in a gathering like this, of people committed to humanitarianism, I think it is enormously important that we understand the turns in the roads that we have made with the operation in Iraq, and the extraordinary consequences, possibly devastatingly bad consequences, for humanitarianism that Iraq poses.

Now let me also say that while 22 of my colleagues died in the attack in Baghdad on August 19th, none of the 100 very seriously injured died, largely because of good civilian-military relations. It is an absolute tribute to the American military medical services who provided extraordinary life-saving support very,

40 very quickly that more lives were not lost. Actually, this morning I heard a wonderful completion of this story when I spoke with the head of the UNDP operation in Baghdad, who had been unconscious from August 19th until last weekend. I finally got to speak with him this morning, and if this had happened anywhere else, where American military medical services had not been available within minutes of the disaster, he would have died, as would a number of my other colleagues. So I’m enormously grateful for the support we received in that regard.

Now, having said all that, let me say what the problem is with humanitarianism and the coalition. We’re losing our space in which to operate, most acutely in Iraq, but not only in Iraq. In something of a post- mortem session, chaired by Secretary-General Kofi Annan a week or so ago in Geneva, attended not just by myself and the heads of the other UN agencies involved in humanitarianism, but also by representatives of the Red Cross, ICRC, Red Cross Federation, other NGOs including the NGO InterAction, their European counterparts and others, we reflected on what had happened. We came to understand that we are losing so much of the space that we had all taken for granted, along with the belief that all combatants in a conflict situation understood and respected the humanitarian space in which we operate.

This is true particularly in Iraq, but not only in Iraq. For example in the case of Afghanistan, before the Taliban came to power, in the 1990s when they were an insurgency movement, the humanitarian organizations operating in Afghanistan had contact with them. The kind of contact which characterizes any humanitarian operation—the one which says we’re going to be delivering food in such and such areas and we are an apolitical organization doing this to bring relief to the civilian victims of this conflict—that kind of conversation with local representatives of the Taliban is the best security that humanitarian workers have. That broad dialogue and understanding of what we’re up to in no way represents political recognition of a guerilla or insurgency movement, but reflects the realities of having to do business with some strange people if you’re intending to deliver humanitarian assistance. Post- the fall of the Taliban, despite the fact that they remain a violent force in Afghanistan, taking the lives of aid workers and Afghans with increasing frequency, neither we nor any other humanitarian organizations have any such conversations with the Taliban. It would be politically impossible to imagine us reaching out to the Taliban even for that non-political discussion.

Similarly in Iraq, neither we nor the Red Cross nor anybody else is talking to armed elements, let alone to the influx of foreign militant Muslims coming to fight in this version, for them, of a Spanish civil war against the coalition occupiers. So there are elements at war in either Iraq or Afghanistan with whom we can no longer dialogue, and the consequences for our security are enormous. It really reduces us to only one option, which is armed security, [because] that basis of local understanding as to how we work isn’t there anymore.

Why isn’t it there? It is partly because of the violent nature of these conflicts, a generation of insurgents and rebel leaders who have very little respect for the blue flag, or for the red flag of the Red Cross for that matter. Perhaps, more critically, because the nature of terrorism and the war against it has created such a high degree of political polarization that there is no longer that neutral space in which the conversations can take place. Humanitarianism is just one consequence of that.

I feel forced as a Brit working for the UN, one both close to my own government and close to the U.S. government, to observe that in my country’s dealings in Northern Ireland, for a long time it was viewed as a military-only operation with identification of the IRA as terrorists, as they were seen, and for their arrest or elimination. That conflict only came to resolution when it was seen to also have a political dimension, when the military option alone was seen no longer to work. I would just observe to a room of people such as yourselves that we appear to have put ourselves in a situation where there is a military-only strategy in dealing with a global terrorist problem.

41 Where is the counterpart political strategy of any seriousness to address the soft support for these kinds of actions that are so much the enabling environment in which terrorism thrives? Ultimately the success or failure of terrorism is not the dozens, or hundreds, or even thousands of people who take up weapons or are willing to be suicide bombers; it is the broader support within a civilian community that they enjoy. That is what has to be drained. That is where a political strategy is so necessarily the counterpart.

Hence my fundamental disagreement with the last words of George about whether or not a coalition such as that which has gone into Iraq is the way of the future. It seems to me that the debate that we saw played out yesterday in the General Assembly between President Bush, Kofi Annan, and I don’t want to lose the argument by adding President Chirac to that side of it, but nevertheless the debate which was played out by many, many speakers was really pointing to the dangers of doing these kinds of operations unilaterally. The danger that you lack the broad-based international support or domestic legitimacy in the country in which it is necessary to remove that enabling, soft support for terrorism.

I profoundly believe today that if the perhaps inevitable military intervention into Iraq had followed rather than preceded an exhausting of peaceful options, through the inspectors looking for weapons of mass destruction and Saddam responding to instructions given to him by the Security Council to disarm and stand down. That if a conflict had followed that process, I suspect we would be in a very different situation today in terms of both the international and national support for the terribly difficult situation we now face in Iraq.

Let me just close with one further observation. That loss of humanitarian space, which has caused us a lot of difficulty in Iraq, is not a one-source event. Not all of you may be aware that just two days ago another truck bomb drove through the Baghdad offices of the UN and was stopped by an Iraqi policeman who was killed, along with the driver of the truck, before it could be driven into that part of the building where Iraqi national staff are mostly concentrated. We were within minutes of a second devastating attack on our presence in Iraq, and those who advise us in these matters believe that the threat is not over. It remains highly active. We are targeted. The Red Cross is targeted. The NGOs are targeted. Because in this polarized war that we now face in Iraq, the most dramatic face of a more global phenomenon is that there is no space in the middle for the kind of humanitarian operations that we carry out. Thank you.

42 Panel Three -- Question and Answer Session

Begleiter. I think just a word of clarification because Mark came in at the end of George Ward’s presentation. George referred to the UN having to accept the coalition model for the future and he made reference in his closing remarks to the idea of the United Nations process being included somehow in that coalition. I think that maybe Mark missed that aspect of it so I just wanted to make sure that the record is publicly clear. That is always the danger of coming in during the middle of a movie and I think that that is the problem here.

Now, I’m going to ask the first question and I’m going to ask it of all of you [the audience]. Can I see a show of hands as to how many of you in this room if you were the CEO or executive director of your organization, which some of you are but some of you aren’t, would accept George’s idea of the U.S. military incorporating civilians into humanitarian operations? How many of you if he said, “come on in” would walk through the door?

Ward. I was referring to civilian government people.

Begleiter. Civilian government people, not civilian organizations? Ok, well never mind, the question is moot.

Malloch Brown. See: it’s not me coming in late. It’s we journalists, we never listen properly.

Begleiter. And we never get it right. (laughter). Ok, now your turn. Again I would like to ask Zahir Jamal to join us. Before you both arrived he did a presentation on the Arab Human Development Report.

Q. Theresa Loar, Vital Voices. My question is for George Ward. George, those of us who knew your great work at the State Department on behalf of women’s voices when you were Ambassador to Namibia were very excited to learn that you had been posted to Iraq, probably happier than you were. I have a question for you and perhaps some advice that you can help us with. We are working with women around the world, working for empowerment and leadership. Women in this network see in the news some of the new restrictions placed on women in Iraq by different clerics and those in positions of authority, and they are very concerned with what’s happening with women in Iraq. We have been asked by a number of these women who are working in the Arab world and other parts of the world, what can they do to help, to support these women and to work with them? I would also like to know your view as to whether or not you think there is a path for women in Iraq to play a role and to have a voice in rebuilding their country.

A. Ward. Thank you very much. The first priority with regard to the role of women in Iraq is to preserve the progress that has been made in the past. Women played important roles in the past in Iraq, including in technical professions. For example, when I arrived at the Baghdad Convention Center, which we turned into a humanitarian operations center, the chief engineer there was a woman. She had been there for 23 years. Women play important roles in society, in various parts of the government and in non- governmental organizations. It is absolutely vital not to lose that base. Just because it happened under the old order we shouldn’t throw it all out. So first start from that base.

Second, at the Institute of Peace we have given grants to some very courageous women who have gone back to do work with other women in Iraq. That is a very important endeavor in which the international community can play a role. However, it is also important to realize, and I think it is a sign of hope for Iraq, that there are many Iraqis who are inclined to support women’s rights. The Shiites have sometimes been demonized with regard to women’s rights. While I’m not an expert on Islam, I understand that the Shiites are deeply divided among themselves. There are various voices within Shi’ism, and people that I think we can work with. So there are various avenues to pursue, but I think the most important one is not to lose the position from which we started.

43 Q. Irene Langran, Carelift International. My question is for Mark Malloch Brown. You spoke about how the war on terrorism and terrorism itself has led to polarization and an inability to have a dialogue. My question to you is how terrorism and the war against it has impeded or helped your work toward the Millennium Development Goals and the dialogue surrounding these goals?

A. Malloch Brown. A very good question and let me just say that it mustn’t divert us from that dialogue. Because while very few of the terrorists who have been involved in terrorist actions over the last few years were poor, and none of the terrorists who were involved in the attack on the World Trade Centers were poor, there is no doubt that part of the environment that allows the devastating growth of this kind of violence is the existence of world poverty on a large scale. So many of the terrorists claim that one motivation for their action is that they are doing this on behalf of marginalized, impoverished people. While most of these people have indicated that they have no sympathy at all for terrorists who claim to be acting on their behalf, nevertheless it is very hard to foresee how we can create a stable democratic decent world we want for all unless we deal with the issues of global poverty with much greater fortitude, focus, and seriousness than we have up until now.

I think that the disappointment for many of us is that in the two big global conferences in Johannesburg last year, and before that in Monterrey, was that an extraordinary concerted effort seemed to be building with President Bush and his counterparts and others in the G-8 really coming together [to address global poverty] in coalitions of governments and civil society leaders and the private sector. We were really getting some traction around how they in their own countries could move. But I think that the Iraq war— not September 11th, which in some ways spurred this movement, but the Iraq war—has obviously cast a pall over that. It has cast an economic pall in that it has become so much harder for the U.S. and others to find the money for the commitments they were making for global development assistance. It has become harder because it has created so much division within the G-8 and between the G-8 and developing countries. It has ultimately become harder because it is just such a distraction from this other, longer-run, more sober issue of how you fight global poverty.

So I think there is a risk that the dialogue breaks down and I suppose finally the risk, the sharp risk implied by your question and its response to what I said in my opening, that we might ultimately polarize the world around this choice: “Are you for us or against us?” which for literally half the world’s population that lives under two dollars a day, is a horrible choice to be asked to make because they are not for terrorism, but they are for much more radical change in the global political economy than the G-8 wants to give them on their own. So to allow the space for a dialogue which says there has got to be a lot more change in the economics and politics of the world we live in is critical for all of us.

Begleiter. Mark, can I ask you to pick up on an idea that you touched on briefly—that 9/11 may have actually spurred some of the development in the right direction. Is that gone, is that lost, or is there a little bit of momentum that might be able to be revived, and if so how?

A. Malloch Brown. I hope so. I think that President Bush was so statesman-like in his initial response to 9/11, which was a development strategy as well as an anti-terrorist strategy. I keep on enraging my Democratic friends by pointing out that President Bush has made the biggest commitments to increase development assistance since President Truman. If he carries them all through, it will be a 50% increase in development assistance, and I have no doubt about his seriousness to do that. However, you do see, and there are people in the audience who have more expertise on this than I, the debate now forming in the U.S. Congress on how on earth you can put $87 billion extra into Iraq, have a huge increase in defense spending and still allow all these other pledges for AIDS, for the Millennium Challenge Account and these other big development programs, to go through untouched. While his first response was, “Yes we need a development strategy as well as a military strategy,” the logic of Iraq and the way it crowds out other budget items and indeed other political issues, has resulted in a loss of some momentum in this and

44 I think that has also happened internationally. So I suppose the argument is that we have to get President Bush back to his post-September 11th focus on the development dimension.

Q. Meredith Richardson, Aga Khan Development Network. I would like to make a link to something that Mark just said about the need for radical change in the societies that we have been talking about but go back to Professor Jamal and bring him into this conversation. Earlier today you were talking about three fundamental deprivations, which you saw particularly in the Arab world—freedom, women’s rights, and knowledge. I would like to posit that you were actually leading us to identify a fourth which is the lack of a role and models for governance in many of these societies which bridges the medieval realities which exist in some countries which we are talking about. And that provides an alternative to forego democracy which is not really accessible yet in many of these countries. What is happening in this area of alternate models of governance and what is the future as a means of responding to some of these other issues that Mark in particular has brought up today?

A. Jamal. Thank you, that is a fascinating question. We spoke this morning about the lack of context for traditional democratic models, but the depth of need for participation and inclusion. We’ve seen in some Arab countries attempts to modify both traditional and Western democratic models to meet some of the demands of the people. Bahrain and Morocco are two of the examples that come to mind where constitutions and parliamentary assemblies have been somehow amended, for example by double lists for female and male candidates, such that you have a demi-quota system there now. This is not a true parliamentary system but it allows something that is otherwise working in the current Arab context to become more pluralistic, more open. Morocco and Bahrain are the two examples where we have seen this happen.

Let me take your question in its broader context because I think it is a very important one. Is there space today in the Arab political economy to find something that stands between autocracy and democracy, and how would it work? I believe the answer to the question “is there space” depends very much upon how the current regimes act in the war against terror. The Arab report that will appear on October 14th, the second installment, complains that the year in review is a year of setbacks simply because copycat legislation across the region gave autocrats more, not less, reason or fewer pretexts, to tramp down on their people and to fight their own domestic political battles in the guise of the war against terror. I could add to Mark’s wonderful answer on the MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) the fact that national budgets have been reduced, budgets that otherwise would have gone toward development programs that countries are supposed to own themselves in the fight to achieve the MDGs. However, those budgets are being reduced to support a military build-up. That build-up is in part a response to intensified security at home and in part a pretext to the response to the escalating violence in Palestine. So I think all these things do come together, and the answer to the question “can we posit Arabized models of democracy that in the interim might work” rests very much on whether we also can find solutions to these deep political and human security issues.

