American Enterprise Institute
Webinar — Advancing the Women, Peace, and Security Strategy in 2020
Opening remarks: Mackenzie Eaglen, AEI
Panelist discussion
Panelists: Julie Cram, US Agency for International Development Kelley E. Currie, Office of Global Women’s Issues, US Department of State Stephanie Hammond, US Department of Defense Cameron Quinn, US Department of Homeland Security
Moderator: Mackenzie Eaglen, AEI
1:00–2:00 p.m. Thursday, June 11, 2020
Event Page: https://www.aei.org/events/webinar-advancing-the-women-peace- and-security-strategy-in-2020/
Mackenzie Eaglen: Good afternoon. Thank you to all of our viewers for joining us today. I’m Mackenzie Eaglen of the American Enterprise Institute. And it is a real pleasure and an honor to have such an awesome event with amazing and accomplished policymakers and decision makers joining us today for the “Women, Peace, and Security Webinar.” I’m going to briefly go through a couple of bios, but I want to also do the administrative housekeeping for all of those who are joining us. And I’ll repeat this again maybe after opening remarks and in case some viewers are logging on just now or in a few moments.
We are looking forward to audience questions today. So, if you have questions, there are two ways to submit those during our discussion from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m. The first is through Twitter, and there are two hashtags. The first hashtag is #AEIWPS2020. The second one is #WPSinaction. If Twitter’s not your thing, which I totally understand, and you’re old- fashioned and like email, that’s good too. And our extraordinary researcher here, Hallie Coyne, will take your emails directly at her email address, which is [email protected]. So please send in your questions, and we will get to them throughout the discussion this morning and look forward to hearing from various people.
I’m not going to do much talking today. I’m going to let our amazing panelists talk because it’s a very exciting day. Obviously, this month is the one-year anniversary of the Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security. And as of 62 minutes ago I believe, each of these agencies participating today have dropped their implementation plans for the strategy and made them public, which is super exciting, and I’m guessing why they wanted to talk today.
This is also great because this has been a big issue for Congress. They’ve been keen to know more details about implementation of the strategy, who’s doing what and where and why, and details beyond some of the great work that was in the document. You know, the strategy was a tremendous contribution to these issues in particular, including highlighting the need to include women in — excuse me — also to bring in men and boys as supporters of these concepts and ideas and getting offices and agencies and officials in charge of thinking about this beyond someone who’s just assigned to it because they showed up for work one day, all the way down to the geographic combatant commands at the Defense Department, which is pretty exciting.
So, with that being said, I suspect today we’re going to focus more on the details of those implementation plans, but let me briefly introduce our panel. We will begin today with our very esteemed guest, fellow friend and traveler and colleague of mine, Ambassador-at-Large Kelley Currie, in the Office of Global Women’s Issues at the State Department. Amb. Currie serves simultaneously as a US representative at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. And prior to her appointment, she led State Department’s Office of Criminal Justice. It’s truly remarkable. Throughout her career, Amb. Currie has specialized in human rights, political reform, development, and humanitarian issues.
Next up, we have Stephanie Hammond joining us from the Defense Department. I just want to alert our viewers that she’s joining by phone today. So, if you don’t see her, that’s the explicit reason why. Stephanie is the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for stability and humanitarian operations in the Secretariat for Policy. In her current role, Stephanie supports development of defense policy for these similar issues as the ambassador, but also natural disaster response, peacekeeping and instability operations, and human rights. Previously, Stephanie was a special assistant to the undersecretary of defense for policy, handling international security affairs portfolio. She has also worked at a nongovernmental
organization and in Congress, and really, really great stuff. She’s received the Department of Defense Exceptional Civilian Service Award, which I think is just awesome.
Next up in our presentation before we move to questions with me and with the audience, we have Ms. Cameron Quinn, officer for civil rights and civil liberties at the Department of Homeland Security. Cameron has been in her position since 2017. And prior to that, she served in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Agriculture. She’s also been a senior policy adviser in the Civil Rights Division at Justice and is an expert in election law and integration, and she also spent several years in the private sector at Winston & Strawn.
And last but not least at all, excuse me, is Julie Cram. She’s our deputy assistant administrator in the Bureau for Economic Growth, Education, and Environment at the Agency for International Development. In this bureau, Julie’s portfolio includes the Office of Education and Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. She also serves, quite busy, as the agency’s senior coordinator for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Prior to joining AID in 2018, Julie was an advocacy in public affairs expert with nearly two decades experience in issue advocacy, communications, government affairs, and more.
So, welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here, and thank you to our audience for joining us. And again, I’ll tell you how to submit questions after the opening remarks. We’re not going to have me interrupt anymore. We’re just going to go through our panelists. And Ambassador, over to you. Thank you again.
Kelley E. Currie: Thank you so much, Mackenzie. It is wonderful to see you. It’s been a long time since we traveled to Israel together and first met. And I got to know what an amazing young woman you were then. And now to see you in this discipline, it’s so rewarding to have watched your career over the past time that we’ve known each other and to see what you’ve accomplished.
