senator bob corker of tennessee is the chair. it's two and a half hours. [inaudible conversations] >> call the senate foreign relations committee to order. we thank our witnesses for being here, and i'm looking forward to your testimony. as much of the world concentrates on the isis threat and instability in the middle east, the committee takes this opportunity to consider efforts by the united states and other partners to counter extremism in

the sub-saharan african area. long-term development has been the norm across much of africa including here -- tell you what. ben, even with large letters i can't see anymore. [laughter] including here in our committee with the recent signing of the power africa legislation, which we're all very proud of and appreciate the way the administration has led on that effort also, that we hope will help bring investment to a key sector for economic growth and opportunity. whereas in the middle east we have been reacting to abhorrent state and terrorist violence and the uprooting of millions of people, in africa we've had the opportunity of years of influence through diplomacy and development and partnerships to improve outcomes. however, violent extremism is not a new phenomenon in africa. three subregions have exploded with terrorist elements some decades old. al-shabaab and its predecessors have long troubled

somalia and its neighbors in east africa including attacks on american embassies in 1998. al-qaeda in the islamic maghreb have evolved since 9/11 into a vicious regional threat across the a sahel and beyond, and they have fought the algerian government since 1991. boko haram which was,. >> has declared allegiance to isis will stop at nothing to carry out its grotesque attacks against civilians in communities across nigeria and the late chad basin. all three of these conflicts have drawn international intervention and resources because of terrorist elements involved which are seen as aspiring to the kind of international terrorism perpetrated by al-qaeda and isis. and some are beginning to show increased sophistication in attacks. beyond these three conflict and terrorist-ridden regions are several complex crises this breed on instability brought on

by many factors, the most egregious of which appears to be the almost complete lack of government responsibility for its citizens through corruption and greed rather than any lack of resources. this includes most recently south sudan and the central african republic. and, of course, the decades-long atrocities in the democratic republic of congo. all three of which have cost billions of dollars to mitigate through massive peacekeeping operations. while the world seeks ways to address the direct threat of e emergent terrorist groups in reaction mode, we have had a chance and still do to improve the prospects for many countries in africa by leveraging long-term relationships and development. i'm also concerned that there are efforts to gain traction and destabilizing other countries we consider relatively stable now. i look forward to hearing from our witnesses today the lessons that they have drawn from their direct engagement in these regions, and i hope to better

understand what the underlying factors are that contribute to the terrorist threat in the region and what u.s. efforts have been made to build a better response across the whole of government and with partners in the international community. with that, i'll turn to our distinguished ranking member, ben cardin. >> chairman corker, thank you very much for convening this hearing on terrorism, instability in sub sahara africa. i agree with your assessments. the amount of violence in this region escalating is a major concern and requires the attention of this committee, of the united states senate and the american people. i also agree with you that there are multiple reasons for the instability and crisis in this region but that there is a common theme of poor governance. and that's an issue that provides a vacuum, and that

vacuum is usually filled with instability and recruitment of extremists. so i very much agree with you this is an area of growing concern in regards to the amount of violence that is taking place and one that requires us to put a focus on the governance structures in the countries of sub-sahara africa. and it's true. it's from west africa to the lake chad basin to east africa. west africa, circumstances in mali, we find the marginalization of ethnic groups that have become now a home for at least five active terrorist groups, breeding ground for terrorist recruitment. the u.n. mission in america ali is -- mali is the most deadliest peacekeeping mission that we have anywhere. that is, should be a sign that things need to change in regards to mali. we have the parties coming

forward for a peace agreement, well, we need to see immediate attention to that and see whether, in fact, that peace agreement can be implemented. in the lake chad basin in nigeria is of particular concern. boko haram, which has pledged its allegiance to isis -- we'll see how, in fact, that alliance takes place or not -- but we do know it is extremely deadly, the number of deaths have escalated dramatically, 15,000 since 2009. 2.4 million displaced people, 5.6 million in need of food. and these numbers are shocking in their size, but i think the world became engaged in this when 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped and yet their fate today is still not known. in east africa, in somalia, we have to pay careful attention.

we know that. and in all of these regions, there's a common denominator of lack of good governance. this year in somalia it's said to be a critical one for consolidation of the somali state a. constitutional referendum and completion of the federal system are supposed to occur. absent the establishment of a fully-functioning, transparent and inclusive government it will be difficult, if not impossible, to eliminate the threat posed byal-shabaab. while the threats have been clearly identified, what is not as evident is whether the united states is consistently applying a comprehensive approach countering violent extremism in africa, one which adequately addresses key drivers of radicalization such as political and economic marginalization, corruption and whether steps have been taken to build the type of capacity in the african country to counter the violent extreme activities. i hope today's hearing will help us all better understand the

package of programs and activities we are bringing to bear to combat terrorism and violent extremism in africa and what, if any, efforts the administration is making to fully integrate principles of democracy, corruption and good governance into our approach. security assistance alone will not win the battle. mr. chairman, let me quote from deputy secking stair of -- secretary of state tony blinken who recently said, quote: a fight over time that will be won in the classrooms, in the house of worship, on social media, at community centers, at sites of cultural heritage, on the sports fields and within the homes of people in every corner of the planet. end quote. given how significantly underfunded governance programs have been in africa, i don't see how we could be reaching that threat where it is. but there are two steps we can take right away to do so. first, it's a point aye been making to the administration for nearly a year. it is critical that we increase

investment in democracy and governance such as are commensurate with our security assistance funding. in fy-15, the last year for which figures are available, we allocated approximately $1 billion for security assistance and only $170 million for democracy and governance. i hope that you have -- the hope that as you discuss allocations for fy-16 with the appropriators, you will indicate you will meet the $312 million democracy and governance in africa culled in the omnibus report language. and i hope we have a chance to talk about that. secondly, the united states must signal to our partners that our support does not come at the expense of democracy and human rights. i think we have sent the wrong signals about our priorities by failing to support human rights and democracy activities in ethiopia. it is critical that we take the prime minister up on his offer from last july to work with us

on improving democracy in ethiopia. in addition, we should be assured that our security assistance includes support for military and civilian institutions, that support accountability for counterterrorism partner countries with weak democracy and human rights records. so, mr. chairman, i hope that during the course of this hearing we're going to hear from our administration officials exactly what is our coordinated strategy? yes, we want to fight extremism. we have to do that. we have to have the military security assistance. but if you don't have in place the type of governance that represent the concerns of the population, there will be instability and avoidance which extremists will capitalize on. i look forward to our discussion. >> thank you very much for those comments. i want to introduce all three witnesses, and then if you'd just speak in the order that you're introduced, i would appreciate it. our first is linda thomas greenfield, assistant secretary for african affairs at the department of state. welcome.

our second witness is linda etim, assistant administrator for africa at usaid. thank you for being here. our third witness is justin -- [inaudible] no, no -- [laughter] need a little help here. seebrow, acting coordinator for terrorism at the department of state. we want to thank you all for being here, for your service to our country, and if you could summarize your comments in about five minutes, that would be great. without objection, your written testimony will be entered into the record, so thank you. >> mr. chairman, ranking member cardin and distinguished members of the committee, let me thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. i have a very brief oral statement, and i've provided a more comprehensive written statement for the record. africa's home to the world's youngest and fastest growing population.

it presents significant opportunities for transformation and growth as well as many challenges. the overall trends in sub-saharan africa point to accelerated democratization -- sorry democratization, development and economic opportunity. although africa remains the world's least developed continent, average, real, per capita income increased steadily over the last decade and a half. however, in spite of these positive trends, instability and conflict persist in parts of africa. this instability has a direct bearing on u.s. national interests and those of our closest allies. terrorists, narcotic traffickers and a range of transnational criminal organizations exploit state from jilt and conflict. conflict destabilizes states and borders, it stifles economic growth, and it robs young africans of the opportunity for education and a better life.

while attacks in brussels and paris and even in san bernardino offer tragic reminders that terrorism can happen anywhere, africa has critical vulnerabilities and capacity gaps that must be addressed. therefore, we're working with our african partners to increase their a abilities, to prevent and respond to such threats and to address the conditions that perpetrate the cycles of instability and conflict across the continent. addressing instability in africa requires a comprehensive and a balanced approach as you have stated. we cannot focus solely on the security aspects of the solution. military, intelligence and law enforcement tools are vital to defend a range of threats, but they cannot replace robust diplomacy and the hard work required to strengthen democratic institutions. to stimulate economic growth, trade and investment and promote development, education and

broad-based economic opportunity. state department, usaid and the department of defense, known as the three ds, and several other agencies offer unique exing per tease and capabilities -- expertise and capabilities, and it is essential that each organization has the tools to contribute to our common objectives of building immediate and long-term stability in africa. as you stated, senator cardin, civilitybegins with building stable and strong democratic processes, addressing individual and collective grievances created by lack of governmental accountability, corruption, denial of basic human rights and feelings of political inclusion is not just the right thing for governments and civic leaders to do, it is a security imperative. stability in africa ultimately requires leaders with the will and the capacity to respond to the needs and aspirations of their people.

we continue to stay focused on supporting free, fair and transparent elections that are inclusive and representative. we've seen major electoral successes during the past several years, but there have been some setbacks as well. however, democratic governance is not only about elections. national and local governments must deliver essential services for their people; civil society and a free press must be empowered. independent judiciaries must enforce rule of law, and professional security forces must respect human rights. president obama, president obama has also highlighted that the most urgent task facing africa today and for decades ahead is to create opportunity for the next generation. young people constitute a majority of africa's population and stand to gain or lose tremendously based on the continent's social, political and economic trajectory. they also represent the next

generation of african leaders. they must be empowered to contribute to their country's future so that they are not enticed by extremist ideologies. president obama has warned about the vulnerabilities, and i quote: the vulnerabilities of people entirely trapped in impoverished communities where there is no order and no path for advancement, where there are no educational opportunities, where there are no ways to support families and no escapes from justice and the humiliation of corruption that feeds instability and disorder and makes these communities rife for extremist recruitment, unquote. we know that groups like boko haram, al-shabaab, al-qaeda and associated groups often ensnare their foot soldiers by simply offering cash or a promise of financial reward for themselves and for their families. it's vital that governments, sometimes in partnership with

the private sector, use every available resource to offer educational and vocational opportunities that provide alternatives to these lethal traps. we also recognize that strengthening the security and justice institutions of our african partners is vital for long-term stability on the con innocent. continent. so as a consequence, we're partnering with african countries, with organizations, with people to develop capable, professional security services, improve security sector governance and enhance regional coordination for more effective responses. once again, i thank you for the opportunity to peek to you, and i -- to speak to you, and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you very much. go ahead. >> good morning, chairman corker. good morning, ranking member cardin and all the members of the committee. and i also thank you for this opportunity to discuss usaid's work on this very important topic. throughout africa, u.s. national interests and our efforts in

promoting resilient, democratic societies and to increase economic opportunities for people are increasingly threatened by the instability and the threat of violent extreme im. we believe, and as this committee has already stated, that development programming can be a powerful tool to prevent conflict and infable. conflict and instability impede development, they slow investment, they prevent children from attending schools -- as we've seen in northern nigeria -- they place additional burdens on already-fragile health care systems as we've seen in the ebola response case, and they undermine political systems. we also know that activities are designed to reduce opportunities for extremists to exploit economic inequality, the lack of political integration, and we need to actually make sure that these activities help to advance development programming throughout the countries. the data i'll try to discuss are programs which are based on strategic thinking and evidence-based, results-oriented

approaches, but i'll also touch on the importance of usaid's governance program which seek to reduce corruption and institutional weaknesses that can often foster instability. when we look at the drivers, experience has taught us that responding to military conflicts that erupt in fragile states by deploying large peacekeeping missions or large-scale and often far too long-term humanitarian responses are very costly. for that reason, whenever usaid designs its program or country strategy, we use our analytic capabilities and knowledge of the local context to reduce the drivers of from jilt. these assessments consider the push factors that drive support for violent extremism such as social fragmentation, a sense of injustice, perceptions of marginalization and distrust of government. we also try to address the pull factors that can attract those who are vulnerable to violent extremism. this analysis helps to shape our intervention to promote good

governor answer and rule of law and respect for human rights as well as sustainable, inclusive development. we don't have one single answer as to a what causes violent extremism. a decade of analysis has shown there's a strong correlation between state fragility, feelings of injustice, marginalization as being drivers of violent extremism. in 2011usaid issued a policy which we entitled the development response to violent extremism and insurgency. this recognized development's role in advancing u.s. national security. our activities, therefore, are designed to mitigate these drivers by increasing resiliency at all levels. at the individual level, we target marginalized communities, particularly youth, through employment, outreach programs, vocational training skills and community development activities. at the local level, we focus on social cohesion activities, peace committees, to build stronger, more resill gent communities.

