The Shelby Shakedown continues. Richard Shelby is no longer holding all executive branch appointees hostage to his demand for extra pork for Alabama, instead it’s just these guys:
But Senator Shelby still has holds on on these individuals: Terry Yonkers, Assistant Secretary of the Air Force; Frank Kendall, Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics; and Erin Conaton, Under Secretary of the Air Force.
This is completely unacceptable. If Shelby doesn’t think Terry Yonkers should be Assistant Secretary of the Air Force then he should vote “no” when the matter is brought to the Senate floor. If Shelby doesn’t think Frank Kendall should be Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics he should vote “no” when the matter is brought to the Senate floor. If Shelby doesn’t think Erin Conaton should be Under Secretary of the Air Force then he should vote “no” when the matter is brought to the Senate floor. That’s how a legislature runs. It has the authority to confirm or not confirm certain people. So when the president nominates people, the members vote. If they don’t want to vote “yes,” they don’t have to. But delaying a vote indefinitely? In order to shake some federal bucks loose? It’s outrageous.
Yglesias is right. It is outrageous– and undemocratic in the extreme.
Shelby’s office said he would maintain holds on three nominations — Terry Yonkers as assistant secretary of the Air Force; Frank Kendall, principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics; and Erin Conaton, undersecretary of the Air Force — until the final terms were issued.
This is ridiculous. The nomination sailed through the Committee and should have been immediately approved by the full Senate. There has to be a way out of this practice of senatorial “holds.” What kind of democracy allows one member of a legislative body the right to unilaterally block a vote on a nominee?
Among the many international organizations supporting relief efforts in Haiti, is the International Organization for Migration (IOM). My dear friend, Louis P. Hoffmann, is the Operations Coordinator for this mission for the IOM (pictured at far right below). The above video depicts one of the IOM’s many supply distribution efforts. More information on IOM’s work in Haiti can be found here.
Preview to Annual Meeting of the President’s Interagency Task Force To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Luis CdeBaca Director, Office To Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons
Washington, DC
February 3, 2010
MR. TONER: Good afternoon. Today, Secretary Clinton will chair the President’s Interagency Task Force to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. She’ll be joined by fellow cabinet members as well as other task force representatives. This meeting, which is required under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, is the first under this Administration and will discuss steps taken by our interagency partners in the last year as well as map out coordinated strategies across the Obama Administration to confront modern slavery.
Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca, the Director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, is here to provide a preview of that meeting. Ambassador CdeBaca serves as the chair of the Senior Policy Operating Group, which oversees the day-to-day implementation and coordination of the Administration’s interagency trafficking – anti-trafficking policies.
Ambassador.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Thank you. As Mark said, I’m Luis CdeBaca. I’m the Ambassador-at-Large for the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking. Today, Secretary Clinton will chair the President’s interagency task force. She’ll be joined by other members of the task force, including the Attorney General, the secretaries of Labor, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services; the USAID Administrator, the Director of National Intelligence, as well as representatives from the White House, Department of Defense, Education, Agriculture, and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
This meeting, which, as Mark said, is mandated under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, is the first held under the Obama Administration. In today’s meeting, we will look forward to a very candid and progressive discussion that highlights the work that each agency is conducting individually as well as collectively to combat modern slavery. In addition, it’s a chance to preview the anti-trafficking efforts in the days, weeks, and months ahead as we work together to make measured progress against every form of exploitation, including forced labor, peonage, and sexual servitude, in response to the President’s declaration of January as Human Trafficking and Slavery Awareness and Prevention Month.
To put this issue into broader context, the crime problem of human trafficking has crosscutting implications across U.S. Government policy lines, and that’s quite evident by the participation of the stakeholders who we will see today. Just one example of how coordination works in the real world and how human trafficking affects American communities: Yesterday afternoon, a jury in Dallas-Fort Worth convicted two defendants of enslaving a woman as their domestic servant in a scheme that lasted almost a decade. To bring these perpetrators to justice and to make sure that their victim was safe and cared for took the efforts of many different agencies working in concert. Just as we worked to rescue one individual Nigerian woman from servitude in Texas, we have to combine our individual mandates and skill sets in a manner that enables a whole-of-government response equal to the scale of this problem. Because to confront modern slavery, we must act in a manner commensurate to the sophistication and tenacity of our adversaries, the traffickers, while honoring the bravery and humanity of the victims.
With that, I will answer any questions you might have.
QUESTION: How pervasive would you say the problem of human trafficking is worldwide?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: There are a number of different estimates and it’s a pretty broad estimate, depending on the methodology. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are around 12.3 million persons laboring in bondage around the world. And some of the other estimates from other organizations are higher, up to 27 million. Some of it ends up, again, coming down to methodology. But certainly, 12.3 million is – we think that that’s a pretty accurate number.
QUESTION: And what are the demographics?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: According to the ILO, it’s around – and I apologize if I don’t have the exact number. We can get that for you. But according to the ILO, I want to say it’s around 50 to 60 percent female, that by their numbers, it’s somewhere around 9 to 10 million in forced labor situations and 2 to 3 million in sex trafficking situations.
QUESTION: The impression we sometimes get is that this is carried out by organized crime groups. Can you set us straight on who exactly is doing this? Is there an international worldwide network of people? What’s the homegrown part of it?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Exactly. We’ve seen all of these different manifestations, and I think this is one of the challenges of this crime, is that for every case that you have like the one in Dallas yesterday, where a man and a woman acted upon their own to bring a servant from their home country and enslave her in their house, you also have cases such as a case that I prosecuted when I was in the Civil Rights Division, for instance, in Michigan and another one in Illinois, in which you had more traditional Russian organized crime types of figures who were recruiting people in Ukraine, in Lithuania, Latvia, et cetera, bringing them over as something that would be, I guess for lack of a better word, the stereotypical type of case that you describe. And so as a result, you end up having to have a response that finds those individual actors and at the same time is able to go after the cartels.
One of the things that we’ve been very successful in doing in the past year during the Obama Administration is working with the Government of Mexico so that, for the first time now, we have cases that are being investigated and prosecuted both at the beginning of the case in Mexico and in the United States, the first case recently that was brought kind of simultaneously in Atlanta and in the state of Tlaxcala in Mexico. We think that that’s probably the way to go when you’re dealing with these – more of the international crime rings is to do that simultaneously in both countries.
QUESTION: So where are these people taken? I have an image of a map around the world. Where do they come from? Where do they go?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: A lot of the cases are actually people who are enslaved in their own country. And it – I don’t think we have good data as to whether that’s the norm or whether transnational movement for the purposes of exploitation is the norm. Certainly, again, the conception that I think a lot of people have on this is that this is a phenomenon of movement and migration which is not required by the United Nations protocol, it’s not required by U.S. law.
Basically, what we see though is trafficking flows – when it is a movement crime, trafficking flows mimicking the broader migration flow. So, for instance, if you look in Western Europe, traditionally a lot of the people who have been held in servitude have been from Eastern Europe, but now they’re starting to see a number of cases involving Chinese children and other Asian folks brought in – again, not always for sex, but sometimes for forced labor, starting to get begging rings with kids from Africa and things like that in a number of European cities. And that really is following the broader migrant flow, so it should be no surprise to people that here in the United States, a lot of our cases involve people from Mexico and Latin America because just, again, the basic percentage of migrants in this country is predominantly Hispanic.
QUESTION: Is this simply taking advantage of people who are in dire economic straits, or do you see an uptick when there is some sort of natural crisis such as an earthquake, a tsunami, something of that sort?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: I think that part of what we’ve seen is that the traffickers end up taking advantage of whatever vulnerability is in front of them. So, for instance, there was a case that was prosecuted a couple of years ago in Kansas where the victims were white American citizens but who were made vulnerable to enslavement because of mental illness, schizophrenia, et cetera.
Usually, the vulnerabilities come from race, class, migratory status, unfamiliarity with the language or the culture. And certainly, we see this notion of displacement, whether it’s in conflict areas, the women and children enslaved in the Eastern Congo and in other places in Africa to do what’s called euphemistically artisanal mining, scratching the precious minerals from the earth that can then be used in our cell phones and other things like that, tantalum and cobalt, but also the notion of the predators coming in to – whether it’s refugee camps, whether it’s into other places where we’ve seen that kind of displacement.
And just as we’ve seen the refugee camps in the wake of the Kosovo intervention and in Bosnia and in those areas becoming a place where human traffickers go to try to find their victims, obviously, that’s something that we’re looking at in the last three weeks in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti.
QUESTION: Can you explain –
QUESTION: Can you be more specific about Haiti and whether you – what you’ve seen and whether you’re just worried about it in general or whether you’re actually seeing it, and are there any cases aside from the dozen Americans in the case that’s pending down there?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Well, I won’t address the dozen – the Americans in the case that’s pending. I think that you’ve heard about that from the podium through some other folks. But the – we are hearing anecdotal evidence from certainly, obviously, UNICEF, which is the head of the child cluster there in Haiti, and other NGOs about the notion of recruiters or others in some of these camps. I think that some of that’s been reported.
QUESTION: What was the name of that organization? UNIT?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: UNICEF?
QUESTION: Oh, from UNICEF. Okay.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Yeah. But some of the other organizations that are there. We have begun to – we’ve actually got funding out the door already to a group called Heartland Alliance that’s part of the child cluster that’s one of the more experienced U.S. countertrafficking organizations. They work with a lot of the trafficking victims in the Midwest. They’re out of Chicago. But they also do countertrafficking projects for – with grant money from us around the world. And they’re stepping up their activities in Haiti.
One of the things that we’re responding to is not necessarily that there is one particular case that’s triggered this or one particular allegation that’s triggered this, but rather the notion that when you have a refugee situation or you have a natural disaster, et cetera, especially in the 10 years now since the adoption of the United Nations Protocol Against Trafficking in Persons, there’s a recognition that you have to build that into your response, just like you’d build – if you were going to have a major sporting event, you’d have to build in how many ambulances do you need if somebody’s going to have heart attacks, what do you do about terrorism.
I think now we’re starting to see that countertrafficking responses need to be built in from the beginning, and especially in a place like Haiti, where, as our report in 2009 pointed out, there was a large child trafficking problem before the earthquake hit. And so I think that the unique situation that we have with Haiti means that it’s even more pressing on the part of donor communities and governments like the United States, who are working on the ground there.
QUESTION: Do you have any statistics on how many – on the problem in Haiti before the earthquake, numbers? And then also on that whole total of 12.3 million persons, how many of those were children, roughly?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: We’ll have to, I think, circle back with you on the ILO study. The ILO study, just so you have it, the name of that was called the Cost of Coercion. And I –
QUESTION: The what?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: The Cost of Coercion – in which the ILO not only did a snapshot of the problem in the world but also did some economic modeling in which they’re estimating that it’s about 31 billion profit to the traffickers annually, and about 20 billion opportunity cost losses to the victims on top of that, so it’s about a 50 billion industry worldwide.
As far as Haiti is concerned, last year in the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, Haiti – and again, this is a wide range of estimate – the high-end estimate is 300,000 children who are in the restavek system in Haiti, with an additional potential of 3,000 who may have been taken to the Dominican Republic for use.
And the restavek system, for those of you who are unfamiliar with that, it’s a – basically a system of fostering out children who then are working as child domestic servants, often abused, often exploited. They tend to age out because the Haitian law requires employers to pay domestic workers over the age of 15. And so one of the things that we’re concerned about and that we raised in the report last year was the notion that many of the street children – whether it’s girls in prostitution, whether it’s boys engaged in crime, et cetera – are basically restaveks who were disposed of by the families who had had them before. So that’s that that notion of kind of the child domestic servant, often enslaved, usually given to the person because of promises that the child would be cared for, sent to school, et cetera. So that’s one of the things that we are very concerned about is that as we rebuild, as we start to enter the rebuilding stage, that the child safety response is in place so that we don’t see an even bigger increase in that restavek population.
QUESTION: Last year’s report refers to –
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: I promised him that I would come to him.
QUESTION: You’ve got a specific question on Haiti?
QUESTION: No, go ahead and, I’ll come back to that.
QUESTION: Those figures are from 2008, though, right?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Yes, and the 2009 numbers actually should be coming in. We’ve – we’re in the middle of our reporting period right now, so we’re looking for our reporting cables. Obviously, we’re going to have to see how much of the data is going to be collectible in Haiti right now, given what’s going on with the government and its ability to give us any kind of data on this.
QUESTION: Just two things. One, you said that you’re hearing anecdotally about the notion of traffickers in Haiti. What do you mean by “about the notion of”? I mean, are you hearing anecdotes that there are actually traffickers or –
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: For – just one for instance. There’s been reports, that I think have been reported on in the news as well, of men coming into some of the camps, using offers of food or water to get girls to leave with them in trucks. Now, obviously, we don’t have any hard evidence as to what’s happening to those girls once they leave with those men, and so that’s why the term “the notion of” trafficking.
When we look at human trafficking, as far as what the crime phenomenon would be, we’re looking at somebody who’s being held in compelled service. So we can suspect that that may have been the case that they might have been recruiting those girls for prostitution and that, because they’re under age, could be a trafficking situation, but we don’t have the hard information yet as to what’s happening down the road. And I think that’s one of the things that we’re going to be looking to work with the Haitian police as they, again, move out of the immediate disaster response and go back to reconstruction and governance. We’ll be wanting to work with them as far as how do you set up detective squads and child protective folks that can then go and look downstream as far as that’s –
QUESTION: That was exactly my next question, which is: Can you describe for us, other than detective squads, what are the kinds of specific, practical steps that one should set up? The same way that you try to estimate how many ambulances you need for a sporting event, what are the kinds of things you need to put in place in this kind of a – after such a natural disaster or a war or whatever?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Well, before the earthquake, we had about $500,000 worth of programming in Haiti itself, and those were largely about child trafficking. It was a couple of projects that were working with protecting escaped restaveks and seeking reintegration, either back with their families or with families who could foster them, who wouldn’t abuse them, to improve and instill greater public awareness about human trafficking within Haiti.
So it was something that then you’d see legal reforms or bigger resources being put it into it by the government, and also to provide direct services to victims, whether it’s men, women or children, in Haiti.
We also have some projects in the Dominican Republic, who are working with the Haitian community there, some of whom are in exploitative conditions, whether it’s in farming or whether it’s in the sex industry. And so there’s a project that we’re working on with the Solidarity Center, working on how to get information out to those communities.
What we’ve done in the last three weeks is we’ve repositioned a number of those projects. In the Dominican Republic, for instance, we’re working with the Solidarity Center so that we can try to turn that project around a little bit and have it catch, if there are folks that are coming over the border in search of jobs, in search of work, that they know their rights, that they know that they shouldn’t put themselves into a situation where they can be exploited.
So we’re working on the Dominican side with that project, and then we’re also moving money into Haiti as far as trying to build up those child protection brigades, as far as working with the groups such as the Jean Robert Cadet Restavek Foundation and others to try to make sure that we can have some things in place to protect those children.
But I think that what we see as far as the bigger macro issue is that it’s – the response to human trafficking is not the first week or two’s response; that’s the immediate shelter needs, immediate medical needs, et cetera. Then it’s starting to overlay in, do you have protection, do you have police, do you have social workers, et cetera, and that’s where we’re trying to move with this.
QUESTION: And how are the child protection brigades different from police or social workers? I mean, what are they?
AMBASSADSOR CDEBACA: They’re a little more akin to the folks here in the United States who are the child protective services –
QUESTION: Okay.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: – folks, so it’s kind of half police, half social worker in the best of all possible worlds. And that’s what we’re going to be engaging with the Haitian Government on as to what’s their vision that we can come in, supplement that, professionalize it, and make sure that there are enough folks in the child protection brigades to actually go out now that we’ve got so many children who will need to be reunited either with their families or with the orphanages that they were in before, et cetera.
QUESTION: Can you explain exactly what this meeting is today about – this afternoon? I mean, you made reference several times to the fact that it’s mandated. I mean, is there any reason other than the fact that it’s mandated that it’s happening today? Is there anything to announce coming out of it? Is there any new strategy, any new policy that’s going to arise? Or is this just kind of a get-together and look at what we’ve done over the past year?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: I think what we’ll see out of this is we’ll see – there’s a little bit of bringing everyone together, which is what Congress set up the task force to do. But I think that one of the things that we’ll see is a commitment from the cabinet to actually go out and then implement what the President called for in his declaration on January 4th.
QUESTION: Well, wasn’t there already that commitment?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Well, that commitment was there, but as far as the task force officially declaring it moving forward, what comes out of today will actually, I think, give us a roadmap that we can use for the interagency coordination through the President’s Interagency Task Force and the senior policy operating group. And so –
QUESTION: But wasn’t that being done last year as well?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: It was being done last year, but –
QUESTION: Okay. So what’s different? I guess I’m just trying to figure out what the point of this meeting is. I mean, it sounds as though it’s just kind of a review and like, yay, let’s everyone get onboard, but not much substance.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Well, I think that what we’re seeing is that the way that Congress set the task force up was that the task force has a coordinating function through the senior policy operating group – and that meets quarterly – that’s where we look at the particular substance, we feed that up to our principals, decisions can be made. Today is the principals meeting, so it’ll be giving us the marching orders for what we do at the more substantive level going throughout the next year.
QUESTION: You asking for more money for Haiti? You said that previously you had about $500,000 a year in projects. And I know you guys have – don’t have yet an exact sum for assistance for Haiti. But do you plan to ask for additional money to combat these kinds of – to combat trafficking in Haiti?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Well, we have 500,000 to begin with. We will reposition about another a million, taking that from other projects, frankly. And so we need to look at how we make sure that those projects, which – the money of which hasn’t gone out the door yet. And those countries don’t necessarily (inaudible) or not, now that we’re looking at the Haitian side.
Obviously, we’re looking at what the long-term funding needs are. We have about $20-, $22 million in grant funds that we administer in the Trafficking office. We work with our partners at USAID and at the International Labor Affairs Bureau over at DOL, and we are shaking the trees right now to figure out what money there is in this year’s budget, as opposed to looking into the next year.
QUESTION: Right.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: I know that Deputy Secretary Lew was in talking budget issues with you guys earlier this week. Right now, we’re shaking the 2010 trees to try to figure out what monies we have available right now. And as we do that, obviously, we’ll be looking at the budget needs going forward.
QUESTION: And the additional 1 million that’s been repositioned is all FY2010 money, correct?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: I want to say it’s – there might be a little bit of unspent 20 – 2009 money –
QUESTION: Okay.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: — that hasn’t gone out the door yet –
QUESTION: Okay.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: — but it’s not new money –
QUESTION: Right.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: — from a new place yet.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: One more question on funding. The people from – who are going to be working with Haiti or with any country on these projects, are they U.S. Government employees or are they NGOs who have applied for grant money from the federal government? What’s the breakdown on that?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: I don’t think we have a particular ratio yet. At this point, the folks that were on the ground were the grantees, and so we’re looking to try to intensify that so that they can get into action immediately.
QUESTION: Okay.
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: Many of them started working first and then we’ve been trying to overlay it so they can actually start bringing in some experts – not only American experts, but also there are a lot of Haitian experts, people on the ground, who can be brought into this, I think especially as people continue to dig out. And so we want to make sure that the – that our partners on the ground there have the funding, everything from rebuilding and making sure that there’s enough food and water for the kids, to if they need to be hiring more social workers or other things so that they can go ahead and do that.
QUESTION: Just one last question?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: One last question.
QUESTION: Okay. Just on statistics here, the number of people who are laboring in bondage, do you have any figures for the United States?
AMBASSADOR CDEBACA: The United States numbers are very imprecise, and I don’t think that we’re in a position where we can really give you a number. There’s been numbers recorded in the past. We’re looking at their methodology on that. I think that the consensus out in the anti-trafficking community is that certainly, we’re talking about tens of thousands. The number of trafficking victims that have been found in the United States don’t come anywhere near that, and that’s one of the things that we’re going to be talking about today with the fellow cabinet members, is how we can ensure that we’re finding and protecting as many of those victims as possible.
