U.S. AMBASSADOR TO UN TESTIFIES TO CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee
Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
Washington, DC
June 16, 2015
AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Congressman Engel. Distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. And thank you for being here. Thank you also for your leadership in advancing America’s national security interests and our values in the world.

Last week I traveled to Ukraine, where I had the chance to see up close what happens when the rules undergirding our international peace and security are ignored. At a shelter for displaced families in Kyiv, I met a mother who told me how her husband and two-year-old child had been killed in February when a shell struck their home in a village in eastern Ukraine. The shelling, as you all know, was part of a sustained assault by combined Russian-separatist forces – and the victims just two of the more than 6,300 people who have been killed in the Moscow-manufactured conflict. Shortly after the attack, the mother fled town with her five surviving children in a van whose roof and doors had been blasted out. Her plea – one I heard echoed by many of the displaced families I met from eastern Ukraine and occupied Crimea – was for the fighting to stop, and for their basic rights to be respected.

As the members of this Committee know, we are living in a time of daunting global crises. In the last year alone, Russia continued to train, arm, and fight alongside separatists in eastern Ukraine; a deadly epidemic spread across West Africa; and monstrous terrorist groups seized territory across the Middle East and North Africa, committing unspeakable atrocities. These are the kinds of threats that the United Nations exists to prevent and address. Yet it is precisely at the moment when we need the UN most that we see the flaws in the international system, some of which have been alluded to already.

This is true for the conflict in Ukraine – in which a permanent member of the UN Security Council is violating the sovereignty and territorial integrity that it was entrusted with upholding. It is true of the global health system that – despite multiple warnings of a spreading Ebola outbreak, including those from our own CDC – was slow to respond to the epidemic. And it is true of UN peacekeepers, who too often stand down or stand by when civilians they are responsible for protecting come under attack. Thus leaving populations vulnerable and sometimes open to radicalization.

Representing our nation before the United Nations, I have to confront these and other shortcomings every day. Yet though I am clear-eyed about the UN’s vulnerabilities, the central point I want to make to this Committee is that America needs the United Nations to address today’s global challenges. The United States has the most powerful set of tools in history to advance its interests, and we will always lead on the world stage. But we are more effective when we ensure that others shoulder their fair share and when we marshal multilateral support to meet our objectives. Let me quickly outline five ways we are doing that at the UN.

First, we are rallying multilateral coalitions to address transnational threats. Consider Iran. In addition to working with Congress to put in place unprecedented U.S. sanctions on the Iranian government, in 2010 the Obama Administration galvanized the UN Security Council to authorize one of the toughest multilateral sanctions regimes in history. The combination of unilateral and multilateral pressure was crucial to bringing Iran to the negotiating table, and ultimately, to laying the foundation whereby we were able to reach a framework agreement that would, if we can get a final deal, effectively cut off every pathway for the Iranian regime to develop a nuclear weapon.

Consider our response to the Ebola epidemic. Last September, as people were dying outside hospitals in West Africa, hospitals that had no beds left to treat the exploding number of Ebola patients, the United States chaired the first-ever emergency meeting of the UN Security Council dedicated to a global health issue. We pressed countries to deploy doctors and nurses, to build clinics and testing labs, and to fill other gaps that ultimately helped bend the outbreak’s exponentially rising curve. America did not just rally others to step up, we led by example, thanks also very much to the support of this Congress, deploying more than 3,500 U.S. Government civilian and military personnel to Liberia, which has been Ebola-free since early May.

Second, we are reforming UN peacekeeping to help address the threats to international peace and security that exist in the 21st century. There are more than 100,000 uniformed police and soldiers deployed in the UN’s sixteen peacekeeping missions around the world – that is a higher number than in any time in history – with more complex responsibilities also than ever before. The United States has an abiding strategic interest in resolving the conflicts where peacekeepers serve, which can quickly cause regional instability and attract extremist groups, as we have seen in Mali. Yet while we have seen peacekeepers serve with bravery and professionalism in many of the world’s most dangerous operating environments, we’ve also seen chronic problems, too often, as mentioned, including the failure to protect civilians.