Begleiter. George, I don’t know if you want to comment here but you’ve been on the ground in a place where positing a kind of government between democracy and autocracy is very much in practice. Do you want to look into the crystal ball a bit? Is Iraq a place where that will happen?

A. Ward. I think Iraq is a place where that could happen. However, it is better to get it right than to get it quickly, and I think that there is a great deal of pressure from various quarters, including from within the United States government, to do this quickly. Some have even said that as soon as there are elections we can go home. If that is literally what is meant, then it is a formula for disaster. We need to begin at the bottom. We need to have real city council elections, a real democratization process at the local level that includes women and young people who in the past have been excluded from those forums, and then build it up—while at the same time beginning to write and put together a constitution and a mechanism for adoption of that constitution. So it is going to take time, but I believe it is possible.

45 Q. Janet Harris, International Rescue Committee. My question is directed to Mr. Ward. If we look at your four-part prescription for solving the problem that you outlined in the civilian military interface, could you give us your comments on how receptive you think our counterparts in the military might be in accepting your prescription?

A. Ward. I don’t see, at least with regard to those four points, that the major problem would come from the military. I think the major obstacle to what I call a Goldwater-Nichols approach to humanitarianism intervention and organization within the U.S. government for humanitarian affairs is a leadership question. The military in the last analysis wants to get this right, and they’ve done an awful lot within the humanitarian operation centers to create an atmosphere in which humanitarians, NGOs, and civilian government aid organizations can feel comfortable. So I don’t see the military as not being receptive. I do believe that concern about the military moving into areas covered in the past by civilian agencies is well founded. The military needs to stay out of the humanitarian space except for the direct provision of humanitarian relief in emergencies. Sometimes the problem is excessive enthusiasm—just the desire to get things done. In Iraq, commanders at local levels, absent adequate instruction from higher levels, would take a can-do approach and just do things—setting up school councils and other things that might have been done better by civilians.

Q. Judith Jenya, Youth Creating Peace. My question actually has two parts. The first part has to do with the enormous amount of weapons around the world and the continued sale of arms in general, the profits made from them and then therefore the connection to other activities—drugs and human trafficking and other various things. With that proliferation and no seeming controls on it, how do any of our discussions react to that? What kinds of needs are there for controlling any of that in order to allow humanitarian assistance to operate?

The second part is, both—I believe Mr. Ward and Mr. Malloch Brown—said that there is no space or that the space is getting very limited for humanitarian action to take place. I’m wondering since you are with policymakers and are policymakers yourselves, what would you put into place as policies to correct that and to deal with that?

Begleiter. Ok, anybody want to comment on the arms question first?

A. Ward. The problem is the proliferation of conventional small arms—massive numbers of deaths in man-made humanitarian disasters are being caused by the simplest of weapons. These weapons, because of their number and the ease of manufacturing and distributing them, are very, very difficult to control. It is much easier, and believe me because I’ve been involved in it, to get a strategic nuclear agreement than it is to figure out how to control AK-47s. Personally, I think we should try because I think it is the right thing to do, but I don’t believe that we should place too much confidence in our ability to succeed. We need instead to get at what causes people to use weapons and to try to build structures that will prevent their use. Small arms are available all over the world. I remember that in January 1994 a hand grenade in the market in Kigali, Rwanda cost 75 cents. This was shortly before the genocide began there. Again, these things are out there, and they are going to be used unless we can create structures within society to make their use less likely.

A. Malloch Brown. We in UNDP and a number of our other colleagues across the UN system are very involved in small arms collection—and—destruction programs. I think it is enormously important because George is absolutely right. There is not much high-tech [involved in] the normal, run-of-the-mill deaths of civilians and aid workers in these situations. It is a lot of cheap weaponry that somehow has to be removed from the system.

Let me just address the broader policy point, the second half of the question. What are we doing to try to rebuild humanitarian space? I think the first thing is the initiative that Kofi Annan launched yesterday to

46 look again at making the Security Council more effective in terms of threats to peace. Many of us are critical of how the coalition entered into the war, but from the Secretary-General downwards we recognize that when the most powerful country on earth feels that it is threatened by a new kind of threat in which it cannot wait to react, as it might have in a traditional inter-state war of the past, then the collective security system of the world has to be adjusted to take that into account.

So we need to update the sense of what constitutes a threat and what are sort of the multilateral rules for addressing it. We have to put actions like what happened in Iraq back into a multilateral framework which everybody accepts as legitimate and appropriate—in which the U.S. thinks we will give it the protection it needs next time and gives others a sense that there is a framework of rules here, that if you’re a North Korea, your reaction to a threat from Iraq is not to rush to get your own nuclear weapons to prevent it from being done to you. We need to believe that there is a framework in which these things happen or don’t happen, a framework that is transparent and that you can understand and work within. So I think that is key, to get war back into that framework, in terms of war waged by major states in response to security threats. Having done that, then on the humanitarian side we can try and rebuild some of the separation between humanitarian action and political action.

I have worked on the humanitarian side of the UN and I’ve worked on the global end. As I reflect on this, I think in some senses as a senior manager of the UN, that I’m automatically on the political side, and I think that we’ve merged these areas in a way that, with hindsight, was a mistake. We need to restore the space that allows UNICEF to go out and work out how it’s going to carry out an immunization campaign for children in a way that, if it is immunizing people in a rebel-held area, there is absolutely no political connotation in its doing that. It is a non-political statement. It is about children. Somehow we need to restore that sort of purity of humanitarian action. For our humanitarian agencies, for the Red Cross and NGOs, it is critical that we build some firewalls between this and the political side of what we do.

47 Panel Four Summary

Positive and negative appraisals and predictions were forthcoming from the panelists, all based on sober and honest looks at the world today and trends that are now in process and cannot be called speculative. We could end absolute poverty within a generation; we could ignore religion as an important and legitimate factor in geopolitics and do so at our continuing and considerable peril; we could end absolute poverty, but not if we ignore the profound change in the world’s demographic profile that is fast bringing us to a point that by the year 2050, for the first time in human history, the number of people over the age of 60 will exceed those aged 0 to 15. Most of those over age 60 will be poor. In many ways we are at the threshold of the first time in history.

Ending Global Poverty. For the first time in history, the world could end extreme poverty within a generation. But people, especially leaders of the developed world, will not face this, because they fear the opposite. They fear that the problems are so negative and overwhelming, that facing them will require too much of a commitment, too much money. The problems of disease, hunger, poverty, environmental degradations, are horrendous, but manageable. Poverty has declined in absolute terms. What is needed now is not high theory, but practical analysis of the concrete steps needed to bring this about—mundane considerations like investments in anti-malarial nets, road pavement, distribution of modern cooking fuel, electrification—all of these investments could lift the poorest out of extreme despair and into a situation where they could achieve self-generating economic progress, based on “being healthy, educated, and having the basic infrastructure needed for normal economic development.” We can’t pretend we can’t do it.

Religion: the Little Girl with the Curl. “…and when she was good, she was very, very good and when she was bad she was horrid.” So it is with religion. Religion is an important player in world events, negatively and positively, and always has been—the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the peace of Westphalia being examples from Western history. Now it is politically incorrect in the West to raise the question of religion in the geopolitical process, but the “non-NATO world” has a different perspective. The first war of the 21st Century, 9/11, could be called a religious war although the enemy operated on a perversion of religion. Not to take religion seriously, not to understand our own faith and to learn about others and how to respect them, is to encourage the conditions that led to 9/11. It is for us to understand our own religion and learn how to respect, rather than merely tolerate, other beliefs. This might help divert this perversion of religion and instead make possible an understanding that would contribute to security, true homeland security.

Reaching Those in Greatest Need? Current Realities—Future Trends. We are on the cusp of the most dramatic demographic shift in the history of the human race. Fertility rates are falling globally. It is not just happening in the developed world. Birth rates are falling and people are ageing. There are 500 million people over age 60 in the world today; by 2030 there will be almost 2 billion, some 20% of the world’s population. Most of these people will live in the developing world and they will be poor. Today in the developing world, there are 16 million children under the age of 15 who are AIDS orphans; in the next 10 years there will be another 40 million. Who is taking care of them? More often than not, the grandparents. No one is supporting them. They have lived in poverty; their children have died in poverty, and now it is poverty that is being bequeathed to the next generation just as surely as wealth is bequeathed among families. Something must be done to address the poverty of the ageing, because this change is coming rapidly. It is a problem in developed countries where pension systems, retirement, and labor forces will be affected. But in the developing world, it will be worse. As someone has observed, the developed world grew rich before it grew old. The developing world is growing old before it has the resources to take care of these people.

48 Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and professor of health policy and management at Columbia University, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is also special advisor to United Nations Secretary- General Kofi Annan on a group of poverty alleviation initiatives called the Millennium Development Goals. Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent more than twenty years at Harvard University, most recently as director of the Center for International Development. Sachs became internationally known in the 1980s for his work advising governments in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Asia, and Africa on economic reforms. He is co-chairman of the advisory board of The Global Competitiveness Report, and has been a consultant to the IMF, World Bank, OECD, and United Nations Development Programme. During 2000-2001, he was chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health of the World Health Organization, and from September 1999 through March 2000 he served as a member of the International Financial Institutions Advisory Commission established by the United States Congress. He is author or co-author of more than 200 scholarly articles, and has written, co- written, or edited over 25 books. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Sachs received his bachelor of arts, master of arts, and doctorate degrees at Harvard University, all in international economics.

Ending Global Poverty

First, let me thank the Hilton Foundation for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you. The Dalai Lama is a hard act to follow, and I know that I will be preceding some hard acts as well; I will be brief so we can hear my wonderful co-panelists.

In a nutshell, I would like to talk about a better way for us to use $87 billion. Something is seriously wrong in the priorities of our country, as I think many of you suspect, when we are about to spend $150 billion over two years in Iraq for very unclear purposes. We can’t mobilize even 1% of that for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria —three diseases that will kill six million people this year, roughly 15,000 every single day.

As the director of the Millennium Project for the UN Secretary-General, I’ve been asked to strategize on how to address problems of global poverty, focusing on the crises that intersect extreme poverty like malaria, TB, AIDS, the problems of hunger, micro-nutrient deficiencies, soil nutrient depletion, half a million mothers dying in childbirth because they lack access to health care, multiple forms of environmental degradation, etc. As horrendous and as widespread as the problems are, they are actually manageable if you dare to look them in the eye. My general feeling is that the rich, especially our country, the United States, don’t understand how amenable these problems are to real solutions, because we are too afraid to look at them out of fear that they will bring us down, rather than us being able to pull up those in desperate need. In three years of dealing with the Bush administration I’ve had absolutely no success at all in helping them to study AIDS, TB, and malaria in any serious way. I think they are afraid; too big to handle, too expensive, don’t want to look at them, when actually the more seriously you do the analysis, the more rigorously you do it, and the more you study what can be done and what can’t be done, how to do it and where to put the priorities, the more you realize something absolutely shocking: we’ve arrived at a situation today where we are truly so rich that if we ever really made a serious effort to address these problems, not only could we tremendously improve the state of the world, but actually it is not crazy for us to think about having within our power, uniquely for the first time in the history of the world, the chance to end extreme poverty within a generation. That is what the numbers show.

49 What do I mean by that? Our planet has many ills. Extreme poverty is perhaps the most dramatic in many ways, perhaps rivaled by war, but the good news is that over time, there is a shrinking proportion of the planet suffering from the extreme poverty that leads to chronic undernourishment, disease, vulnerability to death from conditions like measles and others which basically don’t exist in the rich world anymore. By some standards, roughly one billion people, about one-sixth of humanity, is at the most extreme end of poverty. By other metrics, one could say perhaps one and a half billion out of the six billion, roughly a quarter of humanity. The good news is that at least three-quarters, or perhaps five- sixths of humanity, although many are poor by standards that we would recognize, are not at daily risk of death or even daily chronic hunger by virtue of the fact that economic well-being has actually expanded on the planet in most places over recent generations. The most dramatic good news is in Asia where both giants of the world—China and India —have seen marked declines in extreme poverty as a result of successful economic development, not uniformly successful and not at an end point as to where these countries should be, but real and quite dramatic progress over the last 20 years.

The epicenter of the global humanitarian disaster of extreme poverty is sub-Saharan Africa, because that’s the part of the world where disease pandemics remain uncontrolled, where hunger, under nutrition, stunting and wasting remain rampant; where poverty is so extreme that basic health care systems and even basic education are not in place, where economic progress has been absolutely elusive. In the midst of all the instability that revolves around pandemic disease and hunger, it is not possible to have market-led economic development in the normal way. But the good news is that there has been a substantial amount of economic development at the global level. If you put it alongside the continuing dire plight of one- quarter or one-sixth of the world’s population, it means that it is actually conceivable to think about being able to lift the remaining struggling part of our planet out of this extreme despair into a situation where they too could achieve the kind of self-sustaining economic progress which is based on being healthy, educated, and having the basic infrastructure needed for normal economic development.

The Secretary-General asked me a couple of years ago to help analyze why progress is or is not taking place in parts of the world. What we have been finding is that in those places where absolute poverty continues to grip society, sending more IMF or World Bank missions by themselves is not going to solve anything. These are not places that can generate self-sustaining economic progress. They are too poor, too sick, too undernourished, too undereducated, too bereft of basic roads and power infrastructure to make it on their own. The world is just passing these places by, but for reasons that are understandable, identifiable, and correctable.