I think one of the ways that we do that, frankly, is that we’re now starting to see state laws come on line. And as we get state and local law enforcement – not just federal law enforcement – we’ll hopefully be seeing more rescues.
Rachel Pugh of the Georgetown University Office of Communications writes:
The Georgetown basketball team may have won against Duke on Jan. 30 in front of a capacity crowd that included President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, but students from both schools have put aside rivalry to become partners for a common cause — Darfur refugees.
Through the Darfur Dream Team’s Sister Schools Program, students from the two universities are raising money for two schools located among the 12 refugee camps in nearby eastern Chad.
“Access to education will give refugee kids the tools they need to move out of the camps and support themselves,” said Carolyn Shanahan (C’12), president of Georgetown STAND (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur). “Many of the children have also expressed a desire to return to Sudan and rebuild the Darfur region. They need education in order to help stabilize their country.”
Sister’s a Father, Too
Nearly 3 million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan. There are now 250,000 refugees from Darfur in eastern Chad. Children account for more than 60 percent of the population of Darfuri refugee camps and face major educational challenges from lack of infrastructure and funding.
Georgetown’s sister school, Aboutalib — which means father of scholars in Arabic is located in the Goz Amer refugee camp; Duke is raising money for another refugee school.
“Duke and Georgetown are fierce rivals on the court, but they’ve decided to partner off the court to provide a quality education to kids from Darfur who otherwise would have no opportunities,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of Enough.
Enough, a Center for American Progress project to end genocide and crimes against humanity, joins students from Georgetown STAND and the Duke for Darfur Coalition, NBA stars Tracy McGrady and Dikembe Mutombo (I’91) and former Georgetown Law Center Dean Alexander Aleinikoff, in effort to assist the refugees of Darfur. Aleinikoff is the newly appointed United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees.
The goal for both universities is to each raise $57,500 to operate and supply the schools. Ted Leonsis (C’77), owner of the Washington Capitals and Mystics and a member of the university’s board, offered to match the amount raised during the game. Before Saturday afternoon’s Georgetown-Duke matchup the “Georgetown — John Prendergast” team had raised more than $14,000.
The student groups also shared their mission with game-day spectators by showing a one-minute public service announcement on the Verizon Center’s Jumbotron.
“We hope that, in viewing the video, President Obama took to heart the necessity of active U.S. involvement in pressuring Sudan for reform,” said Daniel Solomon (SFS’13) of Georgetown STAND.
For more information on the Darfur Dream Team or to make a donation to support Georgetown’s sister school, visit the Web site.
The Catholic Church warned the government on Monday against banning full-face Muslim veils, saying France must respect the rights of its Muslims if it wanted Muslim countries to do the same for their Christian minorities. A parliamentary commission has urged the National Assembly to pass a resolution condemning full veils and then ban them. “If we want Christian minorities in Muslim majority countries to enjoy all their rights, we should in our country respect the rights of all believers to practice their faith,” said Bishop Michel Santier, the top French Catholic official for interreligious dialogue.
I agree with Bishop Santier. Perhaps his comments will have an impact on the National Assembly.
Only one-quarter of people in a worldwide survey believe large, multinational businesses apply a values-driven approach to their sectors, according to a new report by the World Economic Forum (WEF) produced in collaboration with Georgetown.
The report, Faith and the Global Agenda: Values for the Post-Crisis Economy, includes a Facebook survey of more than 130,000 people in 10 countries.
“More than two-thirds of respondents see the current economic and financial crisis as a crisis of ethics and values as well,” says Thomas Banchoff, director of Georgetown’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. “The results point to a global values gap.”
Almost 40 percent of those polled chose honesty, integrity and transparency as the value most important for the global political and economic system; 24 percent chose others’ rights, dignity and views; 17 percent chose preserving the environment; and 20 percent chose the impact of actions on the well-being of others.
Published in the run up to the Forum’s Jan. 27-31 annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, the report includes a preface by Georgetown President John J. DeGioia and Forum executive chair Klaus Schwab, as well as essays from leading religious figures including the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.
“The economic and financial crisis is an opportunity to rearticulate the values that should underpin our global institutions going forward,” says DeGioia. “The world’s religious communities are critical repositories of those values.”
DeGioia will be in Davos later this month to participate in WEF’s Global Redesign Initiative, an effort to promote new systems of global cooperation.
“Our present system fails to meet its obligations to as many as 3 billion people in the world,” says Schwab, who is also founder of WEF. “Our civic, business and political cultures must be transformed if we are to close this gap.”
The report also features a year-in-review essay that analyzes the main trends in religion and world affairs over the course of 2009, including violence directed against religious minorities and President Barack Obama’s opening to the Muslim world.
Briefing on Internet Freedom and 21st Century Statecraft
Michael H. Posner Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
Alec Ross Senior Advisor for Innovation
Washington, DC
January 22, 2010
MR. TONER: Good afternoon, and welcome to the State Department. We’re very pleased this afternoon to have with us Senior Advisor for Innovation Alec Ross, along with Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Michael Posner. They’re here to talk a little bit more detail about the context behind the Secretary’s internet freedom speech yesterday.
And with no further ado, I’ll hand it over to Alec. MR. ROSS: Good afternoon, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be with you this afternoon. What I wanted to do is just take a very couple – very few minutes to frame and give a little bit of historic context to the remarks yesterday by Secretary Clinton.
Since the – I thought it was appropriate that, if it wasn’t the day, it was off by one day. It was basically a year and – as Secretary of State to a day that she gave that speech. And for me that was significant, because one of the things that, in my opinion, has defined her tenure as Secretary of State is figuring out the way in which we can modernize our statecraft. And we’ve learned a lot in – over the course of this year, and we’ve learned some things that are very positive about the role that technology can play in our foreign policy, and we’ve learned some things that are significantly less positive.
Among the positive things we’ve seen most recently that we have nothing to celebrate right now as it relates to Haiti, I think it should be noted that it was at the Secretary’s direction that the State Department set up the text Haiti to 90999 program, which has now raised more than $26 million. We also saw, looking back a little further, the role that digital communications networks could play getting America’s message out. I think it’s notable that the President’s speech in Cairo was able to reach so many people and reach them so effectively because living in a digital age, we are no longer bound by the strictures of traditional broadcast area – broadcast-era media, so people were able to get mash-ups of it on their cell phones, people were able to see and hear him over the internet.
But we’ve also learned a number of negative things. The past year has seen a surge in al-Qaida and other extremist organizations using global communications networks to recruit young people into their ranks. And we’ve seen authoritarian governments increasingly use networks and infiltrate them, monitor them, and oftentimes shut them down. And of course, a prominent example of this was in Iran, leading up to, during, and in the aftermath of the election there.
I’m sure that you’ll have a question or two about China, because so many of you keep asking me questions about China as it relates to yesterday’s announcement. And so one of the things that I wanted to point out is that according to the OpenNet Initiative and Reporters Without Borders, 21 countries engage in extreme censorship or filtering of political content on the internet. And notably, this does not include countries that filter or censor content for cultural reasons like pornography or what they consider – in quotation marks – “overly secular content.” And 31 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where government heavily censors the internet for political content.
And we find this data staggering. And that is part of what prompted yesterday’s speech by the Secretary, and it’s part of why we’re elevating internet freedom from a piece of sort of foreign policy arcana to something that’s more central to our statecraft and more central to what we are doing.
One of the key takeaways that I hope you all took from the speech was her point that this doesn’t just go to the issue of information freedom, but it also goes to the issue of what kind of world we want to live in. Do we want to live in a world with one internet, one common knowledge base from which we can all draw? Or do we want to live in a world in which access to information and knowledge is based on what country you live in and the whims of the censors in that country?
A number of you know me – those of you who know me, many know me as Obama’s tech policy guy during the campaign. But what I would point out in a way of sort of giving my own historic perspective on this is point in fact, what I’ve really spent the last 10 years doing is focusing on the digital divide. I started a non-profit in a basement about 10 years ago that grew from being four guys with no money and just a handful of ideas into the world’s largest digital divide organization. And for me, yesterday’s announcement was a shift in the history of the internet from the primary concern of the internet being the digital divide, being an issue of access – can one get access to the internet – to today, where I think now the number one problem, the number one issue that we have to address as it relates to our global communications networks is, is that internet open, is it uncensored.
The last thing that I’ll highlight for you before turning it over to my colleague, Mike Posner, is I want to highlight the role of shared responsibility in this. The Secretary spoke, I think very directly to the private sector, not just America’s private sector but global technology and telecommunications companies. And I think that’s indicative of the fact that this is not just a government-to-government concern. Point in fact, I think that one of the things that’s important about internet freedom is it really lives at the convergence of security issues, human rights issues, and economic issues. It’s not one of those three things; it’s all three of them. And as such, the private sector doesn’t play a secondary role within this; they have a primary role to play within this.
And I thought she spoke very compellingly about some of the initiatives that are out there that are working, which I know Michael described one of them. But what I would highlight here, too, is that this is not something we’re going to be engaging on just on a government-to-government basis but also working closely with the private sector. So with that, Assistant Secretary. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Thanks, Alec. I just want to say briefly before opening up, for me and for us, the speech yesterday is really part of a trilogy. In the last five weeks, the Secretary has spoken about human rights, democracy, and development, and the link between the three, at Georgetown in mid-December. She spoke a couple of weeks ago about development, spelled that out more. And this speech fits within that framework.
And in the democracy and human rights development speech, one – there were really three things the Secretary spoke about that I think are reflected in the discussion of internet freedom. One is that our approach to human rights and democracy promotion and development is one of principled engagement. We’re going to engage with the world, and we’re going to engage in multiple ways. This is one way in which that engagement’s going to take place. Both diplomatically, in terms of technical assistance, in terms of training, we are going to be actively involved in promoting the notion of internet freedom.
We also spoke – she also spoke about universal standards and the fact that there is a global – this is not an American discussion; it’s a discussion of universal human rights standards. And again, the notion of free expression articulated yesterday is part of that notion that there is a – one standard of freedom, one standard of free expression that applies across the board to every government, to every country. Everybody ought to be entitled to the same access to information.
And the third thing was to talk about the fact that it’s very hard to change countries from outside. Countries change from within. And when we talk about democracy, it’s a no – it’s a broad notion that says empowering civil society, strengthening the press, empowering women, creating an environment in which people can change their own societies. These tools, these connective tools of the internet, cell phones, are a prime way now that people are communicating within their own societies and communicating with the rest of the world. So this is really a vital piece of what we’re trying to do when we talk about linking human rights, democracy, and development.
Let me just stop there and let’s open up to questions. QUESTION: On China, I’m wondering if you guys have any reaction or any response to the Chinese rather hostile reaction to the Secretary’s speech. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: I think what the Secretary said yesterday is that we have a range of relations with the Chinese. There’s a lot of issues on the table, and this – there are some issues where we’re working cooperatively together and there are some issues where we disagree. This is an area that will be part of the dialogue going forward, part of the strategic dialogue, and it’s an area where we really have differences. QUESTION: Well, it’s going to be part of your side of the dialogue, but do you have any indication – and how is the human rights dialogue with the Chinese going? And more broadly, other than just internet. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Well, we’re going to – to my mind, it’s part of a strategic dialogue. It’s part of a broader discussion we’re having on a range of issues. QUESTION: Yeah, but it doesn’t seem like they’re willing to talk about it. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Well, that’s not true. We’re in the midst of trying to figure out what the – both the form is going to be for those discussions and what the agenda is going to be. There is going to be – there is already a discussion of a range of human rights issues. There is going to be a more formal dialogue in the coming months, which we’re committed to and they’re committed to. QUESTION: Just one more on the – specifically on Haiti and the internet. I mean, yes, the text messaging donations are all good, but I notice that one thing that the military is doing is that they dropped in or are bringing in 50,000 hand-held radios, AM-FM radios, which is not really internet – it’s kind of old-school technology. Why – or is there any thought being given to building up – I don’t know – cell phone capacity or something there, where you won’t have to rely on a transistor radio? MR. ROSS: So we have a task force right now that’s focused on technology. We’re working very closely in an interagency process that USAID is leading specifically on this topic. And we believe that it is a priority to be able to restore telecommunications to the island, not just so people can communicate with each other and communicate with loved ones but also be able leverage those mobile platforms to help people connect to services during the recovery. MR. TONER: Mark. QUESTION: Sort of a general and specific question, again on China. In terms of carrying out in concrete terms what the Secretary talked about yesterday on internet freedom, there’s been some discussion about whether the U.S. would consider making internet freedom a trade issue in the sense that some of the software that allows the Chinese to do what they do is actually supplied by American companies. Would the U.S. consider putting an export control on that kind of technology?
And the second thing has to do with support for technology that allows people to get around firewalls. I know the State Department has set aside money to support these kinds of efforts. One of the ones that’s gotten a lot of attention is this GIF initiative that’s allied with Falun Gong. It has not yet gotten State Department funding. Are there any – is there any thought being given to giving them some support? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Let me answer the second question first. Our approach – our bureau, DRL, is involved in some of the grant-making and support. And our approach is really that there isn’t one size that fits all. This is a moment where lots of different technologies and lots of different groups and individuals are trying to break the firewall. There isn’t a silver bullet that’s going to solve that. And we’ve encouraged the group you mentioned and others to apply. In fact, we have a request for proposals that’s out that I think closes today or tomorrow. We very much welcome any group that has a piece of this.
But we view ourselves in some ways like the venture firms in California, that try a lot of different things. Everything isn’t going to work. Our approach is we’ve got to try different things in different countries. Technology is a piece. Training is a piece. Diplomacy is a piece. We’ve got to really address this in a multifaceted way, and that’s what we’re trying to do. But they’re welcome, everybody else is welcome to apply, and there’s more money coming down the pike. MR. ROSS: And to answer your first question, Mark, I think that the Secretary laid out a great vision and series of programs for what we specifically at the State Department are going to do. But we are also now in an interagency process which includes the Department of Commerce. It includes USTR. It includes the White House. So there is going to be a whole-of-government approach to this in addition to what we are doing specifically at the State Department. QUESTION: (Inaudible) specifically on export controls. I mean, is it – are you saying that because that’s a USTR thing, you’re probably not the right guy to answer? Or would you say as a principle that those kinds of things make sense? MR. ROSS: What I would say is that what we – what the Secretary made clear yesterday is that we’re elevating internet freedom as a matter of our foreign policy, we’re going to be taking some immediate steps here at the State Department, and we’re going to be working with our partners in the whole of government to make sure that we’re very aggressive in ensuring that there’s a free and open internet. QUESTION: But does that mean actively subverting the Chinese firewall, the sovereign government’s – MR. ROSS: I’m not going to expand on the comments that the Secretary made yesterday. QUESTION: Well, but Mark’s question was to the fact that funding for groups that are trying to get around the firewall – and you are funding that? So in other words, you are – it’s – I mean, it’s – ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Let me answer that in a broader sense. We’re working in about 40 countries now with individuals and groups that are, in a range of ways, trying to exert their freedom of expression. In many of those countries – many of those countries, the governments would rather not have a full discussion of their own actions or of human rights or a range of other subjects. It is our intention to continue to work with individuals and groups that are promoting free expression, as the State Department did 35 years ago working with Soviet dissidents who were fighting against governments that wanted to restrict their ability to speak and write and to assemble and to discuss these issues. QUESTION: So – ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Some governments are going to characterize that – QUESTION: Right. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: — in a way that you did. QUESTION: All right. But your – ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: But from our perspective, this is really a question of empowering people in their own societies to speak with one another and to speak to the rest of the world about things that matter. QUESTION: Well, fair enough, but the Cold War is over and now you seem to be describing the U.S.-China relationship as like, what the U.S.-Soviet relationship was. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: I didn’t mention China. I said there are a range of countries in the world where governments have taken the view that they need to constrict, constrain access to the internet. They need to make it impossible for people to get information about – pertaining to those countries, and they need to constrain people within those countries who wish to express their views.
Our view is the internet ought to be open and free, people ought to be able to express their views, and there ought to be a strong society – civil society within those countries that’s able to raise issues of concern. MR. ROSS: And let me expand on that briefly by just pointing out that we’re focusing on one aspect of internet freedom in the conversation at this point. But point in fact: The Secretary yesterday laid out a broad swath of issues within which she defines internet freedom. So for example, one of the things that causes us a great deal of concern is in countries where young women, for example, who are, quote-un-quote, “caught” using the internet, using social media are then subject to what people call honor beatings and honor killings.
And so while circumvention is one aspect of internet freedom, so too are other aspects of this. So too is ensuring that it isn’t just young men or men who can be a part of the digital age; it’s also the case that, as she pointed out, issues of religious freedom and how that intersects into these issues. So while China and while issues of freedom of expression and censorship are very much topical today, we’re looking at this very broadly, and I think that that speaks to the breadth and depth of the issue. MR. TONER: Indira. QUESTION: Just following on that, Assistant Secretary Posner, from our earlier conversation this week, what my understanding was – the $15 million that has already been spent that was from Fiscal Year ’08 goes to these 40 different – has gone to these 40 different countries and circumvention technology is part of that, and these other things that Alec just mentioned as part of that. There’s 5 million additional that’s up for grant now and more that you’re expecting.
How is that – and so circumvention has been part of what you’ve been doing since ’08 – how is that different from the 15 million that the Secretary referred to yesterday? Is that a different pot of money and different from the 10 million that you’re expecting that would allow you to continue these ventures? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Yeah. Let me break that down. On our side, there was in Fiscal Year ’08 a grant from Congress of 15 million. Some of that has been spent, some of it’s in the pipeline, some of it is being developed. There’s another $5 million for Fiscal ’09 that’s being – where there’s a request for proposals – as I say, closes, I think, today or tomorrow. And then in Fiscal ’10, there’s another tranche of money.
That’s the piece of it that I’m involved in. I think the 15 million she referred to is there’s a range of other programs in the government relating to some of the promotional things that Alex worked on. That is – our piece is really – is separate. And it is not just circumvention; it really is, to me, a – it’s not one – not only not one size fits all, it’s a lot about training people. It’s a lot about – it’s some about technology. It’s some about encouraging groups that are in danger. It’s a lot about diplomacy, too, for us getting out there and being sure that when groups are in trouble, we provide a lifeline.
So we have a range of thoughts, a range of approaches, and we’re working with a wide range of groups. It’s also not in their interest often to be identified. And so I want to speak in general terms, because the reality is this is – these are activities that governments are not often thrilled about. QUESTION: Can you quantify how much of that goes to circumvention technology of the money that you’re in charge of? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: I honestly don’t know the answer to that. I can try to find out, but I don’t know. QUESTION: Okay, thanks. MR. TONER: Charlie. QUESTION: Yes. Can we go back to China and the Google issue? I know we’ve heard all the general language from the podium previously from the Secretary about we’re going to talk to them; we’re going to have negotiations. Can either of you tell us exactly what’s happened as – have there been discussions with the Ambassador here? Has our Ambassador there gone to the Foreign Ministry? Has any – I mean, can you give us nuts and bolts on exactly at what levels this has taken place? MR. POSNER: Not at this time. What I’ll do is – yeah, I’m going to refer you to P.J. P.J.’s got you. QUESTION: Waiting in the wings. Okay. MR. TONER: Goyal. QUESTION: A follow-up – China is concerned: As far as human rights, religious freedom and all this, you have been talking to the Chinese for many, many years and they – actually tells you that – let this off the table; let’s start something else. That’s what they’ve been telling you.