We are working aggressively to address these shortfalls. To give just one example, we are persuading more advanced militaries to step up and contribute soldiers and police to UN peacekeeping. That was the aim of a summit that Vice President Biden convened at the UN last September, where Colombia, Sweden, Indonesia and more than a dozen other countries announced new troop commitments; and it is the message I took directly to European leaders in March, when I made the case in Brussels that peacekeeping is a critical way for European militaries to do their fair share in protecting our common security interests, particularly as they draw down in Afghanistan. This coming September, President Obama will convene another summit of world leaders to build on this momentum and help catalyze a new wave of commitments and generate a new set of capabilities for UN peacekeeping.

Third, we are fighting to end bias and discrimination at the UN. Day in and day out, we push back against efforts to delegitimize Israel at the UN, and we fight for its right to be treated like any other nation – from mounting a full-court diplomatic press to help secure Israel’s permanent membership into two UN groups from which it had long and unjustly been excluded, to consistently and firmly opposing one-sided actions in international bodies. In December, when a deeply unbalanced draft resolution on the Israel-Palestinian conflict was hastily put before the Security Council, the United States successfully rallied a coalition to join us in voting against it, ensuring that the resolution failed to achieve the nine votes of Security Council members required for adoption. We will continue to confront anti-Israel bias wherever we encounter it.

Fourth, we are working to use UN tools to promote human rights and affirm human dignity, as we did by working with partners to hold the first-ever Security Council meeting focused on the human rights situation in North Korea in December. We used that session to shine a light on the regime’s horrors – a light we kept shining through a panel discussion I hosted in April, with escaped victims of the regime. One woman told of being forced to watch the executions of fellow prisoners who committed the “crime” of daring to ask why they had been imprisoned, while another woman told how members from three generations of her family – her grandmother, her father, and her younger brother – had starved to death. This is important for UN Member States to hear.

Fifth, we are doing everything within our power to make the UN more fiscally responsible, more accountable, and more nimble – both because we have a responsibility to ensure American taxpayer dollars are spent wisely, and because maximizing the efficiency of our contributions means saving more lives and better protecting the world’s most vulnerable people. Since the 2008 to 2009 fiscal year, we have reduced the cost-per-peacekeeper by 18 percent, and we are constantly looking for ways to right-size missions in response to conditions on the ground, as we will do this year through substantial drawdowns in Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, and Liberia, among other missions.

Let me conclude. At the outset, I spoke of my recent visit to Ukraine. Across the range of Ukrainians I met – from the mother who lost her husband and two-year-old child in the assault by combined Russian-separatist forces; to the brave students who risked their lives to take part in the Maidan protests against the kleptocratic Yanukovych government; to the young members of parliament working to fight corruption and increase transparency – what united them was the yearning for certain basic rights. And, the belief that the United States could lead other countries – and the United Nations – in helping make their aspirations a reality.

I heard the same sentiment when visiting UN-run camps of people displaced by violence in the Central African Republic, and South Sudan, and in the Ebola-affected communities of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone at the peak of the outbreak.

Some may view the expectation that America can help people overcome their greatest challenges and secure their basic rights as a burden. In fact, that expectation is one of our nation’s greatest strengths, and one we have a vested interest in striving to live up to – daunting as it may feel in the face of so many crises. But we cannot do it alone, nor should we want to. That is why it is more important than ever that we use the UN to rally the multilateral support needed to confront today’s myriad challenges.

Thank you and I look forward to your questions.

SECRETARY KERRY SAYS SOUTH SUDAN FACES WIDESPREAD STARVATION

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT  

John Kerry

Secretary of State

Washington, DC

July 25, 2014

South Sudan now faces the worst food security crisis in the world. Violence has forced over 1.5 million people from their homes since mid-December, while more than 50,000 children under the age of five are at risk of dying from malnutrition this year. This is not a crisis caused by drought or flood: it is a calamity created by conflict. Unless the fighting ends and a peace agreement is concluded, the number of those at risk of starvation -- now as many as 3.9 million people, fully one-third of the population – will reach even more catastrophic levels.

South Sudan's leaders need to make choices and they need to make them now if they're going to pull their country back from the brink of famine. In the last months, I've traveled to Juba and Ethiopia to press on the cease-fire. I've had call after call with both leaders in South Sudan, pressing them to work closely with regional partners in support of mediation efforts. The United States has spoken out against ongoing fighting, obstruction of humanitarian access and failures to resolve the conflict.

But in the end, the leaders have to make decisions. President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar share responsibility for triggering this man-made crisis and they share responsibility for ending it. I call on them to end the fighting immediately and negotiate in good faith under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development.