What we have been doing is asking the question: what if we did make investments into bringing anti- malarial bed nets to malarial regions; in bringing directly observed therapy short course to tuberculosis patients; in bringing anti-retroviral medicines to the millions of HIV-positive people who could stay alive and take care of their children and maintain their jobs. What if we help pave roads and bring liquid petroleum gas to rural impoverished regions to substitute for destructive bio-mass fuel so that the trees wouldn’t be cut down, children wouldn’t die of respiratory infections from breathing the fumes of the bio- mass, and instead people would have a modern cooking fuel which can be readily distributed in rural areas. These are very practical, very pragmatic investments. We don’t need high theory; we need practical analysis of the kind of steps that can be taken to help rescue places and people who are so far below the minimal threshold for growth that they will just die if all they have to help them is another lecture from the IMF. We can give them a hand in hooking up with the world. It is basically helping them get a foot on the ladder of economic development when the ladder is unreachable right now, and they are stranded below the threshold at which normal economic progress can take place.

Well, you can do a costing of these interventions in a serious and rigorous way. I did that as chairman of the Commission on Macroeconomics and Health for the World Health Organization in the years 2000 and 2001. We identified 49 basic life-saving interventions that could save eight million lives per year. We identified what countries can afford out of their own meager incomes and what the donors need to do.

50 We came up with a number that seemed startling in a way, but what is startling about it is how small the cost would be to save eight million people a year: $25 billion a year from the rich world to the poor world. The President of the U.S. is proposing $87 billion now for Iraq (some of it is for Afghanistan), ironically for 24 million people sitting on the second largest proven oil reserves in the world. That is not a coincidence, by the way, but it is a reason to believe that this is not the highest priority for this money. $25 billion a year is one-thousandth of the annual income of the rich world, or in other words one-tenth of one percent of rich world GNP. By another metric, it is about five months of stationing troops in Iraq (though the $25 billion would come from the entire rich world, not just from the United States).

Yet the world isn’t doing it, not because it can’t be done or because the rigorous analysis isn’t done, or because the systems can’t be brought into place. Actually, the public health profession knows how to do a phenomenal amount and has shown it with smallpox eradication, polio eradication, trachoma control, leprosy control, and immunizations. The problem is that everything is budget constrained. If you add up not just the health but these other areas that I mentioned—rural power, electrification, road building, water harvesting, basic water management and the like—rigorous analysis shows, and this is what makes me shudder, that for well less than one percent of the GNP of the rich world we could end extreme poverty in our own generation.

We are the first generation to be able to say that. We are therefore the first generation with the practical and moral responsibility for doing it, because we can do it. We can pretend we can’t do it. We can be as ignorant as the U.S. government is right now about what can be done because we don’t even want to look or because we’re scared to look. But it would be quite heartening to look. We can change the world, dramatically end suffering, dramatically reduce the instability, the number of failed states, the violence, the torture, the mass refugees, desperation and impoverishment in the world. We can do it at a tiny fraction of the cost that we might imagine. It is without question the greatest bargain in the world.

Thank you very much.

51 Robert A. Seiple, Chairman and Founder, Institute for Global Engagement

Robert Seiple formed the Institute for Global Engagement (IGE) following his tenure at the U.S. State Department. "A think tank with legs," the mission of the IGE is to create sustainable environments for religious freedom and to inspire and equip emerging leaders in faith-based methodologies of global engagement. Prior to this, Seiple was the first Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom, a post created by the International Religious Freedom Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in October 1998. In his capacity as ambassador, Seiple worked to end religious persecution and to elevate religious freedom to a place of prominence on the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Before joining the U.S. Department of State, Seiple spent 11 years as president of World Vision, Inc., the largest privately -funded relief and development agency in the world. As president, Seiple guided the organization toward an expanded involvement in advocacy in the worldwide struggle against poverty and hunger. Seiple has also served as the president of Eastern College and Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and as vice president for development at his alma mater, Brown University, where he directed the successful "Campaign for Brown." He has received the U.S. Secretary of State's Distinguished Public Service Award and was named "Churchman of the Year" in 1994 by Religious Heritage America.

Religion: the Little Girl with the Curl

Transition with me to something far less controversial—religion! The tagline that I purposefully employed so that those of us who speak right after a heavy leaden lunch can come with a tad of enthusiasm: The little girl with a curl. That is actually a line from a nursery rhyme, probably long before all of your time, but I can remember my mother talking about this little girl with a curl and the last line of the rhyme goes “when she was good she was very, very good and when she was bad she was horrid.” I would suggest to you that religion with its enormous capacity for passion, also has an enormous capacity for being very, very good and an enormous capacity for being horrid.

What we know for sure in this post-9/11, post-Afghani, post-Iraqi world is that there are people today who are willing to die for their faith, and just as assuredly there are people in the world today who are willing to kill for their religion. We neglect this major, unpredictable dynamic in the geopolitical landscape at our considerable peril.

Interestingly, religion as an important player has been around for a long, long time. Most of us historically go back to those negative incidences in bygone centuries—the Crusades, the Inquisitions— and we negatively gravitate toward those high profile happenings. But then look at something positive— the Peace of Westphalia, 1648—where religion and specific faiths played a major role in the establishment of what is today’s modern sovereign state. Now over the years, most of the West separated religion and government. We did that in the name of good governance. Unfortunately, we also did that at the expense of good analysis. Today we are still reluctant and cautious, and sometimes intimidated or befuddled as to how to bring the subject back up and put it into this geopolitical dynamic. Try to raise religion in the interagency process in Washington or even in some of the human rights organizations. You will find that religious freedom is not the most politically correct freedom that we have today.

The implications? Most of the non-NATO world has very different assumptions than we do here in the West relative to this religious dynamic in the geopolitical process. A specific incidence: a young man, Sheik al-Sadr in Iraq whose father was the one assassinated about a month ago. He came to Ambassador Bremer and asked for support for an Institute for Religious Tolerance. It made sense. He wanted to have a place where there could be dialogue between Sunnis and Shias. Bremer could not provide that because both the ends and the means of the request were religious in nature, and because they were religious in

52 nature they would violate our own Constitution that separates church and state. Which is to say that the U.S. could not pursue its own national security interests without violating the divide between church and state.

There are different assumptions that exist on this issue in the world, and real implications. Frankly this in part is why we have been surprised; surprised that the first war of the 21st century is—because it’s still going on—a religious war. I’ll come back to that terminology in a second. But certainly that is at least a strong component as to how our enemy used 9/11 and beyond. It seems to me if we want to win this war we would help ourselves considerably by understanding the religious backdrop from which we get this, in my opinion, massive perversion of faith—Sharia Law, Jihad, Sunni, and Shia differences, the impact of Wahhabism, and so on. We need to be educated.

Secondly we also need to understand that in times of conflict and pressure—in intense conflict like we’ve seen in Afghanistan and Iraq—the role of the clergy gets elevated. Laity want to know what’s going on. They want somebody to make sense of the present. They need rationale so the leadership role played by the clergy is very much elevated, sometimes perhaps beyond their ability to lead.

How much trust does one bestow upon an Iraqi cleric, an Iranian Imam, the head of a Madrassas in Pakistan for example. Or to be fair, how much credence should be given to Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell on this issue? Beware of established religious leaders talking about subjects that might go beyond their expertise. During points of conflict and crisis, their roles are elevated sometimes beyond their ability to perform and we could experience the law of unintended consequences.

I want to come back to the terminology of a “religious war.” September 11th was about the intentional destruction of innocent non-combatants. Some have called it an ideological battle. Some have called it a political dispute and of course lots of people have referred to it as a religious war. Osama bin Laden saw it as “a glorious deed.” Pope John Paul, a whole lot closer to the truth, referred to it as “an unspeakable horror.” It was murder.

None of the major faiths practiced at their best have anything to do with murder. None of the major faiths practiced at their best give any cause for concern relative to harm, or to diminishing the life of someone else. All of the major faiths speak to the sanctity of life. All of the major faiths speak to human dignity, keeping folks alive. All of the major faiths have something akin to the Golden Rule. All of the major faiths at least talk about the concept and the methodology of reconciliation. Any attempt to equate a 9/11 and conditions somewhere else in the world, frankly, is offensive.

This was not a latent response to the Crusades. The attack was not prompted by the Islamic faith, nor was it some Zionist conspiracy. No rationale will ever pass the smell test. On 9/11, three thousand people, from more than 80 countries, representing every major faith, were slaughtered. This is not religion—this is murder.

What to do about this new dynamic, this new dynamic which is the passion of faith poisoned by perverted religion? Well, we need to understand our own faith at its deepest and richest best and we need to understand enough about our neighbors in order to show them respect. The first thing we have to do is to truly understand our own belief system. Why does it work? Who are the heroes of the faith? What are the eternal varieties of the faith? What is the history of the faith? How does that faith work itself out in terms of guidelines for community, for civil society? Why in the words of Pascal “do good men believe it to be true?”

We need to understand our own faith because superficiality hurts us at this point. And then we need to know enough about our neighbors to show them respect. Respect is the key word. All of the international covenants on religious freedom talk about tolerance. I don’t like the word tolerance. I think

53 it is a wimpy word. Tolerance is a weak form of grace applied to someone that I don’t particularly care for. Respect is celebrating those things that we have in common, and as human beings that is considerable.

What does respect look like? There was a beautiful picture shown only briefly in the Iraqi war. You may have missed it. Media does not linger for long over good news. It was in the holy city of Najaf. The people had heard that the U.S. Army was coming and they were concerned that they were going to march into their mosque and takeover the mosque with guns. Immediately you had this confrontation, an angry mob and a bunch of armed military folks. The Army colonel said to his men, “look them in the eye and smile at them. Take a step back, drop to one knee, put your weapon in front of you and turn the barrel upside down.” Instantly the tension went out of the moment because the people realized that something was happening here that could only go by the name of respect.

The single, biggest contribution that each one of us can make to homeland security is to understand our own faith at its deepest and richest best, and enough about our neighbor’s in order to show them respect. Let me give you the backside of this mantra. Osama bin Laden did not understand his own faith and certainly had no respect for anyone else’s. When you have a truncated faith, a redacted gospel, misunderstood and inappropriately applied—and all of this concoction in the hands of a religious zealot— you have the potential for huge problems. It is very scary indeed and this is really the new factor in today’s geopolitical dynamic —madmen masquerading as devout religionists. It is scary, and when it is bad, it is horrid.

Let me end on a good note. When you get the best of government and the best of religion, you can put together a values-based civil society. This should be the coin of the realm. The two sides of that coin are religious freedom and security. This is where you get human security by securing freedoms, as both moral imperative and realpolitik come together in a values-based civil society. And to go back to our nursery rhyme, “this is very, very good.”

54 Todd Petersen, Chief Executive Officer, HelpAge International

Todd Petersen is the chief executive officer of HelpAge International (HAI), a U.K.-based international development organization, which is focusing on the impact of population ageing on international development, the strengthening of civil society structures in the developing world, and on building linkages between civil society and government. HAI currently works in more than 70 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Caribbean, and East/Central Europe. Reporting to a board of trustees from 10 countries, Mr. Petersen is responsible for developing the strategic direction of the organization. HAI’s work ranges from practical program to national policy development, social research, and institutional development focusing on both government and civil society. HAI has established a strong reputation for its methodology and focus of work, which has always emphasized the development of civil society in the South. Todd Petersen holds a master’s degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he focused on management and public policy.

Reaching Those in Greatest Need? Current Realities—Future Trends

Well, the good news is that I’m the last speaker so I think there is a reception waiting for us somewhere. I’m going to keep my watch up here to make sure we make it and I’ll be leading the way out of the room.

I begin with a confession. I’m an American living in London and, as some of you may know, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Blair government are locked in a very major battle over the BBC’s allegations that the Blair government “sexed up” their terminology in the rationale for going to war in Iraq. The original title of my presentation was the Demographics of Poverty and I was telling my children this around the table and the two oldest ones said, “Well, Daddy, that is going to bore them to tears; you’ve got to sex it up.” The youngest one heartily agreed but then went on to ask what sexed up means, and at that stage I went back to the computer to come up with a new title.

I want to begin by sharing with you the World Bank’s definition of poverty: ‘Poverty is hunger. Poverty is lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor. Poverty is not being able to go to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, is fear for the future, living one day at a time. Poverty is losing a child to illness brought about by unclean water. Poverty is powerlessness, lack of representation and freedom.’ And I want all of you to reflect on these words for a second and reflect on the reality that, as Jeff Sachs said, for a quarter of humanity that is their daily existence.

We see that poverty is a totality of experience, encompassing not only a lack of material things and services, but exclusion, powerlessness and a sense of “unfreedoms.” I would describe that totality as just as much a tortuous existence as many of the people who are the beneficiaries of the wonderful organization that received this year’s Hilton Humanitarian Prize, IRCT. I would say as a humanitarian community we really haven’t done a very good job of reaching those people.

I’m slightly relieved that Jeff has had to go off to meet the Prime Minister of India because it is a brave person that disagrees with Jeff in private or in public. It is easier to do it when he’s not here, because I don’t think that it is as easy as he says it is. I think there are real questions as to how well we as an international development community have really delivered on the results to date and in fact how we are really stacking the deck against the poorest people in the world. Mary Robinson spoke very eloquently this morning about issues around trade, and the reality is that given the trade regimes that exist it would be very difficult for those people to be anything other than poor.

55 Now I would like to talk about one group in particular because it really focuses on what the future is and what the difficulties are. We have heard a great deal today about the impact of HIV/AIDS and there is no question that particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, but also globally, it is an unbelievable situation. I was just in South Africa and it is extraordinary how that country is literally being destroyed by it.