at the national level, usaid has an important role in strengthening government institutions and their ability to deliver basic services, but also to encourage inclusion and better transparticipant city. transparency. youth are a key demographic in our programming, and while this is no one profile, unemployed youth who are university graduates or who have no expectations and have lived through or participated in conflict can be at the greatest risk. therefore, our programming focuses on this important demographic. in kenya, for example, 75% of the population is under 30 years of age. there are general -- through our generation kenya program, we offer targeted training to at-risk populations, closing the gap between young people who are out of work and employers short of employees with skills. generation kenya plans to place more than 50,000 young people in stable careers by 2020. going forward, usaid will expand this programming into violent extremism hot spots working hand in hand with communities, local

and national governments and the private sector to insure or its success. in niger, our peace through development process produces and delivers original radio content which is aimed at terrorist marketing. it reaches over 1.7 million people in 40 of the most at-risk communities. we've also engaged nearly 100,000 people through civic ex, moderate voice promotion and youth empowerment-themed events. these programs, we believe, increase citizens' engagement with the government and decrease incentives for young people to take part in illegal or extremist activities. in conclusion, instability is often the product of generations of neglect and corruption, and its resolution, therefore, will be the product of generations of concerted focus, legitimate engagement and met expectations. because trends in extremism are fluid, we know that we must constantly reassess our priorities, our progress and our policies to insure that our work

is actually based on the realities of today. through program assessments, implementations and evaluations, we are learning what works and what does not work. we're improving best practices, and we're helping individuals and communities to address these drivers of instability and violent extremism on their own. through the work of you are missions in the -- our missions in the field and through usaid-supported resource centers. our commitment is evidenced, but we know that we can't do it alone. sustained engagement with strong partners through the departments of state and defense, through the work that your committee is doing here and with donor governments as well as with our partners in the religious communities, local governments, civil society organizations, all of these different groups on the ground who will be key to combating extremism key, and they'll be key also to securing peace and stability for years to come. i thank you, and i look forward to your questions. >> thank you so much. >> mr. chairman, ranking member cardin and distinguished members

of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. as outlined in our statement for the record be, a number of terrorist groups remain active in sub-saharan africa including al-shabaab, al-qaeda in the islamic maghreb and bow coe that rem, also known as islamic state west africa province. regional military forces with the united states and international assistance have made progress against all of these terrorist groups. terrorist safe havens in somalia, northern mali and the lake chad basin have been degraded significantly. however, in the face of this pressure these groups have shifted to more asymmetric tactics including attacks against soft targets. we've seen this dynamic in west africa recently over the recent months aqim have carried out a series of attacks against or international hotels and tourist sites in mali, burkina faso and

coat da story. we've seen shabaab become increasingly aggressive against high profile targets in somalia and across the border in kenya. we were also concerned about the risk that isil's threats may grow in the don't innocent. isil -- continent. as well as local insurgencies and conflicts to expand its networks and advance its agenda. we are watching these dynamics closely, we are working with partners to contain and drive back isil-affiliated groups wherever they may emerge. the united states has committed to building and sustaining partnerships across africa that counter terrorism and promote stability. partnerships are at the core of our approach. and this is reflected in our interagency efforts as well through the partnership for regional east africa counterterrorism and the trans-saharadown terrorism partnership. mr. chairman, the united states

is providing significant support for regional military operations. through our diplomacy, the department of state continues to encourage regional leadership and cooperation to sustain these efforts. military efforts alone are insufficient, however. as we deal with the evolving threat environment, the success of our counterterrorism efforts in africa increasingly depends upon capable and responsible -- and responsive civilian partners; police, prosecutors, judges, prison officials and community leaders who can help address terrorist challenges within a sustainable and rule-of-law framework that respects human rights. in this regard, the department of state is training and mentoring law enforcement units for more than 15 african countries. we are building their capacity to prevent and respond to terrorist incidents, conduct terrorism-related investigations and improve land, border and aviation security. we are also providing significant assistance for african prosecutors and courts to effectively and expeditiously

handle terrorism cases. we are working to enhance the capacity of prisons in africa to effectively handle terrorist inmates in accordance with international human rights standards. mr. chairman, we greatly appreciate the funding provided infiscal year 2015 for the counterterrorism partnership fund. this funding will enable us to expand our assistance for law enforcement and justice sector efforts in key african countries. at the same time, the department and usaid are increasing our focus on preventing the spread of violent extremism in the fist place. to stop the recruitment, mobilization of people, especially young people, to engage in terrorist activities. we are expanding engagement with african partners to better understand the drivers of violent extremism in order to design effective responses. this includes promoting greater trust and partnership between communities and law enforcement. the president's fiscal year 2017 budget request includes increased resources for counter violent extremism programs including an additional $59

million as part of our overall request under the counterterrorism partnership's fund. these resources would enable us to expand programs in africa, to engage communities and youth susceptible to violent extremist recruitment. mr. chairman, there is no single solution to defeat terrorist groups and promote stability in africa. the challenges are significant. but we believe we have committed partners in africa who are making progress. we believe we will be most effective in the long run with a comprehensive approach that promotes regional cooperation, the rule of law and good governance. we continue to look for ways to enhance this approach, and we appreciate the strong support of congress for these efforts. thank you. >> thank you, all. let me just start by setting context here. if you look at the regions that weaver discussing today -- we're discussing today, and you look at the number of deaths, displacements, the scale of what's happening in these three regions and other places throughout africa really, over

the course of time, is as large as the scale of terrorist activities in the middle easts, is that correct? .. the number of people have been killed are as large as if not larger than the people have been killed by isis in the last year. there is a devastating impact and it is reflected in the numbers of people killed and impacted by terrorism and africa. >> no disagreement from the other witnesses. >> no. >> let me ask you this. there's tremendous there's tremendous focus in the middle east, we have had a lot of hearings here, most of us on the other hand

have traveled throughout africa and have seen a tremendous threat to stability there. why do you think the world focus is marceau on areas like the middle east and less so on areas like the regions we are talking about right now in africa? >> i will offer my thoughts mr. chairman. i think with the case of isil, they emanate from al qaeda in iraq and so there has been a focus in particular on that conflict ongoing. that is of course devastated those societies as well, and continues to. that of course built off of the historic origins of al qaeda from the middle east in that region, so i think think from a terrorism perspective the focus has generally been on that region as the core area where these threats have come from.

it is not as just noted when you look at actual violence the groups in africa are committing extreme amounts of violence, boca her on a particular has targeted civilians and we report these, it is consistently in the top ranks of terrorist groups in terms of committing violence and destabilizing entire regions those are as great in the african continent but generally speaking. >> but for what region. >> i think for isil it is appropriate to focus on the core area where that group has a come from and that is the main f

against isil. in many ways when look at the spread of isil preventing that will depends on defeating the group in its core homeland. so, therefore the focus on that regard and that core area is appropriate. >> any other comments? >> i would just say that much of the terrorism that we saw in the past on the continent of africa tended to be focused on africa. there is not the comparable threat to the homeland from terrorists in africa as we see in the middle east. but i think we have all come to the conclusion that terrorism anywhere affects us everywhere. we have to address it not just in the middle east but in africa as well. >> so the core central beginnings if you will of this

threat, emanated from the middle east and so hitting areas were specially they are establishing caliphate has been important. secondly, the groups in africa have not been seen as a threat to western entities, with that be a a fair assessment of the focus? >> i would say initially. we are seeing more and more that this does have an impact on us. when we look at the attacks on molly, americans were victims. >> i would just add that these groups evolved out of the particular context in africa but have been co-opted or joined up with transnational terrorist groups. al shabab which began out of the islamic courts group in somalia, later affiliated with al qaeda and of course was

part of al qaeda's global agenda and that has been a significant concern of the u.s. security community because of the foreign fighter element that has traveled it to somalia including american citizens. it's been a concern concern that al shabab representing an al qaeda affiliate does also potentially advanced al qaeda gender. similarly with the trend to there's been great concern to look at the group to determine whether they will have more targeted interest even more externally. >> i will save the rest of my time for interjection interjection. >> i think all of our panelist for all of their work in a very challenging assignment. as as i have said in my opening statement there is no simple solution to the violence that is taking place in the terrorism that is taking place. clearly we need a security

response including direct support against terrorism. i strongly support that. but as each pointed out the recruitment of terrorists is because there is a void. there are individuals who feel they have no other choice and they are vying for recruitment. my my concern is, are we giving countries a free pass who are partners in our counterterrorism campaigns, on human rights and poor governance? i say that and can give you many examples. in ethiopia they just had a parliamentary election, not a single opposition leader of the person was elected. we have seen the security forces there who have killed hundreds of protesters. in chad we have dozen of military officers who have been arrested because they would not vote for the president. in somalia we have a report in

yesterday's washington post that they are using children for spies. we have extrajudicial killings by the military in nigeria and kenya. yet i do not race see a response by the them u.s. in regards to these activities. are we giving them a free pass question what should we be giving them a free pass? pass? >> thank you for that question senator. and every one of the cases that you mentioned we condemned human rights abuses. we regularly regularly condemn those abuses by security forces of a government. we make clear to to these governments that this is a core value for the united states. at the same time, we are committed to firmly working with our partners to address efforts to defeat terrorism. we cannot draw a line essay we

are not going to work with you on terrorism because of human rights violations we reinforcement these governments on a regular basis that they must respect human rights, civil liberties. >> how do you do that? how do do you reinforce that they must? >> we start with a diplomatic discussion. in the case of ethiopia we had intense discussion with that government over the past year. you may know that as a result of those discussions we are having a human rights dialogue being led by her system secretary for human rights, tom -- with the ethiopians. it's a challenge. we do not not always get our messages through to them. but they are hearing that these are concerns. in many cases they are upset that we are expressing concerns about human rights. >> would you share with me in this committee the specific methods you have used to

transmit your concerns on human rights violations and lack of democratic progress. i would be interested in that. i see the strong voice of the united states on counterterrorism issues which i expect to see and want to continue to see. i have not seen the same degree of effort and energy in regards to concerns on the poor governments and violations of human rights. >> first of all we start with our embassies. with our ambassadors, engaging with governments. >> that is a pretty quiet usually. >> sometimes it is quiet and sometimes are but investors do not get meetings because they're not quite, they are very public in their expression of concerns. it also occurs through meetings i have on a regular basis with heads of state.

it is at the top of the agenda. they pushed back, back, they say we do not respect them as partners because we are raising human rights concerns. we do do not understand the situation in their countries. my response has always been, please please understand this is the core value for us. we also work with their militaries in terms of providing human rights training. we fund those that directly. we do lay he that tien on a number of countries, affect all countries that we are involved in doing any military training with. there have been some countries where we have had to make the hard decision not to work with their military and security services because they have committed human rights -- >> the security system budgets in africa have gone up from a half a billion dollars to 1,000,000,000 dollars. the democracy government has fallen in that. of time. i would think that democracy and governance is

a clear indication of our commitment on the governance of human rights. there is certainly a shortage of funds, there's no question about that. i would like to see a larger pie for a global effort and of these areas. as i understand it a large amount of decision as to how those funds are allocated are based upon who is the most effective and advocating for knee. have we been ineffective in advocating for democracy and governance? >> i would like to say no because it is the top of my agenda. >> why is there a decline in those funds? >> i am not an appropriate or, if i were i would be -- >> a lot of this is a complicit operation between the people at the state department and appropriators. >> from the africa bureau's standpoint, senator your speaking to the choir.

i do not have a knife resources and i think usaid will agree with me on that. we could use more resources in that area. we know that putting money toward democracy and governance, putting money toward good elections, putting money toward building the capacity of civil society contributes to making countries more stable and respect for human rights. we make strong cases from our standpoint to support democracy funding so that we have that funding to implement the program. >> i would just urge you to do this in a way is visible to those of us who support your efforts. quite frankly we do not see that. we are sending our own messages as loudly as we can including at this hearing that we want to see greater funds for democracy and governance. if we do not get the feedback from what is happening in the missions, it makes our

job much more difficult. it looks like that countries are getting a free pass as long as they are on our coalition team, what they do it in their own culture a little important to our foreign policy mission. which eat the way your talking mistress the opposite. so showing so showing that, not just by quiet diplomatic contact , but how we are making that point with certainly i think help us in accomplishing our mutual desire for good governance. >> good. thank you. >> thank you mr. chairman. can you tell me what happened to joseph kony? >> he is still out there. there has been a very strong and proactive efforts against the lre. we have been working with the eight you and with the ugandans another partners. we were able to get his number two who is now currently in the

hague being tried. but tony has been elusive. our efforts continue very robustly to get him. the job is not over until that is done. >> one time we committed 100 special trips of forces to go after kony, are they still the play question my. >> i think they are. i cannot give you the exact numbers but i did meet with the team when i was in uganda the last time. they are still working there. >> although not recognized as an institutional terrace there probably no worse terrace than joseph kony in terms of children and women. i am glad we are still committed to try to bring justice as hard as that appears to be. talk about the african for union for a minute. did they address the issue of terrorism, do they have a game plan to deal terrorism? >> we are working very closely with the african union on terrorism on the continent. it is high on their agenda. in the case of nigeria, they they have been very much a part

of the creation of the multinational joint task force in chad. we we have provided then some funding and some assistance in their efforts there. it is the mission in somalia, it is an au mission and it is the largest au mission on the continent of africa with troop contributing countries from the region. it is high on their agenda. we are partnering with them along with our european colleagues to make sure they have the capacity and the funding to address what has been a very challenging and difficult threat for them as well as us in the continent. >> and then we use human rights issues and labor rights issues and the approval of participation with the united states never can countries. i was in the eight you three years ago we chastise swaziland for their labor lack of humanity and we use that as a predicate for

them staying in the african -- are we leveraging our trade power and our economics as much as we should in africa? particularly in terms of terrorism. >> we are. swaziland is still not a part of ago up. we regularly send letters of warning to countries if they are not on the right side of human rights and caring for their people. ago is very important for them. it is huge leverage. in many cases it has worked to get governments to term policies around. if they have not we have kicked them out. >> i know we do on other issues do we do it on fighting terrorism as well? we do. but we do understand that they have a challenge. they have a capacity challenge. there are also other challenges that i mentioned in senator cordon mentioned in his statement.

lack of government minutes, corruption that has limited the capacity of government to fight terrorism. i think they'll have all have come to understand that they do not fight terrorism they will not be around to do anything else. they have come to that very strong realization that they have to partner with their neighbors as well as with the international community to ensure that terrorists do not take over their countries. >> china invest a lot of money for their own benefit in africa and extracts a lot of minerals and raw materials to build roads and highways, do we we ever engage with the chinese on the issue terrorism on the continent of africa to get them to help the continent? >> we do. i was in china about four weeks ago for our annual consultation with the chinese. that was on our agenda. usaid usaid was there recently as well on consultations to look at how

we can better coordinate with the chinese on what they're doing in africa, both economically and politically. >> my experience is that terrorism flourishes when there's a presence of no education, poverty, and that disease, and lack a pope. africa is probably the poster child for those qualifications. the more we can do like the africa bill in the water bill that we have done here the food security bill, the more we can uplift the african people the better fight we can have against terrorism. is that fair assessment? >> i will turn to my colleague at usaid, but i absolutely agree with you. >> i will agree, but i also say that we have data that shows that this is actually the case. we see that where ten years of research over all of these countries that usaid has worked in has shown very clear evidence that when we see governments actually able to deliver

services such as energy, access to electricity, education, healthcare, healthcare, there's a core bounding decrease in the amount of feelings of marginalization, feelings of inclusion, and, and we have also seen that those countries are usually not the same as that are correlated with conflict and instability. it has been very clear that there is also a clear correlation be where there is an absence of delivery systems and word people do feel marginalized and have access to opportunities that those countries are at risk and it is very clearing. a link between violent extremism, that's the next step. when step. when you are engaged in conflict your sympathy of going the next level is not as far a stretch. so we know that these are things that actually matter. we know that development is actually a very important tool in the space. >> for my observation it appears that where we have made

challenge compact and we have helped build the structure of these countries has been less of a presence of terrorism in those countries where we didn't. i think that is a good thing for us to continue to invest money. i'm a big support in our engagement on that. thank you very much for service all that. >> thank you. i have about a minute and a half freezer. i'm just going to ask you a quick question. all of us are very proud of the work that we have done in food aid reform, clean water, and we have other efforts that are underway. very private that work. i appreciate you mentioning the benefit that is to people, mass numbers of people, millions of people. on the other hand, to bring up a topic that i think senator alluded to and you just did a minute ago, when we work with governments that we know are abusing their own citizens, they are corrupt.