The Government of South Sudan and the opposition must put the safety and wellbeing of the South Sudanese people first by immediately implementing the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement, ensuring the security of humanitarian workers and goods, and dismantling unofficial checkpoints that impede the delivery of aid. International and South Sudanese humanitarian workers have saved lives at great personal risk. They must be able to do their jobs without the threat of violence, informal “taxation” or other arbitrary impediments.

The United States remains committed to the people of South Sudan and has provided more than $456 million in humanitarian aid this year alone. We call on fellow donor countries to make additional contributions. The people of South Sudan deserve the opportunity to begin rebuilding their country, and to develop the national and local institutions they need to put South Sudan on a path towards stability.

WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT ON FIGHTING IN SOUTH SUDAN

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

Statement by the Press Secretary on South Sudan

Four years ago, some four million South Sudanese voted to break with the past and usher in a new period of peace and prosperity.  They expected their leaders to act with courage and conviction, to put the interests of the people first, and to be statesmen, not strongmen.  Months of fighting between the Government of South Sudan and forces loyal to rebel leader Riek Machar run counter to that vision and threaten to tear the young nation apart.  Thousands have been killed.  Nearly one million innocent civilians have been driven from their homes.  Despite a ceasefire agreement, the cycle of violence and conflict continues.

The United States will not stand by as those entrusted with South Sudan’s future put their own interests above those of their people.  The Executive Order signed by President Obama today sends a clear message:  those who threaten the peace, security, or stability of South Sudan, obstruct the peace process, target U.N. peacekeepers, or are responsible for human rights abuses and atrocities will not have a friend in the United States and run the risk of sanctions.  Both the Government of South Sudan and Riek Machar’s rebels must immediately engage in and follow through on the inclusive peace process led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and resolve this conflict.  They must end military actions and hold accountable those responsible for violence against civilians.  The people of South Sudan are calling for peace.  There is no room for excuses or delay.

WORLD ENGAGEMENT BY CONFLICT AND STABILIZATION OPERATIONS

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
03/13/2014 07:08 AM EDT
CSO at Two Years: Engaging Around the World
Report
Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations
Washington, DC
March 13, 2014
Breaking Cycles of Violence

The State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations (CSO) was created in 2011 to improve the effectiveness and coherence of the U.S. government in conflict situations.

Conflict prevention and crisis response is a vital diplomatic specialty--complementing traditional practices. Focusing on strategically significant countries, CSO believes in taking advantage of the astonishing advances in communications and data gathering and fully realizing the potential of women, young people, and other emerging local leaders. The vast energy generated by expressions of citizen power can move the world toward a brighter tomorrow, if fresh ideas and new alliances steer history toward that promise.

CSO breaks cycles of violence through locally grounded analysis that focuses on a top-priority opportunity to address conflict. When we began, we set three goals:

Make an impact in three or four countries important to the United States.
Build a respected team and trusted partnerships.vellaveve
Be innovative and agile.
By employing tools and expertise to fortify the Department in three areas related to conflict (analysis, strategy, and operations), CSO aims to connect policy and practice. Working with colleagues throughout the State Department and the interagency, CSO strives to forge a common U.S. government understanding of each conflict. The Bureau is now positioned to play a catalytic role as America’s civilian power furthers global peace and prosperity.

Progress in First Four Top-Priority Countries
Kenya is a vital East African ally, and Kenyans and international partners were committed to a peaceful 2013 election. In the previous election season, five years earlier, more than 1,300 people died and 350,000 were displaced. This time Kenyans lost 20 citizens and officials. By mobilizing dozens of apolitical institutions and connecting civil society to the police in new ways, the U.S., its partners, and especially Kenyans, “helped prevent a repeat of the violence we saw five years ago,” Secretary Kerry said.

Bringing the moderate Syrian opposition together and helping them serve the public is a central U.S. objective. Operating from Turkey, CSO has provided opposition activists and local councils with equipment (almost 1,100 recipients), training (more than 1,300 participants), and funding. This assistance has helped Syrians establish 11 independent radio and two TV stations (available to 80 percent of the population), build their resilience under regime and extremist threat, improve their effectiveness and coordination, provide local security, and prepare to serve as democratic leaders and civil administrators. Though the war continues and the regime remains entrenched, many of the opposition councils that we are working with are addressing essential needs.