It’s also great to be joined by my fellow wonderful colleagues. I could not ask for a better group of women and others that I work with in the administration on this set of issues. We have such a great team. And I love coming to work every day to get to work with my colleagues, because we’re all so excited about what we’re doing on Women, Peace, and Security, on women’s economic empowerment, on just everything we’re doing to support American leadership on these important issues.
Women, Peace, and Security is an issue that is very close to my heart. It’s something that I am so excited to be able to work on here in this office, in the Office of Global Women’s Issues, because I know how meaningful it is for women to be included in peace processes, to have a role in their community, and to be able to participate across all the work that we’re doing on foreign policy and national security, and how much it improves our outcomes when we do incorporate women into everything we’re doing. So, this is a national security and foreign policy issue that impacts all of us.
When President Trump signed the 2017 Women, Peace, and Security Act, the United States became the first country in the world to have comprehensive legislation on this priority issue. And I was always so happy when I was at the UN in New York a couple of years ago and speaking on the Security Council or in the General Assembly to be able to point that fact out. And I was always trying to find my Norwegian or Swedish [inaudible] and look at them and
give them a nice smile to show that we were leading in an area that they like to think that they’re out in front. It was always a nice moment.
In 2019, last year, on this very day, we reaffirmed that commitment that we’ve long had since even going back before the passage of UNSCR 1325, 20 years ago this year. We reaffirmed our commitment to advance the Women, Peace, and Security agenda when the White House released their strategy that informs and animates all of the work that we do. And it called upon the four agencies represented here today to develop concrete implementation plans to implement that strategy and to work against it. And today is a really proud moment for all of us. We’ve been working really hard for the past year to create these plans against that strategy and to make sure that they’re mission-specific, innovative, measurable, and able to hold us all accountable to that strategy.
Secretary Pompeo — who I really appreciate the leadership that he shows and that the model that he sets here in the department for us and the support that I get from him — he has noted that women around the world have an essential role in conflict prevention, resolution, security provision, peace processes, and countering terrorism. We’re so pleased that in cooperation with our bureaus, our missions overseas, our offices here in the department and the senior leadership, and all of our partners across the interagency, that our implementation plan is, we think, going to help transform our foreign policy apparatus and the way we do business. That’s the goal, certainly. We’re proud to be leading by example in helping to advance the critical role that women play in our national security. And I couldn’t be more happy to be here with you today.
We’re proud to talk about how we’re going to modernize our programs and our policies and the way we train our people here at the department to make sure that we’re working on issues like countering violent extremism and helping women who are at risk from violent extremism to resist its terrible pull. We’re really working with our partners outside of the United States, our allies, and those that we do joint training with, and other leaders on the ground from civil society on up to build the international support and the networks that are going to be necessary to empower women as agents of change in their own communities and nations.
So, as we mark this amazing 20th anniversary of 1325 this year, and as we head into the fall, where we’ll, I think, celebrate that event at the UN — whatever that looks like in this COVID era — we know there’s still a lot to do, but I think we can look back proudly at the leadership our country has shown and build on it with the implementation plans that we’re all putting out today. And I’m looking forward to the questions and to an opportunity to get into what we’re doing in a little more detail. So, thank you. Thank you for the great opportunity today, Mackenzie, and to my great colleagues.
Stephanie Hammond: Thank you, Kelley. Thank you to everyone here who is in the room today. This is Stephanie Hammond with the Department of Defense. I appreciate you all participating in this event today to recognize the launch of the Women, Peace, and Security implementation plans. And thank you to AEI for hosting this important and very timely event. This is a long-anticipated event, and I know that all of you worked very tirelessly with us to further develop our plans and ensure they were integrated within our departments and agencies. And we here at DOD look forward to implementing our strategic framework and plan, continuing our collaboration with you to further implement this very important initiative.
Global conflict is evolving, and the need to identify sustainable security approaches that meet the unique needs of an entire population is greater than ever. As our adversaries and competitors continue to seek a strategic advantage through the global recruitment and exploitation of diverse populations, we must work together to continue to empower and train diverse talent. The destabilizing effects of malign actors highlights the importance of the global WPS agenda in upholding international human rights and the rules-based international order of the United States and our allies and partners seek to maintain. Advancing the US Strategy on Women, Peace, and Security provides a unique engagement opportunity to strengthen our relationships with allies and partners through collective efforts to reinforce women’s empowerment, meaningful participation and decision-making, protection from violence, and access to resources.
When we recognize the diverse roles women play as agents of change, and when we incorporate their perspectives throughout our plans and operations, we are better equipped to promote our security, confront our near-peer competitors, and defeat our adversaries. In support of the WPS Act and the US Strategy on WPS, DOD today is launching its Women, Peace, and Security Strategic Framework and its implementation plan, or SFIP. The launch of this plan marks a very important and exciting step in the department’s work on WPS, particularly as we work towards fully incorporating the perspectives of women in military activities, operations, and investments across the continuum of conflict and crisis.
The SFIP is the first department-wide strategy that outlines how the department will support the intent of the WPS strategy through attention to the composition of our personnel and the development of our policies, plans, doctrines, training, operations, and exercises. This approach will support the lines of effort in our national defense strategy by helping the department to strengthen alliances and attract new partners, by demonstrating US commitment to human rights and women’s empowerment, making the United States the partner of choice, and to ensure greater performance and affordability by developing more effective strategies to mitigate risks and optimize mission success.