they're absolutely subjective this uses two terrible atrocities themselves, those governments. those governments. when we work with them to counterterrorism, how does that work against u.s. interest relative to causing many to harbor ill will against the u.s. itself. by scene is associated with governments that are corrupt and not treating their citizens appropriately. >> i think we have to work with governments to fight terrorism. we also have to continue to work with these governments to address human rights deficiencies in their countries. i think the people of those countries water to continue to engage. they they wanted voices to be heard. they know that when we are engaging with these governments that we are also raising concerns about human rights, we

have gotten some people released from jail, we have gotten some governments to moderate their actions against her citizens. it is not a perfect solution but i truly believe that our engagements with them help on the issues of human rights. our engagement, i will give the example where we believe that the military emperor randy has been less active and violence against citizens because of our engagement with them. because of the human rights training that they got from our people working closely with them. the governments has been a problem. we have seen that that military has been less of a problem that most people expected. >> just to add to, in addition to what was noted earlier that all of our civilian delivered

assistance is subject to requirements orbiting under the leahy law, we work with governments to strengthen their rule of law framework in which they would carry out effective counterterrorism policy. we reject the notion that there is a inherent conflict in effective counterterrorism and protection of human rights of the people. we have worked to embody that concept in what is known as the robot memorandum which is a document the united states government help to develop through the global counterterrorism form. this is the basis of assistance that we deliver increasingly across the continent in cooperation with the department of justice. prosecutors that we fund from the state department that work with governments to establish strong, ct legislation legislation but to protect the human rights of the people. this is a major challenge in africa. i would say that on the one hand

you have partners willing and capable that need a lot more assistance to become fully capable to fight terrorism challenges. but they have we governments structures. this is where where we have to strengthen those structures of government so that as they conduct military led security led operations to detain terrorists and to prevent terrorist attacks they do so in a framework that enables for those people to be prosecuted and detained effectively with accordance of national human rights standards. it's a long-term effort but we are very much engaged in that currently. >> thank you. >> thank you mr. chairman very much i'm just going to follow up with senators points which is that nigeria's people most need help with governance and corruption issues, the united states is planning to sell the

government attacked aircraft known as the a 29 super -- to nigeria. it would be to fight trant trant >> just last month the international accused the nigerian army of killing hundreds of members of the shia minority sect in december. unfortunately that is happening in other countries in east africa as well. so what is your perspective on that? given the fact that the people of nigeria increasingly are seen usaid move from humanitarian or anticorruption efforts over to more military aid for those who they believe internally are the one where a greater risk of the security of their families.

>> are eight is not moving away from corruption. the the new president nigeria has made clear that corruption is one of his highest priorities. he named named three priorities when he came into power. that was dealing with a bogle rom and dealing with the economy. we are are working very closely with the government. in fact the secretary is in london at a meeting hosted by the ukraine on corruption and president bihari is there. on the issue of assisting the nigerians in fighting trant trant we were concerned about their ability to use those and not have an impact on their communities. >> let me ask you question another way. if there is no success in convincing the people of nigeria

that the government is not corrupt, that their government is not fair, will any of this military aid ultimately create the conditions for a successful effort to defeat trant we absole good governance. we cannot do both. we cannot we cannot do one or the other or we will fail. it will be long-term. i have to say the nigerian people want us there to assist them on the security side as well. they know that their government doesn't have the capacity alone. >> internally, how do you think it will affect the views of the people as we increase military

aid to the very people they fear , how do you think that will affect how they perceive the united states is playing in nigeria and what could be the consequences of that if that persist. >> it shows that we are extremely popular in nigeria. the nigerian people are victims of trant they know there has to be some kind of security they want us there to help our military and they think that ife to help it will be less abusive to the people. that is a point that we've made we are training to battalions of

soldiers and they have human rights training and all of them have been leahy vetted. we are working with the government to moderate and stop human rights abuses by the military. on the security side i think then nigeria people who are victims of the boko haram want to see us address of the security threat they're facing. >> i just think we are on the thin edge here. we just have to be very careful especially the government does not control adequately its own military. i think it's in part that it does for the overall morale inside the country. it makes it much more difficult -- i think we need to keep an eye on that. and congo there is significance political tension because the president there is trying to

prolong his stay beyond to the constitutional two-term limit. his security agents are harassing opposition politicians in a very serious way. mass protests and a parent to remain in office appears eminent. so what is ultimately the likelihood that such protests could spark further instability particularly of security forces continue to crackdown in response to these democratic instincts that people have as has been the case in the past. i sent a letter to secretary carey in february suggesting that the u.s. should communicate to the present there to publicly state his intention to respect the constitution and step aside at the end of his second term in december and if you fail to do that and made appropriate preparations for elections the we should implement sanctions if he does not do that. in response to my letter, you seem to suggest that camille's actions in the next few months would be determined whether or not state would in opt to an act sanctions.

he testified much around the same time, it seems to me the political environment is deteriorating and congo and they have not -- has the time arrived for sanctions to be imposed on the government of congo? >> thank you for that question. yes, we are looking very actively at sanctions as they relate to those who are involved in violence. we have conveyed that to kabila and his people. the secretary met with him a few weeks ago in new york. our special on bay has been proactively engaged in the region we are still hopeful that we will get the government of congo and president kabila to do the right thing. the constitution is very clear that the term ends in december

and they must have an election. we have conveyed that to him. we are also working very closely with our other partners with the e.u., with the french and others to make sure that we are all on the same sheet of music on that issue. >> the election is scheduled for the end of this year, it's only may, there's plenty of time to set up an election. write another talking about the end of 2017 as the earliest, that would be clear violation of the constitution. >> absolutely. >> we need to make it very clear to him that will not accept that. >> thank you. thank you mr. chairman and thank you to all of you for being here today for your ongoing work. can you talk about the importance of women's empowerment in developing in africa and what we are doing, what you would identify as the

best examples of successful programs? >> i love that question. i think that we increasingly, especially in talking about conflict and instability need to talk about the role of women and peace and security. in in fact, that is an actual u.s. government policy which is entitled u.s. woman peace and security strategy which talks about the fact that women are critical agents of not only as victims, but but agents of change when we're talking about instability and conflict but also violent extremism. our programming runs the gamut depending on what the situation or scenario is. in areas where they are vulnerable communities or we see that they do not have a lot of access to legal recourse, economic opportunities, and they often are coerced or used as instruments of terror or violence, or suffer from gender-based violence. we seek

to find ways to empower local women communities in allowing them training, work through economic empowerment, access access to education which is another critical element we are seeing. when women have access to education and girls we have seen child marriage rates falling, their susceptibility to feeling of acceptance with violent extremist groups also decreases. again, we think it is very important to target to women and in these environments because we have also seen it not only are they able to make a critical difference in their own lives but there also critical agents of change in the rest of their community. >> i do not know whether you are mr. several want to address this, but can you also talk about the efforts to recruit people to terrorism to boko haram, how the difference of

overseeing the ability to recruit men and women, i know there's been increasing never to use women as suicide bombers. can you talk a little about what we see, who is easier to recruit? >> i think for most of the groups the emphasis emphasis continues to be on recruiting young men. in in the case of boko haram, notoriously they have used girls in suicide bombing operations which is absolutely despicable, they are obviously coerced into that activity. i would just build on something my colleague just noted on the role of women in particular in identifying the seeds of radicalization. women play a critical role in

most communities in being close to the people and having the ability to understand whether or not their influences coming into the community that could lead to a process of radicalization and recruitment into terrorist groups. this is one of the areas we would like to develop in our programming. we have a program that has been underway in nigeria, through u.s. institute of peace, in which they are developing a network of influential women, women who already have a role in society to bring them into a network and train those women on observing and understanding whether there may be signs of radicalization. he said the kind of programs that will be very important as we get into the community level and address the drivers to radicalization of violence. >> one of the things we have heard about the success of isil has spent their ability to recruit people to a caliphate. the idea of the caliphate is very important. are we seeing that same kind of interest in africa, in terms of the

messaging to try to recruit? >> the numbers coming out of africa that we are aware of in terms of a foreign terrorist, those of actually been inspired to travel and attempt to travel to syria and iraq are much lower than for other parts of the world whether it be north africa were countries or european states, the caucuses, and even down into southeast asia. the numbers are higher. with that said, there is evidence that some african recruitment among africans into isil and isil's propaganda is a very shrewd in identifying and using recruits who come from particular reasons and appealing to those individuals to join the caliphate. or come to iraq and syria. of course isil has been it tempting to infiltrate into other areas of the continent, it continent, it in particular in somalia. there is evidence that there is

a struggle and conflict internally between al shabab and elements that have sought to adhere or affiliate with isil. they have not seem to have success there but it does identify that this is an ongoing concern that we have to watch very closely. >> is the cost getting to syria to iraq part of the challenge? or is it the messaging that's the issue? >> i think there are a lot of factors, that would be one. one is the things that have made this conflict in iraq and syria such a threat to all of us is the relative accessibility of the conflict for the people in europe or turkey for example you can get it to syria quite easily. i think it is harder for the people in africa because it cost more. it is is more difficult logistically to do that. >> of the estimated 60 million refugees in the world today, i understand about 15 million are in the sub sahara africa.

i assume, but maybe you shouldn't that the terrace and instabilities are driving those numbers, can you talk about the and also talk about the climate change is playing a role in what we are seeing in sub-saharan africa? >> sure. >> is not surprisingly we are seeing numbers of refugee movements right now and i'll just say internally because the people are necessarily leaving their borders and moving out. when the instability in somalia we have seen people go across yemen which we know is not secure at all. people know that they are not secure or say. would your surveys we see time after time that these people do not feel secure and safe they

will move across borders and they don't feel like there's any opportunity for them to exist on their own of the country of origin. so we have seen situations where even when insecurity such as in the democratic congo where we've seen large refugee movements, what is often cause people to move across borders and move further is when marcus start closing down when there is not ability to make a living. we have got a dynamic population in these countries that, in a sideways are used to coping and dealing with instability and very creative ways. but the current pressure of instability and lack of opportunity are what are pushing them to move further. >> so than climate change is a big contributor. >> climate change is a big contributor in both. we we have seen the el niño effect right now throughout ethiopia, kenya

and somalia. it's definitely a definitely a factor. in 2011 we know the payment was partially caused by drought, mostly by al shabab with a big reason that people had to cross borders i was so the largest migration of somalia's and it put pressure neighboring countries such as kenya and sudan and ethiopia. we are seeing that those pressures are increasing local tensions and we see very much the same story, current draft and problems. the ability to have accessible land has cost people to move to urban centers. with the lack of opportunity were seen increased radicalization as well. >> thank you. >> limit just begin, would you

describe boko haram as an anti-christian terror group whose main motivation is to rid nigeria of christianity? i say that based on a video released by the leader that said this is a war against christians, the democracy constitution. the constitution. the law says we should finish them when we get them. >> i would say they are more than that. i would say that is part of their ideology. they have curled more muslims in the north than i have killed christians. they are a terrorist organization in the have no boundaries. >> would you support designating nigeria as a country of particular concern for religious freedom? >> i would not designate nigeria of it as a country, we have huge, huge and very active christian populations in nigeria throughout the southern parts of nigeria into the middle belts and even northern nigeria. we have a huge muslim population there as well. so both communities until boko

haram were able to live together and work together harmoniously. i think that can continue once boko haram is brought into justice. >> from usaid, what programs exist to assist the victims of boko haram, in particular the psychological programs for women and girls who have been victims of sexual violence? >> you put the nail on the head. we have a conference a program right now that is in design to really target the northeast of nigeria. looking at the victims of boko haram, we are working with communities right now because as we have seen, when people who are leading boko haram or who have been victims of boko haram return to their communities, sometimes they suffer from a second wave of victimization. so we are working to educate

community. >> in terms of stigma? >> it is been heartbreaking actually. we are working to educate community as to what it actually means and why people suffer. and the fact that they can still be productive members of society. we also offer psychosocial support and care. a number of girls that we did manage to return home are receiving that type of care right now. we are also making sure that we're working with local clinics and medical providers to train them in the right techniques. we are also working with community influence makers, religious leaders, so that there is a message that can be amplified through various channels that there is recovery that is possible. where possible, we are are restarting basic social services such as education, we are

putting more money into emergency education in the north and we are hoping that where we can we can increase access. we are also providing assistance to those for internally displaced through basic humanitarian assistance. >> with all this instant ability in sub sahara, how did it affect your ability to implement programs. have many been suspended due to security concerns? >> throughout the sahara africa when we work in unstable environments we have programs that have to exercise flexibility. so we have multiple times is suspended and restarted programs. i think a model of working in these climates has to be based on the idea that really developing long-standing, long visioning network with these communities so that when security prevents us from moving into an area, we have the right networks and through understandings of local people on the ground and our staff who

often are from the region, they understand when we can come back, they also also understand how we can still have access and figure out creative ways of providing assistance to those intended beneficiary. again, i would emphasize the flexibility of the program to understanding that it is not sometimes a continuous flow programming without starts and stops. especially an area where there is. >> that would be highly disruptive, for example if you are assisting a victim of sexual violence and in the middle of that program the security concerns that require us to eliminate people from that setting and then suspended and restarted. his is a commonplace problem the stops and starts because of the security of army? >> so it's not that the program will stop entirely. usually what we try to do is we have a combination of working through

local partners and so a lot of part what time we train the trainers. they still receive some reports even if some of our staff have to pull back. we try to lay her on different types of interventions to make sure that we have creative ways of making sure that we are able to reach the beneficiaries. it is disrupted. disrupted. when, in extreme places we have to completely not be in a particular area for some time, course that's disruptive. but we have found is that over time when it's been for sustained periods of time, the population is also moving as well. >> on the counter terror threat there is been rumors that the leader of boko haram, is perhaps fighting in syria with isil, can you shoot shed any light on that? >> i have not seen that, he periodically appears and videos that we are distributed and are

aware. one of the things that we have noted is that after the affiliation of boko haram with the islamic state, whether there was any difference in the quality of their media output which is usually an indicator of a strong link. we we have seen a little bit of that payment not. >> i don't know if there's been any reporting that i've seen that he's in syria. >> are there any countries that you're particularly concerned about terms of recruiting fighters and how significantly do you assess the threat of more more fighters flowing out of east africa? were quite concerned about isil or the islamic states attempts to infiltrate an affiliate with existing insurgencies or terrorist organizations. we know they have been attempting to move into somalia, al shabab

itself is recognize this as a threat and there's been a fierce struggle internally to hold off. but that raises the possibility that they will look at other smaller communities in the region to include can they are, elsewhere, so, so this is something we're concerned with. we know that isil will want to continue to build its network and affiliates. we have to remain attuned to that. of course libya is a major affiliate of there is also the threat that connections might be made through libyan throughout the region. we are watching that closely as well. as for individuals traveling to the conflict, as you have noted a minute ago there has been some instance of that but the numbers of sub-saharan africa ours used generally low compared to numbers of north africa, or southeast asia.

