sarah sewall who is the undersecretary for civil security, democracy and human rights at the u.s. state department. doctor school has been previous work of harvard kennedy school as director of the carr center for human rights, and kobe prestigious center and the program on human rights and national security. she was a member of the defense policy board, deputy assistant secretary of state for peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance in the clinton administration, worked for senate majority leader george mitchell and was an oxford scholar sometime back. she has been one of those voices within the state department that has been persistent and consistent in making sure that this issue of countering violent extremism remains on the radar screen. it can be very easy to devolve quickly into kind of security measures when you are talking about east africa or the horn. i'm not saying that those are easy but the much more difficult part of all this is in changing the social norms and the social interactions and the thinking and the hearts and minds and the grievances and frustrations of m

. >> violent extremism in africa is on the rise according to the other secretary of state sarah sewallshe was part of a discussion on u.s. efforts to counter religious extremism and countries across the continent. the center for strategic and international studies in washington, d.c. hosted this discussion. >> good afternoon, everyone. welcome to csis, and it's great to see you all here and welcome to our online audience as well. my name is jennifer cook. i dragged the africa program here at csis and i'm very pleased to see organizing and the institute, the commission international religious freedom at today's session on violent extremism, religious extremism in africa. looking at very, very response is on fat. through the course of the next few months the commission and csis will be hosting a small series of off the record roundtables, each one looking at different models, different places, different interlocutors and promising models, what has been missing from some of the endeavors to counter extremist ideologies within africa. we don't have africans at the table today. unfortunatel