Now, Chinese are crying out for internet freedom. Internet freedom is a concern. Most of the 76 percent Chinese are saying that they favor freedom of the internet. So as far as freedom through internet in China or human rights is concerned, how much control do you have now – earlier question – as far as technology to China, which is – was provided by the U.S. companies? And now, most of the technology companies are in China, so how much control do you have on them? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: I think it’s important to view the human rights – QUESTION: (Inaudible), I’m sorry. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: I think it’s important to view the human rights issue in China in the broadest frame. We have a long agenda, which is an ongoing agenda. These are issues we continue to discuss and will continue to discuss. The internet, cell phones are a means of expressing those issues by Chinese citizens within the country and gathering information about those issues by people in the country, and a way for them to express themselves to the rest of the world. We support their efforts.
We have – we clearly don’t have the control over how that happens. The Chinese Government is very involved in overseeing that, and that’s one of the challenges we face, and it’s an area where we disagree with the Chinese Government. Our view is that there ought to be an open internet, it ought to be global in nature, and people ought to be able to express their views in the freest terms.
So this is going to be a continued diplomatic discussion. As Alec said, it’s also partly the responsibility of companies individually and acting collectively to figure out what their role will be. We need to be working both with companies, but we need also to be clear that this is in the diplomatic and national interests of the United States to be promoting a free internet in China and elsewhere in the world. MR. ROSS: And that’s part of why one of the things that the Secretary announced yesterday is that there are going to be high level meetings here that are going to be co-chaired by Under Secretary Otero and Under Secretary Hormats. QUESTION: Are you planning anything at the – QUESTION: Actually – QUESTION: — United Nations level? I’m sorry. QUESTION: – to go back (inaudible), just to ask you to speak a little more directly to the Chinese foreign ministry’s written statement in response to Secretary Clinton’s speech. They said flatly that her insinuation that China restricts access to – or restricts the internet or restricts internet freedom runs contrary to the facts. They asked you not to make such groundless accusations. And they also said flatly that it is harmful to China-U.S. relations.
Do you believe that this has been harmful to U.S.-China relations? And do you have any intention of tempering your criticism, even in public, over this matter, given the Chinese unhappiness about it? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Look, I think as the Secretary said yesterday, there are a range of places where the U.S. and China have mutual interests. Those interests are going to continue to be discussed. We’re going to continue to work with them. There are places where we disagree. We’re going to put out a report at the end of the month – at the end of next month, our annual report on human rights conditions. Every year, we put that report out. It makes a range of comments about Chinese human rights violations and problems. Every year, the Chinese Government comes back and says that’s an interference.
It is the nature of the relationship. There are issues where we’re going to disagree, but we’re going to continue to speak out strongly and clearly and we’re going to have those discussions. That’s part of what countries do with one another. This is part of the dialogue. QUESTION: So you don’t think it’s hurt the relationship? You disagree with that assessment by their foreign ministry? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Yeah. I can’t characterize that. I think it is part – it’s an inevitable part of the conversation that we talk about things where we disagree, and we try to find ways to bridge those differences. QUESTION: Can I – what exactly do you – the broad range of mutual interests; what exactly are those mutual interests? It seems to me you disagree on the internet, you disagree on Iran, you disagree on Tibet, you disagree on Taiwan, you disagree on human rights. Where are these areas of convergence that you have with the Chinese? Maybe P.J. will when I ask that. If there’s one beyond Afghanistan, I would be very interested in knowing what it is. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Well, obviously, there are a range of economic relationships that are important. There’s a range of strategic and security conversations that are important. It’s – these are two very big, important countries in the world and we talk about a wide range of things, and there’s some areas where we really are working together and importantly working together. The strategic and economic dialogue is about trying to strengthen those parts of the relationship in part. Part of it is also to be sure that we’re talking about the things where we disagree. MR. TONER: Mark. Just a couple minutes. QUESTION: This is not about China, actually, although China could be involved in it. Someone who watched the speech was pointing out to me that singling out the Egyptian blogger who had been in prison was significant because this is a guy who’s apparently going to go back to Egypt.
And the question it raised in this person’s mind was whether this was a way of signaling that the U.S. would treat bloggers – dissident bloggers with the same kind of diplomatic status that they treat political dissidents of other kinds, you know, for purposes of lodging a demarche against a country, raising it in bilateral talks. I mean, was that also important in signaling a new way of treating this category of people? MR. ROSS: Yeah. I think that part of what we now know about the 21st Century is that dissidents oftentimes manifest their dissent on our global communications network. So bloggers are a form of 21st century dissident. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: The case is particularly important to me personally because I was in Egypt last week. I met with a number of bloggers, including one who was arrested the next day at Naga Hammadi. And to me, it is important, as we’ve always done, to be raising the cases of people who are challenging official action by speaking out and who get arrested as a consequence. So this is, to me, part – it’s part of the nature of what we need to be doing. And this happened to be a case that occurred in the last few days. MR. ROSS: I would point out too that the Secretary referenced twice in her speech yesterday samizdat, which we all know are these small pamphlets that were passed out in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. And she specifically likened blogs and social networks to modern-day samizdat. QUESTION: Just quickly, wanted to ask you that – if you are planning anything at the United Nations level as far as this – all this thing going on? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: I think one aspect that we haven’t talked about here at all is there’s a – as the Secretary said in her speech, there’s the discussion affirmatively about opening up and making sure that internet is free. And there’s a second piece which is making sure that there are – that the internet is protected – privacy – and it isn’t used in ways that are detrimental to security, et cetera, doesn’t promote crimes.
I think we’re looking at both aspects of that in a UN context. We were involved in Geneva at the Human Rights Council in September in co-sponsoring a resolution on freedom of expression. Part of that resolution made reference to the internet. So we’re very much aware of that piece of it and to continuing to use the UN as a forum to make sure that freedom of expression is reinforced.
But there’s also cyber security. There’s also questions of privacy. And we’ve got to be mindful of the right of privacy, but also finding the right ways on a global scale to find the right rules of the road for dealing with the negative and dangerous aspects of the internet. QUESTION: Just following up on that, does that mean that the U.S. is going to call on other nations to sign that Council of Europe Convention or whatever it is, the one she was referring to that the U.S. is a signatory to? Is she going to call on more nations? And who’s going to be inflicting these consequences that she referred to, the countries and individuals who are hackers need to face? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Again, we made reference to it. It’s certainly something we’re looking at. I’m not sure at this stage that I can tell you what the next step is on that, but it’s something we’re looking at very closely. QUESTION: How many countries are signatories to that already? ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: (Inaudible). QUESTION: Okay. MR. TONER: We can take that question. QUESTION: Thank you. QUESTION: Thank you. ASSISTANT SECRETARY POSNER: Thank you very much.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you very much, Alberto, for not only that kind introduction but your and your colleagues’ leadership of this important institution. It’s a pleasure to be here at the Newseum. The Newseum is a monument to some of our most precious freedoms, and I’m grateful for this opportunity to discuss how those freedoms apply to the challenges of the 21st century.
Although I can’t see all of you because in settings like this, the lights are in my eyes and you are in the dark, I know that there are many friends and former colleagues. I wish to acknowledge Charles Overby, the CEO of Freedom Forum here at the Newseum; Senator Richard Lugar* and Senator Joe Lieberman, my former colleagues in the Senate, both of whom worked for passage of the Voice Act, which speaks to Congress’s and the American people’s commitment to internet freedom, a commitment that crosses party lines and branches of government.
Also, I’m told here as well are Senator Sam Brownback, Senator Ted Kaufman, Representative Loretta Sanchez, many representatives of the Diplomatic Corps, ambassadors, chargés, participants in our International Visitor Leadership Program on internet freedom from China, Colombia, Iran, and Lebanon, and Moldova. And I also want to acknowledge Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, recently named to our Broadcasting Board of Governors and, of course, instrumental in supporting the work on internet freedom that the Aspen Institute has been doing.
This is an important speech on a very important subject. But before I begin, I want to just speak briefly about Haiti, because during the last eight days, the people of Haiti and the people of the world have joined together to deal with a tragedy of staggering proportions. Our hemisphere has seen its share of hardship, but there are few precedents for the situation we’re facing in Port-au-Prince. Communication networks have played a critical role in our response. They were, of course, decimated and in many places totally destroyed. And in the hours after the quake, we worked with partners in the private sector; first, to set up the text “HAITI” campaign so that mobile phone users in the United States could donate to relief efforts via text messages. That initiative has been a showcase for the generosity of the American people, and thus far, it’s raised over $25 million for recovery efforts.
Information networks have also played a critical role on the ground. When I was with President Preval in Port-au-Prince on Saturday, one of his top priorities was to try to get communication up and going. The government couldn’t talk to each other, what was left of it, and NGOs, our civilian leadership, our military leadership were severely impacted. The technology community has set up interactive maps to help us identify needs and target resources. And on Monday, a seven-year-old girl and two women were pulled from the rubble of a collapsed supermarket by an American search-and-rescue team after they sent a text message calling for help. Now, these examples are manifestations of a much broader phenomenon.
The spread of information networks is forming a new nervous system for our planet. When something happens in Haiti or Hunan, the rest of us learn about it in real time – from real people. And we can respond in real time as well. Americans eager to help in the aftermath of a disaster and the girl trapped in the supermarket are connected in ways that were not even imagined a year ago, even a generation ago. That same principle applies to almost all of humanity today. As we sit here, any of you – or maybe more likely, any of our children – can take out the tools that many carry every day and transmit this discussion to billions across the world.
Now, in many respects, information has never been so free. There are more ways to spread more ideas to more people than at any moment in history. And even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.
During his visit to China in November, for example, President Obama held a town hall meeting with an online component to highlight the importance of the internet. In response to a question that was sent in over the internet, he defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows, the stronger societies become. He spoke about how access to information helps citizens hold their own governments accountable, generates new ideas, encourages creativity and entrepreneurship. The United States belief in that ground truth is what brings me here today.
Because amid this unprecedented surge in connectivity, we must also recognize that these technologies are not an unmitigated blessing. These tools are also being exploited to undermine human progress and political rights. Just as steel can be used to build hospitals or machine guns, or nuclear power can either energize a city or destroy it, modern information networks and the technologies they support can be harnessed for good or for ill. The same networks that help organize movements for freedom also enable al-Qaida to spew hatred and incite violence against the innocent. And technologies with the potential to open up access to government and promote transparency can also be hijacked by governments to crush dissent and deny human rights.
In the last year, we’ve seen a spike in threats to the free flow of information. China, Tunisia, and Uzbekistan have stepped up their censorship of the internet. In Vietnam, access to popular social networking sites has suddenly disappeared. And last Friday in Egypt, 30 bloggers and activists were detained. One member of this group, Bassem Samir, who is thankfully no longer in prison, is with us today. So while it is clear that the spread of these technologies is transforming our world, it is still unclear how that transformation will affect the human rights and the human welfare of the world’s population.
On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world’s information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it. Now, this challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the First Amendment to our Constitution are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.
Franklin Roosevelt built on these ideas when he delivered his Four Freedoms speech in 1941. Now, at the time, Americans faced a cavalcade of crises and a crisis of confidence. But the vision of a world in which all people enjoyed freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear transcended the troubles of his day. And years later, one of my heroes, Eleanor Roosevelt, worked to have these principles adopted as a cornerstone of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have provided a lodestar to every succeeding generation, guiding us, galvanizing us, and enabling us to move forward in the face of uncertainty.
So as technology hurtles forward, we must think back to that legacy. We need to synchronize our technological progress with our principles. In accepting the Nobel Prize, President Obama spoke about the need to build a world in which peace rests on the inherent rights and dignities of every individual. And in my speech on human rights at Georgetown a few days later, I talked about how we must find ways to make human rights a reality. Today, we find an urgent need to protect these freedoms on the digital frontiers of the 21st century.
There are many other networks in the world. Some aid in the movement of people or resources, and some facilitate exchanges between individuals with the same work or interests. But the internet is a network that magnifies the power and potential of all others. And that’s why we believe it’s critical that its users are assured certain basic freedoms. Freedom of expression is first among them. This freedom is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution. Blogs, emails, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas, and created new targets for censorship.
As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics. Two months ago, I was in Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The leaders gathered at that ceremony paid tribute to the courageous men and women on the far side of that barrier who made the case against oppression by circulating small pamphlets called samizdat. Now, these leaflets questioned the claims and intentions of dictatorships in the Eastern Bloc and many people paid dearly for distributing them. But their words helped pierce the concrete and concertina wire of the Iron Curtain.
The Berlin Wall symbolized a world divided and it defined an entire era. Today, remnants of that wall sit inside this museum where they belong, and the new iconic infrastructure of our age is the internet. Instead of division, it stands for connection. But even as networks spread to nations around the globe, virtual walls are cropping up in place of visible walls.
Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which tells us that all people have the right “to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” With the spread of these restrictive practices, a new information curtain is descending across much of the world. And beyond this partition, viral videos and blog posts are becoming the samizdat of our day.
As in the dictatorships of the past, governments are targeting independent thinkers who use these tools. In the demonstrations that followed Iran’s presidential elections, grainy cell phone footage of a young woman’s bloody murder provided a digital indictment of the government’s brutality. We’ve seen reports that when Iranians living overseas posted online criticism of their nation’s leaders, their family members in Iran were singled out for retribution. And despite an intense campaign of government intimidation, brave citizen journalists in Iran continue using technology to show the world and their fellow citizens what is happening inside their country. In speaking out on behalf of their own human rights, the Iranian people have inspired the world. And their courage is redefining how technology is used to spread truth and expose injustice.
Now, all societies recognize that free expression has its limits. We do not tolerate those who incite others to violence, such as the agents of al-Qaida who are, at this moment, using the internet to promote the mass murder of innocent people across the world. And hate speech that targets individuals on the basis of their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation is reprehensible. It is an unfortunate fact that these issues are both growing challenges that the international community must confront together. And we must also grapple with the issue of anonymous speech. Those who use the internet to recruit terrorists or distribute stolen intellectual property cannot divorce their online actions from their real world identities. But these challenges must not become an excuse for governments to systematically violate the rights and privacy of those who use the internet for peaceful political purposes.
The freedom of expression may be the most obvious freedom to face challenges with the spread of new technologies, but it is not the only one. The freedom of worship usually involves the rights of individuals to commune or not commune with their Creator. And that’s one channel of communication that does not rely on technology. But the freedom of worship also speaks to the universal right to come together with those who share your values and vision for humanity. In our history, those gatherings often took place in churches, synagogues, mosques and temples. Today, they may also take place on line.
The internet can help bridge divides between people of different faiths. As the President said in Cairo, freedom of religion is central to the ability of people to live together. And as we look for ways to expand dialogue, the internet holds out such tremendous promise. We’ve already begun connecting students in the United States with young people in Muslim communities around the world to discuss global challenges. And we will continue using this tool to foster discussion between individuals from different religious communities.
Some nations, however, have co-opted the internet as a tool to target and silence people of faith. Last year, for example, in Saudi Arabia, a man spent months in prison for blogging about Christianity. And a Harvard study found that the Saudi Government blocked many web pages about Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and even Islam. Countries including Vietnam and China employed similar tactics to restrict access to religious information.
Now, just as these technologies must not be used to punish peaceful political speech, they must also not be used to persecute or silence religious minorities. Now, prayers will always travel on higher networks. But connection technologies like the internet and social networking sites should enhance individuals’ ability to worship as they see fit, come together with people of their own faith, and learn more about the beliefs of others. We must work to advance the freedom of worship online just as we do in other areas of life.
There are, of course, hundreds of millions of people living without the benefits of these technologies. In our world, as I’ve said many times, talent may be distributed universally, but opportunity is not. And we know from long experience that promoting social and economic development in countries where people lack access to knowledge, markets, capital, and opportunity can be frustrating and sometimes futile work. In this context, the internet can serve as a great equalizer. By providing people with access to knowledge and potential markets, networks can create opportunities where none exist.
Over the last year, I’ve seen this firsthand in Kenya, where farmers have seen their income grow by as much as 30 percent since they started using mobile banking technology; in Bangladesh, where more than 300,000 people have signed up to learn English on their mobile phones; and in Sub-Saharan Africa, where women entrepreneurs use the internet to get access to microcredit loans and connect themselves to global markets.
Now, these examples of progress can be replicated in the lives of the billion people at the bottom of the world’s economic ladder. In many cases, the internet, mobile phones, and other connection technologies can do for economic growth what the Green Revolution did for agriculture. You can now generate significant yields from very modest inputs. And one World Bank study found that in a typical developing country, a 10 percent increase in the penetration rate for mobile phones led to an almost 1 percent increase in per capita GDP. To just put this into context, for India, that would translate into almost $10 billion a year.
A connection to global information networks is like an on-ramp to modernity. In the early years of these technologies, many believed that they would divide the world between haves and have-nots. But that hasn’t happened. There are 4 billion cell phones in use today. Many of them are in the hands of market vendors, rickshaw drivers, and others who’ve historically lacked access to education and opportunity. Information networks have become a great leveler, and we should use them together to help lift people out of poverty and give them a freedom from want.
Now, we have every reason to be hopeful about what people can accomplish when they leverage communication networks and connection technologies to achieve progress. But make no mistake – some are and will continue to use global information networks for darker purposes. Violent extremists, criminal cartels, sexual predators, and authoritarian governments all seek to exploit these global networks. Just as terrorists have taken advantage of the openness of our societies to carry out their plots, violent extremists use the internet to radicalize and intimidate. As we work to advance freedoms, we must also work against those who use communication networks as tools of disruption and fear.
Governments and citizens must have confidence that the networks at the core of their national security and economic prosperity are safe and resilient. Now this is about more than petty hackers who deface websites. Our ability to bank online, use electronic commerce, and safeguard billions of dollars in intellectual property are all at stake if we cannot rely on the security of our information networks.
Disruptions in these systems demand a coordinated response by all governments, the private sector, and the international community. We need more tools to help law enforcement agencies cooperate across jurisdictions when criminal hackers and organized crime syndicates attack networks for financial gain. The same is true when social ills such as child pornography and the exploitation of trafficked women and girls online is there for the world to see and for those who exploit these people to make a profit. We applaud efforts such as the Council on Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime that facilitate international cooperation in prosecuting such offenses. And we wish to redouble our efforts.
We have taken steps as a government, and as a Department, to find diplomatic solutions to strengthen global cyber security. We have a lot of people in the State Department working on this. They’ve joined together, and we created two years ago an office to coordinate foreign policy in cyberspace. We’ve worked to address this challenge at the UN and in other multilateral forums and to put cyber security on the world’s agenda. And President Obama has just appointed a new national cyberspace policy coordinator who will help us work even more closely to ensure that everyone’s networks stay free, secure, and reliable.
States, terrorists, and those who would act as their proxies must know that the United States will protect our networks. Those who disrupt the free flow of information in our society or any other pose a threat to our economy, our government, and our civil society. Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation. In an internet-connected world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all. And by reinforcing that message, we can create norms of behavior among states and encourage respect for the global networked commons.
The final freedom, one that was probably inherent in what both President and Mrs. Roosevelt thought about and wrote about all those years ago, is one that flows from the four I’ve already mentioned: the freedom to connect – the idea that governments should not prevent people from connecting to the internet, to websites, or to each other. The freedom to connect is like the freedom of assembly, only in cyberspace. It allows individuals to get online, come together, and hopefully cooperate. Once you’re on the internet, you don’t need to be a tycoon or a rock star to have a huge impact on society.
The largest public response to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai was launched by a 13-year-old boy. He used social networks to organize blood drives and a massive interfaith book of condolence. In Colombia, an unemployed engineer brought together more than 12 million people in 190 cities around the world to demonstrate against the FARC terrorist movement. The protests were the largest antiterrorist demonstrations in history. And in the weeks that followed, the FARC saw more demobilizations and desertions than it had during a decade of military action. And in Mexico, a single email from a private citizen who was fed up with drug-related violence snowballed into huge demonstrations in all of the country’s 32 states. In Mexico City alone, 150,000 people took to the streets in protest. So the internet can help humanity push back against those who promote violence and crime and extremism.