Honduras has the world’s highest homicide rate, and citizens have lost confidence in their government. CSO has promoted grassroots advocacy and a strategic communications plan to empower civil society groups and encourage government security officials to become more responsive and transparent. Such efforts have helped reduce public fear and shine a light on successful citizen-led efforts to tackle crime. An unprecedented coalition was instrumental in the dismissal of a problematic attorney general and corrupt police, a decline in crime and murder in targeted neighborhoods, and a peaceful election day in November 2013.

In Burma, the challenge is decades of conflict between the government and ethnic minority groups. Creating trust among all Burmese is a priority for U.S. Ambassador Derek Mitchell, and we have helped broaden the constituency for peace, particularly in Kayah State, and strengthen moderate voices in Rakhine State, where animosities between Buddhists and Muslims remain notably high.

Making a Difference in Additional Engagements
In four Central African nations, the United States is determined to end the reign of terror created by Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. Working closely with the host governments and their armed forces, as well as with civil society, the African Union, the UN, the U.S. military, and NGOs, CSO has helped generate significant defections and weaken the LRA. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, faces growing violence. As the February 2015 elections approach, the volatile and oil-rich Niger Delta, with its youthful population of 25 million, is a center of concern. With State Department assistance, creative and influential Nigerians have teamed up to mobilize public opinion. Through the dynamic use of an exploding mass media market, they are challenging the narrative that “violence pays” and are promoting non-violent problem-solving between communities and government.

In Bangladesh, home to 180 million people, violence and instability are major problems. The country is struggling to manage a youth bulge, religious-based exclusion, and violent expression with tired political leaders. With the embassy’s guidance, CSO is addressing threats to minority groups.

A new president’s commitment to end the three-decade Casamance conflict in Senegal prompted CSO to deploy a retired ambassador dedicated to helping the government develop and implement a comprehensive peace platform. This has increased public pressure on key actors, spurred negotiations with rebels, enlisted support from the international community, and allowed for safe progress on development projects. A de facto ceasefire has held since late 2012 as negotiations move ahead.

An Emphasis on Analysis, Priorities, and Fast, Adaptable Practice
CSO starts its engagements with joint, rapid, locally-grounded conflict analysis. Data-driven products draw on diverse sources, including diplomatic intelligence and media reports, “big data” platforms, polling, local interviews, and international expertise. Prioritized strategies then target the causes of instability and address high-risk periods such as political transitions and peace negotiations.

Rapid implementation requires host-country partners. CSO seeks to amplify local initiatives by managing nearly $100 million in programs (in FY2013). Working with an embassy, regional bureaus, and others, we use these funds to ground theory in practice.

Real-time monitoring and evaluation enable us to adjust our plans. In Honduras, we saw an important new fiscal initiative get bogged down. In Kenya we should have mobilized already-active religious leaders, youth, civic activists, and police officers earlier. Better anticipation, greater speed, and improved partnership mechanisms are among recurring challenges. So is the need to provide “the right person, in the right place, at the right time,” which is the goal of our new Civilian Response Network.

Finally, communications is central to diplomacy, and CSO is using both traditional media outlets and social media to break cycles of violence in Syria, Honduras, Nigeria, and elsewhere.

In every place CSO works, we count on partners, starting with our colleagues within the State Department and USAID and at the Department of Defense. In Syria, for example, our U.S. partners include the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, the Office of Transition Initiatives, the U.S.-Middle East Partnership Initiative, and the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. We rely on allies such as the UK, Denmark, and Canada to support training and other efforts. CSO reaches out to civil society organizations like Sant’Egidio, the Rome-based Catholic lay organization that is at the heart of the campaign to bring a negotiated peace to the Casamance. Host-country partners, such as la Alianza por la Paz y Justicia (Alliance for Peace and Justice) in Honduras, are vital if the initiatives that CSO helps build are to endure. Often, new groups converge to increase their impact, as Champions of Peace did in Kenya.

A Commitment to Improvement
The support our teams have received from more than 20 U.S. ambassadors and their embassies is the best evidence that crisis response and conflict reduction are centerpieces of U.S. diplomacy. Increasingly, colleagues are turning to CSO for assistance in breaking cycles of violence. To build an enduring contributor to U.S. foreign policy, CSO understands that constant learning, close partnerships, and innovation are essential.