Now, I’d like to give a brief overview of our three overarching defense objectives that focus the department’s implementation of the US strategy in WPS over the next four years, which are as follows. So, defense objective one is that DOD exemplifies the diverse organization that allows for women’s meaningful participation across the development, management, and employment of the Joint Force. Secondly, women and partner nations meaningfully participate and serve in all ranks and in all occupations in defense and security sectors. And thirdly, partner nation, defense, and security sectors ensure women and girls are safe and secure and that their human rights are protected, especially during conflict and crisis.
Recognizing that such objectives cannot be achieved overnight, the SFIP lays out a series of intermediate defense objectives and actions the department will take in support to those objectives to establish and improve policy frameworks and support achievements in women’s empowerment. Some examples of our actions include greater synchronization with our personnel and readiness offices to ensure we are modeling WPS principles, institutionalizing WPS principles in our guidance documents, providing training on WPS principles to both our own forces and those of partner nations, identifying opportunities to increase women’s participation in partner nation security cooperation activities, and finally, building the capacity of partner nation defense and security sectors to both recruit and retain women.
DOD’s implementation of WPS highlights best practices that further supports our national security objectives. To assist in the implementation of our plan, the department has an active network of WPS advisers within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the joint staff, military departments, combatant commands, and defense agencies. Additionally, the department is continuing to build and refine our robust training programs in WPS for our personnel, including senior leaders and WPS advisers. We, as a department, recognize that there’s an inherent relationship between our ability to implement the WPS mandate abroad and how we organize, train, and equip our own forces. To remain credible and build influence abroad, the department must continue to model and implement the WPS principles that advises other partner nations to uphold.
Thank you very much for your time today. Thank you for your participation in today’s event. I very much look forward to the Q&A portion of this event. And with that, I’ll turn it over to my DHS colleague, Cameron Quinn.
Cameron Quinn: This is Cameron Quinn, the officer for civil rights and civil liberties in the Department of Defense. I’m very pleased to join everyone today. And I have been enjoying being involved in this over the last nine months.
DHS, unlike the other partner agencies, is not only new to, as an entity, the US government, but I think some of our partner agencies have actually been working on WPS initiatives for longer than the department has actually been in existence, which is now about 17 years. So, we are very much, at this point, trying to level set and get a baseline.
But the department, at this point, for folks that aren’t as familiar with it, has eight major components, many of which you’ve heard of, some of which actually predate the country, such as the customs officers who are now part of Customs and Border Protection. We have Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Transportation Security Agency, FEMA, the United States Secret Service, our cyber agency — the CISA, Cyber and Infrastructure Security Administration — the Coast Guard, and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. And almost all of them have either a law enforcement or security professional development staff, and we do tremendous training currently already internally, but also with a number of partner nations. And one of the things we’re going to be trying to figure out this year is just how much we’re already doing training of foreign partners and what we can be doing to try and increase the numbers once we know what the baseline is.
The department actually has five key things that we’re trying to do, and that is to increase the participation of women in training we’re already doing; to provide additional professional development, particularly in the law enforcement and security sectors with our global partners, whom we have been working closely with over the lifetime of the department; to encourage allies that we work with to also be formally more recognizing the WPS agenda and sort of join with us in trying to continue to move the needle globally; to evaluate and identify current programs at the department that appropriately could be improved on actually aligning with WPS; and to support our partner agencies, State and USAID, in their foreign policy engagement in these areas.
I know Amb. Currie had mentioned earlier today in another call that the International Visitor Leadership Program does a tremendous amount now with WPS. And in fact, I’ve already been involved with one of the programs they’ve done, and it’s really exciting to see the kinds
of women across the globe who really are trying to step up and are going to become tremendous additional agents for peace, agents for change, agents to improve global security and cooperation. And we look forward — I have much appreciated the time today learning from my colleagues at USAID, State, and DOD and what they’ve been doing. This will, for DHS, be sort of a baseline year, and we’re looking to then start growing things. But we have tremendous models to learn from with the work that’s been done for close to 20 years I think at USAID and State Department and for close to a decade now with DOD. I look forward to questions.
Julie Cram: Thank you, Cameron. And thank you, AEI, Mackenzie, Amb. Currie, and Stephanie. It’s a pleasure to be here. I so wish we were all in the same room together. We were chatting, prior to going live with you all, how much we would have loved to be with you in person. But we are excited to be here today at the release of our respective implementation plans on Women, Peace, and Security.
In support of America’s foreign policy, USAID leads international development and humanitarian efforts to save lives, reduce poverty, foster prosperity, security, and stability worldwide.
Not only do studies show that when women participate in the peace process, those agreements are more likely to succeed and last longer. All of us know when women are at the negotiation table and when they have equal social, political, and economic opportunities to men, societies are more likely to thrive, be more prosperous and more peaceful and stable. As the concrete steps the agency will take to expand and strengthen our work to empower women and girls to help break those cycles of conflict and instability that threaten global security and undermine countries’ ability to move beyond assistance, this plan will help advance WPS’s strategy through effective coordinated action across our development and humanitarian assistance. And I’d just briefly like to highlight a couple of the plan to actions and those that have already started as part of our agency’s commitment to WPS.