In Iran and Moldova and other countries, online organizing has been a critical tool for advancing democracy and enabling citizens to protest suspicious election results. And even in established democracies like the United States, we’ve seen the power of these tools to change history. Some of you may still remember the 2008 presidential election here. (Laughter.)
The freedom to connect to these technologies can help transform societies, but it is also critically important to individuals. I was recently moved by the story of a doctor – and I won’t tell you what country he was from – who was desperately trying to diagnose his daughter’s rare medical condition. He consulted with two dozen specialists, but he still didn’t have an answer. But he finally identified the condition, and found a cure, by using an internet search engine. That’s one of the reasons why unfettered access to search engine technology is so important in individuals’ lives.
Now, the principles I’ve outlined today will guide our approach in addressing the issue of internet freedom and the use of these technologies. And I want to speak about how we apply them in practice. The United States is committed to devoting the diplomatic, economic, and technological resources necessary to advance these freedoms. We are a nation made up of immigrants from every country and every interest that spans the globe. Our foreign policy is premised on the idea that no country more than America stands to benefit when there is cooperation among peoples and states. And no country shoulders a heavier burden when conflict and misunderstanding drive nations apart. So we are well placed to seize the opportunities that come with interconnectivity. And as the birthplace for so many of these technologies, including the internet itself, we have a responsibility to see them used for good. To do that, we need to develop our capacity for what we call, at the State Department, 21st century statecraft.
Realigning our policies and our priorities will not be easy. But adjusting to new technology rarely is. When the telegraph was introduced, it was a source of great anxiety for many in the diplomatic community, where the prospect of receiving daily instructions from capitals was not entirely welcome. But just as our diplomats eventually mastered the telegraph, they are doing the same to harness the potential of these new tools as well.
And I’m proud that the State Department is already working in more than 40 countries to help individuals silenced by oppressive governments. We are making this issue a priority at the United Nations as well, and we’re including internet freedom as a component in the first resolution we introduced after returning to the United Nations Human Rights Council.
We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship. We are providing funds to groups around the world to make sure that those tools get to the people who need them in local languages, and with the training they need to access the internet safely. The United States has been assisting in these efforts for some time, with a focus on implementing these programs as efficiently and effectively as possible. Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom.
We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and epidemics, to build global support for President Obama’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons, to encourage sustainable economic development that lifts the people at the bottom up.
That’s why today I’m announcing that over the next year, we will work with partners in industry, academia, and nongovernmental organizations to establish a standing effort that will harness the power of connection technologies and apply them to our diplomatic goals. By relying on mobile phones, mapping applications, and other new tools, we can empower citizens and leverage our traditional diplomacy. We can address deficiencies in the current market for innovation.
Let me give you one example. Let’s say I want to create a mobile phone application that would allow people to rate government ministries, including ours, on their responsiveness and efficiency and also to ferret out and report corruption. The hardware required to make this idea work is already in the hands of billions of potential users. And the software involved would be relatively inexpensive to develop and deploy.
If people took advantage of this tool, it would help us target our foreign assistance spending, improve lives, and encourage foreign investment in countries with responsible governments. However, right now, mobile application developers have no financial assistance to pursue that project on their own, and the State Department currently lacks a mechanism to make it happen. But this initiative should help resolve that problem and provide long-term dividends from modest investments in innovation. We’re going to work with experts to find the best structure for this venture, and we’ll need the talent and resources of technology companies and nonprofits in order to get the best results most quickly. So for those of you in the room who have this kind of talent, expertise, please consider yourselves invited to help us.
In the meantime, there are companies, individuals, and institutions working on ideas and applications that could already advance our diplomatic and development objectives. And the State Department will be launching an innovation competition to give this work an immediate boost. We’ll be asking Americans to send us their best ideas for applications and technologies that help break down language barriers, overcome illiteracy, connect people to the services and information they need. Microsoft, for example, has already developed a prototype for a digital doctor that could help provide medical care in isolated rural communities. We want to see more ideas like that. And we’ll work with the winners of the competition and provide grants to help build their ideas to scale.
Now, these new initiatives will supplement a great deal of important work we’ve already done over this past year. In the service of our diplomatic and diplomacy objectives, I assembled a talented and experienced team to lead our 21st century statecraft efforts. This team has traveled the world helping governments and groups leverage the benefits of connection technologies. They have stood up a Civil Society 2.0 Initiative to help grassroots organizations enter the digital age. They are putting in place a program in Mexico to help combat drug-related violence by allowing people to make untracked reports to reliable sources to avoid having retribution visited against them. They brought mobile banking to Afghanistan and are now pursuing the same effort in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In Pakistan, they created the first-ever social mobile network, called Our Voice, that has already produced tens of millions of messages and connected young Pakistanis who want to stand up to violent extremism.
In a short span, we have taken significant strides to translate the promise of these technologies into results that make a difference. But there is still so much more to be done. And as we work together with the private sector and foreign governments to deploy the tools of 21st century statecraft, we have to remember our shared responsibility to safeguard the freedoms that I’ve talked about today. We feel strongly that principles like information freedom aren’t just good policy, not just somehow connected to our national values, but they are universal and they’re also good for business.
To use market terminology, a publicly listed company in Tunisia or Vietnam that operates in an environment of censorship will always trade at a discount relative to an identical firm in a free society. If corporate decision makers don’t have access to global sources of news and information, investors will have less confidence in their decisions over the long term. Countries that censor news and information must recognize that from an economic standpoint, there is no distinction between censoring political speech and commercial speech. If businesses in your nations are denied access to either type of information, it will inevitably impact on growth.
Increasingly, U.S. companies are making the issue of internet and information freedom a greater consideration in their business decisions. I hope that their competitors and foreign governments will pay close attention to this trend. The most recent situation involving Google has attracted a great deal of interest. And we look to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review of the cyber intrusions that led Google to make its announcement. And we also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent.
The internet has already been a source of tremendous progress in China, and it is fabulous. There are so many people in China now online. But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century. Now, the United States and China have different views on this issue, and we intend to address those differences candidly and consistently in the context of our positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship.
Now, ultimately, this issue isn’t just about information freedom; it is about what kind of world we want and what kind of world we will inhabit. It’s about whether we live on a planet with one internet, one global community, and a common body of knowledge that benefits and unites us all, or a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the whims of censors.
Information freedom supports the peace and security that provides a foundation for global progress. Historically, asymmetrical access to information is one of the leading causes of interstate conflict. When we face serious disputes or dangerous incidents, it’s critical that people on both sides of the problem have access to the same set of facts and opinions.
As it stands, Americans can consider information presented by foreign governments. We do not block your attempts to communicate with the people in the United States. But citizens in societies that practice censorship lack exposure to outside views. In North Korea, for example, the government has tried to completely isolate its citizens from outside opinions. This lopsided access to information increases both the likelihood of conflict and the probability that small disagreements could escalate. So I hope that responsible governments with an interest in global stability will work with us to address such imbalances.
For companies, this issue is about more than claiming the moral high ground. It really comes down to the trust between firms and their customers. Consumers everywhere want to have confidence that the internet companies they rely on will provide comprehensive search results and act as responsible stewards of their own personal information. Firms that earn that confidence of those countries and basically provide that kind of service will prosper in the global marketplace. I really believe that those who lose that confidence of their customers will eventually lose customers. No matter where you live, people want to believe that what they put into the internet is not going to be used against them.
And censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere. And in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand. I’m confident that consumers worldwide will reward companies that follow those principles.
Now, we are reinvigorating the Global Internet Freedom Task Force as a forum for addressing threats to internet freedom around the world, and we are urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments’ demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider what’s right, not simply what’s a quick profit.
We’re also encouraged by the work that’s being done through the Global Network Initiative, a voluntary effort by technology companies who are working with nongovernmental organizations, academic experts, and social investment funds to respond to government requests for censorship. The initiative goes beyond mere statements of principles and establishes mechanisms to promote real accountability and transparency. As part of our commitment to support responsible private sector engagement on information freedom, the State Department will be convening a high-level meeting next month co-chaired by Under Secretaries Robert Hormats and Maria Otero to bring together firms that provide network services for talks about internet freedom, because we want to have a partnership in addressing this 21st century challenge.
Now, pursuing the freedoms I’ve talked about today is, I believe, the right thing to do. But I also believe it’s the smart thing to do. By advancing this agenda, we align our principles, our economic goals, and our strategic priorities. We need to work toward a world in which access to networks and information brings people closer together and expands the definition of the global community. Given the magnitude of the challenges we’re facing, we need people around the world to pool their knowledge and creativity to help rebuild the global economy, to protect our environment, to defeat violent extremism, and build a future in which every human being can live up to and realize his or her God-given potential.
So let me close by asking you to remember the little girl who was pulled from the rubble on Monday in Port-au-Prince. She’s alive, she was reunited with her family, she will have the chance to grow up because these networks took a voice that was buried and spread it to the world. No nation, no group, no individual should stay buried in the rubble of oppression. We cannot stand by while people are separated from the human family by walls of censorship. And we cannot be silent about these issues simply because we cannot hear the cries.
So let us recommit ourselves to this cause. Let us make these technologies a force for real progress the world over. And let us go forward together to champion these freedoms for our time, for our young people who deserve every opportunity we can give them.
Thank you all very much. (Applause.)
MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you, Madame Secretary. The Secretary has agreed to answer some questions. So if you would, there are going to be three microphones in the audience. If you would make your questions short, we’d appreciate it. And identify yourselves, please.
Yes. Could you wait for the microphone? QUESTION: Madame Secretary, you talked about anonymity on line and how that’s something – oh, I’m sorry. I’m Robert (inaudible). I’m with Northern Virginia Community College. I’m sorry. STAFF: Could you hold the microphone up, please? QUESTION: Sorry. STAFF: Thank you. QUESTION: You talked about anonymity on line and how we have to prevent that. But you also talk about censorship by governments. And I’m struck by – having a veil of anonymity in certain situations is actually quite beneficial. So are you looking to strike a balance between that and this emphasis on censorship? SECRETARY CLINTON: Absolutely. I mean, this is one of the challenges we face. On the one hand, anonymity protects the exploitation of children. And on the other hand, anonymity protects the free expression of opposition to repressive governments. Anonymity allows the theft of intellectual property, but anonymity also permits people to come together in settings that gives them some basis for free expression without identifying themselves.
None of this will be easy. I think that’s a fair statement. I think, as I said, we all have varying needs and rights and responsibilities. But I think these overriding principles should be our guiding light. We should err on the side of openness and do everything possible to create that, recognizing, as with any rule or any statement of principle, there are going to be exceptions.
So how we go after this, I think, is now what we’re requesting many of you who are experts in this area to lend your help to us in doing. We need the guidance of technology experts. In my experience, most of them are younger than 40, but not all are younger than 40. And we need the companies that do this, and we need the dissident voices who have actually lived on the front lines so that we can try to work through the best way to make that balance you referred to.
MODERATOR: Forty may be (inaudible). SECRETARY CLINTON: (Laughter.) MODERATOR: Right over here. Yes. QUESTION: Hi, my name is Courtney Radsch. I’m the Global Freedom of Expression officer at Freedom House. And I wanted to ask you – you spoke about business and relying on them to do the moral, right thing and not put profits first. But the goal of business is to make a profit. So what kind of teeth are going to be put into this? What role does the World Trade Organization play? And how are you going to encourage them to do the right thing? SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, again, I think this is one of the issues that we want to have a very vigorous discussion about. I know that asking business, which is in business to make a profit, to do the right thing is not always easily translated into practical practice. On the other hand, I think there is a broader context here. It’s – companies that don’t follow the sanitary and hygiene procedures of a prior generation pay a price for it. And government and business have to constantly be working together to make sure that the food and other products that end up on the shelves of consumers around the world are safe, because individual consumers in a global interconnected economy can’t possibly exercise that vigilance on their own.
Similarly, when it comes to censorship, we believe that having an international effort to establish some rules over internet connectivity and trying to protect the basic freedoms I discussed is in the long-term interest of business, and frankly, I would argue, governments. I used the example from the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is very hard to keep information out. It was hard to keep it out at a prior age; it is even harder now. And trying to adjust to that, work with that, and learn from that about what could be done better is going to challenge every single government in the world.
So I think business, as such a driver of economic growth globally, has to have that in mind, both when they go into countries and when they confront the kind of censorship that we’re hearing about around the world. It’s particularly acute for the technology companies, the media companies obviously, but it’s not in any way limited to them. Other companies are facing censorship as well. So this is an issue that we have to surface and we have to talk about and we have to try to find as much common ground and then keep claiming more common ground as we go forward. MODERATOR: We have a question way over here on the left. QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Aly Abuzaakouk. I’m the director of Libya Forum website, promoting democracy and human rights and civil society in Libya.
We have been attacked and hacked many times. I would like Madame Secretary to tell me how can you help those voices which do not have, you know, the technology or the money to protect themselves, protect them against the hackers which are the silencers of voices from outside the countries which lacks freedom and freedom of expression. SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, this is one of the issues that we are debating and we’re looking for ideas as to how we can answer it in a positive way. We would invite your participation. After I take the last question, Anne-Marie Slaughter, the Director of my Policy Planning unit inside the State Department and someone – the former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School who has written a lot about interconnectivity and how we have to begin to look at the world as the networked reality that it is, will be leading a discussion. And I hope some of you with ideas, suggestions, cautions, worries will stay and really get into an in-depth discussion about that. MODERATOR: Thank you. And right here in the mezzanine, right next to the microphone. QUESTION: Dr. Nguyen Dinh Thang with BPSOS. We serve Vietnamese Americans and work with Vietnamese in Vietnam. While your initiative will take some time to take effect, just recently, in recent months, the Vietnamese Government sentenced several bloggers to five years all the way to 16 years in prison. So what does your office plan to do, and how the U.S. Government can confront such an emergency situation in Vietnam? SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we have publicly spoken out against the detention, conviction, and imprisonment of not only the bloggers in Vietnam, but some of the Buddhist monks and nuns and others who have been subjected to harassment.
Vietnam has made so much progress, and it’s just moving with great alacrity into the future, raising the standard of living of their people. And we don’t believe they should be afraid of commentary that is internal. In fact, I would like to see more governments, if you disagree with what a blogger or a website is saying, get in and argue with them. Explain what it is you’re doing. Put out contrary information. Point out what the pitfalls are of the position that a blogger might be taking.
So I hope that Vietnam will move more in that direction, because I think it goes hand in hand with the progress that we’ve seen in the last few years there. MODERATOR: Thank you. Up in the back. QUESTION: Nora von Ingersleben with the Association for Competitive Technology. Madame Secretary, you mentioned that U.S. companies have to do the right thing, not just what is good for their profits. But what if I am a U.S. company and I have a subsidiary in China and the Chinese Government is coming after my guys for information and, you know, we have resisted but now my guys have been taken to jail, my equipment is being hauled away. In that situation, what can the State Department do? Or what will the State Department do? SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we obviously speak out on those individual cases. And we are, as I said, hoping to engage in a very candid and constructive conversation with the Chinese Government. We have had a positive year of very open discussions with our Chinese counterparts. I think we have established a foundation of understanding. We disagree on important issues with them. They disagree on important issues with us. They have our perspective; we have our perspective. But obviously, we want to encourage and support increasing openness in China because we believe it will further add to the dynamic growth and the democratization on the local level that we see occurring in China.
So on individual cases, we continue to speak out. But on the broader set of issues, we hope to really have the kind of discussion that might lead to a better understanding and changes in the approach that is currently being taken. MODERATOR: Thank you.
Up in the very back in the center, if you could come to the aisle so we can get a microphone to you, and then we’ll come back down here. Thank you. QUESTION: Imam Mohamed Magid from ADAMS Center in Virginia. My question for you, Madame Secretary: When you talk about social networking, we’re trying to address the issue of youth in the West, Muslim youth. Would you be open to the youth forum to speak about foreign policy? Because one of the reason that youth be radicalized, they don’t have a way to express themselves when they disagree with the United States Government or their own government overseas. Would you be open to those ideas? SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes, we would. In fact, we – in the wake of the President’s speech in Cairo, we have been expanding dramatically our outreach, particularly to Muslim youth. I agree with you completely, sir, that not only young people in the Muslim world, but young people across the world are increasingly disconnected from authority, from government, from all kinds of institutions that have been historically the foundations of society, because they are so interconnected through the internet, something that my generation can’t really understand.
In America, the average young person spends eight hours a day with media. The internet, cell phones, television – I mean, you think about that. Eight hours a day. That’s more time than they spend in school, that’s more time than they spend with their families. It’s often more time than they spend asleep.
So when you think about the power of this information connection to young people, I don’t think it should cause panic in people my age. I don’t think we should begin trying to stop it and prevent it. We ought to figure out how better to utilize it. You go back to the millennia; how were values passed around? Sitting around a fire, how were values communicated? In the homes by parents and grandparents. Now, values are being communicated by the internet, and we cannot stop it.
So let’s figure out how better to use it, participate in it, and particularly to focus on the needs of young people. They’re often looking for information. They’re looking for answers. At least until now, in most cultures that I’m aware of, despite all of the time that young people spend with technology, when they’re asked who do they look to for guidance about values, they still say their families. But if families increasingly feel disconnected from their highly connected young people and don’t know what their young people are doing online, then we see the problems that can result.
And there are so many manipulators online right now, not just stoking the anxieties and the fears of Muslim youth, but youth everywhere, defined by all kinds of characteristics.
So we have our own work to do, not just through our government but through our families, through our education systems, and every other institution to make sure we understand the power of this technology and to engage with young people through it and about it. MODERATOR: I see a lot of hands going up as you speak. Let’s try over here on the far right.
Yes, the young lady there. QUESTION: Thank you very much, Madame Secretary. Bahgi Gilamichael with the Sullivan Foundation. And also, thank you for inviting us to apply for grants. Now I’m interested in knowing what are the procedures, what is the agency we need to deal with, and if you have someone in the room we can follow up with on that? Thank you so much. SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you. Well, in addition to our panel, we have a lot of the members of our team who are working on these initiatives, and we can certainly connect up. If we invited you, we know how to find you. So we will make sure you get information about all of these programs, the ones that already exist and the ones that we’re rolling out. MODERATOR: There’s no anonymity in this room. (Laughter.)
We have actually time for one more question, but I really would encourage you to stay for the panel that Anne-Marie Slaughter will chair on connection technologies and diplomacy immediately following. And I’m sure some of the questions will get answered.
So let’s do one last question over here on the far left, down below here. Can we get a mike? Thank you. QUESTION: Hello. Thank you so much. I appreciated your wonderful program speech. I’m Mary Perkins from Howard University, and at Howard University, we – very much interested in particular aspects of the internet with respect to the digital divide. Or – in your story about the young girl being pulled out of the rubble because of the text message she was able to send brings to mind – the question in my mind, how many others could have been saved had they had that technology? SECRETARY CLINTON: Absolutely. QUESTION: And so we’re very interested in knowing, in terms of access, the – not only internet freedom but free internet for all, the universal service aspect, and what can be done, particularly right now for Haiti, with this. SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, as – thank you for that. As you know, that is a continuing issue for us and for many countries around the world. We’re at 4 billion cell phones. And certainly, the cell phone is becoming the principal tool of communication, both through the applications that are on it, through the texting that it enables. And there are a lot of groups, NGOs, and even businesses that are passing out and providing cell phones at very low cost.
We just have to keep incentivizing and encouraging the technology to be as low cost as possible so it can be as ubiquitous as possible.
But I think we’ve made enormous progress. Ten years ago, we talked a lot about the digital divide even in our own country. We are overcoming it, but there are still questions of access, still questions of cost. Now, obviously, we have to recognize that a lot of the search engines are run by for-profit companies. They’re not – it’s not going to be free. But there are lots of ways of trying to encourage more universal access. And that’s part of the Obama Administration’s overall policy on technology, not just the diplomatic and development aspects of it.