>> senator mccain. >> think mr. chair and thanks to the witnesses were being here today. chairman corker, you you opened with a provocative question which is, given some of the statistics in the deaths, why is there less focus, generally in the media, and the public sphere about some of these challenges in africa and elsewhere where. the staff asked asked the africa center for strategic studies to prepare some material for the hearing. there is a really, really good one pager on the number of fatalities that have been experienced in africa. i would like to introduce it for the record. >> absolutely. >> it did not did seem to provoke much. >> it bears out your point exactly one of the reasons i admire my colleagues on the committee's many on this committee spend a lot of time in africa, and not committee members to. hearings like this are really helpful. just a thought on this, i don't have to be diplomatic because

i'm not a diplomat. on the question of the differential, i think you have to acknowledge that race, we would have to look at mira and and ask yourself if braces part of the reason. if we look backward at her own history, often things get explained in retrospect and races part of the reason. we put japanese americans in a german case, we do put germans there, what explain the difference, german-americans look more european like the powers that be then japanese americans day. there's a school of thought that explains the differential actions of the united states in the 90s in terms of intervening dramatically to stop genocide in the balkans but not intervening to stop genocide in rwanda and then why didn't we intervene in one and not the other. some of the answers to that is not too pleasant. so i think part of the reason to have a hearing like this in part of the reason i applaud my colleagues who spend a lot of time in

africa, is because as leaders we have to challenge and it's a media print trail to, terrorist attacks in mali, nigeria, chad, are worthy of the of the attacks that brussels and paris are. and even others don't give us much attention. all of of these are important and having a hearing like this tries to put it on an equal scale and not suggests that some lives are worth less than others. i think there's other reasons. in the middle east we have needed something, we've needed oil, so, so that's probably made us more focused on the middle east and we haven't focused as much on africa because maybe we do perceive that we needed something as much. , also, and again it's a good reason to have a hearing like this are form policies as a nation just have an east-west access that is been undeniable. we've cared about the soviet

union, now russia and china, if you look at the diplomatic effort that focus south of the equator, it's just been less. that's that's something that's been good about a hearing like this. i wanted to ask a question. i'm going to make you do homework me were all writing the defense authorizing bill. africana is an interesting regional command on the military side because probably more than any of the other it integrates cross disciplinary usaid and trying to deal with chain challenges in africa. as folks who who are not part of the dod, talk to me about the perceptions of africa,, one proposal is to fold it back into you, and not there be a specific africa.

second, talk to me about the efficacy on senators questions less about the arms sales but about the training and exercises we do with african militaries. i know many of our u.s. ambassadors ask that we devote marine units and other units of training i power terrorism and human trafficking to build capacity. in your view as professionals in this area, how successful other are those training efforts that we do with african security training courses? >> i will will certainly turn to mccauley. i hope that africa, is not folded back into yukon because what it is meant to us is that we have a military that is more focused on africa and has over the years become more understanding of africa. they have become a great partner for us. we very much appreciate that

partnership with africa, and as a for the armed services we do have a key area of said concerns. those concerns concerns are that as their authorizations are being considered there crossing some lines into the areas into diplomacy and development. those are what we like to keep and where we think we have better skills and skill sets to carry out those responsibilities particularly in the area of community developments, in the areas of working on governments, some of those authorizations need to be guarded for the state department and for usaid. the we

have have raised concerns there. in terms of our relationship with africon, i think there better then any time when we are working with -- i think we have areas of disagreement and we have been able to establish channels of communication between general rodriguez and myself. where we have addressed those issues. we have had some positive impact on the region. in all of their training that they do with african military, they have human rights training modules in every single one of those efforts that we have made. i think they have paid dividends for us. we have been able to use the relationships that the military has developed with their military counterparts to get messages through to those militaries. in terms of lethal weapons, we

look very closely adds what we are providing. as i mentioned to us the senator when they asked for cobra/of it and think though it would be appropriate we are concerned about how they be used and we said no. we think the super to condos are a better piece of equipment, we can train them on how to use this equipment to effectively and not have a negative impact on communities and on civilians. so we are working very closely with them to address those concerns to make sure they do not have a negative impact. >> senator king, ranking member on africa. >> thank you mr. chairman,.

>> mr. chairman, and ranking member i just want to thank you both for convening this hearing and for your great engagement on this topic today. along with senator marquis and others we have all enjoyed a chance to work over many years together. just two opening statistics, i think you reminded all of us that there are positives and negatives to the security situation in africa. as some of you know i hosted annual effort kid opportunity -- the fastest-growing caught continent in the world. it has seven out of ten of the fastest-growing economies in the world. eight eight out of ten of the largest united nations peacekeeping operations are also in the continent. i think one of our challenges is to remain appropriately focused on the difficulties of developing assisting, strategic framework for engaging with extremism and

violence on the continent, while still recognizing the significant growth opportunities, positive opportunities to reinforce our values and to work together with our many allies and partners on the continent to moving forward. on the outset i want to thank that dedicated foreign service officers and civil service with the state department and u.s. a id work so hard as well as those of dod and law enforcement who do so much in terms of training and outreach. on a recent trip i took the time to meet with the number of episodes and it's always interesting to hear just how hard they work and i'm impressed with their determination and drive while working under difficult dangers and often remote conditions. let me just ask this panel, what lessons have we learned from fighting terrorism in africa. we have in front of us probably speaking, three case studies and

the saw hill, with a focus on molly, in the lake chad region with a focus on nigeria, and in the horde with a focus on small you. we have very different levels of u.s. engagement, u.s. expenditure, u.s. policy responses. it's a significant stability challenge which is been with somalia, where there is a multilateral military presence where we played a significant role. i think that made substantial success in pushing back al shabab in the lake chad region where were spending less money but boko haram was the deadliest terrorist organization the world. it should get and it deserves higher attention and higher priority, senator kane suggested it is a very unappealing. the united states, by the way gets more oil from the covenant of africa from the middle east. so if it was just about resource prioritization it would be long ago that we put africa on the top of our list. i'm concerned that we are allowing others to become dominant players in africa and we are liking.

and in the saw hill we have predominantly left the hard work from un, the french and an au mission. these are different responses but in all three there are no significant u.s. troop deployment, and maybe central but it's quite different in iraq or syria. so where are we getting the best bang for our buck, our security concerns and what role does diplomacy, development development and security play in this work, if you would just in series what is the strategic framework for making progress? >> i will start and then turn to my colleagues. you asked early what lessons we have learned, i think the most valuable lesson we have learned is that this has to be multifaceted. it cannot be just focused on security and military, we have

to bring in the civilian agencies. we also have learned that we cannot only. we have to build the capacity of local organizations, local military and local security services. local civil society. we have to build their capacity to own it. we have to be supportive of them. third, i think we have learned that we have to partner. in the case of molly, we have been extraordinarily proactive in the -- but we are not in the lead. we have been involved in the peace negotiations come our military has been extraordinarily supportive of the french effort there. there are so many problems across the continent, we have to spread ourselves very thin. we have to look for other

partners, in that case we have worked very closely with our partners in the un as well as the french government to make sure that we are having an impact with the situation. finally, this is been set in the room by everyone, we have we have to be concerned about human rights. we have to ensure that these governments understand that human rights are important for us, as i said before is a core value. they expect to expect to hear from us on human rights issues. if we don't raise human rights, i think everyone of them would be in shock. we generally start out in that area. >> ..

>> there making sure that we are aspiring to the same standard. i think that we have a lot of opportunity here to partner in with the government, private sector, and also local communities, making sure that we are touching people on the ground and not just working with institutions and capitalist. >> i agree with you. the senator raised this and i was pleased because of electoral electoral a regularities and tha setback. it is a great opportunity to continue the administration sending the ambassador among the many others. you may have them take the time to conclude. thank you, sir. >> i think that in general, in

each of these three situations as you pointed out, is that we have, in the african continent, partners that are willing to address the challenges from within the region. they are committed to this and that is something that is unique globally in the way that these terrorist issues are being addressed. each of the three examples that you have provided have not been easy. it takes the constant diplomatic effort to keep the momentum in each of these areas. but the solution that you would want in somalia is a situation that has developed in terms of the contributing countries from the au led missions. and of course the bigger challenge there is that these are governments are also generally speaking in many cases, the weekend before and lack of equity.

the same solution over time that addresses the root causes will require improved government. it is a long-term effort here. but the buy-in and the commitment of the countries themselves is a virtue. >> absolutely. i think that the fighting of terrorism is every bit as large in scale as the middle east. the key difference is that we have allies that are putting soldiers into the fight. african soldiers are fighting and dying in somalia, mali and other areas. we are providing support unlike other places in the world, we have willing allies that are sending their troops into the fight and it has made a difference and we should be grateful for their partnership. i am grateful for your service and the chance to ask questions. thank you. >> very good. senator martin. >> thank you very much, mr. chairman. i wanted to follow up on some of

the questions that the senator asked on regarding assistance provided by the 2014 budget. it was the first time that security in africa past that best data comes from a lot of different places. in particular the pentagon runs called building partner capacity which is about $10 billion globally, increasing the source of dod funds to help to promote military skills and train sales and military standup capacity. so, ambassador linda thomas-greenfield, i wanted to ask you about to what extent the state department and the africa bureau has read into the department of defense to spend holding capacity dollars, a huge

amount of money globally ,-com,-com ma a lot of it is spent in africa, the extent to which individual ambassadors have a say as to how that money is spent. to make sure that it is not counteracting the work that they are doing. and, you know, the broader thoughts on this long-term transition away from the majority of money in these countries, being state department money, to the department of defense money. >> thank you for that question. we work closely with africa with any activity that they are involved in and we have an annual strategy review meeting with them where the usaid mission director's come there. i am there, my college from

their is also there as well. we look across the board at what they are planning to do and look at what they are planning to do in the context of our mission programs. and in terms of our own strategies. and the ambassadors have detailed the violence and any actions that they are taking in any program that they are doing. and in general, if there is any disagreement, general rodrigues and i work those disagreements out between ourselves. so we are very much in sync with them. we wish that we had that $10 million. the $10 million to program on the continent of africa. we would be doing some different things. they have the money, so we want to help them channel that money to places where it is going to make a difference on the continent as we work to fight security and terrorism. together. $10 billion would be a huge contribution to the democracy.

i'd described it as scraping the mayonnaise jar to get just enough to do the job that we have to do. >> how much do you have in governance? >> let me get back to you at that figure. it is a moving target. >> okay, i would submit that it's well less than what the department is saying and what they are spending and the building partner and as members of the foreign relations committee, all we know is that it is spent. i am glad that it is part of the degree of coordination that is happening. and it's probably a topic that should get more attention. let me ask one additional question. >> if you would please yield for one second i will give you extra time. i think that you are raising a

fundamental point. >> there is another situation that the ambassador pointed out, even to expand the traditional state department areas. it's a matter that we are looking at on a broader scale. >> obviously there has been a long-term shift. that is what happens when you are engaged in very dangerous places. but i guess that i am not as optimistic as the witnesses is the ability to coordinate this work on a country by country basis. >> it is an effort. i actually have the figures here where we are actually looking at increasing the funding and the presidents request, increasing support for the programs in africa and fiscal year 1700. the request for that is 20% above what we did in 2015. the figure for 2015 was

$286 million. and there are $311 million. >> it is another way by which we communicate our priorities in this country. so we are looking at $300 million on a good day in democracy assistance, then we are handing out potentially 10 times that amount of money in an account that has very little oversight from the united states congress. it tells the countries what we think is most important. and as part of this balance it is difficult to do when the numbers are that skewed in favor of military and security. so to that end, and i don't know exactly who to put this question to. but maybe i will ask it to you and to others. in these conflict zones that we are talking about. can we talk a little bit about

this attractiveness of the sunni ideology amidst areas that are often dominated by muslims and the story is partially about schools and on the ground, funded by some of the allies in the middle east. some of it has to deal with young men that go to the middle east to get taught in schools, funded by allies in the middle east. what is the level of seriousness about the countries on the ground in understanding and also trying to tackle this problem of radicalization that happen in these schools. >> i think that it is a real concern on the part of many governments in the region. we hear that from these governments.

as he pointed out there are likely a variety or number of different vehicles into which this put into context. we see it in southeast asia, we see another places where you have had to have a certain approach to religion that is tolerant of other traditions. that is being sort of worn down by the soucy and ideology. and that causes polarization, intolerance, sectarian conflict. so it is a problem globally and also relate probably to the spread of media. people have access to media coming from different parts of the world. and it has been media funded coming out of certain regions that have propagated or have emphasized a particular view.

and so there are a number of particular vehicles and it is a major concern. i think that when we talk about how you have to look at the particular circumstances, almost the community in the village level, what are those influences. that is where the very difficult work of countering extremism will be identified through research and also through data, as well as understanding the drivers at a local level. it is a hard issue to address. especially in what is really a global phenomenon of the infiltration of this particular situation. >> i will just say that we can spend money chasing these dollars around the world, but we are never going to be able to keep up and it's probably a better strategy for us to ask about why these dollars are moving into areas like africa out of the middle east, out of the pockets of many of our friends, probably a better use of our time and money. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. i want to thank our panelists. i think you can see that there's

a lot of interest in what we had to talk about today. if you could, we will have questions after this and if you could respond quickly we will take questions until the close of business on thursday. we thank you for your service to our country. if you could with your crew, we would like to shift over to another panel. okay, thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> thank you, thank you, sir. >> thank you. [inaudible conversations]

>> the second panel will consist of two witnesses. the first witness. any corrections needed there, sir? okay, thank you. the assistant administrator and development are for the regional bureau of africa, the second witness is with us, associate regional director for center -- onemoment. the senior director for central and west africa, at the democratic institute. we welcomed you first with the opening comments. we thank you both for sharing your expertise and knowledge with us today.