First, and quite importantly, is senior leadership in Washington and in our more than 60 missions — have and will continue to elevate and advocate for WPS’s objectives in our policies and strategies in DC and our programs in the field. We will consult and work with local women leaders, civil society, and the faith-based organizations and academia in countries affected by crisis and conflict in an effort to incorporate those diverse perspectives directly into our programming and our practices. We are integrating women and girls’ perspectives in our CVE, our countering violent extremism strategies and programs. And finally, we will work to reduce the harmful effects of gender-based violence and increase support for survivors affected by crisis and conflict.
Today, we are even in more uncertain times, and I know each of our agencies have been working hard and tirelessly to respond and adapt to the impact of COVID-19. And we have all seen the vital role that WPS and gender integration plays in both the response to the pandemic and its recovery. We recognize women play a critical leadership role as mediators, negotiators, and peacebuilders often working to draw attention to important but overlooked ways that [inaudible] women also bring important and practical priorities to the forefront of response planning, disparities such as disparities in health and social welfare, and women have greater roles and leadership opportunities in our efforts to ensure that communities and families can access both our response related to COVID, as well as their own government’s aid safety.
While COVID is at the forefront of our minds — and as some of our colleagues have noted — USAID has a long-standing history helping to empower and protect women and girls in countries affected by crisis, conflict, and violent extremism. Since the WPS strategy in the past two years, the agency has invested over $200 million in programming aligned with WPS strategy. This includes $27 million dedicated funding for new activities that are designed to advance women’s meaningful participation in peace process, [inaudible] affected by violent extremism, and increase the protection of women and girls in areas of crisis, conflict, and instability.
Our WPS activities have supported the participation of 70,000 women in political and peacebuilding processes and provided health care, psychosocial support, legal aid, economic services to more than six million survivors of gender-based violence. And finally, to better integrate the innovative and results-driven programming that Amb. Currie was noting earlier across all that we do, we have a robust suite of trainings focused on gender equality and women’s empowerment and its critical role in supporting our development and humanitarian mission.
In the last two years, we’ve offered over 80 trainings that reached over 10,000 staff on areas aligned with the requirements of WPS. And further, to advance the objectives of both the State Department and USAID in our strategy to support women and girls [inaudible] conflict, our WPS programs are working to tackle the root cause of women engaging in violent extremism in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. And we’ve indeed expanded our program to address, one, the needs of women and girls affected by violent extremism, and secondly, to increase the women’s participation in both preventing and responding to radicalization in their communities.
One quick example is in Nigeria, working in close coordination with the National Directorate of Employment. WPS activities in Nigeria trained over 150 widows of security personnel killed in their fight against violent extremism organizations. These women, not only suddenly heads of households with limited skills or work opportunities, were also the most vulnerable to extremist influences. These women were trained on micro-business management skills while also provided hands-on [inaudible] startups and training that such power them provide for themselves, their families, and their communities, and also to resist those violent organizations.
In closing, the WPS Strategy and the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity initiative build on the recognition that societies that empower women socially, economically, and politically are more prosperous and peaceful. We look forward to this continued collaboration, and I’m looking forward to your questions. Thank you for this opportunity.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Wow. That was a terrific example, Julie. Thank you. I hope we can dig into that later. But I just want to check back in with our online viewers one more time to let them know about how to reach our esteemed panelists with questions. The first way is through Twitter, and there are two hashtags. The first hashtag is #AEIWPS2020. The second hashtag is #WPSinaction. Email is another method of contact here at AEI. We’ll take your questions and share them. The email address is for Hallie. It’s spelled [email protected]. And she’s tremendously efficient and responsive.
Ambassador, tell me what you’re most proud of from the implementation plans. It’s pretty impressive and maybe, you know, what you foresee as maybe one of your bigger obstacles because I know that was referenced. I congratulate all of you on this really hard work. I’m impressed mostly by the theme that I’m picking up on, which is leading by example and not telling other people to do what we’re not going to do. So, perhaps if you could talk about what you’re most proud of from the plan and your obstacles, and then perhaps if you feel like there is senior leader buy-in across the government, the US government, and each agency involved, or is that something we need to work on?
Kelley E. Currie: Thanks for those great questions, Mackenzie. I think just having the plan put together in a way that both highlights the strategic imperatives of what we’re doing sets the thematic tone for what we’re doing, but also has very concrete and specific deliverables built into it that going down to the office, bureau, and mission level. If you look at the annexes in our plan, for instance, you see that we have commitments from bureaus, offices, and missions across the department to engage in specific and measurable activities to advance the Women, Peace, and Security agenda. So I think that giving us a plan that holds us accountable to advance progress on this, while also helping us to, as you say, lead by example through our own implementation at the policy level, I think about the tools that we have here at the department: policy, diplomacy, programs, and partnerships.
Now, programs — USAID and Department of Defense — they are the primary leads, but we do have programs here, making sure that our programs are really reflecting a Women, Peace, and Security agenda and taking in gender analysis, accounting for women’s voices from the program inception stage all the way through to completion, throughout the whole life cycle of a program. We want to see that. We’re learning a lot of lessons from our counterparts at USAID in how we do that because they have a lot more experience than we do in program implementation.