Thank you, Professor.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Madame Secretary. Thank you very much. SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you, Alberto. Thank you very much. Thank you. Applause
*Senator Lugar was not a co-sponsor of the VOICE Act. Senator Kaufman was one of the co-authors and leading co-sponsors.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Overseas Citizens Services Michele Bond, Counselor for Human Services Policy Sharon Parrott, Acting Deputy Director, United States Citizenship and Immigration Service Lauren Kielsmeier
Treaty Room
Washington, DC
January 20, 2010
SECRETARY CLINTON: Good afternoon, everyone, and Michele and Sharon, Lauren. I’m joined today with three of our extraordinary public servants from the federal government who you will hear from in a minute, and I will introduce them.
But first, I want to give you a brief update on developments in Haiti. Today we are closely monitoring the impact of the significant aftershock – it was above 6 on the Richter scale – that struck Port-au-Prince this morning, and we are assessing potential damage from it.
In better news, we saw the arrival of the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship with more than 600 medical personnel, that adds important capacity to our relief efforts. Already, patients are being taken on board via helicopter, and treated. The Comfort adds to what is one of the largest international rescue and relief efforts in history. Food, water, medical supplies, and other essential aid continue to flow into the country. And relief workers are operating around the clock to deliver more aid more quickly to more people. There are significant challenges – devastated infrastructure, limited transportation options, security concerns – but we are making real progress every day.
One area we are urgently focused on is the plight of Haitian orphans, and I am pleased to have with us today Michele Bond from the State Department, who is heading up our efforts on this issue; Sharon Parrott, who represents Secretary Sebelius from the Department of Health and Human Services; and Lauren Kielsmeier from the Department of Homeland Security, working with Secretary Napolitano. These three dedicated public servants, along with all whom they work with, are leading our efforts on behalf of the children who were orphaned before this earthquake, because children are especially vulnerable in any disaster, especially those without parents or other guardians to look after them. This devastating earthquake has left many in need of assistance, and their welfare is of paramount concern as we move forward with our rescue and relief efforts.
Now, when it comes to children, it is imperative that we closely coordinate with the Haitian Government, the United Nations, and our other international partners such as NGOs and faith communities who are on the ground, who are working to ensure that aid reaches Haiti’s orphanages and that the newly orphaned children are accounted for and cared for.
But we will also be doing everything we can to unite the many children and families who have been separated in the aftermath of the earthquake and to do all that we can to expedite the travel of children who were in the line for adoption, who have a legal, permanent home, guardianship waiting for them. We will not let red tape stand in the way of helping those in need, but we will ensure that international adoption procedures to protect children and families are followed.
There are several hundred Americans in the United States who were already in the process of adopting Haitian children before the earthquake. As a mother, I share the anxiety that they must be feeling as they wait for word about their children’s safety, and we are doing everything possible to locate these children and then expedite their arrival in our country. The State Department is heading up a joint task force with the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services to streamline the process and ensure that families both get word and get reunited as quickly as we can. We’ve established an interagency working group to focus on the humanitarian needs of highly vulnerable children. And we are working with the many members of Congress who are understandably very concerned on behalf of their constituents.
I want to underscore that we are consulting closely with President Preval and his government on this and every facet of this massive relief effort. They are setting the priorities for relief and recovery despite operating under the most difficult circumstances. I’ve also spoken with a number of leaders and foreign ministers from across the region and the world, and we are keeping in touch about our ongoing commitment to Haiti. And I will be traveling to Montreal, Canada on Monday to attend a meeting of donor countries who are already involved or wish to be involved, not only in the emergency crisis we’re facing now of search and rescue and the delivery of immediate relief, but also in the longer-term challenge of reconstruction and recovery.
The outpouring of support and assistance from around the world has been extraordinary, and I’ve been very proud to see generous Americans from every corner of our country open their hearts in solidarity with the Haitian people. These are the times when we remember our common humanity, when we pull together across cultures and borders to help those suffering and in need.
Now, in these difficult first days, we’ve seen miracles: children pulled alive from the rubble, separated family members finding one another, walls that did not crumble, and foundations that did not crack. But unfortunately, those miracles have been too few. Seeing the human suffering and dislocation of daily life in Port-au-Prince, a place I have come to know over the past three decades, reminds us of the magnitude of the task at hand – all of the lives that are lost, all of the terrible injuries, the families that have been broken, the homes in ruin, and a country that was on the cusp of progress dealt another cruel and unimaginable blow.
Yet there are reasons to believe that the days and months ahead can and will be better. Over the years, I have come to know the resilience and determination of the Haitian people. They may have seen more than their share of sorrow. They may have known more struggle and pain and nature’s fickle wrath than many of the rest of us. Yet they come through these storms, they are carried forward by their faith and their hard work, and I am confident that even in this darkest of hours, they will once again persevere.
President Preval and I have been working closely during this past year on plans for the future – for sustainable growth, for new opportunities. These plans, which are a very solid foundation, will, of course, be revised and rethought, but they will not be abandoned. Haiti will need not only the talent and grit of her people, including the Haitian diaspora, but it will need all of us, partners and friends who are committed not just in the immediate aftermath of this terrible earthquake but for the duration.
So let me reaffirm what President Obama said so forcefully in recent days: The people of the United States will stand with Haiti every step of the way. This is a partnership with a neighbor for the long term.
Now I would like to introduce Michele Bond from the Department of State, Sharon Parrott, who will follow her, from Health and Human Services, and Laruen Kielsmeier from the Department of Homeland Security.
Michele.
MS. BOND: Thank you, Madame Secretary. I am honored and delighted to accept this request to head up our whole-of-government interagency effort to ensure necessary coordination of U.S. adoptions and process in Haiti.
As we’ve witnessed in television reports of adopted children arriving in the United States, there is no sweeter scene than a child walking to the safety of loving parents who have been waiting to welcome that child home, far away from the horror and devastation they have recently witnessed in their homeland. We fully sympathize with the worry and the concern of adoptive parents who have not yet welcomed their children home and are worried about their safety and their welfare.
Having been in the Department of State for more than 30 years and spent about half of that time working on issues involving children and orphans, I really look forward to working closely with colleagues in the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services on this critically important mission. Together, I am confident we will successfully expedite the process of bringing to the United States children who are in line to be adopted by American citizens while closely following and respecting international standards for intercountry adoption.
Thank you very much.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you, Michele.
MS. PARROTT: Hello, I’m Sharon Parrott from the Department of Health and Human Services. The Department of Health and Human Services is so pleased to be working with our federal partners on this important mission. To be able to be a part of joining children who need homes with loving homes is truly a privilege, I think.
It is really critical, I think, for everyone to understand, including prospective parents, that when children arrive and adoptions are not final, we do have to take steps to safeguard and protect those children that are now entrusted to our care. We are so thrilled that there are loving parents here in the United States ready, already in process to welcome children who desperately need homes. And no one wants to expedite the process more than the three federal agencies responsible for getting children here and getting them to parents. And I’m very confident that, working together, we’ll be able to develop a – we’ll have a process in place that will safeguard the needs and protect children and get them to their adoptive homes as quickly as possible.
Thank you.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Thank you, Sharon.
MS. KIELSMEIER: Thank you, Madame Secretary. We are pleased to be here today. On January 18, Secretary Napolitano, in coordination with the State Department, announced a humanitarian parole policy allowing orphaned children in Haiti with prospective adoptive families in the U.S. to enter the United States.
The humanitarian parole policy will be applied on a case-by-case basis to the following children: children who have been legally confirmed as orphans eligible for intercountry adoption by the Government of Haiti and are being adopted by U.S. citizens, children who have been previously identified by an adoption service provider or facilitator as eligible for intercountry adoption and have been matched to U.S. citizen prospective adoptive parents. USCIS and the Department of State are assisting individuals through the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince to determine eligibility for evacuation and entry to the United States.
DHS appreciates the urgency of the situation and need to process evacuees quickly. In order to ensure children are not separated from relatives in Haiti and to protect potential victims of trafficking, DHS strongly discourages the use of private aircraft to evacuate orphans. All flights must be appropriately coordinated with the U.S. and Haitian governments to ensure proper clearances are granted before arrival to the United States. DHS encourages U.S. citizens with pending adoption cases in Haiti to send detailed information about their cases to Haitianadoptions – all one word – @DHS.gov for additional assistance.
Thank you very much.
SECRETARY CLINTON: I’ll be glad to take your questions on this issue.
Jill. And I’ve got my experts, so I will probably be turning to them.
QUESTION: Secretary Clinton, you have mentioned several times that you are coordinating with President Preval. As we know, the Government of Haiti was pretty much decimated after this earthquake. Is there any chance that in coordinating and perhaps asking them for direction in what to do that the relief effort was slowed down?
And then also a second question kind of in the same vein: We’re hearing a lot from the ground from people who say that supplies are simply not getting in. We can’t get into a lot of detail, but that seems to be a theme that’s emerging. Are you satisfied with the pace of getting supplies, especially medical and other supplies, and personnel on the ground?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Jill, as to the first question, as you know, I met at length with President Preval and Prime Minister Bellerive on Saturday when I was there. We agreed to a joint communiqué which we have issued under my signature and President Preval’s which outlines the very broad request for help that the Haitian Government has made to the United States Government. We are proceeding as quickly as we can to meet the innumerable needs that are there on the ground.
But I do think it’s important to underscore that the Government of Haiti was grievously damaged by the earthquake. The physical damage to the actual buildings of government, the loss of ministers and government officials is extraordinarily difficult to contend with. However, President Preval, the prime minister, and those ministers who have been working with him meet every morning, every afternoon. They are deeply involved in coordinating not only with the United States, but with the United Nations and with other countries and donors as well.
Of course I’m not satisfied about getting material and personnel in for everyone who needs it, but I am realistically aware of the difficulties that this terrible natural disaster has posed. And I think given the challenges that the relief and rescue effort faced, everyone in this country and those of citizens of countries that are also participating along with the United Nations should be very grateful for the extraordinary outpouring and very proud of the men and women who are in Haiti.
Every day, we get better. Today’s better than yesterday. Tomorrow will be better than today. But there were so many challenges that had to be addressed all at once, and I think that having followed and been involved in disasters over many years now, the other way of looking at it is that it’s really remarkable how much we’ve gotten done. And yet we are not satisfied; we are working every day to get better. We have more assets on the ground today than we did yesterday. So we’re just going to continue to do more and more.
The USNS Comfort is a big help, having more U.S. troops working to deliver humanitarian aid, but when the principal instruments of authority and assistance – namely the Haitian Government, the United Nations, including MINUSTAH themselves – were so impacted, we really had to start at the very beginning to be able to put in place what we have accomplished thus far. I get reports twice a day about what is happening. We push hard when something comes to our attention. But frankly, if you look at the whole broad context of what we’ve been able to do, I think that overall, it’s a heroic, historic effort that is ongoing.
QUESTION: Madame Secretary?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.
QUESTION: The development expert, Paul Collier, who helped craft that plan you discussed earlier told me today he thinks there needs to be a Marshall Plan for Haiti and he says he thinks your husband should lead it. Have you discussed that possibility with him? And what do you think are the most important considerations for the rebuilding of Haiti going forward?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I have a great deal of respect for Paul Collier, who some of you may not know is one of the premier development experts in the world now. He’s a citizen of the United Kingdom. He was someone we consulted on our plan about how we were going to work with Haiti that we had all teed up and ready to go when the earthquake caused us to change our direction on what we needed to do immediately.
I think there has to be a coordinated reconstruction and development effort. Again, though, we were working this past year with the Haitian Government. We were fulfilling their requests about what they wanted to see done in agriculture, in energy, in infrastructure. It is very important that you be closely connected and listening to the people of the country that you are attempting to help. Too much development in the past has basically been kind of parachuted in and that hasn’t necessarily been sustainable.
So I think Dr. Collier has some very good ideas. There are others who are bringing their ideas to the forefront. As you know, my husband was working with the United Nations on the tsunami recovery. The United Nations has a broad mandate and legitimacy to deal with a lot of these issues. And so when I go to Montreal on Monday, we’re going to begin to look at how we get prepared for what will be the next phase.
The search-and-rescue teams are still there. They’re pulling people out today. The food, the water, the medical supplies are pouring in and getting distributed. The security is improving so that we’ve got a safe passage for relief workers and their supplies. That was the first priority. Now, we will simultaneously, while all of that continues, begin to talk through how the international community will step up to the challenge of helping Haiti build back better. That is our goal.
Yeah.
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, how concerned is the – excuse me, the Obama Administration about Haitians, given all their difficulties, taking to the seas and trying to come to the U.S. to escape the problems? Even though you’re doing all you can to help there, it may not be enough.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we have seen no evidence of any kind of mass movement like that. Secretary Napolitano issued the order for temporary protected status for those Haitians who are undocumented in the United States as of January 12th. But we’ve made it very clear that there will not be an opportunity for those who leave Haiti to be permitted to go into the United States, that we don’t think it’s in the interests of either Haiti, and it would be in violation of our immigration laws.
So I know Secretary Napolitano has a very comprehensive plan about how we will help the people in other parts of Haiti. You saw the buses leaving Port-au-Prince. A lot of those people are going into the countryside. We want to provide assistance to them so that they are sustained there. But we’ve done what we think we can do. But we will not be changing our immigration laws.
I’m going to let our experts answer your questions about orphans. Thank you all very much.
QUESTION: On the orphan issue, I’m wondering if you could tell me roughly what numbers of orphans are covered by the parole order already, how many actually may come to the United States under that order? And what the United States can do to prevent misuse of the system – I’m thinking on the ground in Haiti? For instance, is there – are there investigators you can put into this? How do we ensure that unscrupulous brokers don’t begin just to send children on for adoption who shouldn’t be eligible? And thirdly, is there any evidence that the trafficking is already underway? You mentioned that that – you know, they shouldn’t be using private planes. Do we have any sense that that’s actually happening?
MS. BOND: Okay. Those are good questions. As to the first question of what is the scope of this, how many children might be involved, we can only estimate that based on the number of American parents, adoptive parents who have filed paperwork with DHS indicating an intent to adopt from Haiti. And it’s always true that some people who file the paperwork don’t go through with an adoption or switch to another country or something, so you don’t have a firm fix on it. But we do think it’s several hundred, certainly 5-, 600 at least who are likely to be pursuing the completion of their adoption.
As to the question of how we can know that the children that we are dealing with now are the ones that are really those children on the paperwork, it’s important to understand that these children have been in the adoption process, in many cases, for two years or three years. We have photos. The families have photos, many of them have visited. We have good information. We know exactly who the children are. And so it would be very difficult for someone to slip a different child in as a substitute for the child in the particular case or the particular paperwork.
We don’t have any reason to suspect that children have entered the United States illegally to date. But we want to emphasize that that potential is there, and that’s why the warning was given that people with the best of intentions flying in to try to rescue children and take them back to the States are doing something that is actually very harmful for the children, and we strongly urge against it.
19 January 2010 – The Security Council today backed Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call to increase the overall force levels of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti to support the immediate recovery, reconstruction and stability efforts following last week’s devastating earthquake.Following his visit on Sunday to the capital, Port-au-Prince, Mr. Ban asked the Council for an additional 1,500 police officers and 2,000 troops to reinforce the mission, known as MINUSTAH, to augment its 9,000 uniformed personnel already on the ground.
The Council, in unanimously adopting resolution 1908, decided that MINUSTAH will consist of a military component of up to 8,940 troops of all ranks and of a police component of up to 3,711 police, and that it will keep the new force levels under review as necessary.
The 15-member body took that action, “recognizing the dire circumstances and urgent need for a response” to the 7.0-magnitude quake which struck Haiti on 12 January, leaving one third of the country’s population of 9 million in need of immediate humanitarian assistance.
Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Mr. Ban voiced his gratitude to the Council for its swift action. “By approving my proposal… the Council sends a clear signal – the world is with Haiti.”
He stressed the need to try to get the extra forces on the ground as quickly as possible. Yesterday UN peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy said a pledge for 800 troops has already been received from the Dominican Republic and more pledges are expected soon.
The additional forces are needed, Mr. Le Roy said, to escort humanitarian convoys, to secure humanitarian corridors that are being established, and to constitute a reserve force “in case the situation unravels and security deteriorates.”
The earthquake has caused the single greatest loss of life in the UN’s history. The Christopher Hotel, which housed the world body’s headquarters in Haiti, collapsed, while other buildings hosting the UN suffered extensive damage.
Hundreds of UN personnel are still unaccounted for, and among those confirmed dead are Mr. Ban’s Special Representative to Haiti and head of MINUSTAH, Hédi Annabi, as well as his Deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa, and Acting Police Commissioner Doug Coates of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Last week Mr. Ban dispatched Edmond Mulet, the former Special Representative to Haiti and current Assistant-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations, to the country to assume full command of MINUSTAH in the wake of the disaster.
Good. Let’s hope that the organization can play a useful coordinating role too.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked the Security Council to send more troops and police to Haiti as forces on the ground struggle to keep order and speed delivery of food, water and medicine.“Haiti requires a massive response from the international community,” said Ban, who yesterday visited the capital, Port- au-Prince. “The people need to see that today is better than yesterday, and that the future will be better than the past.”
Ban told reporters at the UN today he will seek 2,000 more soldiers and 1,500 police from the Security Council, which met today to discuss the request. The UN, whose Haitian offices were destroyed in the 7-magnitude quake Jan. 12, has more than 9,000 troops and officers in Haiti. At least 46 UN staffers died in the disaster, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
Aid workers are dealing with scattered street violence, fueled in part by shortages of food and medical supplies in the capital, a city of about 3 million people. The quake, which may have killed more than 100,000 people, damaged roads, the port and toppled the control tower at the country’s only international airport, hampering efforts to get relief supplies moving.
The U.S. expects to have 7,000 troops in and offshore of Haiti by today, providing medical care, security and operating the airport.
‘Safe and Secure’
“We need a safe and secure environment to be successful,” U.S. Southern Command Lieutenant General Ken Keen, who is overseeing relief efforts, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday. “There is increasing incidents of security and we are going to have to deal with it as we go forward.”
There are 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Haiti, Keen said. Another 3,000 are working from ships docked off Haiti’s coast and two additional companies of the 82nd Airborne Division are arriving along with Marines aboard the USS Bataan and a Marine landing battalion, the American Forces Press Service said.
Brazil, which has had the biggest number of soldiers in Haiti in the UN’s peacekeeping forces, is ready to double its 1,266-strong contingent if asked, General Enza Peri, the Army’s commander, said today in a news conference in Brasilia.
Police Units
Alain LeRoy, the head of UN peacekeeping operations, told reporters today at the UN the Dominican Republic has pledged to send 800 soldiers to Haiti and that the European Union will send some police units.
The main task for the additional soldiers will be escorting relief convoys to 200 distribution points in the capital, LeRoy said. Relief corridors are being set up from the Dominican Republic and ports in northern Haiti to Port-au-Prince, he said.
LeRoy said that while there has been violence “here and there, most due to frustration,” the situation is “generally calm.”
The number of flights the airport can handle almost doubled today to 100 after the U.S. took control of the one-runway facility, the White House said in a statement. The U.S. is now giving priority to planes carrying relief supplies, said John Holmes, UN emergency relief coordinator.
Medical teams of Doctors Without Borders are stymied by bottlenecks at the airport that have stretched out by two days the expected time for delivery of supplies, said Benoit Leduc, operations manager for Haiti, in a conference call today with journalists from Port-au-Prince.
Antibiotics Needed
People are dying and infections, curable with antibiotics, are leading to amputations instead, he said. The organization has five facilities now, three of which have surgical capabilities, he said.