[inaudible] [inaudible] >> we are thankful to be invited before the u.s. committee on foreign relations. i have a longer text and i'm going to try to limit my remarks within five minutes first, i want to briefly update you on what we have learned in africa, and second i would share our view on the possible developmental approach to mitigate the quest for peace to the arc of instability. the ford i start with a sense of perspective even though we are

discussing africa, the continent is doing great for the last 15 years. [inaudible] since the year 2000. violent extremism is among some of the economies. not a lot has been cut from 3% to 1%. it has been cut to 1% in 2015 and other countries like kenya and nigeria. [inaudible] mbt estimates that 30,000 people have died since 2011 and are victims of violent extremism. and 6 million are currently displaced due to radicalization. mr. chairman, over the last two years they have held a number of confrontations and conducted a

series of studies to better understand the violent extremism is in africa. the israeli studies converged with three major findings. one is that radicalization's are multifaceted. [inaudible] in the combination of property and development. and that includes weak social contracts with high levels of individuals. number two is the ground to radicalization are the border areas which are in most of the country neglected, ungoverned, weak government and low socioeconomic structure.

and while there are a number of commonalities, there are also some important differences between countries. [inaudible] and that includes somalia and nigeria. it is much more prominent in kenya. it is with this in mind as they embarked on. [inaudible] approach that we seek to address the multiple drivers and enable us to radicalization and extremism. [inaudible] on preventing and responding to extremism in africa which focuses on supporting the regional institution, government, communities and individuals to really those factors. we are working in countries

supporting pathways to develop and integrate regional strategies. this includes preventing radicalization. [inaudible] [inaudible] working these local and national governmengovernmen ts to provide basic social services to citizens. support and implement creations and we want to local governments to strengthen with authority. we have learned that the conference of immigrated program providing security offers the best approach to combat violent extremism. let me conclude my remarks by emphasizing that to me the full

potential, preventing and responding this was a collaborator partnership with government and i thank you. >> thank you very much, sir, is that the correct pronouncement? >> yes, it is correct, sir. >> mr. chairman, testing which members of the committee. on the half of the national democratic institute, i appreciate the opportunity to discuss terrorism on instability and make the argument as to why this should be a center component of any stabilization strategies. >> for more than 50 years we have worked to establish and strengthen the community is, and promote citizens and the accountability of government.

the institute has conducted programs or worked with approximately 50 countries and i have been fortunate to be part of this for the past two decades. terrorist activity for the past decade threatens to destabilize the continent including this third wave of democratization that began in the 1990s. groups such as boko haram and others. [inaudible] at the horn of africa have caused tens of thousands of deaths and tremendous economic security. [inaudible] for the population. some of these organizations are

eager to establish alliances with organizations in other parts of the world, notably the islamic state of iraq and al qaeda and isis. [inaudible] and that includes military groups militarily and at the same time as the affected country addressing the extreme violence. the violence is deeply rooted in religious belief. however. [inaudible] it has exacerbated the impact of this phenomenon and created a middling environment in which extremism tries. when the state collapses as was

the case with somalia prior to also. [inaudible] as was the case in molly.. and that includes providing citizens with access to meaningful lives, liberty and property and the social contract between the city and state is broken. discontent with government that is viewed as illegitimate or ineffective is a ground for this embracing extremism, hoping to extract a better life and what is link to this environment. moreover groups that are denied

access to basic public groups and opportunities are more honorable to extremist appeal and indoctrination. therefore to counter violence in africa, they must therefore address this as part of the overall strategy. based on institutional lessons learned through the work, my own experience and what i hear loud and clear from african democrats, leaders and activists alike, i strongly offer this to your recommendation for your group. it should be grounded in democracy and good governance so

that the military victory can be sustained in the medium to long-term. we cannot afford to defeat violent extremism now only to have a creep back up five attend years down the road. they should not get a pass solely because we are good partners in the fight against terrorism. shrinking political space and violations of citizen rights and freedoms and the undermining of constitutional rules breed discontent. [inaudible] for the perpetrators of violence and extremism. terrorism can and should be good performance in democratic governance. these two are not mutually exclusive but mutually

reinforcing. africans of this generation are extremely fearful of reliving the expense of the cold war era during which there are gross human rights abuses not odd just because of the allies of the west at the time. they should not become a substitute for the cold war paradigm of this century. it is critical to every counterterrorism strategy before they are allowed to breed extremism and from the state not odd and excessive.

[inaudible] and economic terms make young people one of all to these incentives of this extreme movement. and so some remarkable accomplishments for the last two decades, democracy and democratic governors in africa are under attack. and on the other hand it is challenged from extremist organizations and on the other hand, in some cases by internal threats from other regimes that fail to deliver public services including rights and freedom. [inaudible] africa must make sure that they do not willingly allow

themselves to deny africans are basic rights in securing the future. thank you, mr. chairman, and members of the community for this opportunity. >> without objection. it will be entered into the record. we thank you both for the testimony. we now turn to the distinguished member, senator cardin. >> i want to thank you all for your full statements that are being made part of the record. i have had a chance to look through it and it certainly does reinforce the concerns that i've had. i would like to get a little bit more granular here. those of you who mentioned the importance of the underlying causes of this granulation, if we don't deal with the underlying causes it will be short-term success.

we have incredible tools. this is an incredibly important part of the international efforts to help develop the prosperity in countries that we hope will provide long-term stability necessary including incredible service developing incredible opportunities around the globe. and of course the united states and our development assistance and security assistance, these are tools that can provide incredible opportunities for stability globally. and yet we point out that in africa we have not been as successful as we need to be. so therefore, my question to both of you is what is one that we should build on and that includes economic issues. but how do you take the current programs that are available,

whether through government or others. how do they build the ones that are the most relevant to the stability of sub-saharan africa, and what programs need to be reconfigured because they are not providing the returns for the investment that are being made? can you be a little bit more specific here? >> thank you, senator. let me first say that when i was listening to the panel -- it was music to my ears. this is the fight that we are doing. and the main concern is good governments. we have seen ungoverned spaces. [inaudible] and what we are seeing in this continent. and you are right. the issue that we are seeing

here is that most of these countries have limited space and the ability to participate in this practice in which we are doing. first, not odd military and then human rights and then development. but the good practices that we are having with them to scale. i think that we have to understand that this is limited and we cannot do it alone in the spirit of partnership we can have good partnership. [inaudible] i come from an area that has an excellent partnership between two countries in the. [inaudible] region. and it is at the border that we see problems. so if we can invest in this at the border areas it would be great.

and i think that they are -- with funding, we can scale this up. >> thank you. >> senator, this obviously doesn't have the luxury of governmental entities or even a multinational organization. but with the resources that we have always received, we have tried to put this forward to the society. because when you look at that and the studies done by organizations, and i reference that in my written statement. 75% of africans aspire to be in the societies in democracy. and so they demand and it continues to rise through the continent. unfortunately this supply is shrinking. and so the programs that can

allow the expansion would bring more into the process and it would also allow the citizens to advocate for the proper management that are created within this country. so i would like to speak more about society, some of them are very active. especially in some of the areas that are being impacted. i understand that there are a number of groups that are engaging with this internally displaced presence. and there are some that are dealing with the effects of boko haram. and there are some that sometimes receive support from other organizations to be

effective advocates. >> i agree with what the points you have made. i think that it is a good point and we need to concentrate. it has been more complicated because there for the country, no matter what the host country's response, it makes it complicated and difficult. and i think that civil society is certainly a critical factor in good governance. if you don't have a healthy civil society it breeds problems. so let me try to get to a third point. and that is the reality or the perception that you can get a free pass from the united nations or from the united states if you are working with international coalitions to fight counterterrorism and what you do internally in your

country will not really be of major importance to the international participation and support. that to me, whether it is real or perceived can be a huge problem in dealing with civil society or good governance or dealing with democratic institution and development. just share with me your concern as to whether the leaders of the countries that are working with us have the view that the international community will give them a free pass on governance issues as long as they are part of the coalition against violent extremism. >> thank you, senator. for us, human rights is the bedrock of whatever we do and not negligible. >> are you willing to pull out of the country if you can get the cooperation you need from your leaders? >> what we do -- >> are you willing to pull out of the country? if you set it for that and you

said it is the bedrock, at least part of that is going to support a regime. will you pull out? >> what we do is meet with the high commission of civil rights, making this a part of the situation. but i think that we could be better off to support capacity and community and help countries with human rights. and this is a voice that is functioning strongly. whatever we do, human rights is embedded in our programs. it takes time, it may not happen overnight. but it is embedded in all that we do. >> senator, i would say that your description. [inaudible] and that includes decisions within society that when you go through the countries that have

had poor performance, that those countries coincidently happen to be in the fight against terrorism and it is a perception that is with all of what has been done to support this in the past. the example that you raised earlier is very clear. it is obvious that it is backsliding on the democratic governor's front, but it is still viewed as a good ally. and what many civic leaders think are doing in regards to this front, whether it is part of the two undertakings is mutually reinforcing. and it could still be a good performer on the democratic governor's front.

>> well, i agree. it's not a choice of either or. it has to be both. because otherwise you get short-term games and you're not going to succeed and it was provide not only a opportunity for citizens but it will be a gap for extremists. so you have to do both. i am afraid that we have focused on counterterrorism for a military point of view including dealing with the good governance in the country. it seems like this hearing has only put a spotlight on that. and you have to be prepared to walk away with a partner that is providing an opportunity to a country. it is sometimes difficult because you know that there are needs that you sometimes have to deal with.

if it is not getting through and if it is supporting corruption than the better alternative is to look for another new opportunity rather than continuing the existing partnership. thank you, mr. chairman. >> thank you. >> what they just said is unlikely to ever occur. let's just be honest. >> would you like me to answer that enact. >> i think he answered when he laughed. but it is not going to occur. >> there is an optimal way of doing it is not to walk away from a country but to what invest in it. we say this is building the social contract. for them to also fight for human rights. that is an investment worth doing. >> is to underscore the point. we always look for ways to provide humanitarian help, to deal with the human crisis that exists. but if the host country believes that they are always going to have a partner regardless of

their own activities, you lose the ability to change the underlining problems within that country. >> we talked to the first panel that is here. and we went on the same line of discussion. there is no question that the fact that citizens understand this because the terrorism issue is a cute. the other issues are longer-term and they know that we are going to hang in there with him on the counterterrorism piece. there is no question relevant to this and other issues that creates ill will toward the united states. >> what is the question? >> obviously, it creates a lot of doubt in the minds of the people and we are also dealing with a segment of the population that is only going to increase.

and we know that africa is a young continent. so the bulk of the consummation is in this category of people who have asked to be seen differently. [inaudible] and they are the ones being put in the position of this one government is not anti-terrorism legislation that has been used in so we end up not creating france with a segment of the population that is the continent of the future. >> and that is a magnet for folks to be attracted more so to terrorism. so they just feed on each other. so let me step back. we all understand the presidential race underway. and we also understand both of us here, we understand that we spend 1% of the u.s. budget on foreign aid.

but there is no question that during the presidential race there will be discussions about foreign aid. i don't think it's possible for that not to occur. so people listening to this testimony today, listening to the fact that on one hand we are dealing with corrupt leaders that are not treating the populations properly, sending them money than in many ways keeps them in power and if they partner with counterterrorism, even more so. on the other hand we have people that have terrorism -- we have people that are being treated unfairly. we actually have one of our committee members here that is constantly focused on this issue. so stepping back. and as we debate the nation's fiscal issues and the nations interest, which i think could be more so in this presidential year be discussed in times in the past. if you would, both of you

advocate to me why you believe that the continued involvement in countries like the ones we are discussing is an important thing for the united states to be doing. >> mr. chairman, simply put as i said earlier, although terrorism could be generated by poor governance in a country, it can belong to the ordinance and the national committee. that is why we fight them wherever they are. i am not saying that we should give a free pass, but we have to fight it and fight the root causes. and that is why it is so important in this fight. >> mr. chairman, i agree with what the individual has said.

and i will simply add that american lives and american interests are also at stake. i'm sure that we remember the bombings of embassies in kenya and that includes embassies and americans died in the process. so terrorist are threats to americans whether they are on the homeland were trying to operate overseas. because their ultimate goal are a part of the villages they get destroyed in a number of african countries. so i think it is important to set forth the message that we are all shaken by this. [inaudible] and we find ourselves at the present moment. >> and i think -- i think that the challenge, you know.

i think that some of the debate about let's go to the middle east, isis, people act as if we are going to do away with isis in the next year or two. they are missing the fact that the root causes are long, long-term as far as issues go. the same is true in africa. the root causes there are a long-term issue. and i think that as long as americans look at the resources that we have and the needs within our own country, sometimes the simple thought we can go deal with terrorism like that and maybe the lack of understanding that there are root causes within africa and the middle east that will mean that it is good as gone and another group will be coming behind it unless we are dealing with haute sides of the equation, i think that people in many cases miss the point because the dialogue that has

taken place. would you all agree or disagree with that? >> absolutely. mr. chairman,. [inaudible] it has started years ago and it has taken several years and i will say that it is a toxic combination of. [inaudible] that has created this. and it will take time to deal with this. it is a long-time investment. and people are putting steel into that long-term investment and providing it with good security. and i think that it will take time. it is not an instant battle in my view. >> i agree with you, mr. chairman. and i think that first you have

to stop the bleeding and then you can use democracy on the government to build up things in this country. and i think that for example, that democracy on good governance made in this situation of two countries that were both bordering countries to libya and that includes the post libya crisis in a different fashion. mali, the government was accused of being very corrupt and marginalizing minorities. marginalizing them a great deal. and that includes activities that have already taken place in northern mali prior to the attacks by the terrorists in

2012. on the other hand the neighboring country of which they share a direct order with libya because the governmengovernmen t has better control of its borders and they have come up with a policy and because the government was dealing with interrogation and allowing people. [inaudible] to make decisions. [inaudible] and they were better able to deal with the other effects of the libyan crisis. they are surviving with its northern border with northern mali and to the southern border with nigeria. they are to be commended for

this effort. this is one example where an african country is better able to manage the economic resources and human capital in a way that gives people confidence that the government can respond to in the country is still doing well. >> well, thank you. we are way beyond time. if i could ask one last question. this is off-topic. but we had a really sort of harrowing hearing with speakers about the abuses that are taking place. and i would like to just ask enclosing when this is happening, what does that also do relative to populations --

and their feelings of people that are working within this period and how does that feel in addition to the attraction of terrorist groups? >> it is a horrible situation. it puts the discredit on the good work that the soldiers are doing and you have seen the secretary general condemn it strongly. >> he condemns it. but we see almost no action taken. condemning it doesn't mean anything. >> this coming week has condemned it. he has dismissed the head of the mission. he has asked to name the countries. >> is going to jail.