Also, with DOD, on partnerships, we have a great partnership in terms of how we do security training overseas. My colleague and friend, Clarke Cooper, who’s our assistant secretary for pol-mil here — political-military affairs — here at the department, is one of our greatest boosters and one of our best allies in terms of how we coordinate with DOD and leverage all the resources that we have as we’re building security partnerships and making sure that those trainings incorporate Women, Peace, and Security at every level. So, this is making sure that we get more women to participate in IMAT, in leadership course training, in making sure that we are improving our numbers and our officer outreach to women through the State Department’s foreign military financing, IMAT, and other partnership, TKO partner — I’m sorry, peacekeeping. I try not to speak too much in jargon — but peacekeeping training, all of those things, we really work very closely with DOD through the pol-mil nexus.
And so, I think that knowing that — if anything, I mean, we have some of the best leadership buy-in that I could ask for. I have tremendous support from our leadership. But it’s also the colleagues across at my level, above, below. We have, if anything, so much demand and so much interest in helping to advance this agenda that it’s hard for us to meet all of it. So, it’s really — we have the best kinds of problems. I was saying earlier today on another conversation about this, where we are — really, there’s so much interest and enthusiasm behind what we’re doing that we’re having trouble keeping up with all of it.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Thank you. I want to ask you three more questions, but I won’t because our audience is very excited to talk with all of you, and I will not deprive them of that. So,
I’ll just quickly ask Stephanie a question. And thanks so much for joining us again, Stephanie. It’s a pleasure to have you on by phone.
You know, having spent some time in the department myself, I am struck by the level of detail which you guys have taken this down to, just like the ambassador’s reference for the State Department too. I really wanted to dig in a little bit on incorporating women in DOD plan — women’s perspective in DOD’s plans and operations. That sounds great. Can you give me examples perhaps of how you want to achieve that, or if it’s already being done, or an example of a success story perhaps? Thanks.
Stephanie Hammond: Sure, Mackenzie. Thank you. And, yeah, I’m very much looking forward to — now that we have our implementation plan — of moving towards the execution of this plan. This plan will make great strides for us within the department of raising awareness within the department of our WPS objectives and further highlighting this initiative. So, I’m really excited to, again, phase into the implementation side with $7 million that we’ve received from Congress for this year for building partner capacity exercises.
One example to answer your question is we’re working with Amb. Currie right now on a Vietnam conference for their Ministry of Defense. And this is going to be focused on educating their Ministry of Defense on Women, Peace, and Security, including women and more leadership roles in the Vietnamese military, and then really working with them longer term on implementing WPS within their own Ministry of Defense.
Colombia, too, has been another success story. SOCOM has been very successful in working with the Colombian Ministry of Defense and increasing the participation and leadership of women in their military and in law enforcement as well. So, we’ve made really encouraging strides the last few years in working through our COCOMs, working through our WPS advisers in focal points that are located at each geographic combatant command to really maximize the impact that we have on the ground in these countries in interacting with respective MoDs to further underscore the importance of WPS objectives.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Yes. That’s fantastic. And I really honed in on the combatant command part as you know from my opening remarks. And I’m thinking that that is the level which you need to go. I applaud you for saying that you’re even focused on the composition of Department of Defense personnel, you know, including uniformed, all the way up to the top.
You know, this week, the Senate confirmed the first African American member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And it’s remarkable because every time I’m retweeting pictures of the president meeting with the senior military leadership, it is all men, and there are no persons of color until now. So, I think that the time is just right, and the time is now for talking about all of these issues.
Cameron, I mean, speaking of maybe focusing in for briefly a moment on law enforcement, since that’s a national issue we’re wrestling with right now with a lot of protests. And I don’t want to get too — I don’t want to be political about it at all actually, but I really was struck by the absence of the large numbers of women in the ranks, in the uniformed ranks. I know it’s a different type of law enforcement for DHS, but tell me how this work that your agency is doing can help sort of address some of the national questions we’re confronting right now.
Cameron Quinn: An interesting question that we are just beginning to sort of come to grips with. Because my office also does the department’s traditional EEO, we have already done, within the department, gender analysis and barrier analysis for minorities in a number of areas. And one of the big areas that we realized several years ago needed attention was women in law enforcement. So we’ve already been doing a number of things internally at the department to really try and address that and look at ways to increase the ranks, working with recruiting with each of the components, as well as with mentoring and trying to really identify some of the things that make a difference.
And the components themselves also have been very focused on this. Coast Guard in particular actually did a study with RAND over the last few years, trying to identify some of their challenges. And they had a really interesting result of just a small change that made a very large difference in people’s satisfaction about challenges. And one of this, they have found that they tend to lose a lot of women as they reach that point — childbearing years — where they want to make sure they start a family and then they start thinking about, you know, six weeks out at sea — three weeks out at sea with young children. And there are a lot of dual Coast Guard couples who also sometimes end up out at sea at different times, and it adds a lot of challenge to the family situation.