Current global figures estimate that 16 million children under the age of 15 have already lost either one or both parents to HIV/AIDS and that another 40 million children will lose their parents within the next ten years. That is 60 million people, but what we don’t ever hear is who’s looking after those children. The reality is that it is primarily older people.

Recent World Bank studies found that in 20 out of 28 countries in Africa and Latin America, more than one-fifth of orphaned children were living with their grandparents. In South Africa and Uganda it was 40%; and in Zimbabwe over half. In Zambia, Uganda, and Tanzania, grandparents made up the single largest category of carers of orphans. Yet you don’t ever, ever hear about it. If you look across the globe you will find almost no formal international or national initiatives intended to support those carers. People who have had to watch their own children die after living a lifetime in poverty are now left as the only economic beneficiaries of their grandchildren.

Should it matter to us? Yes it should. It has to on the issue of basic human rights, but it also has to matter to us on economic grounds. Because we see now more clearly than ever that poverty is bequeathed just as easily as wealth, and if we don’t address the poverty of these people, we compromise our ability to address the next generation.

Why is it important to focus on a group of older people that we have never really paid attention to before in the developing world, and not that much in the developed world, you could argue as well? It is important, because we are on the cusp of the most dramatic demographic shift in the history of the human race. That is not an overstatement.

In the last 30 years there has been an extraordinary change in the make-up of the world. For the last two decades, fertility rates globally have been falling and they are falling dramatically. In a country like Brazil, where in the ’60s women were having over six children per woman, it has dropped to below three. This is a trend that is increasing globally and, at the same time, we as a global population are ageing.

We are seeing an extraordinary shift in the numbers of older people. There are approximately 500 million people in the world today who are over 60. By 2050 there will be almost two billion; one in five of the global population will be over the age of 60. For the first time in human history, the number of people over the age of 60 will exceed those aged 0 to 15.

Why we have to care about this is because most older people, particularly in the developing world, are poor. They are the poorest. If you really want to look at the poorest and most marginalized people, you look particularly in the developing wor ld for older women. There are poor older women living today in Africa who are still being accused of witchcraft and killed. We can’t fool ourselves. This is a very, very significant issue.

We’ve focused a lot in the development world on the issue of the ageing population. Twenty-five to 28% of the most rapidly ageing countries are in the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries and there will be profound changes in the next 40 years. The pension systems, retirement, labor forces, all of these issues will be dwarfed by the shift in the developing world.

What is phenomenal about this change is not only the scope of it, the size of it, but it is the pace of it. It is how quickly it is happening. You see, in France and in the developed world we have 100 years plus of economic growth, and the change in the numbers and percentage of older people is occurring much

56 quicker in the developing world. Alex Kalache of the World Health Organization has a saying that the developed world grew rich before it grew old. The developing world is growing old before it has the resources to take care of those people.

So reflect back if you will to 30 years ago and think about how much as it exists today has changed. Who here 30 years ago could have predicted the Internet, globalization, the flow of capital, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union? Well, the issue of population ageing and the impact of that within the next 30 years will certainly have potentially as great an impact on our lives as any of the developments over the last 10 to 20 years.

We have as a global community, now and in the future, to take a much closer look at this issue because the reality is there, and I’ll finish up now that Jeffrey Sachs feels there is a way within the Millennium Development Goals to end poverty. The Millennium Development Goals call for helping with global poverty and a number of other issues; however, not a single Millennium Development Goal deals with anything that deals wit h older people. The Millennium Development Goals will not be met if there is not a greater emphasis or reflection on this incredible change in the demographic structure of the world. Thank you.

57 Panel Four -- Question and Answer Session

(Jeffrey Sachs left before Robert Seiple’s and Todd Petersen’s presentation, however, his Q & A is included here.)

Begleiter. Since Jeff Sachs has to leave early, let’s take your questions for him only at this time.

Q. David Bornstein. I’m an author for Oxford University Press. Earlier today Mary Robinson talked about the issue of linking human security to the humanitarian questions as a way of creating a more political role than we currently have. What do you think about that as a strategy?

A. Sachs. It’s interesting that the CIA has for many years studied the question of state failure—the collapse of states, revolutionary turmoil, anarchy—partly because we know that those events pull us into combat situations, into military engagement, and into other kinds of costs for the U.S. What did they find was the biggest predictor of state failure? It turns out that the best indicators of instability are economic failure and the infant mortality rate. I think that the CIA has actually done pretty well at intelligence over the years, but unfortunately the Pentagon doesn’t listen to the CIA anymore. It constructs its own intelligence until it gets an answer which then turns out to be wrong.

The fact of the matter is that we have a real stake in reducing poverty because of the instability and the insecurity that results from it. President Bush said it again yesterday. The government says it, but doesn’t apply it. The rhetoric of this administration on this particular matter has actually been fairly consistent since September 11th. Yet the investments that are really being made don’t follow. Just yesterday, Bremer explained we’re having a Marshall Plan for Iraq. We should have a Marshall Plan for Africa, one to end disease and hunger, one that really goes to the core of the problem, not something that is in my opinion an extremely naïve, wasteful, and misdirected effort in Iraq. Iraq has hundreds of billions of dollars of oil reserves, it is not the place where people are struggling for survival. As a note on these Iraq calculations: if the pipelines would stop being blown-up—that’s a political issue—that would be an extra 10 billion dollars into the coffers of the Iraqi government. This isn’t a question of impoverishment in the same way as it is in Africa. What the administration is not doing is investing in the alleviation of poverty and suffering, even though those investments would deliver major benefits for the people involved, for America’s image and role, and therefore our safety in the world.

Q. Richard Pichler, SOS Kinderdorf International/ SOS Children’s Villages. We are working in many of these countries where you were referring the $25 billion would have to be invested. We are suffering and feeling this pressure for children to be admitted into our facilities. If this plan comes through, it would be great for us because then the pressure would be less. What I like very much in your presentation is that there would be simple and practical solutions available on the investment side. What practical, simple solutions are there in the sourcing and the funding side, because it basically would mean that on the industrialized state side either a tightening of the belt has to happen or some priorities have to be reset, but what is the realistic view as to how this can happen?

A. Sachs. Please don’t make me be realistic. I don’t know what the realistic answer is. To me, spending $450 billion on the military and $10 billion on foreign assistance is not realistic, but that seems to be what passes for realism in our world today. In terms of mechanisms of funding, I’m a great fan of finding mechanisms that allow the countries in need to apply for funds to meet those problems, bringing together—within those countries of need—government and civil society.

There is one model that I appreciate very much which is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. It is a fund that invites countries to establish coordination mechanisms within the country, bringing together government and civil society and then applying for funding for the three diseases. Countries are able to design their own projects, which are then sent to Geneva, and are reviewed and analyzed by an

58 independent technical review panel for soundness, prudential standards, transparency, and participation of civil society in the actual planning of the mechanisms. Once the programs are approved, the money is disbursed and there is very little top-down control by international agencies. There is ample opportunity for non-governmental organizations to fit into this process so that a plan for Malawi, for example, might have some national health center component, but it could also have Save the Children, the church mission hospitals and other groups, which are all part of this umbrella solution. The money is then disbursed to these various entities.

Yesterday in his speech to the General Assembly, President Lula of Brazil suggested a Global Fund on Hunger. There is the idea of a trust fund on education for all, another one of the Millennium Development Goals. What I like about all of these is that they invite countries to take the reins and find practical solutions, but they insist that it not just be government-led, but that it be led by civil society and government together, and that it have standards of transparency, participation, and a scientific and evidence-based design. So it is not just whatever is said, but there really is independent review, monitoring, and evaluation. It seems to me that this would be a new model for development assistance: fewer flags planted by development agencies, more pooling and more true ownership at the country level.

Q. Unidentified Person. Literally overnight hundreds and hundreds of NGOs have suddenly emerged in a number of countries working with AIDS-related programs. There is an issue of corruption in a number of these countries…even if the funds were available there is a question of the structure that could be used to legitimately spend them. I think that it is a supply and demand issue. There has been a huge amount of money spent, granted it has been insufficient, but we’ve spent a huge amount of money over the last several decades with pretty uneven results.

A. Sachs. We have not spent a huge amount of money. We’ve spent a very limited amount of money and we’ve also spent it mainly for foreign policy reasons, not for development reasons, just like this money for Iraq. We constantly are allocating funds for what are perceived to be foreign policy interests, supporting our thugs who are against their thugs. Whatever it is, it has very rarely gone into real development.

Our report did not recommend $25 billion tomorrow; it recommended $25 billion by the year 2007. It recommended a concerted, serious, sustained, ramping-up of efforts to build capacity alongside building the funding. There is no doubt that money is not a sufficient answer. There is also no doubt that money is a necessary feature. There is no doubt that you don’t solve the other problems without the money alongside because planning hypothetically is worthless. Only planning real projects and scaling up in real time as a real effort with real doctors, nurses, teachers, road builders, and the like is the way that one gets the systems operational. So what we are doing in the UN Millennium Project is looking explicitly at a 12-year time horizon to reach the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. We are not pretending that this can be solved today, and mind you, I didn’t say that poverty could be eliminated tomorrow. I said that poverty could be eliminated within this generation, which I’ll take liberally to be 20-25 years.

Now, that would require having a lot more money available. It is going to have to be results-based, monitored, evaluated, and gradually built up over time. Certain things can come quickly; other things can’t come quickly, but what we do right now is we plan a year at a time. What I reject about the rhetoric of assistance right now is if you were asked today not what should you do tomorrow, but what should you do till 2015, you would come up with some powerful answers about how to use those years effectively, and I believe that those answers can be found in all of the places with reasonable governance.

Q. David Sack, ICDDR,B – Centre for Health and Population, Bangladesh. For Mr. Petersen. We are beginning to look at the issues of ageing and are struck by what an issue it is in terms of gender, in terms of who is caring for the older people, and we’re finding because of the difference in age between husband

59 and wife, the husband does tend to die earlier, leaving the widow to live many years without any caregiver. Could you comment on the gender issue in relation to ageing?

A. Petersen. It’s a very powerful one and it is a good point because, as you say, women in a number of countries who have had a lifetime of poverty have the potential of becoming even more marginalized as widows and much more vulnerable. Women in many countries and communities continue to have significant roles as carers but older women are often, particularly in relation to changing migration patterns and otherwise, in much more vulnerable positions than any other age group.

Q. Judith Jenya, Youth Creating Peace. I have a question about religion. In this era when fundamentalism is certainly on the rise in many of the major religions, and fundamentalists have taken over some of the functions or have great influence in various governments, what would you propose for our country to be able not to have both a fundamentalist movement in our country and be able to address the situation that you raised about having this person who wanted to bring together the Sunnis and the Shiites have that possibility? In other words, have it both ways?

A. Seiple. We need to be careful of any mass categorization of groups. It is kind of like having two Baptists in the room together, yet three opinions, which is also probably true of two fundamentalists in the room. Let’s take a look at the Muslim faith. There are two billion Muslims in the world. They represent majority positions in 59 countries but they are not all the same. There is a great deal of discussion going on within Islam. It is extremely important and in some respects it has taken longer for it to go on there than other religions where higher criticism got argued back and forth and the debate has been 50 years in the making. But this intra-religious dialogue is extremely important and so of course, is inter-faith dialogue. What we are talking about is education that doesn’t talk past one another, education that doesn’t create universalism because there are differences that should remain differences. We need to find ways to respect our differences.

What is at stake? You know we have a theory out there that kind of helped us debate dur ing the interim period between 1989 and 9/11 called the “Clash of Civilizations.” We should all work very hard to prove Sam Huntington wrong, but it was a good debate and continues to be a good debate. We should also all be working very hard both to understand our own faith and then to have respect for the faith of others. If you look at the last 15 years, what has been at the heart of many of these horrific, intra-national conflicts has been our inability to live with our deepest differences. Many times those differences are represented by ethnicity, religion, or both and they are a stain on our recent history. If we want to keep our future from being pockmarked by the things we have seen during the last 15 years, we need to work harder at understanding our own and respecting our neighbors.

Begleiter. Bob, can I follow up with you for just a moment. I was surprised that during your remarks you did not make any reference to the phrase “faith-based initiatives.” I would like to ask you what it looks like to someone in Pakistan, Afghanistan, or maybe in the West Bank or Gaza, maybe in Saudi Arabia, to have the U.S. government advocating faith-based government initiatives while at the same time suggesting that religion ought not play a role in politic s in those places?

A. Seiple. I have never understood why this issue of faith-based initiatives ran into such a buzz-saw on Capitol Hill. It was like everyone immediately gravitated to “Chicken Little is right and the sky is falling,” which, yes, in the worst-case scenario may be true. Quick aside: I was standing in line at the National Prayer Breakfast and someone referred to a rabbi who said a faith-based initiative is kind of like mixing horse manure and ice cream; it doesn’t really impact on the manure, but the ice cream is pretty done in by it all. This was kind of the level of rhetoric.

Let me tell you something as someone who used to work at a faith-based international NGO who got hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government; the faith-based initiative has worked forever

60 overseas. The criteria is not whether you’re faith-based or not, it is whether you can do the job. You say you are going to plant trees, dig for water, or vaccinate kids. Well if the trees grow, if you find pure water, if the kids live, then you have something credible to say and any government will give money to the kind of organization that is doing that kind of work and that is doing what they say they will do. Now if you are digging for water and giving out bibles then certainly USAID is going to put a stop to the funding of the latter point of ministry. But the issue is a really curious thing for those of us who believe that evangelizing or proselytizing is essentially done incarnationally, that you establish the worth of the gospel until such time that the truth can emerge. So you do random and not so random acts of kindness today and those things get funded by the U.S. government because they are humanitarian acts and are not seen as religiously motivated. In the example I gave you the ends and means are not direct, but boy that is a nuance. The fact that we have done it forever and done it well abroad but seemingly can’t get this off the ground in the United States has me befuddled and slightly amused.