>> yes. [inaudible] >> it behooves the conscious. >> you understand from my perspective that i would be like us naming the terrorists of bad guys but doing nothing about it. >> we also have a special coordinator from the u.s. to coordinate the efforts of the u.n. to address this underlying situation. >> prosecutions including not naming people, not naming countries. >> mr. chair, you would know that the u.n. has no space for soldiers. [inaudible] and i think it proves the countries to do the prosecution once they are named. >> i would like to join with the

chairman. i am not satisfied that the united nations has done everything that needs to do. i understand that you don't have independent ability to do that. i understand that you have the politics of dealing with the member states. but with the peacekeepers it was very late at the game and the action was not adequate. and we know that the secretary general is quite sincere. we know that the security council has taken action. but we have not seen the type of enforcement that we expect. i think that the same thing is true with the various programs under the united nations including the development programs that are critically important. but if you are not prepared to break your partnership with a corrupt regime, then i think that you are doing a disservice. i understand the humanitarian needs and dealing with ngo types where we can do direct

humanitarian service. by contrast the governments that are corrupt, we need to be prepared as to walk away we cannot get the type of progress. we do not expect progress every night. i have one quick question, mr. chairman, to the gentleman. and that is, what should the united states do in order to respond to the perception that we get free passes to coalition partners in regards to those human rights violations? is there something specific that you would like to see us do? >> senator, i think the you touched on some of those issues in the first panel. i think that speaking out more publicly against the citations and also taking actions that can reassure the vast majority of africans in this country.

they really mean it. so it is a sense of adventure with amputated at the highest level. i would also mention what we have discussed in terms of additional resources for democracy and good governance programs and the support of programs. and also a sense that this program to be effective, because you're talking about changing attitudes and changing behaviors. dealing with people who have acted one way for decades who now need to act differently. it is the same level of support and it is more likely to pay dividends than physical type of intervention. because in the meantime to be able to create relationships of trust and creating trust. [inaudible] with assistance that is nonpartisan and means well in

terms of raising the cooperation between one government and one later, that wires time and resources. so i think that that would go a long way. fortunately for the three decades that they have had and that could have a huge impact where the resources are available. >> thank you. and thank you. i know that you are speaking up regarding this is not your area of expertise and i appreciate that. and i think you understand where none of us on the panel are particularly thrilled and that calls for prosecutions to take place. and i think that certainly this hearing has given us a good

sense of complexity is that exist. we have similar complexities in the middle east where we are dealing with countries that, you know, leave these back and discriminate against various sections that are not of their own. .. which. with that the meeting is adjourned. >> , [inaudible conversation]

[inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation] [inaudible conversation]

[inaudible conversation] rice

university in houston. we have been: looking on i mind this is that all my machines, digital platforms with which our social lives have grown increasingly familiar but which are also invading our academic lives. this -- to these machines, we can collaborate colleagues, teach thousands at once and so want but it's has -- but it has also become clear that these machines can take march us of us, they

in directions that we don't necessarily want to go. tonight, we get to hear from some of these genes from someone who knows a great deal about them and who has even written and implement chill book about this world that we live in. -- and even written and worldntial book about the that we live in. if i am not mistaken, even worked for one of the first -- ethan worked for one of the first.com enterprises. ofis also a founding member global voices online, a popular nonprofit network of bloggers, citizens, and journalists. in 2007, he joined the inaugural wikipedia's eyes reboard.

added to the list of stop global bloggers. it is my pleasure to present ethan zuckerman. please join me in welcoming ethan to rice. [applause] mr. zuckerman: thank you so much. it is wonderful to be here in this beautiful state on this gorgeous campus. want to tell you about where i from and how that informs some of the work that i am doing at the moment. i teach at the m.i.t. media lab which is one of the stranger academic institutions in the world. behind the media you have to be future on inventing the

and you have to be studying something that no one else is studying. my colleague at the top of the screen used to be one of the top rock climbers in the world and ended up losing both of his legs below the knee in a climbing accident and went on to become an amazing researcher in biomechanical limbs. terry oxman is as designer -- mary future and you have to be studying something that no one else is studying. my colleague at the top of the screen used to be one of the o's and surfaces that look like cells or organisms. pretty is not nearly as but in some ways it is more global and colorful. i study civic media. i'm interested in the idea that by making media, we can make change in the world. the work i have done for the last dozen years is with a group called global voices which looks for people in developing nations who are writing about their country in a way that the rest of the worldbut in some ways ite global and colorful. i study civic media. tends not to know about. there are pakistanis talking about their countries, not in terms of islamic fundamentalism

but in terms of science and technology. and people talking about west africa in terms of the economic opportunity. because of the work that i do, i get to meet with people in a amazing and different places. this is a photo from september of last year. ghana.n accra, i was hanging out with a bunch nf canadian -- ghanaia bloggers. i wanted to meet the guy in the red hat. i had in reading him because he and comedian, an essayist, one of the most successful political organizers in ghana. he had organized an up-and-coming social movement.

impoverished for about 40 years and has recently turned things around. it is now a middle income country. a lovely place to go and visit. a lot of people working in high tech and management which is to say there are a lot of people who have cars, air conditioners, and televisions. this is not a nation of stereo typical huts. it really stinks when they do not have electric power which is happening a lot because the nation has become very wealthy and also because of climate change. they get most of their electricity from hydro water. very low because the rain cycle has changed. this leads to "on off." the

power goes off and on all of the time and it is driving people nuts. people are getting together and driving to protest, they are lanternsp kerosene because this is what they need low because the rain cycle has changed. this leadsto use to read wet anu all at their t-shirts, they off on must stop. he is organizing marches with 5000-10,000 people. they are marching into the center of town to say to the government, look, you need to get your act together. we cannot live without electric power. i am watching this. i am really interested in this. and like the good social scientist that i am, i say -- hey, what is the best way to politically organize here. when you are organizing things

and getting people into the streets, are you doing this through facebook or twitter? says -- i ame and not political. what? 5000ave just organized people to march through the center of the capital city to protest electricity and you are going to tell me that you are not political. in many countries where i work, when you say you're not political, what it means is that you do not want to end up in prison. but that is not ghana. it is an open society. according to reporters without borders, they have a more free and open press than we do here in the united states. the reason he wanted to tell me that he was not political was he did not want everyone else in the room to think that he was an idiot. and that is what is happening in politics in ghana right now.

people who are strongly affiliated with the major political parties, are being seen by the younger generation as wasting their time. guy in his late 20's, he literally will not allow himself to be photographed near someone who is strongly associated with one of these political parties for fear that he will lose his credibility, and someone will think that he represents one of these parties, and that also someone will think that he is someone involved in organized politics. which is seen in ghana as being such a dirty game and so far removed from what is actually happening on the ground like the electricity shortage, that he simply does not want to be associated with it. i came back and i was thinking about this. i hear this all over the world.

i go to india and i talked to him and he corruption activists who are trying to track people taking bribes on mind and they say they are not -- taking bribes online and they say they are not political. i go to russia. not political there either. i come back to the united states , and you start hearing some of the same stuff to the extent that these two gentlemen have anything in common, one of the things that senator sanders and mr. have in common is that they are both very much attached to the idea that they are removed from politics. that they are somehow separate from the into the tuition of politics as we know it. it is a little harder for bernie to make this position then donald. he has been an unusual figure as the one socialist.

donald trump probably actually has a legitimate claim to being an outsider is leased from institutional politics. institutional politics, institutions more generally are what i think we are moving away from and moving to a culture of sharp and extreme mistrust for. one is simple example. thinkooking at how we about politicians in the united states. this is a survey that comes from gala. it asked people if you expect people in these professions to behave honestly and ethically. you can see that nurses do very well. police officers, a little less so. areas on theower way down. the only people who come out lower at 7% are lobbyists. once you start getting into money and politics, we start

getting to the point where we do not expect much from people going into these businesses. this has been happening for a long time. this is a very long, slow change in how american society is structured. this is a compilation to him by the pew research center asking americans to question -- do you trust the government in washington to do the right thing most or all of the time? number peaks in 19 64 at 77%. this number now runs between 12%-19% routinely. it has been a long gradual slide. it had a real comeback around the year 2000. i was born in 1973. the only time this question has been in positive territory, in my 43 your lifetime that 50% of

americans have said that they trust the government to do the right thing, was just before we invaded iraq. for the most part, what we have seen is a shift away from assuming that our government is going to be acting in our interest to a moment where we simply do not expect that to happen. if this was just about government, it would be disturbing that it is more disturbing than that. americans and ask about trust in large institutions of all source, -- level ofrts, that trust is falling sharply over time. the two institutions that come up that most people say they trust all or most of the time are the military and small business. this is strange. , theyou think about egypt ended up with the military after throwing out the under -- the

other institutions. the military and small business are the only institutions where we have increased interest. we trust the military more now than we did in the non-. everyone else has fallen quite far. we might understand the church religionrganized falling but we have seen the medical system fall sharply in trust. we have seen banks. public schools. organized labor. newspapers and the press. the criminal justice system. all the way through. we trust these institutions less and less. the simple rule of thumb is that if we cannot see an individual common human being, if we see a structure or an entity rather than a person, for the most part as americans we are shifting to the point where we do not trust it anymore. it is not just us. the global pr company has been

running a similar survey around the world. they are finding that these levels of institutional trust are dropping gear on year. the places where they are not dropping are concerning places like china, singapore, the united arab emirates. best not falling in the governed, open societies. scandinavia. and it is falling in the most economically successfully closed societies. well forworking really you, open society and democracy, you probably have a decent institutional trust. if you are in a closed system, you probably have high institutional trust. if you are anywhere in the middle, it is falling apart. it is worth asking -- why is this? what happened? i have some guesses. it is possible that having the

impeachment of the sitting president had a lot to do with this. i think it also had a lot to do with a systemic attack both in the u.s. and the u.k. on the idea that government could do good. we had a real shift in the 1980's, a lot of people refer to it as neoliberalism, generally speaking government are going to be significantly less effective than the private sector. when you have government officials standing up and tell you that the government can do no good and you should not fund it, you end up at a place where the government can do no good. it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. we have government officials who have embarrassed themselves, who have damaged the dignity of the office. i am doing my best to be a partisan here. -- to bee bipartisan

bipartisan here. for a lot of the people that i know, watching the u.s. government, this incredibly wealthy and powerful nation, failed to take care of our own during the aftermath of hurricane katrina was a moment of realization that the system was not working. the safety notes -- safety net that we thought we could trust are not once we can trust anymore. the 2007-2008 banking crisis was another moment that shook people to the core. a realization that the systems we thought were too big to fail, which we thought had safeguards counteract negative effects, were in fact surprisingly fragile and needed a lot of help to recover from systemic fraud and abuse. i am a media scholar. by and up thinking that the press has a lot to do with it

and that ending up with an unshackled press in the era of at thete looks to be start of the shift. it starts in the 1970's. and the shift on taking a close look at the nixon administration has something to do with it. figures like edward snowden are capable of putting incredible revelations into the press and having widespread effect. that also has a way of undermining the opacity of the power of institutions. ?hat does this mean fors a real uphill battle people who are strongly associated with existing institutions and government. watch all ofg to in thed representatives no to support marco rubio to

effect. if you accept my theory that we are at an anti-institutionalist moment where people are incredibly suspicious of any existing institution, there is really nothing worse than having mitt romney show up and say -- what you should do now is work for marco rubio. this probably represents a tough uphill path for hillary clinton who is someone who has built her career through the institutions of the senate, the state department, working her way up to a position of incredible prominence and experience. but at a moment where we seem extremely mistrustful of the very institutions that have brought her to the fort. i am not concerned about their problems. i am concerned about our problems. here is the problem i am concerned with. have deep, abiding

mistrust in institutions, almost everything we know how to do as civic actors does not work anymore. the main two things we know how to do in conventional civics are to elect good and wise leaders, to pass laws, to carry them out and to enforce them. or, when we feel like those people are not listening to us, to show up, to march, to make our presence known and to demand change in one fashion or another. here is the problem. a 9% approval rating in congress, when you have a branch of government that says we are not planning on doing our jobs for the next year until we have an election, when you have success of congresses congresses setting records were being the least productive, it is challenging to convince people that they can make change in the world by passing laws and having them

carried out. if you do not believe that washington right now is capable of making major change in the world, it takes out this other route of protest which has been so powerful over the years. this is an image from the march on washington. the challenge is that it -- have got good news because there is other ways people are finding ways to do civics. i want to talk about two of them. they are the two i feel like i understand the best. we are doing a lot of interviews these are twod

that i feel like i can give you a little bit of a glove. so, this guy on the screen is larry. he is probably the single least successful candidate of 2016. he briefly decided he would make a run based on campaign finance reform before bernie sanders did. really known for is being probably the deepest theorist of the internet bed any of us have run into. he wrote books that are incredibly important. "code" does is say there are multiple ways that we as a society regulate behavior. we're used to regulating behavior through law. say "you law and we can't do that anymore." or we say, "you can't do that

anymore." s big observation in this book is that laws are only one of four ways we regulate society for top we also regulate through norms. none of you yet have jumped up and started arguing with me during this talk and maybe it is because i'm not said anything to argue with or maybe you are following a social script. the norms of behavior when someone is giving a talk at a lectern is you sent and wait and ask questions afterwards. ands are extremely powerful constrain us from doing huge numbers of things in life because we fear social sanction. we fearfully break them, other people shun us or make fun of us. being extremely powerful ways of effecting change over time. in fact, major societal changes are us -- often normative

changes. suddenly it is ok for people about that race is to be married. suddenly it is ok for gays and lesbians to be out in public and be married to each other. we make things expensive, would make them cheap. anyone with the misfortune of being a smoker, you notice that gets more expensive every year. that is a way of regulating behavior out of existence. making it so expensive it is harder and harder to do. the most subtle of this is code. codes and architectures of all sorts. these also regulate. walked you, when you into this building you walked on tax. in those paths are designed to have you walk in a certain way and that is a form of regulation through code. there are things that are easy to do with computer and things that are hard. to ripemarkable and easy

a cd and have finals. it is hard to rip a movie. it requires custom software and secret, dark corners of the internet. that is not enforcing law. that is an forcing code. there is code that makes that easy and code that makes that hard. what i am trying to do is understand activism by the essig.ed lsess it is kind of like gymnastics. we know that we can make change through law. we know that when the supreme court decides that recognition of eight will marriage is the affectshe land, that everybody but it turns out you changingmake change my norms, markets, and codes.