They started making arrangements and promising women who were on ships on the cutters that they would ensure there was a replacement for the whole time they’re out on pregnancy leave, so they didn’t feel like they were leaving their colleagues in the lurch by being out and being pregnant. They expected they were going to probably have 25 or 50 people the first year who took advantage of it, and it’s now well over 100 in less than a year. And it really just addressed a concern that people hadn’t figured out a way to express.
So, looking for those opportunities to make differences not only improves us, but it improves what we can share with others because of what we’ve learned. The same thing with our women in law enforcement mentoring programs that we have been doing for the last couple of years. Identifying people and having the chance to talk to somebody else with a little more experience on how to handle some of those situations can make a huge difference. I certainly know when I was a young lawyer and there were not nearly as many women, having women lawyers I could talk to who had been out for five or 10 years more and had experienced these things makes a huge difference. And just, you know, taking things we’re learning and bringing those to our foreign partners, I think, still makes a huge difference.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Thank you. Julie, before I ask you a question, if you guys could all tell us where these plans live online for your agencies because we are being asked that. Or if the ambassador wants to jump in on that?
Kelley E. Currie: Sure. I can answer that question very easily. They are all now on the White House website. And then all of our agencies will also have our individual plans on our own websites. I think ours is going live at some point very soon, if it’s not up already.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Okay. Got it. So, some of them may be still being uploaded. Thank you for that.
Julie, the list of details and accomplishments and programs and projects that you went through is remarkable. It’s really cool. I had no idea, to be honest with you, how much of work has been done by your agency over such a long period of time. Just briefly, you told
about that Nigeria example, and it’s very, very interesting. Can you give us a sense of when the program launched and then how does it work — how do you look back and say, “We know it was successful,” or it wasn’t? Are you tracking the women? Do you see if they’ve utilized your resources? Are you able to track if they were able to open a business or, you know, provide? I don’t know what — not, like, anything too detailed or personal, but just how do you know that that’s succeeding after the training?
Julie Cram: Sure. And I will quickly get out of my [inaudible], and I think the ambassador referred to it earlier. USAID and State Department have a very long history — but is getting better every day — on how do we track our success? I think Amb. Currie and all of my other colleagues — and I know I mentioned it as well — with WPS, with WGDP, and frankly, with all of our programming is really about how it’s a results-driven approach.
And one of the reasons we’re trying to work at this level, at the interagency level, is to ensure that we’re doing that. And you’ll notice at the back of our implementation plan, there’s a long list of how we’re tracking each of the metrics. There are some WPS indicators, giving you an overview, and then I can specifically address the Nigeria outside of what our practices and [inaudible] and how we build those relationships, which I think is another important part of what WPS brings and will continue to bring to both the State Department and USAID and DOD’s collaborative efforts, where it really matters, which is at — in the field, and at where the rubber meets the road, where the programming really happens, and where women are making a difference every day in their communities.
And part of what — to your point about what does that look like, the relationship building, particularly not with the individual women but particularly with local women organizations, faith-based community organizations that, you know, are really the infrastructure that women in their communities rely on. And so, I think that’s where WPS and some of our other cross- sectorial work at USAID, but also the cross-agency work is [inaudible]. As you know, USAID has gotten very focused on local organizations. Or you may not know that, but I’m here to tell you that is one of the things we’re focused on. And WPS is an important part of that.
And so, hopefully, I’ve given you a sense of metrics, results-driven, relationship building at the individual level. But equally and perhaps even more importantly is that infrastructure at the community level that allows women to feel that they’re not alone, that they’re being trained, whether it’s women’s economic empowerment as part of Women, Peace, and Security, or as peacebuilders or political candidates or getting involved in the political process. It is relationship and trust-building exercises, as my colleagues were saying, that we are trying to exemplify [inaudible] and therefore, you know, we believe in — you have the results that it’s going to be a long way to go, but we’re getting there.
Mackenzie Eaglen: I applaud that sort of block-by-block, neighborhood-by-neighborhood approach — the people who are interacting with these women on the front lines and partnering with them. I think that’s really, really smart.
I’m going to go now to our audience questions. And thank you to all of you who’ve submitted. I’m going to try and get through as many as I can. The first one is for the ambassador and from our kind reader says, “Thank you for your leadership in the Trump administration to advance this agenda.” The question is about the key ally in South Korea.
President Moon just appointed the first gender equality ambassador whose mandate includes WPS.
So, if you could talk about if you see this as potentially helpful to the peace process. I know there was a hiccup earlier this week from North Korea saying various things. So, if you could talk about what the Trump administration might do to ensure that the negotiating team will include women officials, possibly, and how to engage with civil society to ensure that women’s perspectives are included in the Korean peace process, if there is one.
Kelley E. Currie: Great. I work really closely with our Deputy Secretary Steve Biegun here, who many of you also may know and who has been one of our also just great supporters. Just last week, we did a wonderful event with Deputy Secretary Biegun, who also heads up our North Korea negotiations. He continues to lead on that effort. And he has just been one of our greatest advocates and allies.
And in terms of how we work with other gender ministers and other — there are now a number of Women, Peace, and Security ambassadors from different countries around the world that I work very closely with. We have a great network — kind of a sorority, I guess you can say, of all of us — of all the ambassadors and ministers who’ve been appointed to this portfolio. And I have gotten to be friends with them over time, because some of them I knew from before when I worked at US UN, and I’ve continued to be able to engage with them.