The organization has treated more than 3,000 patients, and performed 500 surgeries with 165 international workers and 550 locals. Another 48 doctors from abroad are on the way.
Doctors Without Borders is trying to reach areas outside the capital that have suffered destruction and often are accessible only by helicopter, Leduc said.
“We’re behind pace,” he said of the group’s overall operations. “It’s really a race.”
International search teams have managed to rescue just 71 people from the rubble, Tim Callaghan, chief of the U.S. Disaster Assistance Response team, said today. The U.S. alone has 540 people working on search and rescue.
Keen said on ABC’s “This Week” an estimate of between 150,000 and 200,000 deaths is “a starting point.” The quake affected 3 million people and left 300,000 homeless in Port-au- Prince, according to the UN.
‘Widespread Looting’
CNN reported today that there was “widespread looting” in downtown Port-au-Prince. One U.S. citizen died in an “incident,” Agence France-Presse said, citing a military spokesman.
U.S. Rear Admiral Michael Rogers, director of intelligence for the Joints Chiefs of Staff, told reporters today looting had been “isolated” and wasn’t impeding aid from getting through.
Former President Bill Clinton visited Haiti today in a bid to accelerate international relief efforts.
Haitian President Rene Preval said that international aid to his country, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, has been “quick, concrete and massive.” The nation, with an economy of about $7 billion, was in a “difficult” situation before and needs institutional reforms and economic development, he said in an interview with Venezuela’s government-funded Telesur television network.
Food for Millions
The World Food Program said it is seeking $279 million to rehabilitate Haiti’s ports, repair the road infrastructure, provide security for humanitarian workers, and donate trucks. More than $60 million has been received in donations from governments, $6 million from businesses and $2.5 million has been donated on-line.
Aid pledges continued to pour in today. Avon Products Inc. said they would donate $1 million; Spirit Airlines Inc. promised as much $10 million; and the American Red Cross had raised $21 million through text-message fund-raising. The U.S., World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Corp. have pledged more than $300 million in aid in the past week.
In Brussels, the European Union offered Haiti 422 million euros ($607 million) for emergency aid, steps to shore up the government and longer-term reconstruction.
The aid effort is being slowed by a shortage of gasoline, Louis Belanger, a spokesman for Oxfam International in Haiti, said today in a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince.
Gasoline prices have soared at stations that are operating, Belanger said. Fuel trucks are being sent from the Dominican Republic to ease the shortage, he said. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.
In Paris, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said today that an international Haiti reconstruction conference will be held on Jan. 25 in Montreal.
Remarks by the President in Remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Vermont Avenue Baptist Church, Washington, DC
12:00 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. Praise be to God. Let me begin by thanking the entire Vermont Avenue Baptist Church family for welcoming our family here today. It feels like a family. Thank you for making us feel that way. (Applause.) To Pastor Wheeler, first lady Wheeler, thank you so much for welcoming us here today. Congratulations on Jordan Denice — aka Cornelia. (Laughter.)
Michelle and I have been blessed with a new nephew this year as well — Austin Lucas Robinson. (Applause.) So maybe at the appropriate time we can make introductions. (Laughter.) Now, if Jordan’s father is like me, then that will be in about 30 years. (Laughter.) That is a great blessing.
Michelle and Malia and Sasha and I are thrilled to be here today. And I know that sometimes you have to go through a little fuss to have me as a guest speaker. (Laughter.) So let me apologize in advance for all the fuss.
We gather here, on a Sabbath, during a time of profound difficulty for our nation and for our world. In such a time, it soothes the soul to seek out the Divine in a spirit of prayer; to seek solace among a community of believers. But we are not here just to ask the Lord for His blessing. We aren’t here just to interpret His Scripture. We’re also here to call on the memory of one of His noble servants, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Now, it’s fitting that we do so here, within the four walls of Vermont Avenue Baptist Church — here, in a church that rose like the phoenix from the ashes of the civil war; here in a church formed by freed slaves, whose founding pastor had worn the union blue; here in a church from whose pews congregants set out for marches and from whom choir anthems of freedom were heard; from whose sanctuary King himself would sermonize from time to time.
One of those times was Thursday, December 6, 1956. Pastor, you said you were a little older than me, so were you around at that point? (Laughter.) You were three years old — okay. (Laughter.) I wasn’t born yet. (Laughter.)
On Thursday, December 6, 1956. And before Dr. King had pointed us to the mountaintop, before he told us about his dream in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King came here, as a 27-year-old preacher, to speak on what he called “The Challenge of a New Age.” “The Challenge of a New Age.” It was a period of triumph, but also uncertainty, for Dr. King and his followers — because just weeks earlier, the Supreme Court had ordered the desegregation of Montgomery’s buses, a hard-wrought, hard-fought victory that would put an end to the 381-day historic boycott down in Montgomery, Alabama.
And yet, as Dr. King rose to take that pulpit, the future still seemed daunting. It wasn’t clear what would come next for the movement that Dr. King led. It wasn’t clear how we were going to reach the Promised Land. Because segregation was still rife; lynchings still a fact. Yes, the Supreme Court had ruled not only on the Montgomery buses, but also on Brown v. Board of Education. And yet that ruling was defied throughout the South — by schools and by states; they ignored it with impunity. And here in the nation’s capital, the federal government had yet to fully align itself with the laws on its books and the ideals of its founding.
So it’s not hard for us, then, to imagine that moment. We can imagine folks coming to this church, happy about the boycott being over. We can also imagine them, though, coming here concerned about their future, sometimes second-guessing strategy, maybe fighting off some creeping doubts, perhaps despairing about whether the movement in which they had placed so many of their hopes — a movement in which they believed so deeply — could actually deliver on its promise.
So here we are, more than half a century later, once again facing the challenges of a new age. Here we are, once more marching toward an unknown future, what I call the Joshua generation to their Moses generation — the great inheritors of progress paid for with sweat and blood, and sometimes life itself.
We’ve inherited the progress of unjust laws that are now overturned. We take for granted the progress of a ballot being available to anybody who wants to take the time to actually vote. We enjoy the fruits of prejudice and bigotry being lifted — slowly, sometimes in fits and starts, but irrevocably — from human hearts. It’s that progress that made it possible for me to be here today; for the good people of this country to elect an African American the 44th President of the United States of America.
Reverend Wheeler mentioned the inauguration, last year’s election. You know, on the heels of that victory over a year ago, there were some who suggested that somehow we had entered into a post-racial America, all those problems would be solved. There were those who argued that because I had spoke of a need for unity in this country that our nation was somehow entering into a period of post-partisanship. That didn’t work out so well. There was a hope shared by many that life would be better from the moment that I swore that oath.
Of course, as we meet here today, one year later, we know the promise of that moment has not yet been fully fulfilled. Because of an era of greed and irresponsibility that sowed the seeds of its own demise, because of persistent economic troubles unaddressed through the generations, because of a banking crisis that brought the financial system to the brink of catastrophe, we are being tested — in our own lives and as a nation — as few have been tested before.
Unemployment is at its highest level in more than a quarter of a century. Nowhere is it higher than the African American community. Poverty is on the rise. Home ownership is slipping. Beyond our shores, our sons and daughters are fighting two wars. Closer to home, our Haitian brothers and sisters are in desperate need. Bruised, battered, many people are legitimately feeling doubt, even despair, about the future. Like those who came to this church on that Thursday in 1956, folks are wondering, where do we go from here?
I understand those feelings. I understand the frustration and sometimes anger that so many folks feel as they struggle to stay afloat. I get letters from folks around the country every day; I read 10 a night out of the 40,000 that we receive. And there are stories of hardship and desperation, in some cases, pleading for help: I need a job. I’m about to lose my home. I don’t have health care — it’s about to cause my family to be bankrupt. Sometimes you get letters from children: My mama or my daddy have lost their jobs, is there something you can do to help? Ten letters like that a day we read.
So, yes, we’re passing through a hard winter. It’s the hardest in some time. But let’s always remember that, as a people, the American people, we’ve weathered some hard winters before. This country was founded during some harsh winters. The fishermen, the laborers, the craftsmen who made camp at Valley Forge — they weathered a hard winter. The slaves and the freedmen who rode an underground railroad, seeking the light of justice under the cover of night — they weathered a hard winter. The seamstress whose feet were tired, the pastor whose voice echoes through the ages — they weathered some hard winters. It was for them, as it is for us, difficult, in the dead of winter, to sometimes see spring coming. They, too, sometimes felt their hopes deflate. And yet, each season, the frost melts, the cold recedes, the sun reappears. So it was for earlier generations and so it will be for us.
What we need to do is to just ask what lessons we can learn from those earlier generations about how they sustained themselves during those hard winters, how they persevered and prevailed. Let us in this Joshua generation learn how that Moses generation overcame.
Let me offer a few thoughts on this. First and foremost, they did so by remaining firm in their resolve. Despite being threatened by sniper fire or planted bombs, by shoving and punching and spitting and angry stares, they adhered to that sweet spirit of resistance, the principles of nonviolence that had accounted for their success.
Second, they understood that as much as our government and our political parties had betrayed them in the past — as much as our nation itself had betrayed its own ideals — government, if aligned with the interests of its people, can be — and must be — a force for good. So they stayed on the Justice Department. They went into the courts. They pressured Congress, they pressured their President. They didn’t give up on this country. They didn’t give up on government. They didn’t somehow say government was the problem; they said, we’re going to change government, we’re going to make it better. Imperfect as it was, they continued to believe in the promise of democracy; in America’s constant ability to remake itself, to perfect this union.
Third, our predecessors were never so consumed with theoretical debates that they couldn’t see progress when it came. Sometimes I get a little frustrated when folks just don’t want to see that even if we don’t get everything, we’re getting something. (Applause.) King understood that the desegregation of the Armed Forces didn’t end the civil rights movement, because black and white soldiers still couldn’t sit together at the same lunch counter when they came home. But he still insisted on the rightness of desegregating the Armed Forces. That was a good first step — even as he called for more. He didn’t suggest that somehow by the signing of the Civil Rights that somehow all discrimination would end. But he also didn’t think that we shouldn’t sign the Civil Rights Act because it hasn’t solved every problem. Let’s take a victory, he said, and then keep on marching. Forward steps, large and small, were recognized for what they were — which was progress.
Fourth, at the core of King’s success was an appeal to conscience that touched hearts and opened minds, a commitment to universal ideals — of freedom, of justice, of equality — that spoke to all people, not just some people. For King understood that without broad support, any movement for civil rights could not be sustained. That’s why he marched with the white auto worker in Detroit. That’s why he linked arm with the Mexican farm worker in California, and united people of all colors in the noble quest for freedom.
Of course, King overcame in other ways as well. He remained strategically focused on gaining ground — his eyes on the prize constantly — understanding that change would not be easy, understand that change wouldn’t come overnight, understanding that there would be setbacks and false starts along the way, but understanding, as he said in 1956, that “we can walk and never get weary, because we know there is a great camp meeting in the promised land of freedom and justice.”
And it’s because the Moses generation overcame that the trials we face today are very different from the ones that tested us in previous generations. Even after the worst recession in generations, life in America is not even close to being as brutal as it was back then for so many. That’s the legacy of Dr. King and his movement. That’s our inheritance. Having said that, let there be no doubt the challenges of our new age are serious in their own right, and we must face them as squarely as they faced the challenges they saw.
I know it’s been a hard road we’ve traveled this year to rescue the economy, but the economy is growing again. The job losses have finally slowed, and around the country, there’s signs that businesses and families are beginning to rebound. We are making progress.
I know it’s been a hard road that we’ve traveled to reach this point on health reform. I promise you I know. (Laughter.) But under the legislation I will sign into law, insurance companies won’t be able to drop you when you get sick, and more than 30 million people — (applause) — our fellow Americans will finally have insurance. More than 30 million men and women and children, mothers and fathers, won’t be worried about what might happen to them if they get sick. This will be a victory not for Democrats; this will be a victory for dignity and decency, for our common humanity. This will be a victory for the United States of America.
Let’s work to change the political system, as imperfect as it is. I know people can feel down about the way things are going sometimes here in Washington. I know it’s tempting to give up on the political process. But we’ve put in place tougher rules on lobbying and ethics and transparency — tougher rules than any administration in history. It’s not enough, but it’s progress. Progress is possible. Don’t give up on voting. Don’t give up on advocacy. Don’t give up on activism. There are too many needs to be met, too much work to be done. Like Dr. King said, “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope.”
Let us broaden our coalition, building a confederation not of liberals or conservatives, not of red states or blue states, but of all Americans who are hurting today, and searching for a better tomorrow. The urgency of the hour demands that we make common cause with all of America’s workers — white, black, brown — all of whom are being hammered by this recession, all of whom are yearning for that spring to come. It demands that we reach out to those who’ve been left out in the cold even when the economy is good, even when we’re not in recession — the youth in the inner cities, the youth here in Washington, D.C., people in rural communities who haven’t seen prosperity reach them for a very long time. It demands that we fight discrimination, whatever form it may come. That means we fight discrimination against gays and lesbians, and we make common cause to reform our immigration system.
And finally, we have to recognize, as Dr. King did, that progress can’t just come from without — it also has to come from within. And over the past year, for example, we’ve made meaningful improvements in the field of education. I’ve got a terrific Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan. He’s been working hard with states and working hard with the D.C. school district, and we’ve insisted on reform, and we’ve insisted on accountability. We we’re putting in more money and we’ve provided more Pell Grants and more tuition tax credits and simpler financial aid forms. We’ve done all that, but parents still need to parent. (Applause.) Kids still need to own up to their responsibilities. We still have to set high expectations for our young people. Folks can’t simply look to government for all the answers without also looking inside themselves, inside their own homes, for some of the answers.
Progress will only come if we’re willing to promote that ethic of hard work, a sense of responsibility, in our own lives. I’m not talking, by the way, just to the African American community. Sometimes when I say these things people assme, well, he’s just talking to black people about working hard. No, no, no, no. I’m talking to the American community. Because somewhere along the way, we, as a nation, began to lose touch with some of our core values. You know what I’m talking about. We became enraptured with the false prophets who prophesized an easy path to success, paved with credit cards and home equity loans and get-rich-quick schemes, and the most important thing was to be a celebrity; it doesn’t matter what you do, as long as you get on TV. That’s everybody.
We forgot what made the bus boycott a success; what made the civil rights movement a success; what made the United States of America a success — that, in this country, there’s no substitute for hard work, no substitute for a job well done, no substitute for being responsible stewards of God’s blessings.
What we’re called to do, then, is rebuild America from its foundation on up. To reinvest in the essentials that we’ve neglected for too long — like health care, like education, like a better energy policy, like basic infrastructure, like scientific research. Our generation is called to buckle down and get back to basics.
We must do so not only for ourselves, but also for our children, and their children. For Jordan and for Austin. That’s a sacrifice that falls on us to make. It’s a much smaller sacrifice than the Moses generation had to make, but it’s still a sacrifice.
Yes, it’s hard to transition to a clean energy economy. Sometimes it may be inconvenient, but it’s a sacrifice that we have to make. It’s hard to be fiscally responsible when we have all these human needs, and we’re inheriting enormous deficits and debt, but that’s a sacrifice that we’re going to have to make. You know, it’s easy, after a hard day’s work, to just put your kid in front of the TV set — you’re tired, don’t want to fuss with them — instead of reading to them, but that’s a sacrifice we must joyfully accept.
Sometimes it’s hard to be a good father and good mother. Sometimes it’s hard to be a good neighbor, or a good citizen, to give up time in service of others, to give something of ourselves to a cause that’s greater than ourselves — as Michelle and I are urging folks to do tomorrow to honor and celebrate Dr. King. But these are sacrifices that we are called to make. These are sacrifices that our faith calls us to make. Our faith in the future. Our faith in America. Our faith in God.
And on his sermon all those years ago, Dr. King quoted a poet’s verse:
Truth forever on the scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne…
And behind the dim unknown stands God
Within the shadows keeping watch above his own.
Even as Dr. King stood in this church, a victory in the past and uncertainty in the future, he trusted God. He trusted that God would make a way. A way for prayers to be answered. A way for our union to be perfected. A way for the arc of the moral universe, no matter how long, to slowly bend towards truth and bend towards freedom, to bend towards justice. He had faith that God would make a way out of no way.
You know, folks ask me sometimes why I look so calm. (Laughter.) They say, all this stuff coming at you, how come you just seem calm? And I have a confession to make here. There are times where I’m not so calm. (Laughter.) Reggie Love knows. My wife knows. There are times when progress seems too slow. There are times when the words that are spoken about me hurt. There are times when the barbs sting. There are times when it feels like all these efforts are for naught, and change is so painfully slow in coming, and I have to confront my own doubts.
But let me tell you — during those times it’s faith that keeps me calm. (Applause.) It’s faith that gives me peace. The same faith that leads a single mother to work two jobs to put a roof over her head when she has doubts. The same faith that keeps an unemployed father to keep on submitting job applications even after he’s been rejected a hundred times. The same faith that says to a teacher even if the first nine children she’s teaching she can’t reach, that that 10th one she’s going to be able to reach. The same faith that breaks the silence of an earthquake’s wake with the sound of prayers and hymns sung by a Haitian community. A faith in things not seen, in better days ahead, in Him who holds the future in the hollow of His hand. A faith that lets us mount up on wings like eagles; lets us run and not be weary; lets us walk and not faint.
So let us hold fast to that faith, as Joshua held fast to the faith of his fathers, and together, we shall overcome the challenges of a new age. (Applause.) Together, we shall seize the promise of this moment. Together, we shall make a way through winter, and we’re going to welcome the spring. Through God all things are possible. (Applause.)
May the memory of Dr. Martin Luther King continue to inspire us and ennoble our world and all who inhabit it. And may God bless the United States of America. Thank you very much, everybody. God bless you. (Applause.)
My great friend Ben Bixby is the co-founder and chief executive officer of Earth Aid, a start-up working to save energy costs for consumers and promote a greener approach. Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer has an outstanding article on Earth Aid. Diane Mastrull writes:
You manuever the controls on your thermostat, hoping for a few more degrees of warmth.
But wait! What if there were a reward for leaving the setting right where it is – or, better yet, for lowering it?
What if putting up with a little chill got you a price break on a butter pound cake split three ways and filled with lemon curd and blackberry and raspberry puree – the hopelessly tantalizing spring torte from Bredenbeck’s Bakery in Chestnut Hill?
Or maybe a $10 coupon for native plants or artisanal goat-milk cheeses at Yellow Springs Farm in Chester Springs? Or a bed-and-breakfast package at the Four Seasons Hotel in Center City?
Perks like those are part of a growing list from local businesses hoping to improve their bottom lines by promoting a greener lifestyle.
Rewards for households that recycle are well-known through RecycleBank, which got its start here in 2005.
Now comes what is believed to be a first: a rewards program for saving energy.
Earth Aid, a Washington start-up, enables U.S. residents to track their electric, gas, and water usage online and, by cutting back on it, earn points that can be redeemed at local businesses.
Launched in September, Earth Aid will not dislose how many members it has or the company’s financials. Ben Bixby, its cofounder and chief executive officer, said membership was “in the thousands and our rate of growth is doubling monthly.”
Though the program has not yet had a formal introduction here, Philadelphia is home to some of its largest reward partners, Bixby said: Of the more than 100 businesses that have signed on, 25 are from Philadelphia or its suburbs, “with many more on the way.”
That could be a barometer of not only the growing influence of the sustainability movement, but of just how eager recession-impaired businesses are for a chance to boost sales, said Maria Cain, sales manager at Bredenbeck’s, where a few more sweet tooths would be welcome.
Linking with Earth Aid, Cain said, “really puts our name out there to the entire Philadelphia region.”