of all the things in the world i am his stuff about right now, governmentread surveillance is high on my list. run a network of 1400 journalists and translators in 120 countries. all of that communication between me and the people i work with is subject to surveillance by the nsa. is ae have decided that price we are ok with paying in exchange for preventing -- and as much thought the obama administration might take a stand, it has not happened and there is very little hope the clinton change might. so trying to make change through law is not going to happen. the good news is there are a lot of geeks out there running software companies that are trying hard to make encryption standard.

so when i talk to people right now, i do it through a little application on my phone call looks justd signal like an sms client. it looks just like i am sending text messages except they are encrypted. they are hard to intercept. i see using the tour browser, -- the tor browser which makes it hard to see where i am coming from. inc. the link, friends of mine are trying to help with surveillance through code and i would argue people writing and putting that code out in the world are just as much at the best as the people with the human rights campaign who are working on equal marriage. i would argue the same for elon musk who is trying to make the electric car,

not a compromised vehicle but the sexiest thing that is out there on the road. and not as a way of trying to take advantage of marketing mechanisms to make social change. something like the difficulty of passing a widespread carbon tax in the united states right now and saying, maybe we that if we can like havingl your an electric car or putting solar panels on your house, maybe there is an alternative way of taking change. probably the most subtle change of things around this is around changing norms. the folksplace where behind black lives matter have an enormous amount to teach us through the power of change through norms. so here's the thing about social norms. when we look at the epidemic of people of color being shot by a problem weis not are to fix with law.

illegal to shoot an unarmed being unless the person is directly threatening your life. what happens when someone gets shot like michael brown, a officer, -- a police in the course of doing his or her duty is interpreting a threat to his or her life from a person of color because we tend to associate young black with violence. change we't normative have to make over time. we're not going to get out of it just by putting audie cameras on police. a change it has to be about how we think about each other within society. so that's how you went up with campaigns like this. oft image to the very sight the screen is an image of michael brown taken from his face book page not very long after his death. days is ifs these you get killed by the police the first thing the media does is go

on your facebook page and tries to find images of you to illustrate the story. onethe image left was the that showed up to illustrate who michael brown was for about the first 48 hours after his death. activists look at that image and send you know, that is interesting. michael brown posted a lot of images on facebook, including if one next to it will stop you look at the first image, michael is being shot from below, he looks tall, he looks intimidating, he is scowling, he is throwing a peace sign which a gangwspapers said was sign. he looks older, he looks tall, he looks dangerous, he is probably trying to look a little dangerous. he is pudgy, he's a kid, he's cute, he is a high school kid. brown ones, heel was a high school kid. and the difference between those two images is the normative difference in how we think about

this shot man who was killed in ferguson, missouri. where when you saw activists, starting this campaign, asking the question, if they gunned me death which photo what they use? and an activist would go on to their own facebook feed and the total of themselves that would be the most negative portrayal the mediocre put forward and they would pick the photo where they were the best example of an upstanding citizen and so in this case, an active marine put up these two images coming out of his facebook feed and you the difference. the campaign went viral really quickly. one things it was so interesting was that lots of young white kids did not get the political message behind this. just got the store to her of it. so they went on to facebook and put up a photo of them looking drunk or disorderly and then one graduating from college and using a shovel thing, please just get out of this conversation.

deepis a much more conversation then you are giving it credit for. within three days use of the new york times putting the story on the front page. hard to find that first image of michael brown. that threatening image of michael brown after this first story rant. media was shamed by the campaign into realizing that the way we portray people less real implications on how we think about a whole category of people over time. so this is an approach to civics that i refer to as "the effect ." the approach it says, we all learned that civics was about law, about electing people to government, about passing and enforcing laws. now the rules are different. the roles now are that you tould do whatever allows you feel most effective as a citizen.

if you feel like you are going to be able to make change by going onto facebook and changing how we perceive african-american males, you do that. if you think you are going to do it by starting a social venture go ahead. you do that. she is the downside about this -- here is the downside about this approach. the downside's equity. equity is different than equality. equality is that we all get an equal chance. is the idea that we might need accommodations to get that chance. that we would actually have to work or a hard for people that different life experience, different circumstances, to get this apple. here is this problem. with this version of civics. it is deeply inequitable. if you want to change social morals we could all do want to twitter and start a campaign. i have an advantage you do not.

i have 42,000 twitter followers you probably don't. there are a lot of celebrities that have 2 million, they are in a much better position than i am. and what a columnist for the new york times wants to do something he has a great advantage over me. fame is strongly correlated to your ability to make change when you're trying to make it and it is inequitably distributed. if you want to start a car company that is going to change the world and conquer climate change, it helps to make -- to be elon musk and found that paypal and have several million dollars to start with. change how the world of color is, it helps to be a student of mine here at m.i.t. or somewhere else. that is so amazing about these legal based spheres of changes that at the end of the day we all have one vote voting rights act,

now said leases bended, we actually worked very hard to make sure people had equal vote.unity to cast a that took years. it took a very long time to realize we hado build equity into the system. these forms are so new we have not thought about equity yet. we have not thought about what it means that some people have a much better chance at using these tools than another. i want to talk to you about another way people are trying to make change and here i'm going to talk about some books that of been very influential on my work will stop there is a book by a guy named michael who teaches at columbia journalism school. he is one of the better teachers of journalism. he wrote a book called "the good citizen." the point of the book is that we have in our head a model of citizenship that we think

citizens should follow and the good citizen more or less as someone who gets up, reads a bunch of newspapers, gets different points of view, stays up to date on all sorts of different issues, goes out and ises and when he or she incensed or worried, rights to an elected representative. the good citizen works really hard at being a good citizen. and one of michael's observations is that the good citizen might not exist. the good citizen turns out to be a creation of the progressive in the 1920's. and it is a reaction to an earlier model of what it meant to be a good citizen. before the progressives came along, to be a good citizen is to be a loyal party member. to show up, represent your social class, your tribe of people, by showing up in the election, loading up your ballot to the public, filling it out, fighting her way to the polls

because the the polls were also often drunken brawls at that point and casting your vote and solidarity with your brothers who had the same background as you do. that changes with the progressive movement. suddenly we have muckraking journalism. we have the secret ballot. alan initiatives. we put an enormous amount of responsibility on the citizens to be hugely informed. what happened? voting rates plummeted. people were35% when just voting rather than electing a president. we may be asking too much. this may not be a realistic and cure of what citizens really do. they really do as they monitor. they scan the horizon for places

where they think they can be effective. i have an example from my hometown. of 3500 people. my local politics are not usually all that interesting. i generally do not spend much time thinking about them but i have a six-year-old child. he is in public school. in six more years, he will be heading to high school and the high school is falling down because it has not been fixed since the 1960's and there is a bill on the ground to figure out how we can fix it. layings bro, massachusetts. -- layings bro, massachusetts. the high schools of the road in williamstown, massachusetts and we have had a giant controversy on whether we should increase our tax rates to pay for the high school. and while i have not paid attention to local politics with three or four years this came on my radar and i got excited, put up a sign on my lawn, and my

wife and i both went and voted. i had been monitoring for the issue i cared about and when it came up, i jumped in. this idea forward, an australian political scientist named john keane, he says this explains a lot of how we do politics now because it is not just individuals who monitor it is whole organizations. like the sunlight foundation who do nothing but try to monitor the performance of government. our people showing up for votes? where they're getting a contribution -- where are they getting their political contributions from? it feels like a very passive, very washington-centered form of citizenship but it does not have to be. is a documentary, wonderful, pbs put it on about the black panthers. when you go back to the history of the emergence of the black panthers at the height of the civil rights movement, the first thing the panthers actually did

was start following the oakland police around. driving behind police cars, for men to a car. and when the oakland police would stop and try to make an arrest, form members of the black panthers, armed, would get out, guns in hand and monitor the police arrest. this sounds crazy. it is amazing no one got shot and killed. it was a way of stepping forward and saying, police brutality is a problem in oakland. we are watching. and part of our job as citizens is to be monitors of power in juicy this right now with groups that are going out and teaching people how to be monitors of police who are going out and making arrests. it is also why we know about deaths of people like walter scott because sadie santana picked up a camera and was able to monitor what happened. this is a very old way of thinking about citizenship.

it goes back to the french revolution. a remarkable french thinker has a brilliant called "counter democracy." and what he argues is that for all that makes democratic systems work, what may be most powerful is people watching those democratic socialists. theing under surveillance people in power. if we look it people, if we are vigilant, if we denounce round doing, if we evaluate performance within this, we are not doing surveillance of the way we normally think about it, we are doing some much more closer to watching from below than from above. they make the argument that this emerges during the french revolution. new forms ofld get political power, the citizenry see themselves as empowered to

hold responsible their new leaders. monarchs never had to be responsible but when you have leaders coming from the people there is this need to because telling watchful. to ensure theing power does not get abused. this idea of counter democracy is not that this watching is against democracy, but that it's intention is structural. it is a buttress. a way in which the counter power keeps that wall from falling down. thinks interesting to about is that there are two ways watchfulness can go wrong. be too weak. that seems to be the situation we have right now. we have the great and good groups like the ¢ foundation going out and say, guess we can document how much money is a popular. yes we can -- how much money is in politics.

revolutionhe french ends up as with the guillotine. literally people who came under surveillance act were found wanting in the eyes of the public, including robespierre. ?o what we do i am offering to ideas to try to find a way out of what looks like an otherwise very difficult mess with civics. whatnot have an answer for you should do so i will take what i am doing. i am spending a lot of time in places like this. survey last santana lussier. the largest -- the third-largest city in brazil. it is quite a port community in the middle of a fairly wealthy city. it is built on reclaimed line in a steep hillside. it is a problem that has a lot of social capital and a lot of

what i am doing these days is going out and meeting with community organizations like this and saying, what is wrong with your community? what are things you would like to document and try to figure out how to fix? we do this with the highest of high-tech elegy. we only use the best post-it notes. magic markers. and we brainstorm what is wrong. what would you like to fix in santa lussier? identifying things and we start to identify things you would never think about. when i was there i found myself documenting staircases. why staircases? it is a surveillance. hill.built on a high it is a big problem in your life because they are badly maintained. they are falling apart. on them.ip and fall when you come to one of these brainstorms, people say, i want to to document what is wrong

with the staircases. i want hand railings. so we know how the software platform. it is a platform that lets the community group identify an issue they care about. they design a survey, go out with mobile phones and believe me, even in the poorest neighborhoods there, people of cell phones. thisgo out and they have survey instrument that says, ok take a photo of the pavement. is pavement missing? is this a hazard to someone? this turns into a point that can show up on a map and the map he comes in interesting and powerful tool. you can use these maps to hold the government responsible. you go to the mayor and say, hey mr. mayor you promised you would be taking care of it our city better in your administration. you are the issues we care about and we can document and map the

problems. sometimes it works. we have actually had really great success in a city where there has been huge problems with sanitation in the main market and now the city is our partner and we are working together to put this application out of people document what is going on in the market and cleanup. sometimes the city does not care and that you go to the press and you say, hey we have a story ready-made for you. let me tell you about my uncle who felt down the staircase and broke his hip because he is one of the dozens of people who had this experience because this neighborhood is filled with danger staircases and we have collected thousands of data points on a map you can simply run in the newspaper if you wanted to just come and verify our work. multiple theories of change but they're all based around an idea that people want to monitor. a want to look at their community and say here's what is going on, here is what we want to ask.

,t if you can give them tools you can make them more powerful. here's another thing we are doing, you have heard the talk changehaping social through norms. one of the best ways is through media. we make images, we make stories, we try to persuade people that their values need to change. that we need to think again black men not as violent but as victim's, for instance. we have been thinking about, how do you measure this change? measure whether a campaign to change norms will have an effect? we look at median three ways. reach, influence, impact. mediae make a piece of and put it in the world, who gets to see it? does it end up changing the media dialogue? forward, dos we put the end of being a ducted by other people? do they change how we talk about

things? when the occupy movement goes out and starts talking about the 99% of the 1%, do other people pick up that language? did we end up with impact. we pass a law? do we change our attitude? it is hard to change impact. it is a long-range change. but measuring the impact ends up being a big thing we can do. one of the things we do is read newspapers. roughly 100,000 of them a day. don't notem so you have to. we subscribe to pretty much every newspaper in the united states, a lot of the was in brazil, a lot of the ones in israel, we collect electronic media from around the world and turn it into a search engine and the search engine lets us ask questions like, what are we paying attention to? so it the beginning of last year we asked the question, who is paying attention to the attacks on charlie hebdo in paris. the answer was everyone, as it should be.

horrific attacks on the freedom of the press. but these attacks ultimately killed fewer than 20 people and during the same week of those attacks, more than in 2000 people were slaughtered in nigeria by northern boko haram. and if you look at our graphs, that orange line with the steep peak are the number of people talking about charlie hebdo, and the blue line behind it is the line talking about nigeria. -- u.s.the line of usb media. we also did a line in nigeria and even in nigeria people were talking more about paris than their own country. very quickly the new york times grabbed this and the editor quoted us as a way of saying, we blew it. this is wrong. we need to figure out how we change our attention. i am happy to say the new york times is actually doing a lot

more coverage of nigeria than they had been previously. by being able to watch this, by looking at where we spend our attention, we may be able to change media. we can also ask questions about how we talk about things. this is work we did for the world health organization trying to figure out how the world was talking about ebola. is the biggest issue of the world in november 2014. the biggest thing everybody is talking about. we gathered tens of thousands of articles on ebola and we cluster them together when they used the same language. you look at the top of the graph, you see where there is like fever, and factions, hemorrhagic, those are words that occur in the same articles. scientificin journals, publications like nature, you see other clusters over time if you look at the upper left, you wind up seeing people talking about nigeria, liberia, or children. those are people talking about

this as an african crisis. but these are not the only ways people end up talking about. we see people talking about relief. that is the group and team. we see africa. we also see a conversation going on about dallas because you remember one of the people exposed to ebola ended up in presbytery hospital in dallas and suddenly there was a huge amount of coverage about ebola in the united states and we are all going to die. then there is a big conversation going on with the obama, crisis, washington, americans. saysconversation basically ebola has come to the united states under the obama administration, this is a lasting legacy of the obama presidency. together people, obama, ebola, both from africa. this is an agenda that shows up and it turns out to be the dominant agenda of what is going on in media. you were the world health organization.