I really — again, just as I have great partners here in the interagency, I have wonderful international partners who I’m very, very blessed to be able to work with. And increasingly, I think that this is an issue that has such resonance not just with our traditional allies, with our NATO allies and our OSCE allies and our North Atlantic, or even our — but it increasingly is an issue that has so much resonance with our allies in the Indo-Pacific, as well as our partners in Africa and in Latin America. They have the lived experience, and theirs is much — when Julie talks about, and when we all talk about how we want to model behavior, we also learn so much from our counterparts overseas, who have the lived experience of having to negotiate a peace process without the tools and without the support from their own leadership or from their own governments and having to fight for that seat at the table.
And so, one of the things that we try to make sure we do in our programming, as we think through with colleagues here in the department about how they can tap into that experience and that lived reality for women around the world who have so much to give us in terms of lessons they’ve learned and information that they can provide to inform and animate our policy, is about listening: listening to women on the ground, listening to their experiences, and giving them platforms to share them.
We’ve been doing a series of roundtables for colleagues here in the department and in other government agencies that allows them to listen to our partner or local organization partners who are talking about their COVID response in the context of Women, Peace, and Security and context like Nigeria, Columbia. And the local partnerships that we’re building are such a tremendous resource that we think we can do a lot more to use as we leverage them into building American security by having those partnerships at the ground level. And what we do, what USAID does and what DOD does, it’s all piece of the same puzzle of how we build a more secure, prosperous world and help countries on their journey to self-reliance, the
wonderful motto of our USAID colleagues that we are fully bought into. And I think I’ll let some of my other colleagues add to that if they have anything else to say.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Thank you. Julie and perhaps Stephanie or both, one of our viewers is asking if your agencies plan on leveraging the geographic command military advisers at AID or your senior development advisers who are out in the combatant commands to be a bridge for cooperation on WPS under the direction of the gender advisers because there is some overlap between those roles.
Tara McCready: Hi, my name is Tara McCready. Stephanie Hammond had to step out because she has a meeting with the secretary. So, I will attempt to respond to this. I think you have made a good point. We have WPS advisers at every COCOM, and they have been great at implementing the programs that we have. We’ve been working closely with both State and AID [inaudible] in the COCOMs, too, to implement comprehensive programs that represent all of the interagency.
And so, some of the things that they are doing is conducting gender analysis and to look at how men, women, boys, girls deal with situations and implementing that into the operational planning and security assistance plannings. And they’re also doing a lot of bilats with countries in order to show how women’s inclusion benefits everyone. And so that’s just some of the highlights at the GCCs — global COCOMs, excuse me, have been doing to implement the WPS program.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Thank you for weighing in and for joining when Stephanie had to step away. Julie, did you want to add anything?
Julie Cram: I think my colleague at DOD kind of handled and covered really what DOD — how that’s being integrated. And — excuse me — from USAID’s perspective, we absolutely are planning to encourage and have our MILCOM advisers be part of the WPS, and they are already doing that. So, I think my DOD colleague pretty much handled that very well.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Great. So, this might be tricky, but I know the ambassador can handle it, or unless she wants to deflect to somebody else. So, of course, there is a peace process underway in Afghanistan. So, if you could maybe just give our viewers who are asking, you know, some examples of how WPS can be put into action perhaps, or maybe it’s too late because the talks have been underway for quite some time. But to really, you know, secure meaningful participation from Afghan women in these peace talks so that when the US pulls the chalk box that the gains aren’t rolled back.
Julie Cram: This is obviously a critical issue that we have given a lot of thought to. And I would not even — it’s never stopped being part of our conversation and our work in Afghanistan. Going back to when I was working for Paula Dobriansky here at the State Department, when we started the US-Afghan Women’s Council, this was an animating issue about — how do we build the cadre of women leaders who are going to be needed in a post- Taliban era in Afghanistan that we, you know, were trying to launch going back to 2001? How do we build up the cadre of women leaders, political, economic, social, who have been living under that system, and who needed to be able to speak for themselves and carry forward their country?
We have spent the past I think 19 years trying to do that, and we’ve had some pretty tremendous success. If you look at the women who have been nominated to participate as negotiators, and if you look around them and if you look at women like [inaudible] who was just appointed as the new minister for women affairs, if you look at our wonderful ambassador, Roya Rahmani here in Washington, as well as the incredible Afghan ambassador to the UN, Adela Raz, all of these women have — almost all of them have come through some kind of US-engaged training program — have been empowered in some way by the efforts of the United States, either State Department, USAID, DOD.
We actually have, I think, done about as — under the difficult circumstances of the past 19 years, we’ve done a pretty incredible job of building up women who are able to speak for themselves. And one of the things that has been most enjoyable about my job the past few months is in March, the secretary gave an International Women of Courage Award to a woman named Zarifa Ghafari, who is the 29-year-old mayor of a town called Wardak in Afghanistan. And Zarifa has survived five assassination attempts, including one right after she returned back to Afghanistan from the United States. And I mean, she is fierce. There’s no other word for this woman. She grew up in conflict almost her entire life, but you would never know it. Nothing frightens her. I’ve never met anyone quite like her. And knowing that — and she says it herself, “I want to make sure there are thousands of Zarifas out there so that if something happens to me, there’s somebody right there who’d steps in and takes my place.”