Begleiter. Interesting answer; you dodged the question, but I’ll leave it at that.

Q. Janina Ochojska, Polish Humanitarian Organization. Do you think that we of non-fundamentalist countries, that we are responsible for the developing of fundamentalism in different countries where there were wars? Like for example in Bosnia, because of the powerless international community. This war, it was not a religious war, it became a religious war because we pushed these people by doing nothing. The same is in Chechnya and I heard nobody here say any word about Chechnya. It is a forgotten country. We have a nation in Chechnya and this nation is pushed now to fundamentalism and we do this with our hands, yes. And also the same in other countries. What can we really do to stop this?

Seiple. If I understand the question it is, “How do these things become religious wars? How do they pick up a religious characteristic?”

Begleiter. The question included that sense of responsibility. Does the U.S. bear some responsibility or the West, the U.S., and its allies, bear some responsibility for driving fundamentalists in the direction of political fundamentalism? Is that a fair paraphrase?

A. Petersen. Well, yes, as someone who worked in Bosnia, I think the West shares a tremendous amount (of responsibility). There was tremendously bad political judgments made very early on in the conflict, particularly by the European Union, which probably significantly exacerbated the situation. I think then it further exacerbated it by really not wanting to intervene in a way, which was significant—and the sort of half-hearted measures of having the UN peacekeepers in who stood by and watched the slaughter in Srebrenica and other places. So, yes, I think you can say that there were some terribly, terribly bad geopolitical decisions made in some of those places. I don’t think that necessarily pushed them in a religious way, but I think there were some very naïve political decisions that failed to take into account the tensions that existed in those places.

A. Seiple. I agree, but I would just add this. When there is tension and when there is conflict, just like the churches in America were filled the Sundays immediately after 9/11, the identity issue that is associated with religion takes over. Ten years ago, Indonesia was a moderate state. But every Christian knew where every Muslim lived and vice-versa. And so when a mosque got burned, a church had to get burned. And then you eventually had this thing taking place that becomes very religious in nature. There was a time when you did not see a burka on the streets of Bosnia. When they started to persecute people on the basis of their ethnicity and their religion, you started to see it because the identity was becoming more prominent.

I no longer work for the government, so if I avoided the (previous) question, Ralph—shame on me. Let me go back and reframe the question that may have come. “Does the U.S. put pressure on groups or allow groups to go into a country that can exacerbate the situations because of their religious nature?”

61 Inasmuch as they allow groups to go into Iraq, groups who in the not so distant past, have talked about Mohammad being an evil person or being a pedophile or whatever, yes, I think that is discouraging and disgusting. I think that you can solve that with visa and work permits. Ultimately, you don’t have to renew them. You can keep out anybody you want to and perhaps in the spirit of good common sense and public relations that is where government ought to take a stand and make their feelings known.

Q. Meredith Richardson, Aga Khan Development Network. This may sound a little provocative but I can’t bottle it up any longer. You were just saying that what you do with those people is you don’t give them visas, you don’t give them work permits. Does that also apply to what we should do in this country to not let fundamentalists get into our government and to frame the laws and institutions in this country so that they perpetuate some of these same fundamentalist practices?

Begleiter. Are you making indirect reference to the Guantanamo situation or are you speaking more generally?

Q. Meredith Richardson, Aga Khan Development Network. I have an Australian accent but I am also an American. Some of the laws that have been put in place in this country and in some of the ways in which regulations are being enacted about other laws since 9/11 perpetuate to me fundamentalist attitudes, discriminatory attitudes, intolerance—the same sorts of things that we have just been hearing about as aspects of fundamentalism in other faiths and in other countries.

A. Seiple. Let me answer that two ways. I think that 9/11 created a hierarchy of values with security at the top of it. Any organization that cannot define itself in the context of national security is going to be fairly irrelevant for awhile. And, the Senate and the House overwhelmingly voted for the Patriots Act. They also voted overwhelmingly for a sunset clause so that after a while one would take another look at it, not unlike what happened after World War II when a lot of the legislation that Roosevelt put in place was backtracked and eliminated.

I think our country has enough of a history and enough of a tolerance and enough rule of law that we can safely assume that that is going to happen. That is not to say that the ACLU should not be eternally vigilant. I am not troubled too much by that in this day and age when I think that security is the big issue.

Now let me take another stab from a different direction. When I was in the State Department, we used to get criticism all the time of the Islamic groups that we allowed to come in. My feeling is that if you could pass diplomatic security and the Middle East Bureau and these groups were citizens of the United States, they should be talked to, they should have an audience, they should have a seat at the table. Now some of these groups have been found wanting. Some of these groups have money trails to different groups that we are not friendly with anymore. But, at the time, they got a pass because they were citizens and they were approved and we talked to them.

I’m not sure if the second part answers all of your question but again in terms of what we need to fear in this country, I personally don’t lose any sleep over the Patriots Act. I think there are plenty of people who are vigilant and will make sure that the Act reaches its normal demise when it should, when appropriate.

Q. Jennifer Olden, Catholic Relief Services. Jennifer Olden from Catholic Relief Services. I had a question for Todd about addressing poverty among the aged. As development humanitarian and development agencies, we do typically focus on children and ensuring their education and their health so they have more opportunities when they grow older—and on the productive generation, improving their ability to earn a living and increase their livelihood and security. Can you give some examples of practical programming that addresses poverty among the elderly in particular?

62 A. Petersen. What’s interesting is that the programs that are focusing on poverty now, the inter- generational aspects or the impact of that, are in both Brazil and South Africa. I suppose Brazil would be middle income, but both of these now have non-contributory pensions focusing on older people. And those are important because the vast majority of older people in the developing world are in the informal sector, and they are the poorest. So, to reach out to them is quite crucial.

But what both of those governments and both of those countries have seen, what was essentially or initially viewed as a welfare transfer has had a huge impact on the families. That in families where there was an older person receiving pensions, the participation in education of the children actually increased, because the older people were paying for school fees and for uniforms. So, there is a clear inter- generational aspect to it. It’s very difficult to just focus on one age group anymore and I think that is what everyone’s recognizing.

So what you are seeing is that in programs where there is a focus on older people, there is almost always a spill-over effect and very positive benefits to the rest of the family. That could be programs focusing on micro-finance, that could be programs focusing on access to health services, but there is a now clear knock-on effect in this area.

Actually, we are working with Joe Stiglitz, who is a former chief economist at the World Bank who left because he was quite concerned about some of their policies. But looking at the issue around the importance of social protection as a development mechanism, as a development tool, we always saw them as completely separate, but now there is a recognition that the two were very, very closely intertwined and it’s a very important and powerful mechanism for dealing with poverty.

Begleiter. Todd, if I may, I’d like to ask you a question. I’ve been mulling about all day in anticipation of your presentation. We have heard the phrase “clash of civilizations;” it came up again here today with regard to religion and politics. I’d like to ask you to comment on the potential for “clash of civilizations” in the politics of ageing. Just to put a little spice into it, should NGOs be offering to assist France to prevent the deaths of 15,000 elderly citizens in the developed world? Point number one, and point number two, if the median age in a country like Yemen is 15, and the median age in a country like Japan is 41, illustrating an enormous gap between the Arab/Muslim world versus much of the rest of the West or the developed world, is there a clash?

A. Petersen. Well, I think there are three or four questions there that you wrapped up into it, but I’ll try to answer them. First of all, I think there are lots of different politics of ageing. I think the issues you raise around the population demographics in the Arab world are very different. I think there, the politics are around an extraordinarily young population, which one of the presenters talked about this morning, a young population with very little access to employment, very tight labor markets, very little opportunity to participate in any kind of governance, so there I think it is a very set and very different set of issues.

I think within the OECD countries, there is this discussion or this question around the clash of ages. Are the very young going to resent somehow this shift in the fact that people now are receiving extraordinary state benefits from most of the European governments? There is almost no historical provision for private pensions in most of Europe; it’s all state provisions. It’s extraordinarily generous. In France you can retire in a state industry at age 55. As you say, if there’s a heat wave, you may well die at 60, but the question is who is going to be paying for that in the future? And, for most of the governments, certainly in the OECD countries, this is potentially a very, very explosive discussion to even raise, and there are real questions around the availability and affordability of what people are getting now.

There’s almost no question that that won’t be affordable in 30 years in most of the European countries. There you have an extraordinarily shrinking, diminishing labor market. Most of the European countries’ fertility rates are way under the 2.1 replacement ratio, so the populations are actually projected to decline.

63 This will mean a smaller labor market, less tax revenue, less ability to pay for all the benefits that people are used to. So it’s not an issue now, but there is going to be a huge amount of resentment, perhaps in that generation where my children will be falling in, seeing the sort of benefits that they paid for through extraordinarily high taxes, and yet will accrue no benefits from. It’s a very, very hot political issue. Most of the European governments are trying to shift it around the edges, change retirement ages, change contributions but, to date, they have not been particularly successful, so I think it’s going to be a very, very significant issue, certainly within most of the European countries in the next decade.

Begleiter. OK, thanks. George, can you come up and join us for ten minutes? For the last few minutes of our session you all have a chance to spout off on any of the issues, or maybe some of the issues that we haven’t touched on today, an opportunity to do a commercial for your organization if you think that’s really necessary among your colleagues and friends.

Q. Dane Smith, National Peace Corps Association. I am struck at the way in which the conference today, which I found quite interesting, has been approaching humanitarian intervention in the broadest sense. We looked at the breadth of health issues, we looked at eradicating poverty, we’ve looked at demographic shift and I must say that it’s a little bit different from what I expected.

I want, if I might, to take the opportunity to focus on a question within the framework of humanitarian intervention. A couple of years ago, I was particularly interested in finding ways to support a mechanism at the National Peace Corps Association called the Emergency Response Network. The Emergency Response Network is an interactive database of former Peace Corps volunteers and former Peace Corps staff who have indicated a willingness to become volunteers again and serve in complex emergencies overseas. And it seemed to me as I went around and talked to many NGOs that are prominent in this gathering that there should be a great interest in making use of people who have particular expertise in language, in areas of the world where there are crises who bring a lot of experience to bear. Indeed, that was borne out by my discussions with Mercy Corps and a variety of different international rescue committees, a variety of different organizations that use people abroad. But the problem that I ran into in talking to various foundations, I did not find much support for helping to fund a mechanism which could use people with this kind of expertise in short term humanitarian situations.

It seems to me that the way the situation has evolved over the last couple of years that this has become even more important as we face this interrelationship between security and humanitarian intervention of which Mary Robinson spoke so well this morning. So my question is, how do we mobilize people with particular expertise abroad who have a savvy based on their experience in difficult places like the Congo, for example, or Ethiopia to be used in delivering humanitarian assistance in complex emergencies?

Begleiter. Anybody want to take a crack at that? This is a question that seems to me to boil down to whether you can get somebody to pay for something other than an actual delivery of a service to someone abroad and whether you can get people to pay for skilled sets of individuals. Maybe, George, you want to try that?

A. Ward. Just a couple of examples that I can think of, Dane, that I fear don’t respond exactly to what I think you have in mind. For example, the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has a program whereby they collect data on skills and qualifications of people who might be available for peace operations in given areas so that they have at any one time a database of people who could be called upon. That’s called the REACT program. Another initiative out there that I’ve had contact with in the past is the Executive Service Corps, which is a database of executives with a great deal of experience. They receive requests for assistance in particular areas and fit the right person into them. Those are the only two examples that I know.

64 A. Petersen. As someone who spent about 15 years working in emergency programs before I shifted over to what I am doing now, in many ways the trend is going the opposite way. For a number of the donors that used to fund us, the toughest thing to get funding for was the expatriate staff. You try getting money out of UNHCR for an expatriate. It’s very, very difficult. But that said, I have some degree of sympathy because of my experience in some of the really big emergencies. I remember being in Rwanda literally weeks after the genocide, the place was flooded with all sorts of well-intentioned people who wanted to do good but who didn’t know much about the place. You really had to question why they were there and what they were doing there. That doesn’t apply certainly to all emergencies but it does apply to ones where there is this huge public outpouring and people are trying to fund anybody to do almost anything.

I think you found that to some degree in the Balkans and Bosnia, and certainly in Kosovo, people from the DART Team were walking around literally with suitcases ready to start handing out money to anybody who would take it to do work. So, it’s a tough one. I think there is also a lot of legitimacy to this issue of trying as much as possible to build sustainable structures within these countries and working with what is there. In almost any place you are there are usually plenty of resources to do the job. So it’s a conundrum I suppose. I don’t have any simple answer to it.

Q. Unidentified. Just to comment on what Todd just said: This is also our assessment; we are working in over 130 countries. The competence and know-how is in the countries. The worst which we can do is to come with an attitude and think only if you have the right nose, you have the know-how. They have the know-how there and the things are not that complicated. We have to exert trust to the people. If something goes wrong, ok, it’s gone wrong. But how many things have gone wrong if the right nose has gone to Rwanda and into Burundi. Not much is talked about this. So I would really appeal to trust the people in the different countries no matter how poor they are. They are skilled enough to handle the things, but they need the trust.

Begleiter. Never would have thought we would have gotten into the shape of noses in this discussion but everything comes into play. Is there a comment or a question elsewhere?

Q. Neesha Mirchandani, Niya. I am with a tiny little nonprofit in North Carolina. I guess I was a little shocked by your statistics on ageing and I also keep thinking about this word “sexed up” for some reason, and the reason is probably that maybe you have an idea on how we can “sex up” the discussion about ageing in the mass media, in the policy circles so that more people can focus on it. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on that you could share with us.

A. Petersen. My daughters would be deeply gratified that we have adopted their “sexed up” (phrase). I think it’s a real cultural issue. I think, particularly in the West, we have extraordinarily negative connotations about growing old and ageing. Most of us are very uncomfortable with many of those images. And I think part of what’s going to change, maybe with the boomers, is people’s views about growing old. That will create as much of a different perspective as anything. But we are very intrigued by the lack of interest in this issue.