Said Stephen Falvo at Manayunk’s Art+Science Salon & Spa, where Earth Aid participants can redeem 300 points for a 60-minute massage: “I think people need to realize that just by supporting local business, they are helping to reduce their carbon footprint and, in turn, keeping the supply chain local.”
Earth Aid has developed proprietary software that makes it possible, with consumer permission, to retrieve household utility data everywhere in the country, Bixby said. Once people sign up, their energy use is reviewed and a baseline established. Then the company provides customized advice on how to become more energy-efficient and which rebates and tax credits are available to make the changes.
Participants receive monthly statements from Earth Aid showing how much energy they used and how that compared with the same month in the previous year. Reward points are based on reductions achieved.
“We just want to make it easier for people to save energy, and information does that,” said David Burd, Earth Aid’s vice president of business development.
Sign-up for households is free “and will forever be,” Bixby said. There is also no charge “at this time” for small and regional businesses to offer one reward, he said. Larger rewards-program participants must pay a promotional fee, depending on their size.
Earth Aid also makes money from sales it helps arrange between members and providers of energy-conservation services and products, such as oxygenating showerheads and programmable thermostats.
RecycleBank, the incentive-based recycling initiative now providing services to more than one million members in 20 states and the United Kingdom, was an inspiration for Earth Aid, Bixby said.
One of RecycleBank’s founders, Ron Gonen, a Germantown Academy graduate and now a resident of New York, said he was flattered.
Though calling Earth Aid’s energy-use tracking program a good idea, Gonen said he was not convinced the business discounts would be as effective a recruiting tool as they have been for RecycleBank. Last year, RecycleBank members redeemed and used more than $1 million in reward points, he said.
Without incentives, people who recycle were getting no benefit from the act other than “feeling you were doing something good” for the environment, he said. Energy savers, on the other hand, can see the benefits of that in cheaper energy bills.
“I’m not sure that you need additional incentives beyond reducing your monthly energy bill,” Gonen said.
At Yellow Springs Farm, co-owner Catherine Renzi lauded the idea of rewards – such as the $10 coupon she is offering toward the purchase of at least $50 in goods.
“It’s much easier to make [conservation] attractive for people,” she said, “when you have a carrot.”
Or a free overnight stay at one of Philadelphia’s premier hotels.
The Four Seasons, considered a sustainability leader in part because it composts, recycles, and has microturbines on its roof, is offering one bed-and-breakfast package for two, including breakfast in its acclaimed Fountain Restaurant.
To win it, you must assemble the group of friends or family on Earth Aid that collectively saves the most energy between today and April 30.
U.N. soldiers stood guard as Haitians lined up for food handouts in a field in Port-au-Prince. Photo: Maggie Steber for The New York Times
AS the tragedy in Haiti continues, the New York Times reports on a perennial problem in mass humanitarian crises– the lack of coordination. Ginger Thompson and Damien Cave explain:
But with Haitian officials relying so heavily on the United States, the United Nations and many different aid groups, coordination was posing a critical challenge. An airport hobbled by only one suitable runway, a ruined port whose main pier splintered into the ocean, roads blocked by rubble, widespread fuel shortages and a lack of drivers to move the aid into the city are compounding the problems.
About 1,700 people camped on the grass in front of the prime minister’s office compound in the Pétionville neighborhood, pleading for biscuits and water-purification tablets distributed by aid groups. A sign on one fallen building in Nazon, one of many hillside communities destroyed by the quake, read: “Welcome U.S. Marines. We need help. Dead Bodies Inside!”
Haitian officials said the bodies of tens of thousands of victims had already been recovered and that hundreds of thousands of people were living on the streets. A preliminary Red Cross estimate put the total number of affected people at 3.5 million.
The United Nations also confirmed the death of three of its most senior officials in the quake: the secretary general’s special representative for Haiti, Hédi Annabi; his deputy, Luiz Carlos da Costa; and the acting police commissioner for the peacekeeping force, Doug Coates of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. They were meeting with eight members of a Chinese police delegation in the agency’s headquarters, the Christopher Hotel, when it collapsed on Tuesday.
Even as the United States took a leading role in aid efforts, some aid officials were describing misplaced priorities, accusing United States officials of focusing their efforts on getting their people and troops installed and lifting their citizens out. Under agreement with Haiti, the United States is now managing air traffic control at the airport, helicopters are flying relief missions from warships off the coast and 9,000 to 10,000 troops are expected to arrive by Monday to help with the relief effort.
The World Food Program finally was able to land flights of food, medicine and water on Saturday, after failing on Thursday and Friday, an official with the agency said. Those flights had been diverted so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.
“There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti,” said Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the agency’s Haiti effort. “But most of those flights are for the United States military.
He added: “Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync.”
In a notice over the weekend, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said priority would be given to search and rescue, military and humanitarian aircraft, in that order. Flights were being routed through a command center at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and pilots must tell controllers what they have on board and when they would like to arrive.
American officials said they were making substantial progress. Mrs. Clinton said the military was beginning to use a container port in Cap Haitien, in northern Haiti, which should increase the flow of aid.
The United States Agency for International Development was helping choose sites and clear roads for 14 centers for the distribution of food and water. Rajiv Shah, the agency’s administrator, said the United States had moved $48 million of food supplies from Texas since the quake and distributed 600,000 packaged meals. It has also installed three water-purification systems capable of purifying 100,000 liters a day.
Yet problems remain. American officials said that 180 tons of relief supplies had been delivered to the airport, but much was still waiting for delivery. While the military has cleared other landing sites for helicopters around the capital, they are thronged by people looking for help, making landings hazardous.
Fuel shortages were mounting. At several gas stations around Port-au-Prince, attendants or customers said that even though the stations had fuel left in their tanks, there was no electricity to work the pumps.
Some aid workers were critical of the United Nations, as well, arguing that the agency had the most on-the-ground experience in Haiti and should be directing efforts better.
But many United Nations employees were killed in the earthquake. And Stephanie Bunker, the spokeswoman for the United Nations humanitarian relief effort, said Saturday that a United Nations logistics team was trying to coordinate with other agencies, and that the peacekeeping forces were trying to clear roads.
Criticism of the United Nations “may reflect people’s frustrations with the entire effort because it is such a grueling effort,” she said. “It takes a long time for all this stuff to be cleared up and fixed.” She noted that all modes of transportation — air, road and sea — were still limited. A shortage of trucks remained a problem.
Michel Chancy, appointed by Mr. Préval to coordinate relief, said that much of the aid to Haiti was coming to a government that was itself under siege.
“The palace fell,” he said. “Ministries fell. And not only that, the homes of many ministers fell. The police were not coming to work. Relief agencies collapsed. The U.N. collapsed. It was hard to get ourselves in a place where we could help others.”
At the American Embassy in Port-au-Prince, American rescue teams continued to roll out of the gate. Most of their equipment had arrived, and at any given time, the teams were working on several different piles of rubble throughout the city.
“People need to get the message, we’re out, we’re doing stuff,” said Craig Luecke, a coordinator with the search and rescue team from Fairfax County, Va., who has been tracking American efforts in advance of Mrs. Clinton’s arrival here. “My Google Earth map is filled with American activity.”
Though the numbers are fluid, he said four American teams had helped pulled nearly two dozen survivors from the rubble. The State Department said 15 Americans were confirmed dead in the earthquake.
Some airplanes, after circling the capital’s airport, have been turning back or landing in Santo Domingo, in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Its airfield was growing ever more crowded with diverted flights.
“We’re all going crazy,” said Nan Buzard, senior director of international response and programs for the American Red Cross. “You don’t have any kind of orderly distributions of food, water, shelter, clothing. The planes are in the air, the materials are purchased. It remains a profoundly frustrating situation for everyone.”
A caravan of eight trucks from the federation was creeping toward the Haitian border on Saturday morning, carrying medical equipment and aid workers.
The group had originally planned to touch down in Haiti, but the delays at the airport forced them to divert to Santo Domingo, delaying their arrival in Haiti by about 12 hours, said Paul Conneally, a Red Cross spokesman who was traveling with the convoy.
“Every minute counts, I know that, but we cannot be on standby to land at Port-au-Prince because it may not be for two or three days,” he said. “It’s problematic to go across roads, but it’s a small price to pay.”
Mr. Préval, speaking at the airport, now the effective seat of the Haitian government, urged patience. He showed a map covered with red dots, indicating the worst-hit areas. When the earthquake struck, he said, “We in Haiti thought it was the end of the world.”
Mr. Préval said he was making food, water, medical supplies and the re-establishment of communication the priorities for his government. “We have a lot of work to do,” he said. (emphasis added)
I worry that coordination problems will continue and more human lives will be lost. Will I do not support a long talk-fest in the Security Council, it seems to me that a resolution that sets forth a framework for coordinating the Haiti relief effort could be useful. It could designate lead agencies and a chain of command. It would help facilitate communication among the IGO’s, NGO’s, and Governmental entities working in the area. And it could make clear the relationship between the aid and security components of the operation. I believe such a framework resolution could be produced in a matter of hours and would greatly assist in efforts to help the people of Haiti.
Remarks by President Obama, Former President Bill Clinton, and Former President George W. Bush on the Recovery and Rebuilding Effort in Haiti
Rose Garden
11:02 A.M. EST
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good morning, everybody. In times of great challenge in our country and around the world, Americans have always come together to lend a hand and to serve others and to do what’s right. That’s what the American people have been doing in recent days with their extraordinary generosity and contributions to the Haitian people.
At this moment, we’re moving forward with one of the largest relief efforts in our history — to save lives and to deliver relief that averts an even larger catastrophe. The two leaders with me today will ensure that this is matched by a historic effort that extends beyond our government, because America has no greater resource than the strength and the compassion of the American people.
We just met in the Oval Office — an office they both know well. And I’m pleased that President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton have agreed to lead a major fundraising effort for relief: the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. On behalf of the American people, I want to thank both of you for returning to service and leading this urgent mission.
This is a model that works. After the terrible tsunami in Asia, President Bush turned to President Clinton and the first President Bush to lead a similar fund. That effort raised substantial resources for the victims of that disaster — money that helped save lives, deliver aid, and rebuild communities. And that’s exactly what the people of Haiti desperately need right now.
Every day that goes by, we learn more about the horrifying scope of this catastrophe — destruction and suffering that defies comprehension. Entire communities buried under mountains of concrete. Families sleeping in the streets. Injured desperate for care. Many thousands feared dead. That’s why thousands of American personnel — civilian and military — are on the scene working to distribute clean drinking water and food and medicine, and thousands of tons of emergency food supplies are arriving every day.
It will be difficult. It is an enormous challenge to distribute this aid quickly and safely in a place that has suffered such destruction. That’s what we’re focused on now — working closely with our partners: the Haitian government, the United Nations, and many organizations and nations — friends from Argentina and France, from Dominican Republic and Brazil, and countries all around the world.
And Secretary Hillary Clinton will be in Haiti today to meet with President Préval and continue our close coordination with his government. But we also know that our longer-term effort will not be measured in days and weeks; it will be measured in months and even years. And that’s why it’s so important to enlist and sustain the support of the American people. That’s why it’s so important to have a point of coordination for all the support that extends beyond our government.
Here at home, Presidents Bush and Clinton will help the American people to do their part, because responding to a disaster must be the work of all of us. Indeed, those wrenching scenes of devastation remind us not only of our common humanity but also of our common responsibilities. This time of suffering can and must be a time of compassion.
As the scope of the destruction became apparent, I spoke to each of these gentlemen, and they each asked the same simple question: How can I help? In the days ahead they’ll be asking everyone what they can do — individuals, corporations, NGOs, and institutions. And I urge everyone who wants to help to visit www.clintonbushhaitifund.org.
We’re fortunate to have the service of these two leaders. President Bush led America’s response to the Asian tsunami, aid and relief that prevented even greater loss of life in the months after that disaster. And his administration’s efforts to fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa treated more than 10 million men, women, and children.
As President, Bill Clinton helped restore democracy in Haiti. As a private citizen, he has helped to save the lives of millions of people around the world. And as the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, he understands intimately the daily struggles and needs of the Haitian people.
And by coming together in this way, these two leaders send an unmistakable message to the people of Haiti and to the people of the world: In these difficult hours, America stands united. We stand united with the people of Haiti, who have shown such incredible resilience, and we will help them to recover and to rebuild.
Yesterday we witnessed a small but remarkable display of that determination — some of you may have seen it — Haitians with little more than the clothes on their back marched peacefully through a ruined neighborhood, and despite all their loss and all their suffering they sang songs of faith and songs of hope.
These are the people we’re called upon to help. Those are the hopes that we’re committed to answering. That’s why the three of us are standing together today. And with that, I would invite each President to say a few words. I’m going to start with President Bush.
PRESIDENT BUSH: I join President Obama in expressing my sympathy for the people of Haiti. I commend the President for his swift and timely response to the disaster. I am so pleased to answer the call to work alongside President Clinton to mobilize the compassion of the American people.
Like most Americans, Laura and I have been following the television coverage from Haiti. Our hearts are broken when we see the scenes of little children struggling without a mom or a dad, or the bodies in the streets or the physical damage of the earthquake.
The challenges down there are immense, but there’s a lot of devoted people leading the relief effort, from government personnel who deployed into the disaster zone to the faith-based groups that have made Haiti a calling.
The most effective way for Americans to help the people of Haiti is to contribute money. That money will go to organizations on the ground and will be — who will be able to effectively spend it. I know a lot of people want to send blankets or water — just send your cash. One of the things that the President and I will do is to make sure your money is spent wisely. As President Obama said, you can look us up on clintonbushhaitifund.org.
The Haitian people have got a tough journey, yet it’s amazing how terrible tragedies can bring out the best of the human spirit. We’ve all seen that firsthand when American citizens responded to the tsunami or to Katrina or to the earthquake in Pakistan. And President Clinton and I are going to work to tap that same spirit of giving to help our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean.
Toward the end of my presidency, Laura made a trip down to Haiti to look at the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief programs down there. I remember clearly her coming back and telling me about the energy and optimism of the people of Haiti. There’s just an unbelievable spirit amongst the Haitian people. And while that earthquake destroyed a lot, it didn’t destroy their spirit.
So the people of Haiti will recovery and rebuild, and as they do they know they’ll have a friend in the United States of America. Mr. President, thank you for giving me the chance to serve.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: First, I want to thank President Obama for asking President Bush and me to do this, and for what I believe has been a truly extraordinary response on the part of the American government. Because I’ve been working down there for nearly a year as the U.N. special envoy, I’ve been in constant touch with our people through the U.N. on the ground, and you know we lost a lot of our people there — the largest loss of life in the history of the United Nations on a single day. The United States has been there from the beginning. The military has been great. The response by the State Department and AID has been great. I just can’t say enough about it. And the people in Haiti know it, and I’m grateful.
Secondly, I’d like to thank President Bush for agreeing to do this, and for the concern he showed for Haiti. Before this happened, my foundation worked with the PEPFAR people on the AIDS problems in Haiti and I saw how good they were and what they did and how many lives they saved.
Finally, let me say that — I don’t have to read the Web site because they did — but I want to say something about this. Right now all we need to do is get food and medicine and water and a secure place for them to be. But when we start the rebuilding effort, we want to do what I did with the President’s father in the tsunami area. We want to be a place where people can know their money will be well spent; where we will ensure the ongoing integrity of the process.
And we want to stay with this over the long run. My job with the U.N. basically is not at all in conflict with this because I’m sort of the outside guy. My job is to work with the donor nations, the international agencies, the business people around the world to try to get them to invest there, the nongovernmental organizations, the Haitian diaspora community.
I believe before this earthquake Haiti had the best chance in my lifetime to escape its history — a history that Hillary and I have shared a tiny part of. I still believe that. The Haitians want to just amend their development plan to take account of what’s happened in Port-au-Prince and west, figure out what they got to do about that, and then go back to implementing it. But it’s going to take a lot of help and a long time.
So I’m just grateful that President Bush wants to help, and I’ve already figured out how I can get him to do some things that he didn’t sign on for. (Laughter.)
Again, I have no words to say what I feel like. When you — I was in those hotels that collapsed. I had meals with people who are dead. The cathedral church that Hillary and I sat in 34 years ago is a total rubble. But what these men have said is true: It is still one of the most remarkable, unique places I have ever been. And they can escape their history and build a better future if we do our part. And President Obama, thank you for giving us a chance to do a little of that.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, these gentlemen are going to do an extraordinary job, but really what they’re going to be doing is just tapping into the incredible generosity, the ingenuity, the can-do spirit of the American people in helping our neighbors in need. So I want to thank each of them not only for being here today but what I know is going to be an extraordinary effort.
I want to make sure that everybody got that Web site one more time. Obviously we’re just standing it up, but it will immediately give people a means to contact our offices — www.clintonbushhaitifund.org.
And I just want to amplify one thing that was said. We were talking in the back. In any extraordinary catastrophe like this, the first several weeks are just going to involve getting immediate relief on the ground. And there are going to be some tough days over the next several days. People are still trying to figure out how to organize themselves. There’s going to be fear, anxiety, a sense of desperation in some cases.
I’ve been in contact with President Préval. I’ve been talking to the folks on the ground. We are going to be making slow and steady progress, and the key now is to — for everybody in Haiti to understand that there is going to be sustained help on the way.
But what these gentlemen are going to be able to do is when the news media starts seeing its attention drift to other things but there’s still enormous needs on the ground, these two gentlemen of extraordinary stature I think are going to be able to help ensure that these efforts are sustained. And that’s why it’s so important and that’s why I’m so grateful that they agreed to do it.
SECRETARY CLINTON: I want to take a moment first to thank the American people who have been extraordinarily generous in the amount of support that they have shown for the people of Haiti during this devastating period.
Through a State Department partnership with the Red Cross and mGive, we’ve raised more than $10 million from more than 1 million donors through our SMS Haiti relief campaign. It has become the single largest mobile donation campaign ever. One hundred percent of the proceeds go directly to the Red Cross for their activities on the ground in Haiti. But the devastation is far greater than we could have imagined, so please keep texting Haiti, H-a-i-t-i, to 90999 where $10 will be charged to your cell phone.
I’m also pleased to announce a new tool on state.gov for those searching for loved ones in Haiti, or for those who have information. You can find the Person Finder – that’s the Person Finder – on www.state.gov/Haitiquake, H-a-i-t-i-q-u-a-k-e. And more information will be posted soon.
I also have decided after consulting with President Obama and others in our government that I will be traveling to Haiti tomorrow with USAID Administrator Dr. Raj Shah. We will be meeting with President Preval and other members of the Haitian Government along with the members of the U.S. Government team on the ground, including our civilian and military leaders. We will also be conveying very directly and personally to the Haitian people our long-term, unwavering support, solidarity, and sympathies to reinforce President Obama’s message yesterday that they are not facing this crisis alone.
I will also be able to see firsthand the ongoing efforts and deployment of U.S. Government personnel and resources for maximum impact to support the vital lifesaving relief and recovery efforts. We have an incredibly robust and complex set of relationships on the ground in Haiti not only among the various components of the United States Government, but many of our NGOs, representatives of our faith communities, as well as the United Nations, the international partners, and aid organizations. And I want to have an opportunity to consult with a number of those as well.
As you can imagine, details are still coming together. We will get them to you as soon as they can be confirmed. But lastly, and perhaps it can’t be said often enough, our hearts and our prayers are with the people of Haiti, the brave rescue workers that are there on the ground literally working around the clock – we had some wonderfully heartwarming stories today of people being rescued from the rubble alive and well – and to reiterate the support that we feel for all of those who are caught up in this disaster.
And finally, let me just say a word about our Embassy team. They have been extraordinary, working without stop. They bear the responsibility for the 45,000 or so American citizens there. They are obviously coping with their own losses and worries. But through it all, they’ve exhibited the utmost professionalism and I’m very, very grateful and very proud of them.
So I’d be glad to take some questions. Andrea.