three of these ways of talking about ebola are really good for you. you want people talking about relief, you want people talking about this is a curable disease. you are happy when people talk about africa because this is what we really care about. talking about panic in texas -- not help roll at all. -- not helpful at all. and talking about this being a crisis lyrically, not helpful at all. you can use this as a scorecard. a way to look at how an issue is being framed and that is how we are doing this work overtime. we are now doing this work for social change organizations all over the united states helping them get a sense for how an issue like police violence is being talked about. what frames are winning, what friends are losing and doing it analytically so we can figure what are the publications involved with this? it turns out the publications doing well talking about this as an african issue are british and irish.

none from the united states. the publications talking about this big obama's problem, they are the mainstream of america media. bloomberg, new york times, all of this stuff. we're looking at ways of using this as a way of keeping score in helping people figure out, how would you intervene if you .anted to change the dialogue what the who probably missed was at this point, when everyone was talking about it media was whether we should be quarantining ebola patients and the who never used the word "quarantine" because they thought it was such a terrible idea they did not even want to legitimate it. in the process, they ended up being completely marginal in the conversation. so we're using this to try to help groups like lack lives matter figure out how to organize their media. how to change social norms around this. we are studying how much attention gets paid to -- and we are able to

document that month after month we seem to be paying more andntion to these deaths over time, if you are supporting that movement, you want find a way to sport and work with that. and we are finding open source tools that other researchers can use. we are people using this for everything from teen pregnancy through racial justice issues and we are encouraging people to jump on that and work with that. so these are the questions i am people how do we help feel more powerful? had we help people feel effective in making civic change or monitoring it in the world? when we are making change, how do we know if we are succeeding? how do we know if we are working in the right direction? how do we know how progress is being made? want to leave you. i think civics is changing because civics has to change.

i think a lot of these old models are just not working anymore and i think these new forms of civics, while they are incomplete, while there are often an equitable, why they do not work as we help, i think it a newe to push them in direction. what is not fine is to look at this moment in time and react with disengagement. this feeling of mistrust many of us have when we look at the world today is either a powerful corrosive force or a force we can harness. thank you very much for listening. [applause]

>> i have a question for you. binary to you of platforms, the fact that they are designed to be celery and buyer or user it somewhat is coincidentally compatible with the mistrust of government? to get rid designed of government, are they designed to get rid of auctioneers, , etc.?cts, bankers along those same lines, is insurrection somewhat coincidentally compatible with instant communication? or today, five million people were going down the street in san paolo, it was because they could do that. the secondme answer one first. i do think that instant communication has a great deal to do with insurrectionist

movement. there is a huge history behind this. aboutof what we know history and technology comes from the philippines and mobilization through sms, which documentednderfully by howard rheingold in his book "smart mobs" where people could say, we're all going to edison square, where black, pass it on. it turns down that was enough to pull down a government, to put people on the street. through somesier of these technologies to mobilize people and bring them out the at it ever was before. flipside is that governments are getting much smarter about it and starting to understand that this sort of instant mobilization means less then it used to. when you saw the march on

washington, when you saw 40,000 people coming into the capital at a moment when it was very difficult to organize, what that march basically signified was months and months and months of work and head of time to mobilize everybody. what 40,000 people in a public square right now might need is that somebody had a really well-craft did tweet. auto crafts are learning how to -- autocrats are learning to ignore that. a friend said what was happening around mobilization in turkey. she points out the mobilization has led to very little. you saw erdogan get elected with a majority of voters and he basically belittled and made fun of the people came out in the yearshe realized that ago, 50,000 people in the streets -- you were in trouble

and about to be overthrown. but 60,000 people in the streets right now might just mean that somebody did a really good job working their network. some mobilization is easier but it is less meaningful. question is subtle. i like it. this notion that these somehow arelatforms this level of distrust. and one of the things i would we have been watching the collapse of profession in the united states. notion been moving this that, i am an architect or accountant and i have a set of values i am owing live up to independent of the specific job i hold. it tends to be more specific. less to the profession. is a way ine there which a lot of these

intermediary platforms right very well be further eroding those sorts of roles. to the extent you end up saying, maybe i do not need a bank anymore. maybe i will just use bitcoin or my mobile phone company as i do in kenya. institutiont, that that had a reason to be there and reasons to charge you money suddenly looks like we can get rid of it over time and maybe that is another place where mistrust starts eating away. back isg i would look when you look at the graph i was shot, this rise of mistrust and institutions is really starting 19 70 and a lot of this disintermediation is more a result than a cause. once you realize there is nothing particularly special about the bank or the travel agent or the lawyer, it is just someone puts words together and

maybe i could do it if i just had the right information on the internet, but i think that is more result the end cause. hard to say at a certain point. what else do we got? >> in terms of mistrust of institutions, i am wondering how you feel about m.i.t.? you are working within the structure of a very powerful institution. a great question and i will make the question even more complicated by admitting that i was friends with aaron swartz, the young man who committed suicide after being prosecuted by the commonwealth of massachusetts and m.i.t. not only did not fund that prosecution but in many ways sort of actively encouraged it. tricky aboutis

finding yourself at an institution, particularly if you're like me, a professional insurrectionist, is that you are sort of left with this question of "is it my job to fix this institution or is it my job to ?"rk around the institution in who find themselves with an powerful and flawed institutions, and i would say mostar, a question at a certain point becomes, "can i be more effective trying to make the institution better at what it is and does well or can i do a better job by saying, maybe we do not meet this institution anymore, let's do something else instead of this institution." of graduate dean education left m.i.t. to start a new kind of university. a university that is mostly virtual. it does not have tenure. it does not have a lot of the

trappings as a place like m.i.t. does. insurrectionist of approach. to say, i have looked around come i see the limits, it is signed for me to step out and try something new. at this point i find myself saying, there is a lot i can do to help the since two should become better. students, a year and a half after aaron's death found himself in legal trouble based on experiments he was doing with bitcoin. i was very concerned that m.i.t. was not representing him, was withaking care of them and a couple of other professors we wrote "or to the president of the university which ended up in the boston globe which ended up with a commission that i was then slated to serve on to try to figure out how we would defend students who got into legal trouble while innovating. two and a half further down the road, we now have a new institution.

we have an office that actually provides legal defense services to students who get in trouble when innovating in the course of their academic work. it is a very institutionalist and i felt a problem it was something i could do and take advantage of a place like m.i.t. is absolutely the kind of institution that can and should stand up for that freedom to innovate. everyone has to wrestle with of. everyone of us who are blessed to be working with an strong and powerful institutions have to ask the question, can we make change for the better or is it time to step out and try to behave very differently and make the change from outside? >> of relative to civics and mistrust of government, was wondering if you would comment campaign, theers trump campaign, the use of twitter, and they are both

appealing to groups that feel disenfranchised and powerless and the whole relationship. ask some of the better analysis i have seen looking at both the donald trump and bernie sanders phenomenon looks at groups of americans who feel like the world has changed for the worst. we have seen a lot of reporting that low-end middle income white are living shorter lives, dying sooner. the people in the past have been involved with factory jobs are now not my "employment. that there is really -- now not employment. a whole class of people for which things are getting worse. a lot of these people in the past would've been well represented i organize labor but we have less and less organized labor. these are people who in many cases are turning either to the

trump or to the sanders cap. the common ground is the sense that the system just is not working and that iterated over the course of 10 or 20 years, things are simply not getting better for some groups of people. that point, someone who says -- look, i agree. the system is broken. i am outside that system and i am going to find a way to fix it. those prescriptions to make america great again, make , either of those are outside the point. what you are really saying is tentative voters saying, i cannot trust anyone who believes that the institutions we have are basically sound. i need one who understands how frustrated, how angry, how alienated i am and is willing to

say, we need a completely different system. we need to get rid of some of these institutions and start from scratch. there really different. i do not want to lump trump and sanders together. it i don't want to predict whether we are at a moment when insurrectionist some is more powerful then institutionalism. there are still a lot of institutionalist up there. at the end of the day, i do teach at m.i.t. hand at the end of the day, a lot of people are working very hard to make institutions work. of someone who has tried incredibly hard to make institutions work, i think hillary clinton is a nice example. the question may be for people who feel systemically let down by the structures that were supposed to give them opportunity, are they going to be able to sign off on someone who has proven herself as very effective within that

institution or are they going to demand someone who basically says, no we have to get rid of those their nest -- they are just not working. the had to questions about end of your lecture. one related to the example in brazil. though you are --king about the monitoring the citizens monitoring. a would've they doing? they are producing maps to take to the government, and institution they do not trust. so how effective is such dreaded gm's your premises there is no trust in institutions? why are you going back to the government? is a great question. thank you for calling me on that. what i am really trying to do in my work right now is more descriptive than prescriptive.

what i am seeing around monitoring is that this is a lot of the way people are trying to make changes at the moment. that it isnvinced necessarily the way i want to make change. and i think it is a way you can make change when you still have can that the institutions be reformed. it is a way of saying, this is a way of making my voice heard within those institutions. one of the things that has been interesting in brazil as we have had a couple cases where we have evidence it works. where we have the government show up and do the right thing in response. we also have a lot cases where it has not worked at all. started working in sao paulo in part because there is a progressive mayor, for non-dough, who did all the right things. concrete things to change the city. immediatelyost

after taking office faced a strike from the left. a transit strike of people saying, we are not going to pay that isl buses and because we do not trust the government to do anything anymore. i think monetary or power is a much more active stance than saying, we'll pass the laws, elected right people. i think it is a way of saying, we are going to be deeply involved with institutional politics. cross theng when you line and say, i don't even think monetary power is going to out me. i'm going to try to figure out how to step out further. thistrying to look at line. i am personally ambivalent about where area. i do not think the institutions are unsellable gimbal or we can find a better way to channel our frustration and power into

reshaping the institution. but you are right to call me on that structural. question is on your beautiful landscape or graphic. could you put it up again? >> yes. it is my student to is doing it. gorgeous but is do not see how the world health organization uses it to change their strategy so could you unpack that a little bit for us? >> sure. what we ended up talking about was trying to figure out first of all who they would want to reach and saying, right now the who, at the top of this graph, is using language that is in common with the cd say, the new -- journal of medicine. the nih.

they are writing in a way where their dialogue and way of framing the issue is getting picked up in scientific publications and not getting picked up by anybody else. there are actually quite distant from organizations that have a much greater reach. hardit is probably quite for the who to start talking in the same language that the new york times is talking in. they are framing these issues so differently. that it might be a time when the who spends a lot of time talking to the bbc or guardian and tries to figure out whether they can carry some of the water and help make some points. it is also a way of trying to define the landscape that people are talking about. so when you say what are the topics that and up being common between a lot to of these different dialogues, they are the ones at the center of the map. the ones around quarantine. hospital andnd

symptoms. they are really looking at this idea that people are deeply worried about this as something personally affecting them. and the who really elected not to engage in that dialogue at all. we ended up suggesting we thought that was a mistake will stop we thought that was probably the wrong way to do it. been using these landscapes on other ideas as well. we did one for the ford foundation around teen pregnancy and we ended up discovering there was a cluster around the shame-based organizations. a cluster of what you might think of as healthy pregnancy at any age. don't worry about teen pregnancy, worry about healthy mothers. and then there's mtv. pregnant" endsd up being a completely dominant layer on the landscape. saying, mtv we know you think 16

and pregnant is destigmatize it, but actually it is not. close to the shame-based language then the language we are trying to use round healthy pregnancy. can we talked about how you are framing this issue because you have an undue amount of cultural weight. the public health sector is ahead of everybody else with this. they have been working on norms-based change for 30 or 40 years. it started with the harvard alcohol project that was trying to normalize this idea of the designated driver. there is an enormous amount of research around this. what there are not are very, very good tools for looking at the broad media landscape. we are still trying to figure out how to get there but this is what people have been telling us is useful about being able to look at the media lens this way.

>> i am wondering what role openness might play in addressing this mistrust. government, open data initiatives, openness from the citizens perspective. >> i have been disappointed with openness. working with how questions of technology could change participation. the last great wave that happened, you could think of as a way that said, let's openness government data and remarkable things will happen from it. so you sought data.gov in the united states, you saw data.uk

in the u.k.. you saw all these attempts to make information more available to the public and the hope that people would build new tools and services around this. the hope was that journalists would find ways to review it and make sense of it. and the hope or than anything else was that i just opening up the secrets, everything would realize that government had nothing to hide. i would say there have been two disappointments that have come from it. the first disappointment is that it turns out data by itself is not all that helpful. it requires an enormous amount into a toolurn data or narrative or into anything that is sort of logical or sensible. right now aree american newspapers sort of scrambling to figure out how to do data journalism. to figure out, had we take these data sets and bring stories and their tents out of them?

it is possible when we get that we at storytelling and data will be richer and smarter and more open and so on. that it has been surprisingly hard and i think in many cases part of it, the story it tells, it is ambiguous, complicated, is as simple. the second that, as richard hofstetter reminds us, you can never underestimate the role of the paranoid in american politics and the incredible openness that is starting to happen provides this amazing fodder for a conspiracy from both the left and on the right. one of the projects i love to teach is this visualization called "they roll." it looks at the interlocking directorships of different fortune 500 corporations and different nonprofit corporations and the whole rhetoric is, if you just look, you can find d.c.

could people who actually rule the world and you see this journalism only time in extreme sources like right part. courses, i show where i show up on the map as a board member is a board member of a large foundation, the open society foundation. and i say, great. open association. who wants to go for right up my car? it is not a ferrari. this is not -- you know, the transparency of showing who is involved with this does not actually help one hour paranoid very is that a small number of people actually role and control the world. the best efforts, a lot of the things that come out of things like the spotlight foundation, an organization i respect,y unfortunately contribute more to mistrust because what we get are the stories of how huge amounts of money are pouring into

politics. the sense that the politicians and paidour bought for. we end up with this sort of corrosive mistrust mistrust when we look at the data rather than this sort of sunlight we hope for. >> fantastic. thank you so much. i appreciate you being here and thank you for listening. [applause]

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>> we will carry on without work. thank you very much indeed. >> mike cane. despite the trade union elements being removed, it is still a battlefield. does the secretary of state agree that billable make the good agency governments? >> i don't share the honorable gentleman spheres at all. i fully support it. >> mckinney. >> sent memorandums on the trade unions bills. it's clearly impinges. does the minister not now agree it was subject to legislative motions and what actions will the government take to ensure