Now certain national governments that we are working with are terribly interested. Like most governments, they are interested out of their own sense of self-interest. The Chinese government is deeply concerned about the shift in its demographics. It’s going to go from a population that has about 80 million people over the age of 65 today up to 500 million in less than 30 years, a vast majority of them in the rural areas without any kind of formal state protection. They are concerned about the political instability that may cause. But I think what you are going to see, and it’s very interesting, is within the OECD countries, the developed world, people are very interested around issues of Social Security, pensions and what’s going to happen to them. The young, for the most part, aren’t that interested.

65 Speaking from having been in government early on in my career, there’s not too many governments I’ve run across that are concerned about issues that are 30 years out. The few times where a sort of enlightened public policy has been created to deal with issues in that kind of time frame has been where there are some extraordinarily important ramifications. But I think it’s just the nature of how the world works. People will get concerned about this when the coin drops. The economics of this will probably drive it as much as anything.

It’s interesting, many people in government and otherwise are saying that this demographic shift is going to be the most crucial issue of this century, of this new millennium. But it has not come home to roost in the general discussions.

Begleiter. Will you permit me to comment on that a little bit from the media perspective, maybe a bit of an amusing comment. If you think that the mass media in the United States, and I would argue that this would also probably be true particularly in Western Europe where the media tend to follow U.S. trends, if you think the mass media here are going to focus more on issues related to ageing, I think it’s a mistake to think that’s going to happen. We are seeing a trend in the opposite direction. At a time when the average age of the viewers of the Larry King show is 68, they’re not going to be putting on a lot more Larry King shows in order to attract viewers to issues of this sort.

So, something else is going to have to happen. I think I am going to have to agree with Todd that I think it will occur when there is an economic impact either on the media or on the advertisers who support the media, at least in the United States. And that’s only going to happen when younger people realize that all this discussion about Social Security is really not an old person’s issue; it’s a young person’s issue because they are the ones paying for Social Security. But don’t look for that change anytime soon, at least not in the U.S. media.

Q. Steve Rothstein, Perkins School for the Blind. If we are meeting here five years, 10 years from now, for both the panelists and the moderator, do you think the situation will be better or worse? Will there be progress or will we be further behind on the broader issues of inequities in health care, in economic development, in education across the world?

A. Seiple. We’re going to be better. I’m an optimist by choice, even though sometimes it’s against my better judgment. I choose to be an optimist. We should be better, we can be better. What man has done, man can do; the next 15 years should be more positive.

A. Petersen. I’d agree with Bob up to a point. I’m an optimist too. I think you have to be, but I think there are some legitimate significantly difficult issues that the world is facing now that we didn’t face 20 years ago. Now you could argue that certainly one of the great successes of the last century is this issue around population ageing. Our longevity, our lifespan has increased more in the last 50 years than it did in the previous 5,000. That’s related almost entirely to improvements in public health, and you can expect to see that continue, but great successes breed other difficult issues.

I think we, the global community, pinned great hopes on globalization as a unifying, equalizing force and I think what we are seeing is that that hasn’t played out. So what will sort of happen in its place remains to be seen. We put great store on the extraordinary—the revolution in terms of the computer age as a great leveling force. And again, the results on that are sort of mixed. So I think we’re sort of on a cusp. I certainly hope the world’s a much better place in 15 years, if for no other reason than I have three children, but I think it could go either way really.

We continue to do tremendous environmental damage to the globe. We have more than a quarter of the world’s population living in absolute abject poverty. Certainly the successes around family planning have been a great success, but there are problems around child labor. There are still an awful lot of ills that

66 exist and continue to exist in this world. And, as Jeff said, we could actually do something about it, but we don’t seem to be able to in a really concerted, constructive way. And again, as someone who has worked in this field for almost 20 years, that gives me great frustration. I’m an optimist, I have to be and have to keep working at it, but I really wish the world was farther along than I think it is.

Begleiter. For whatever it’s worth, I am certainly not an expert on this topic, but having done this conference now for five years or so, the thing that has impressed me is the individual success stories and what you learn from each one of your organizations as you come together, and you share information about what you are accomplishing. It is the accomplishments that you can very proudly point to. Granted, maybe that’s not a global scale and maybe that’s not an overall amelioration of the situation, but there are success stories in every one of these chairs in this room and that’s got to be something. There’s got to be something positive about that.

A. Petersen. Oh absolutely, and that’s sort of the draw—that’s the great thing that we all should embrace—the stories that on an individual level are taking place around the globe, driven by a sense of optimism, driven by a desire to make the world a more equitable place. People struggle under unbelievable circumstances, as the situation in Iraq demonstrated with the death of the fine, fine human beings there. I agree 100% with you Ralph, that’s the thing we can never lose sight of. In spite of all these difficulties, people continue to try with 100% commitment to make the world a different place from what it is now.

Begleiter. I think that’ll be a good note for us to call it a day. I’d like to thank all the participants who were on the panel, but I would now ask you to applaud yourselves because it’s been an interesting day of dialogue. We touched on a whole range of issues across the board on humanitarianism. The one thing that stands out for me is how many of those on the panel made references to the changes occurring in the humanitarian space, and the angles of that are very, very intriguing. The relationship to the military, the relationship to government, the relationship to religions around the world, the relationship to the demographics of population, all affecting the space in which your organizations work. Those are challenges that we are going to face, certainly in the next five to 10 years as the United States and its friends and its enemies work around how a single power operates in the world. All of you will be affected in one way or another as well. So let’s please thank our panelists and yourselves for a good day of participation.

67

68

2003 CONRAD N. HILTON HUMANITARIAN PRIZE LUNCHEON

Honoring

INTERNATIONAL REHABILITATION COUNCIL FOR TORTURE VICTIMS

Recipient of the 2003 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize

69 Luncheon Keynote Address

His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people. His Holiness was recognized at the age of two as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama. In 1950, when he was 15 years old, His Holiness assumed full responsibility as head of state and government when Communist China threatened Tibet’s independence. His efforts to bring about a peaceful solution were unsuccessful, so following invasion and the 1959 Tibetan national uprising, His Holiness had to escape to India where he was given political asylum. Since 1960, His Holiness has resided in Dharamsala, a small town in northern India, the seat of the Tibeta n government in exile. His Holiness has successfully led his people in the field of education, rehabilitation, and preservation of their ancient and unique Tibetan culture. Besides being the free spokesperson of the Tibetan national struggle, His Holiness is also recognized as the respected advocate of world peace and inter-religious understanding. In 1987, His Holiness enunciated a Five Point Peace Plan for Tibet before the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus in Washington. He expanded this idea further in June 1988, at an address at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France. For his lead role in the non-violent Tibetan struggle for freedom, global human understanding, and concern for the environment, His Holiness has received many international awards, including the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize. His Holiness has written books on Buddhism, philosophy, human nature, and universal responsibility, including two autobiographies: “My Land and My People” and “Freedom in Exile.”

To the president and board of the Conrad Hilton Foundation and the members of the jury of the Humanitarian Prize, and also representatives of the recipient organization IRCT, and the distinguished guests—it is a great pleasure and honor for me to participate in this ceremony to honor the work of a great humanitarian organization.

The Conrad Hilton Foundation has been established to promote humanitarian work and particularly to promote humanitarian work that would extend toward the long-term well-being of human beings on this planet. Although I am not familiar with the details of the ideas behind the establishment of the foundation, one fact that I was informed which impressed me was the farsightedness of the vision of the founder of this foundation. And particularly his interest in understanding the psychological dynamics that are imbedded in the human psyche, and particularly as it is expressed in various human emotions such as aggression. This deeply impressed me.

This kind of farsighted kind of vision into understanding the deep laws of human psychology which lies behind human action resonates with my own personal belief that if you examine human actions— whatever actions that human beings engage in—most of them are really determined by a human heart or a mindset underlying those actions. So it is very important to understand—in order to understand human action—to understand the motivation and the mindset that underlies these various actions.

For example, the real demarcation of violence and nonviolence ultimately depends on motivation— motivation, a sense of caring, a sense of concern. For example, like a parent takes serious concern about their own children, or a teacher who seriously takes concern about the long future of the student. Then sometimes in order to stop certain sorts of behaviors which ultimately are harmful to themselves, as a preventive measure they may sometimes use harsh words. When parents use physical action, of that I

70 don’t know. In my own case when I was small, I had already become Dalai Lama, so in my kitchen traditionally no egg, no pork, no fish. So, one day, my father was enjoying pork. It looked very delicious. So I just sat beside him, just like a dog, expecting something from him. Then he gave me some pieces of pork. Very delicious. But anyway, my father had a very good moustache. Always, whenever he enjoyed meat, fat he put on his moustache. So then one day—my motivation was just to tease, play with my father—I pulled his moustache and he lost his temper (indicates a slight slap). A little physical action but essentially nonviolent.

But on the other hand, if someone really wants to cheat someone or wants to take advantage but uses nonviolent method, nice words, smile, and even some gifts, but their real motivation deep inside is to try to exploit or try to harm, that is essentially violent because the motivation is to want to harm. So I think that as a clear example of violence and nonviolence much depends on the motivation. So, any human activities, themselves are more or less, I think neutral, such as our education, our science research, and many businesses. But if we with certain motivation use it in order to achieve certain subtle goals which are no benefit to others, or sometimes a harmful goal for example —education comes to mind—then that sort of knowledge becomes negative.

Even, I think, in religious teaching, certainly some use religion for some other purpose; then even that religious teaching can be destructive. All religious teaching is, I think, the instrument to bring humanity inner peace, but used with certain motivation and certain goals even then religious education and religious faith—especially with religious faith which is very much with emotion—so if you manipulate that, sometimes it is dangerous. Just like science—science is very important, very useful if used properly, but when used wrongly, then these awful destructive powers come in.

Therefore, motivation is very important. I always try to promote the right kind of motivation. What is the right kind of motivation? On that basis, we realize all brothers and sisters are the same; human beings all have the same rights. Also, from the selfish viewpoint, every individual, no matter how powerful, or no matter how successful or wealthy, still we are part of the society, part of humanity. So naturally, an individual’s future much depends on society. If society is a calm friendly compassionate society, then each of the members of the society gains the benefit. And if society as a whole never feels affection, then the whole socie ty atmosphere is something cruel; then each individual, everyone will eventually suffer. So I always try to make clear compassionate motivation. Compassion is something very, very precious.

Hearing about the founder of this foundation’s keen interest in understanding the deeper nature of human psychology and emotions, I felt that the basic philosophy of the founder of the foundation giving the honor and giving the prize resonates in my own belief in the importance of understanding human motivation. And today’s recipient is a very important humanitarian organization dedicated to the welfare of torture victims, the individuals who have suffered at the hand of human aggression.

In general, we find in all the great teachings of the major faith traditions of the world an emphasis on ethical ideals such as a sense of community, the importance of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood of all humankind, teachings on love and compassion. So it becomes very important as members of human society to pay particular attention to individuals or groups of people who have suffered at the hands of other human beings.

So, I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep personal admiration to the work of today’s recipient of the Hilton Humanitarian Prize, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture victims and for their tremendously humanitarian work. Also perhaps I could say that I speak on behalf of millions of individuals, many of whom have no voice, whose sufferings remain very private and hidden, and who have no capacity to really express their own grievances and sufferings. Maybe on their behalf too, I can take the liberty to express on their behalf deep appreciation to the organization as well.

71 It is my belief that the world that you are engaged in—paying particular attention and care to individuals and groups who are suffering at the hands of fellow human beings—this, I believe is a spiritual act of compassion and loving kindness.

It is logical that a person who believes in the tremendous value of compassion and also sharing it with many people, such a person naturally has a deep admiration and appreciation of those actions of compassion. I believe in my talk I have used several times “compassion” from this mouth—but it’s just talk, just a word. Your organization is actually compassion implemented. The implementation of compassion is much more difficult than just “wada wada wada” (talk) like that, so therefore I admire your work. Please continue your work, even expand. In order to increase, and carry out the work effectively, they (IRCT) need moral support and also material support. I think the award will really give them some kind of new spirit so that they may carry their work more effectively, more wider.

So, now I am ready to go to my second home, India. Three weeks now are completed. I am leaving with a feeling of some contribution regarding peace of mind, I think, including for those security officers I have now had with me three weeks, some a few days. At the beginning, less smiles, but one day passes, two days, three days, four days, and now we are like old friends. So I think at least they also got, for a short period, some peace of mind, I hope.

So, our brothers and sisters, everyone wants a happy life, peaceful life, but peace and a happy life, our happiness, we must bring by ourselves. So much depends on our own way of thinking. Everyone has great potential to create a happy atmosphere, happy mind. Even the poor—a poor beggar who has one cup of coffee—but these people also have the same potential to be a happy person. A billionaire, without knowing that, may fail to be happy person. So on that level—educated, uneducated, rich, poor, this color, that color, old, young—no difference.

So, this is my last engagement (in the United States). I want to share my beliefs, so if you feel some interest, the important thing is experiment your daily life. But if you don’t have much interest, then enjoy your food.

72 Jens Modvig, Secretary General, International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

Dr. Jens Modvig, born in 1953 in Denmark, was appointed Secretary-General of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) in June 2000, succeeding the founder of the IRCT, Dr. Inge Genefke. The driving motivation throughout his career has been to make a difference to people in need.

Starting out as a social worker, he later graduated as a Medical Doctor in 1988. He completed his Ph.D. in epidemiology in 1991 and his residency in hospitals in Copenhagen, Denmark. He worked in the public health and social medicine areas at the University of Copenhagen as an assistant and associate professor and in the City of Copenhagen as a senior resident. He conducted research in the public health area, focused on marginalisation and health, and contributed to the development and implementation of the first graduate and post-graduate public health programs at the University of Copenhagen.