And I’m proud of the role that the United States has played to help make some of that a reality. I know that we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. This is the hard part now, negotiating peace and making sure that women’s voices are heard fully and are able to fully participate, but I have so much — knowing that Afghan women that I know and knowing how strong and determined they are to secure their rights and to make sure that their male counterparts do their part to make sure that they secure their rights, it gives me a high degree of confidence that we’re going to come out on the other side of this in a positive way. And we’ll continue to be monitoring it and watching it and holding partners to account.
Mackenzie Eaglen: That is an incredible woman. And thank you for sharing her story and —
Kelley E. Currie: You have no idea. She’s terrifying —
Mackenzie Eaglen: I mean, wow, and recognizing —
Kelley E. Currie: — in a good way.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Right. We will close out. I’m going to — it’s a group question. So, we can start with the ambassador and just go quickly through the panelists. We have about two minutes left. We talked about this in the opening, too, but, you know, we’re even seeing in America right now that until an issue is cared about by people other than those talking about the issue, it’s not going to really get solved. So, women’s issues can’t just be advocated for and by and among women. Issues affecting people of color can’t just be advocated for, changed by people of color. So how do we make this a man and boy cause to champion too? And thank you.
Kelley E. Currie: Well, from my perspective, again, I enjoy such great support from my leadership — from my male colleagues. They are such good partners. I think that day in and day out, I don’t necessarily have to worry about that here at the department. I think that when we’re talking to other governments, sometimes we have to make arguments that resonate with them, with their interests, and their incentive structures. So, for instance, on areas where we’re working on women’s economic empowerment, we make economic arguments to governments about the potential that they can unlock in their own countries, in societies, when they fully empower women. We are also encouraging countries to see how both positive and negative — the examples that surround them point toward the value of including women.
When Julie talks about the fact that peace processes are much more likely to succeed and be sustainable when women’s voices are included, that’s real. It has consequences. And countries increasingly understand that. Going back to the passage of 1325 and continuing through today, we’re working to build out that international coalition of countries that have full buy-in into that idea that understand that you’re not going to get far without the participation — the full participation, the meaningful participation of women — whatever you’re trying to do, whether it’s grow your economy or resolve a dispute.
So, I think that it’s just — we’ve got great tools now, and it’s just about putting them to work and doing it every day and making sure we’re not letting people off the hook, in a way, and making sure that they understand that it’s in their interest to do this.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Cameron, do you want to weigh in next?
Cameron Quinn: I do. I appreciate the opportunity. Being at DHS, there’s definitely a larger component of men, and I have been very pleased at how enthusiastic they’ve been when I’ve talked to some of our key senior leaders around the department. The department’s mission is that with honor and integrity we safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our values. And one of the things that immediately catches the attention when I start having these conversations is as we ensure more peace and stability around the rest of the globe, we actually ensure our own security. Many of the kinds of issues we’ve had — many of the things behind the department stand up — come back to parts of the globe where there wasn’t that much peace and stability. And so, there is instantaneous buy-in when I had that conversation with the folks that are leading many of these law enforcement and other security components.
Mackenzie Eaglen: Julie, you get the last word.
Julie Cram: Sure. And thank you for that. And I’m so glad you brought it up because one of the — building on what my colleagues have said, and I’m going to kind of take it to what USAID does, which is kind of where the rubber meets the road at the field level. And we certainly cannot continue to talk to ourselves whether — pick your cross-sectoral group. And one of the things USAID is doing is having a much more focused effort on engaging men and boys in all of what we call our “gender programming” — gender equality and women’s empowerment programming.
But what I think will have even more impact as it relates to having women come in is looking at all of the dollars and the programs that we’re spending and infusing women into — in a cross-sectoral way. So if we’re doing an economic growth program, it’s not an
economic growth program unless [inaudible] at the [inaudible], and that it becomes second nature, where we — and we’re doing that systemically in how we’re organized, and we’re doing it in how we’re working with each other so that the priorities of women do become the priorities of men, and we’re seeing it.
The ambassador can speak to some great successes in some of our WGDP programming as an example. We’ve got, you know, lots of others examples on the WPS front as well. So, it’s really that infusion and responsibility that we’re imparting in all of our programming. So, we’re looking at it through multiple lenses at once and not our parochial lens of expertise.
Mackenzie Eaglen: I can just tell from the response to this event that we threw together so quickly — and thanks to all of your leadership, joining us today — the number of people, the questions if I could show you, the level of detail and seriousness, it’s really remarkable. I’m so impressed by how many people care so strongly and deeply about this. I apologize to our audience for going four minutes over into our panelists, but I couldn’t let it stop. I’m sorry. I thank you all very much on behalf of AEI and myself for all of your hard work, not just being here today, but truly a lot of people’s time and attention and heart on the line, caring about this issue. And I’m so pleased that we could have this conversation today. So, thank you again, and thank you to our audience for joining.