With a strong commitment to the role of the medical profession in the promotion and realization of human rights, in 1994 he joined the IRCT as a medical consultant, primarily working with rehabilitation centers and programs in Latin America. In 1997 he headed the IRCT’s Project Department and in 1999 was promoted to the position of Medical Director. Key priorities included the regional strengthening of rehabilitation centers in Asia, Sub Sahara Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and Latin America. Under his management, 15 centers and programs for torture victims were initiated in countries where previously no such services existed. His work has taken him to Honduras, Gaza, West-Bank, Guatemala, El Salvador, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Chile, Ukraine, Albania, Kosovo, Poland, Indonesia, India, Russia, Philippines, Ea st Timor, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Moldova, Pakistan, and Tanzania, in addition to a number of Western countries.

Notable IRCT achievements under his leadership include spearheading conflict interventions in support of victims of torture and trauma in Kosovo, East Timor, and in Pakistan in support of Afghan refugees. Such interventions included the development of research-based needs assessments in post-conflict settings and the promotion at the national and international level that any post-conflict reconstruction efforts must include rehabilitation services for the most affected populations. Dr. Modvig has been instrumental in developing a clearly health professional approach to the prevention of torture by promoting the need for doctors worldwide to be trained in documenting the medical consequences of torture. He is also recognized for his key role in the IRCT’s recently-launched Global Torture Victim Information System, the first of its kind, that will systematically document, monitor, and report on the prevalence of torture, and could eventually provide solid epidemiological information of torture on both a country and global basis.

Dr. Modvig is also recognized for strengthening the IRCT’s institutional collaboration with international bodies including the UN, the EU, and the World Medical Association to further allow for a continued development of and shared responsibility in the international fight against torture.

Since 1992, Dr. Modvig has worked as medical consultant for the social service center of Nørrebro, Copenhagen, which has the highest percentage of refugees and immigrants in Denmark. Most of his patients include torture victims who have struggled with the hardship in overcoming their torture experiences and adapting to a new country.

73 Mr. Hilton, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,

On behalf of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, I am deeply honored to accept the 2003 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize.

It is a privilege for the IRCT to stand together with those organizations whose work has previously been recognized by this most prestigious Prize.

I am joined here today by the IRCT President, Dr. Bhogendra Sharma from Nepal and founder and IRCT Ambassador, Dr. Inge Genefke—as well as members from the IRCT Council and General Secretariat, and representatives from rehabilitation centers in the United States and abroad.

We represent a global movement of health professionals committed to restoring the health and human dignity of those who have suffered at the hands of torturers.

We thank the International Jury and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation for their recognition of the IRCT’s global work against torture. In doing so: ?? you have focused world attention on the fact that torture continues to be widely practiced, despite its absolute prohibition; ?? you have recognized and validated the suffering of torture victims; and, ?? you have reaffirmed their right to treatment, to understanding, and to justice.

We thank the Standing Committee of European Doctors who nominated the IRCT for this year’s Prize, and the British Medical Association and TASSC—the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition in the United States for their endorsement.

Importantly, this year’s Prize pays tribute to the courage of torture victims and their families, to that enduring attribute of the human spirit displayed in their determination to overcome.

Let us, on this occasion, particularly remember, and also pay tribute to, all those who have lost their lives as a result of torture.

This year’s Prize to the IRCT comes at a crucial time. We now live in an era when many around the world share profound feelings of fear and insecurity.

There is a need for reflection on both the level of restraint and the degree of determination required on the part of the world’s governments to bring about a restoration of human rights; a restoration of acceptance and appreciation of all the diversity of individuals and of nations. Without a strengthening of these values, we cannot hope to experience peace and security.

Deterioration of these values, combined with a lack of political will, encourages a climate in which perpetrators of torture are allowed to act with impunity. Such impunity means not only that perpetrators are not brought to account, but suggests that torture is tolerated. We cannot accept this.

Our work against torture is continually presented with new challenges. In many countries, our centers face increasing harassment, detention, and threats of torture under the pretext of “anti-terrorism.”

In countries in which we would least expect it, we have been confronted with renewed debate about whether it can be justified to use torture.

74 Our response to this is to affirm the words of the late Sergio Vieira de Mello:

‘It may not. …There can be no going back…A commitment to freedom from torture is fundamental to our world civilization’.

We must continue to call for a clear condemnation of those that continue the practice of torture. We must bring transparency to the veil of secrecy and denial that serves to conceal the practice of torture. We must expose those governments which claim to accept the rule of law but do not practice it.

We know that torture is used as a means of political repression, domination, and control. We know that the practice of torture is made possible in political environments which foster discrimination based on race, gender, religion, and political persuasion.

We know that torture is a weapon of war. We know that a priority for post-conflict interventions must be adequate care for victims of torture and extreme trauma, as witnessed in Rwanda, East Timor, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Liberia, Sierre Leone, and Iraq—to name but a few.

We are seriously concerned that governments, which have gone to war against repressive regimes—at the same time deny asylum to those who have fled for their lives, many having suffered torture under such regimes.

Our global network of rehabilitation centers provides our most important long-term weapon in the work against torture—the medical documentation of torture—documentation of the physical and psychological impact of torture on individuals and their families. This documentation provides the foundation of our collective approach to treatment and it provides the legal basis for successful prosecution.

We are also developing a global monitoring and reporting system through which we will, in time and with the donor support needed, be able to provide a clear picture at the global and national levels, of the prevalence of torture.

Through our work, we know that for many torture victims, survival can be as difficult, often more difficult, than the torture itself, leaving no part of their lives untouched.

Treatment centers around the world provide refuge for torture victims, a safe haven in which torture victims can confront their horror and express their grief, anger, and humiliation with professionals who work with individuals to rebuild their lives.

Treatment centers recognize that torture does not only affect the individual. The horror of torture lodges itself within the victim’s family, and it resonates through fear and repression in the wider society.

This year’s Hilton Humanitarian Prize will be used to strengthen the IRCT’s global impact by ensuring treatment for torture victims through existing and new centers, and by ensuring exposure of the prevalence of torture and its perpetrators through increased research, documentation, and advocacy.

The work of the IRCT does not take place in isola tion. Time does not permit me to acknowledge all who have contributed to the work of the IRCT, however I would like to pay special mention to: ?? the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs which has supported the IRCT from its creation; ?? the Oak Foundation; ?? the European Union which for the past 10 years has been a major donor to the rehabilitation work and we hope continues to be so in the years to come; ?? the United States which, through the Torture Victims Relief Act, has guaranteed treatment for torture victims in the United States and abroad; and,

75 ?? the UN Voluntary Fund for Torture Victims, which has in many cases meant the survival of many of our centers, and we urge UN Member States to increase their commitment to this Fund.

We hope the recognition of the work against torture, through this Prize, will encourage governments and donors to support the IRCT to continue its work and to prevent the closure of centres providing treatment to victims of torture.

I would also like to pay special mention to the former UN High Commissioners for Human Rights—Mary Robinson—the late Sergio Vieira de Mello, and the present Acting High Commissioner, Bertrand Ramcharan—for their inspiration, encouragement, and support.

The founder of this Prize—Conrad N. Hilton—believed that we live under an obligation to bring relief to the suffering, the distressed, and the destitute.

May the 2003 Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize bring hope to all who have suffered as a result of torture. May it bring shame and condemnation upon the perpetrators. And, may it strengthen our resolve, and encourage others to join us, in our efforts for a world without torture.

Thank you.

76

The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT) is an independent, international health professional organisation, which promotes and supports the rehabilitation of torture victims and works for the prevention of torture worldwide.

The IRCT was established in 1985 in Copenhagen, Denmark, initially as the international arm of the world’s first rehabilitation center—the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims (RCT), founded in 1982 by Dr. Inge Genefke, now serving as IRCT Ambassador. As the global movement for the rehabilitation of torture victims grew, the IRCT became fully independent in 1987.

The medical response to the problem of torture began in 1972 when Amnesty International (AI) launched an international campaign to help and diagnose torture victims. The first AI medical group to start this work was founded in Denmark in 1974, soon to be joined by medical doctors from 34 countries. In 1978, the first medical international working group to address the rehabilitation of torture victims convened at an international seminar, ‘Violations of Human Rights, Torture and the Medical Profession’ in Athens, Greece.

Less than three decades ago very little was known about torture methods or the devastating impact of torture on the individual. From a handful of rehabilitation centres in the mid-1980s, the IRCT today supports and collaborates with a global network of more than 200 centres and programs in around 80 countries. (The Global Directory of Rehabilitation Centres and Programs is available at www.irct.org). Through the contribution of health professionals worldwide, thousands of torture victims have been rehabilitated and wide-ranging prevention activ ities have been implemented.

The fact remains that acts of torture continue on a daily basis in up to 100 countries, destroying the inherent dignity of the individual, impacting on the victim’s family as well as on the broader society. This is despite the fact that 134 UN Member States have recognized the right to freedom from torture through becoming States Parties to the UN Convention against Torture. Each year more than 100,000 torture victims receive treatment however the conservative estimate of torture victims in need of such treatment is ten-fold. The IRCT’s recently launched ‘Global Torture Victims Information System’ represents an important initiative to authoritatively document the prevalence of torture worldwide on a global and country basis.

The IRCT’s Documentation Centre is the world's largest library dedicated specifically to the subject of torture, prevention of torture, and the rehabilitation of torture victims. The Documentation Centre collects and disseminates materials on all aspects of torture, in both electronic and printed formats with a special focus on scientific literature relating to the medical aspects of torture and holds more than 40,000 items.

Recogniz ing the fact that in many countries no such services exist for torture victims, in 1999-2000 the IRCT supported the establishment of 15 new centres and programs. There is far to go. To further strengthen the work against torture, in 2002 alone the IRCT organized training seminars for 82 rehabilitation centres. Last year the IRCT conducted 10 urgent appeals for partner centres that faced harassment, imprisonment, raids, or torture by authorities simply because of their work in support of torture victims. A recent development for the IRCT is to respond to the needs of victims of torture and extreme trauma in conflict or post-conflict situations in East Timor, Kosovo, in and Pakistan for Afghan refugees.

77 2003 Conference Attendees

Ms. Ellen Agler Mr. James Beale Operation Smile UK Chief Executive Ockenden International

Ms. Maya Ajmera Ms. Laurie Becklund Executive Director Vice President of the Board Global Fund for Children Parents International Ethiopia

Mr. Khalid Almulad Mr. Ralph Begleiter (MODERATOR) Assistant to the President Distinguished Journalist in Residence Islamic Relief (Worldwide) University of Delaware

Ms. Jytte Andersen Ms. Catherine Bellamy Member of Danish Parliament Program Manager University for Peace

Mr. Tom Arnold Mr. Nicola Bellomo Chief Executive Officer Humanitarian Counsellor Concern Worldwide Delegation of the European Commission to the United Nations

Mr. David Arnold Mr. David Bornstein Editor Author WorldView “How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas” Oxford University Press

Ms. Mary Asta Ms. Nanci Brannan Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Director, Office of Private Sector Initiatives Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation Peace Corps

Mr. Kenneth Baker Mr. James M. Brasher, III Director of Corporate Relations Director of the Global Philanthropists Circle and AmeriCares Director, Development & Communications Synergos Institute

Ms. Bilgé Ögun Bassani Ms. Robyn Brentano Director of Programmes Executive Director United Nations Fund for International Partnerships Initiatives Foundation

Ms. Ann V. Bauer Ms. Tica Broch Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer International Civil Servant Global Health Council United Nations

78 Ms. Susan Brown John N. Clarke, Ph.D. Assistant Vice President for Public Affairs Advisor, Early Warning and Contingency Planning Columbia University United Nations Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

Robert Buckley, M.D. Mr. Craig Cohon Member, Board of Directors Chief Executive Officer Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Globalegacy

Mr. Ron Burkard Mr. Julius E. Coles Executive Director President World Neighbors, Inc. Africare

Ms. Nan Buzard Mr. Jim Collins Director Director, Corporate Projects Sphere Project WorldView

The Honorable Thomas R. Byrne, Ph.D. Mr. Michael Collins Chairman of the Board Director-Hilton/Perkins Program Jesuit Refugee Service / USA Perkins School for the Blind

Mr. William Canny Joseph A. Cook, M.D. Secretary-General Former Executive Director International Catholic Migration Commission International Trachoma Initiative

Dr. C. Richard Carlson Mr. Joel D. Corcoran Board of Trustees, Chairman Executive Director Perkins School for the Blind International Center for Clubhouse Development

Melvin L. Cheatham, M.D. Ruth B. Cowan, Ph.D. Special Assistant to the President Founding President, Board of Directors Samaritan's Purse Pro Mujer

Lincoln C. Chen, M.D. (SPEAKER) Mr. Jeff A. Cowart Director, Global Equity & Security President Global Equity Initiative Foundation for American Communications

Ms. Suzi M. Clark Ms. Barbara Crossette Director of Advocacy and Information Columnist International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims UN Wire

79 Sister Patricia A. Cruise, S.C. Mr. Timothy J. Dougherty President Director of Marketing, Membership & Philanthropy Covenant House Global Health Council

Mr. Ami Dar Mr. Christopher J. Doyle Founder and Executive Director President Action Without Borders American Leprosy Mission

Mr. Michael Delaney Mr. Kenneth J. Dudek Director, Humanitarian Response Executive Director OXFAM America Fountain House, Inc.

Francis M. Deng, Ph.D. Mr. Ernest Duff Former Ambassador from Sudan Senior Director Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Safe Horizon/Solace Internally Displaced Persons

Mr. Robert P. DeVecchi Ms. Catherine Dumait-Harper Adjunct Senior Fellow for Refugees and the Displaced MSF Delegate to the United Nations Council on Foreign Relations

Mr. Arthur E. Dewey Dr. Christine K. Durbak Assistant Secretary of State Founder and Chair Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration World Information Transfer United States Department of State

Mr. Rinchen Dharlo Hany El -Banna, M.D. President President Tibet Fund Islamic Relief (Worldwide)

Mr. Gregory R. Dillon Ms. Carol Etherington, R.N. Vice Chairman Emeritus, Hilton Hotels Corporation President, Board of Directors Member, Board of Directors MSFUSA Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Ms. Camelia Doru Mr. Lloyd Feinberg Vice President Manager, Patrick J. Leahy War Victims Fund, International Rehabiliation Council for Torture Victims Displaced Children and Orphans Fund and Victims of Torture Fund United States Agency for International Development

Mr. Amir Dossal William H. Foege, M.D., M.P.H. Executive Director Presidential Distinguished Professor United Nations Fund for International Partnerships Department of International Health Emory University School of Public Health

80 Thomas G. Fox, Ph.D. Inge Genefke, M.D. Senior Vice President for Advancement Honorary Secretary-General Florida Institute of Technology International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

Mr. Frank Franke Mr. Richard Gere Editor, Hessischer Rundfunk and Co-founder Founder Aviation Without Borders/ Luftfahrt Ohne Grenzen Initiatives Foundation

Matthew J. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D. Ms. Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen Professor of Psychiatry & Pharmacology Member of Danish Parliament Dartmouth Medical School and Executive Director National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Ms. Barbara M. Frost Mr. Teckie Ghebre-Medhin Chief Executive Deputy Director for Operations Action on Disability and Development United Nations Development Fund for Women

Mr. Jason Fung Ms. Anne F. Glauber Operation Smile China Senior Vice President and Director of Global Issues Communications Group RuderFinn

Mr. Edwin H. Futa Ms. Priscilla S. Goldfarb General Secretary- Rotary International President Rotary Foundation of the Rotary International Northern Westchester Hospital Foundation

Ms. Felice D. Gaer Mrs. Sandy Gooch Executive Director Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights

Mr. James R. Galbraith Ms. Kate Grant Member, Board of Directors Vice President for Non-Profit Programs Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Network for Good

Ms. Patricia Gaviria Ms. Anne-Marie K. Grey Country Director, Pakistan Assistance Programs, Chief, International and Corporate Alliance International Catholic Migration Commission United Nations Children's Fund

Mr. Bekele Geleta Ms. Sarita Gupta Head, Africa Department Executive Director, Presidential Initiatives International Federation of Red Cross and CARE Red Crescent Societies

81 Mr. Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari Ms. Dyanne M. Hayes Special Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Vice President, Programs Executive Chairman of the Board Conrad N. Hilton Foundation International Campaign for Tibet

Natalie D. Hahn, Ph.D. Ms. Peggy Healy President Senior Consultant, Global Diversity Practice HahnAssociates, Inc. Future Work Institute Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham Law School

Mr. Steven Hansch Ms. Kathy D. Hendrix Senior Advisor for Communications Director, Gender Integration Project The Cuny Center DTS (Development & Training Services)

Mr. Tim Hanstad Mr. Omar Hendrix Executive Director Deputy Chief Executive Officer Rural Development Institute University of Miami Behavioral Health

Ms. Ameerah Haq Ms. Kenja D. Henriksen Deputy Director Programme Coordinator for Central Eastern Europe Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery International Rehabilitation Council for United Nations Development Programme Torture Victims

Mrs. Tahira Masood Haque Mr. Arnold Herz Board Member Member, Board of Directors SOS Children's Villages, Canada PRASAD

Ms. Rita Harmon Ms. Noeleen Heyzer (SPEAKER) Executive Director Executive Director Fight for Children United Nations Development Fund for Women

Mr. Bruce Harris Mrs. Claire E. Hicks Executive Director Chief Executive Officer Casa Alianza IMPACT Foundation

Ms. Janet M. Harris Edwin P. Hill, M.D. Vice President of Development International Rescue Committee

Mr. Gary A. Haugen Mr. Conrad N. Hilton III President Member, Board of Directors International Justice Mission Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

82 Mr. Steven M. Hilton Dr. Zahir Jamal (SPEAKER) President Chief of Regional Programme Conrad N. Hilton Foundation United Nations Development Programme

Mr. William B. Hilton, Jr. Ms. Carla I. Javits Member, Board of Directors President and Chief Executive Officer Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Corporation for Supportive Housing

Ms. Merry Hofford Ms. Judith Jenya Director Family Violence Department Executive Director and Founder National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges Global Children's Organization/ Youth Creating Peace

Professor Erik Holst Ms. Paula D. Johnson Research Fellow with the Global Philanthropy Program Harvard University

Mr. Donald H. Hubbs Ms. Karen Judd Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Special Assistant to the Executive Director Conrad N. Hilton Foundation United Nations Development Fund for Women

Mr. Alan Hurdus Musimbi Kanyoro, Ph.D. Water Team Leader General Secretary United States Agency for International Development World YWCA

Dermot Hurly, M.D. Ms. Jill H. Kassis International Exe cutive Director Executive Vice President PRASAD Aid to Artisans, Inc.

Ms. A. Sarah Ilchman Allen S. Keller, M.D. Senior Program Officer, Africa Fulbright Program Director Institute of International Education Bellevue /NYU Program for Survivors of Torture

Ms. Patricia Ireland Mr. Matthew D. Kemp Chief Executive Officer Director for National Program Development YWCA USA Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation

His Excellency Bob Francis Jalang'o (SPEAKER) Mr. Al-Haaj Ghazi Y. Khankan Former Permanent Representative of the Executive Director Republic of Kenya to the United Nations NY Chapter of the Council on American Islamic- Relations

83 Mr. Craig Kielburger Ms. Theresa Loar Founder and Chairman President Kids Can Free the Children VITAL VOICES: Global Partnership

Ms. Elisabeth Kofler Shuman Mr. José Luis Lobera Representative Senior Communications Specialist, Hermann Gmeiner Fonds Germany, New York Office of External Relations Inter-American Development Bank

Ms. MyPhuong Lam Mr. Martin Long Director of Finance Director, Program Development C Sixty, Inc. Action on Disability and Development

Irene Langran, Ph.D. Mrs. Virginia Lowney Assistant Director of Development Haitian Health Foundation Carelift International

Mr. Harry Lederman Dr. Jeremiah J. Lowney, Jr. President Haitian Health Foundation

Ms. Phyllis Lee Ms. Jo Luck Chief, Advocacy and External Relations Section President and CEO United Nations Office of the Coordination of Heifer Project International Humanitarian Affairs

Ms. Mildred Robbins Leet Mr. Ky Luu Co-founder and Board Chair Vice President and Director of the Washington Office Trickle Up Program International Medical Corps

Mr. Kevin J. Lessard Mr. Charles J. Lyons Former Director President Perkins School for the Blind United States Fund for UNICEF

Ms. Nancy Lindborg Mr. Liam Mahony Executive Vice President United States Representative Mercy Corps International International Council of Peace Brigades International

Ms. Casey Lintern Mr. Mark Malloch Brown (SPEAKER) Program Officer Administrator Conrad N. Hilton Foundation United Nations Development Programme

84 Ms. Carolyn McAskie Mr. Adam Meyerson Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator President United Nations Office of the Coordination of Philanthropy Roundtable Humanitarian Affairs

Mrs. Joann McCullough Mr. Andrew E. Miller President Co-Director Montclair Fund for Educational Excellence Peace Brigades International/ USA

Reverend John L. McCullough Ms. Hope Miller Executive Director Development Consultant Church World Service United Nations Development Fund for Women

Ms. Gay J. McDougall Ms. Judy M. Miller Executive Director Director, Hilton Humanitarian Prize International Human Rights Law Group Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Sister Mary Rose McGeady, D.C. Ms. Neesha Mirchandani Former President and Chief Executive Officer Founder and President Covenant House Niya

Ms. Patricia L. McGrath Mr. Pat Modugno Vice President and Director of Development Vice-President of Administration Population Services International Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

Ms. Lisa Meadowcroft Jens Modvig, M.D., Ph.D. Executive Director Secretary General African Medical and Research Foundation USA International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims

R. Christine Melton, M.D. Gary B. Morsch, M.D. Member, Board of Directors Founder Friends of Aravind Heart to Heart International

Sister Joyce Meyer Raymond A. Nash, Jr., Ph.D. Executive Director Conrad N. Hilton Fund for Sisters

Ms. Debbie Meyer Bobbi Nassar, Ph.D. Director of Development Vice Chair Africa-America Institute UN International NGO Committee on Human Rights

85 Matthew C. Naylor, Ph.D. Ms. Carol Prendergast President Managing Director Outreach International Downtown Community Resource Center New York University Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response

Sister Elaine Nazareth, FMM Dr. Anil Purohit Institute of the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary Executive Director, Regional Director for Asia and Director, AIDS Program François -Xavier Bagnoud US Foundation

Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye Jose Quiroga, M.D. Director, New York Office Co-founder and Medical Director United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Program for Torture Victims Human Rights

Joyce Neu, Ph.D. Ms. Shazia Z. Rafi Executive Director Secretary-General Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice Parliamentarians for Global Action University of San Diego

William M. Novick, M.D. Ms. Meredith J. Richardson Founder, Medical Director and CEO Director of Programs International Children's Heart Foundation, Inc. Aga Khan Foundation USA

Mrs. Janina Ochojska Joseph Riverson, M.D. President Medical Specialist Polish Humanitarian Organization World Vision

Mrs. Jennifer Oldham The Honorable Mary Robinson (SPEAKER) Director, Corporate and Foundation Relations Director Catholic Relief Services Ethical Globalisation Initiative

Donald E. Payne, M.D. Ms. Betty A. Rogers Board Member Journalist, Media/ Project Consultant Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture

Mr. Todd Petersen (SPEAKER) Mr. David B. Roosevelt Chief Executive Officer HelpAge International

Mr. Richard Pichler William H. Rosenblatt, M.D. Secretary-General Founder and President SOS-Kinderdorf International Recovered Medical Equipment for the Developing World (REMEDY, Inc)

86 Ms. Claire Rothman Ms. Shannon Sedgwick Executive Director Geronimo Funds

Mr. Steven M. Rothstein The Honorable Robert A. Seiple (SPEAKER) President Chairman of the Board Perkins School for the Blind Institute for Global Engagement

Mr. Richard C. Rue Bhogendra Sharma, M.D. Director of Development President Foundation for American Communications International Rehabiliation Council for Torture Victims

Feride Rushiti, M.D. Victoria Sharp, M.D. Medical Director President of the Board of Directors Kosova Rehabilitation Centre for Torture Victims Doctors of the World USA

Professor Jeffrey Sachs (SPEAKER) Ms. Roz Sheriff Special Advisory to the UN Secretary General and African Medical and Research Foundation Director of Columbia University's Earth Institute

David A. Sack, M.D. Ms. Catherine Shimony Director Director of International Programs ICDDR,B: Centre for Health and Population Research American Jewish World Service

Amb. Mohamed Sahnoun Mr. Richard Shortway Special Advisor on Africa to the UN Secretary- Member, Board of Directors General Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation United Nations

The Honorable Dane F. Smith, Jr. Ms. Zainab T. Salbi Former President Founder and President National Peace Corps Association Women for Women International

Alfred Sommer, M.D. Professor Dirk Salomons Dean and Professor Director, Humanitarian Affairs Program Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health School of International and Public Affairs Columbia University

Ms. Catrin Schulte-Hillen, R.N. Ms. Inky Song Program Director Development and Communications Director Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontieres Action Against Hunger-USA

87 Ms. Gillian M. Sorensen Ms. Vanessa J. Tobin Assistant Secretary General Chief, Water, Environment and Sanitation Section UN Office of External Relations United Nations Children's Fund United Nations

Ms. Janet Spitz Mr. Stefano Toscano Director of Development First Secretary, Sustainable Development, Perkins School for the Blind Humanitarian Affairs Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN

Ms. Patricia K. Sprague Ms. Richenda Van Leeuwen Founder and Executive Director Executive Director The Safe Child Project Trickle Up Program

Mr. Cedric L. Suzman Mr. Peter Völker Vice President and Director of Programming Deputy Secretary General Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta SOS Kinderdorf International

Ms. Lhadon Tethong Ms. Siobhan Walsh Executive Director Executive Director Students for a Free Tibet Concern Worldwide US, Inc.

Ms. Carol Baker Tharp, Ph.D. The Honorable George Ward (SPEAKER) Deputy Director, Civil Engagement Initiative Director, Training Program School of Policy, Planning and Development United States Institute of Peace University of Southern California

Mr. Michael Tharp Mr. Jean-Paul Warmoes Founder Director for International Relations Michael Tharp & Associates, Inc. King Baudouin Foundation

Mr. Mohan Jacob Thazhathu Ms. Gwen Widell Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer ORBIS International, Inc.

Ms. Janet Thompson Mr. Bruce Wilkinson Board Member Senior Vice President for International Grameen Foundation USA Programs Group World Vision

Ms. Brenna Thorpe Ms. Amanda Willett Development Manager Consultant ActionAid USA Conrad N. Hilton Foundation

88 Ms. Marie Wilson President Ms. Foundation for Women

Ms. Joan D. Winship Executive Director International Association of Women Judges

Mr. Kenneth L. Woodward Religion Editor NEWSWEEK

C. T. Wright, Ph.D. President and Chief Executive Officer International Foundation for Education and Self Help

Mr. Chris Zappia Executive Director SOS Children's Villages USA

Jim A. Zingeser, DVM Senior Epidemiologist and Technical Director Trachoma Control Program The Carter Center

89