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, you know Haiti well; you’ve been there often going back over decades. What do you think you can learn by going yourself tomorrow? What do you want to not only convey to them, but bring back?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, three things. First, I’ll be taking supplies with me and I’ll be taking some people who will stay on the ground there. This is a convenient, efficient way to get both into Haiti. I will be bringing out some American citizens who are waiting for evacuation. So there are some very tangible reasons for this.
I will also be meeting with President Preval, who has expressed a great interest in having me come. And I know him. We, as you know, had a very close working relationship established with President Preval and his government, an effort headed up by my chief of staff and counselor Cheryl Mills, but which was, again, a whole-of-government enterprise. And so we perhaps as well, or maybe in some cases better than the rest of our government, kind of know what the plans were, understand what the president and his team are up against. And the Haitian Government is the authority in Haiti, but they clearly are asking for appropriate help, which we are providing.
And finally, it’s been my experience over many years now that those of us here who have a lot of the responsibility for executing our policy, including myself, Dr. Shah, Counselor Mills, and others, really can add to our understanding and cut through any misunderstanding that might be afoot by face-to-face contact. And it also gives us a chance to report back to our international partners as well. I’ve spoken to a number of foreign ministers and heads of state who are asking questions about how things are operating and what they can do to contribute, and it just gives you a level of credibility in this implementation phase that we’re finding ourselves in.
QUESTION: Secretary Clinton –
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah.
QUESTION: — how concerned are you about the possibility that, as people now live on the streets for several days, don’t have food, water, shelter, and are surrounded by corpses – in some cases of their loved ones – that their sort of anguish may turn to rage, and given the limited capacities of the Haitian Government, that the sporadic looting that one has seen may get significantly worse? And what can the U.S. Government do to try to forestall that?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, Arshad, I think it’s understandable when human beings are as distressed and stressed as the Haitians are, when they’ve suffered such grievous losses and they’re still experiencing aftershocks – there were more today – that it is an extremely anxious environment. And add to that the difficulty of loved ones still trapped in rubble, inadequate food, water, medical supplies; you can certainly relate to the challenges that the people of Haiti face.
I think that everyone agrees that up until that point the matters have been well in hand. But there’s a process of grieving, which includes anger. If you look at the stages of grief, that is a stage that is just part of the human DNA.
We think that the UN peacekeepers are doing an excellent job. They have about 7,000 peacekeepers. They’re on the streets. They’re patrolling. They are primarily responsible for law and order. But they need help.
The Haitian police force has been severely impacted. We get varying estimates of how many are actually left and able to be on the streets themselves. We do have American military assets that we have put at the disposal of MINUSTAH, the peacekeeping force. Our three-star general on the ground, General Keen, is personally acquainted over a number of years with the Brazilian general in charge, and they’re cooperating in every way they can.
But this is a very tough situation, and that’s why we’re trying to move as quickly as possible to remedy the underlying causes that might give rise to people being desperate. But we’re aware that there are all kinds of potential problems on the horizon that we’re trying to be prepared to help the Haitian Government deal with.
QUESTION: Madame Secretary?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah.
QUESTION: Based on what you’ve been told about how the situation has developed, just say in the last day or so, do you think that conditions will actually get worse in the days ahead, or do you think that the corner is being turned?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Bob, I think every hour that goes by, we get more resources on the ground and more people deployed to act on what is required in the face of this very large disaster scene, so I think we’re making a lot of progress. But it kind of goes back to Arshad’s question: Is our progress fast enough for the people who have been without food or water or who are sitting there with a severely injured relative? I mean, I think if you and I were in that situation, it wouldn’t be fast enough no matter how fast we were moving. So I think any fair assessment that I could make would show that the United States Government, the international community, the NGOs, everybody is really stepping up and we’re making a lot of progress.
It’s just a race against time. It’s a race against time in the search-and-rescue missions. It’s a race against time to establish some means for clearing the roads so that more supplies can get in. But boy, everybody is pushing as hard as they can. So I think we’re making a lot of progress. I just want to make sure we move as quickly and effectively as we can.
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, you – the United States has been giving money and aid to Haiti for development for decades, and every time something happens, there’s a crisis and the money seems to have – you seem to take one step forward and kind of five steps back. And now, as you look to not only the search and rescue but the long-term recovery of Haiti, what can be different this time to make sure that Haiti can stand on its own two feet?
And you have this fragile political situation with the government. Even though, as you say, it’s in authority, it still is very fragile and weak. How can the government kind of stand up and assert authority especially now that President Aristide is saying that he’d like to return, he’d like to help his people and bring supplies? But certainly as divisive a figure as he is, this could sow a lot of discontent, because as you’ve said, the people are angry, the people are scared, the people are nervous. Do you think this is the right time for him to be returning?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, let me just take it one day at a time here. Our immediate need right now is to do what is required in the search-and-rescue phase and then the transitioning to a physical recovery effort – clearing the rubble, getting more – getting some field hospitals and helping to restock the hospitals that are still standing, the kind of nuts-and-bolts humanitarian assistance, disaster relief work that has to go on now.
But I would say from my perspective, having turned a lot of our attention in this Administration to how we could effectively work with Haiti, starting back last year, we were really making progress. We had a good plan that was a Haitian plan. The Haitian Government created the plan. It was realistic. It was focused. We worked with them. We came in with a very successful donors conference. We had a lot of buy-in from many other countries in this hemisphere and beyond. And it was certainly on track to be, in my view, a very positive effort.
Haiti has suffered enormously over the course of its existence from all kinds of factors, some of them poor governance that we know so well, some of it interference by other countries that set back all kinds of opportunities for forward progress, some of it by just the battering of nature. A country that had four hurricanes last year and a devastating earthquake this year has certainly got more than its share of problems.
But I think that we’ve learned a lot, and there’s a resilience among the people of Haiti and a commitment on the part of the current government that I think bodes well for being able to bring about reconstruction and recovery efforts that will be successful. The United Nations is heavily committed. Obviously, my husband is the special envoy for the secretary general.
And it was so ironic that Monday night on PBS, there was a long story about how Haiti was on the way back. It was a story on the Jim Lehrer show – I don’t know if that’s still its name, but that’s what I call it – and it was such a hopeful story and it had interviews with elected officials, business leaders. And people who watched that were just so revved up, and one of the things it showed was this really successful business conference that my husband led a few months ago, 500 businesses from all over the world signing contracts, opening factories.
And the next day, this happens. So look, it’s not easy, we know there’s a long way to go. But I think if we’re smart about how we choose to interact with them and if we have the right set of expectations, I think this can be done.
QUESTION: President Aristide (inaudible)?
SECRETARY CLINTON: I don’t have any comment on that.
Yes.
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, Mike Emanuel from Fox. I’m wondering if you have an update on unaccounted-for Americans and whether you are troubled by the fact that the Embassy may not have heard from a lot of Americans or whether you have some logical explanations.
SECRETARY CLINTON: No, I am troubled. I’m very troubled. Communication is still very difficult. And we are encouraged by those with whom we have made contact and the hundreds and hundreds that we’ve evacuated at their request. But we’re working feverishly to track down as many as we possibly can.
And thankfully, a lot of people have called in with information we wouldn’t know. For example, as I was looking at the records of this, a friend called a friend, called a friend, and they contacted us. A frantic family, a young woman down there on a missionary medical trip staying in one of the hotels, nobody had heard from her. So we take every piece of information and we try to follow up on it. And we found that young woman alive and we’re finding lots of other people. But it’s going to take a number of more days before we can piece all that together.
Yeah.
QUESTION: A number of countries have pledged assistance to Haiti, and I guess this will need some coordination. Is – did you plan already an international conference, or –
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes, we will most likely have that. The United Nations has been instrumental in coordinating what we were doing this past year for Haiti. As you know, their mission has been severely impacted. We don’t know the exact number of lives that have been lost yet, but they are staffing up to try to continue their work. So the United Nations will be very much involved, and obviously we have to wait on that. I’ve spoken with the foreign ministers of several of the countries here in the hemisphere and others in Europe, as well as the EU high representative, and everyone’s very willing to help. So there will be an organized effort. We have to get through this first initial period.
Yes.
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, the Cubans opened their airspace for humanitarian flights.
SECRETARY CLINTON: And we appreciate that.
QUESTION: I was going to ask you what’s the – how significant is that? And do you anticipate further or deeper coordination with the Cubans in regard to Haiti?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, we very much appreciate the Cubans opening their airspace for medical evacuation and emergency flights, and we would welcome any other actions that the Cuban Government could take in furtherance of the international rescue and recovery mission in Haiti.
I saw a hand back there.
QUESTION: I was going to ask about the international conference. The president of France today –
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.
QUESTION: — called for an international conference, so you said you will be considering this.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes. Well, of course, I’ve talked to my friend Bernard Kouchner and – among the many that I’ve spoken with, and we are all committed to doing that. It’s not appropriate yet. We’re going to need to get through this period. Everyone understands that. And then we need to do some needs assessment, and then we have to have a division of responsibilities. I don’t think it would be productive just to have a conference. We want a conference with kind of assignments that people are willing to accept. And we have to do that in conjunction with both the Government of Haiti and the UN, neither of which are yet in a position that they can be able to do that. But we will definitely have such an effort.
QUESTION: What about contributions from rich Arab countries? Are you aware of any action on – in this regard?
SECRETARY CLINTON: I know that we’ve received notice of some contributions. I just can’t tell you right now who that is.
QUESTION: Thank you.
SECRETARY CLINTON: But there’s always room for more to help.
Yes.
QUESTION: I’d like to know what – your plan as you’re meeting with Preval — during your trip.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Right.
QUESTION: — what your plan is to help to try to stand up this government. He’s lost his home, obviously. The parliament –
SECRETARY CLINTON: Right.
QUESTION: — is destroyed. And I’d also like to know why you think this is the appropriate time to go down there, when there’s a major relief operation underway.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I would not be going if I thought my trip would have any adverse impact on the relief efforts. What I’ve – I’ve been asked to come and, after evaluating it during most of the day, we’ve taken every step we can to minimize any impact. I will not be leaving the airport area, so that I will not be using assets like automobiles that should be better used for transporting rescue workers or medical personnel.
It is the judgment that we’ve reached that this is a useful time for both Dr. Shah and I to go. And I have very carefully analyzed this because I’ve been to more crises and emergencies than I can even remember over the course of a long, long time in public life. And I don’t ever want to do anything that interferes with or imposes burdens on the people who are actually doing the work.
On the other hand, we do need to send a very clear message, several messages, about not only our ongoing commitment but also our relationship with President Preval and the Haitian Government, which is a supportive one. Our working with the UN, our hearing firsthand from our Embassy mission, from our military leadership, our USAID teams, and then, as I say, bringing and taking some both human and other materials back out and in.
QUESTION: And how you stand up the government and going forward on –
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about. I mean, it’s kind of hard to do long distance. It’s something that, because I’ve worked with President Preval, and Cheryl Mills and her team have a very close working relationship with him and others, including the prime minister, we really need to spend some time thinking through how we can help them.
And you can imagine how it must feel to be in this position where you are – you have no tools of government and you have an enormous amount of personal anxiety because so many people – friends, loved ones, colleagues – nobody’s heard from. You have no idea where they are. If they’re alive, you can’t communicate with them.
So I think it will be an important step toward doing exactly what you’re referring to, being sure that we empower them in every way that we can. We take responsibilities off them for a time period that they can’t physically perform, if they want, or other members of the international community as part of that do. Our goal is to really help them. And that is, in part, making sure that they have a government that insofar as possible gains in capacity to function over the weeks ahead.
USAID Administrator Raj Shah and U.S. SOUTHCOM Commander General Douglas Fraser
Washington, DC
January 13, 2010
MR. CROWLEY: Good morning and welcome to the Department of State. As the President said earlier, we are committed to helping the people of Haiti, as well as looking after the welfare of the roughly 40,000 Americans who live and work in Haiti, including those who are part of our U.S. Embassy family in Port-au-Prince.
This is a whole-of-government effort, as you’ll see by the speakers who will be at the – who will give you kind of a status report on the way forward, representatives from the Department of State, Defense, and Agency for International Development. We are obviously supported by other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, as we go forward. And as you will hear, we’re responding as rapidly and effectively as we can to the difficult situation in Haiti.
We’ll begin this morning’s briefing with Cheryl Mills, Counselor to the Secretary of State and a driving force behind Haiti policy formulation here at the State Department, followed by Raj Shah, the Administrator of USAID. And we’re thrilled to have General Doug Fraser, the Commander of U.S. Southern Command, who will be coordinating the considerable military response to this disaster. But we’ll begin with Cheryl Mills. MS. MILLS: Good morning. Let me just first start out by saying, and echoing the sentiments of the President, that our thoughts and prayers are with the Haitian people and the vast international community that is present in Haiti as we are going through what is going to undoubtedly be a very challenging and difficult time. And we are looking forward to being able to provide all the support that we can bring to bear to try and ameliorate the impact of this terrible situation.
As you all know, shortly before 5 o’clock yesterday, an earthquake struck outside of Port-au-Prince and outside of the island of Haiti, and then there were multiple aftershocks that had an impact on the island as well. According to our initial overflights that have gone on this morning, it appears that most of the damage has been within Port-au-Prince, and that the outlying areas have sustained less damage or very limited damage.
The situation on the ground is very fluid. We have very limited telecommunications, and certainly within the Haitian community there’s limited telecommunications. We have been fortunate our U.S. ambassador has been able to reach President Preval, who is safe and who is grateful to the outpouring of assistance that he has been receiving from the international community. And they have had a couple of occasions to have a conversation.
As many of the people have already seen, there are numerous structures that have sustained substantial damage, and we also know that there have been not insignificant numbers of casualties. We do not have any estimates yet of the numbers of those, nor for the number of individuals who are – who have been injured, but the situation is very severe.
In addition to the numerous facilities that have sustained damage, we also note that the UN peacekeeping force headquarters also sustained considerable damage, and so we will be lending our assistance to see how we can provide the appropriate support to be able to provide search-and-rescue support in that area.
I’m going to speak a little bit about our American citizens who are there, and Raj will be speaking about disaster assistance – Administrator Shah. And we will then have General Fraser, who will also be speaking about our military response.
So in that vein, there are approximately 45,000 U.S. citizens who are in Haiti. The Embassy Port-au-Prince has activated its Early Warning System to connect with those citizens and establish, one, how they are doing and, two, what support they might need. We have received a number of reports of injured U.S. citizens, so we are working through those to be able to make sure that we are getting everybody the assistance that they need.
There have been a number of calls that have come into our Consular Affairs here at the Department seeking information about loved ones who are in Haiti. For those people who are seeking information, the President gave out this number. I just want to give it one more time, and that is 1-888-407-4747. And that’s a number that you can call into if you are seeking information or seeking to make a request with respect to someone who is – that you are trying to connect with that’s in Haiti.
In terms of Embassy personnel on the ground there, we have about 172 personnel who are there under chief-of-mission authority. As of 8:00 a.m., we had accounted for just about all of them. There were eight personnel who were wounded, four who had been seriously wounded. We have already had U.S. Coast Guard heels on the ground to be able to medevac them to get appropriate care. And so we are beginning to see that happen as well.
We have ordered the departure of approximately 80 Embassy spouses, children, and non-essential personnel. Those will begin happening later today so that we can ensure that the infrastructure and resources that are there can be properly concentrated on those who are in need. The Coast Guard will have planes actually arriving, I believe, this afternoon. And I’m sure General Fraser will be able to speak to that to help and assist in that evacuation process.
The Embassy structure has remained intact and so it has become a point of support. And it has been providing medical support and other support for Haitians and Americans and others who have been able to reach the Embassy.
We have reached out to the government of Haiti to be able to assess what their needs are and to be able to understand what their priorities are. We have launched a multiagency effort to provide disaster assistance, which is being led by Ambassador Shah through the Office of Disaster Assistance.
And so with that as a background, I’m going to turn it over to Ambassador Shah, who can speak to those efforts. ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Thank you. Thank you, Cheryl. Our first comment, of course, is that our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Haiti, who have, of course, suffered a tremendous tragedy with this earthquake that started last night just before sundown. We are working aggressively and in a highly coordinated way across the federal government to bring all of the assets and capacities we have to bear to quickly and effectively provide as much assistance as possible.
The goal of the relief effort in the first 72 hours will be very focused on saving lives. That is the President’s top priority and is what the President has directed us to do. We will do that by first putting in place significant Disaster Assistance Relief Teams. We’ll have, by the end of today, 15 members of that team doing surveillance, collecting data, identifying priority sites, and guiding the efforts of the larger search-and-response units that will following their entry into the country.
We have two urban search-and-rescue units on their way, both are units with 72 individuals, people who have significant training and significant equipment and technical capacity to conduct search and rescue in urban settings, to drill through and clear as much as is possible rubble in order to try and identify individuals that can be saved and continue with the mission of saving lives. We’re working aggressively across the various agencies of the federal government, including FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, to identify additional units that will be able to deploy as rapidly as possible. And we’re working hand-in-hand with the Department of Defense and General Fraser to make sure that we have the transport and logistics to get these assets into the country and efficiently operating as quickly as possible.
The other comment I wanted to make is that as part of this we are also, of course, thinking about critical needs in the area of health and food, water, transportation, and infrastructure, and other advanced planning that needs to take place now so that we can, because we know that we will have quite a lot of work to do in the days and weeks ahead. We are committed to a significant effort, and we are committed to doing everything we can in all of those sectors. And so our team, which includes members from every agency in the federal government that has the capacity to help, is working to develop plans and put resources in place so that we can effectively respond to some of the requests that have come from the Haitian leadership and from our teams on the ground.
Finally, I’ll point out that we do already have, of course, teams on the ground, including our Ambassador, our USAID mission and mission director, and other brave men and women who work for the U.S. Government in that capacity. And they’ve been providing guidance and support and data and information, and are very much a part of the effort despite having themselves gone through a very significant and challenging experience. So we want to thank them for that effort.
So we will be pushing forward with an aggressive and coordinated effort, focused very much on saving lives through aggressive search-and-rescue in urban – in the urban environment for the next 72 hours. And that’ll be the primary focus of our engagement.
I’ll hand it to General Fraser, who can talk about the logistics support that we are getting and that we need to continue to get and will continue to get from our armed forces in order to make sure that we’re using every capacity we have in the government to be effective. Thank you. GEN FRASER: Thank you, Raj. From the United States Southern Command and from the Department of Defense, our prayers and our condolences go out to the citizens of Haiti also. In coordination with USAID and with the entire U.S. Government, we have a significant effort undergoing to support this. From the time we found out about the earthquake, we started into motion.
There are still concerns about the airport and the access to the airport in Port-au-Prince. The word we are getting is that the airport is functional but the tower and the capability to operate there are limited, and so we’re pushing capability there now to be able to operate and secure that airport.
We’re also pushing command-and-control capability and communications. As you all know, communications has been very difficult in Haiti. And so we’re pushing that to not only support U.S. forces who are there, but because of a lot of the communications from MINUSTAH was in their headquarters, that has been lost, and so we’re looking to support the MINUSTAH effort as we go forward also.
We also have various ships within the region, U.S. Coast Guard ships, as well as some Department of Defense ships that are moving in that direction. They have limited humanitarian assistance supplies on them, but they have some vertical lift capability, some helicopters with them.
In addition, we’re moving the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson from Norfolk to the vicinity. It will take on a complement of helicopters as it proceeds, and we’re hoping to have that in the vicinity of Haiti tomorrow afternoon.
So we continue to robustly move capability and support into the area to provide that lifesaving assistance as well as do assessments of what the follow-on needs will be. And we’re already looking beyond the immediate needs to understand, as we get those assessments in, to provide the capability as quickly as we can to Haiti. So a significant effort across the board, onboard. So thank you very much. QUESTION: Yeah. General, can I ask, all of the – MR. CROWLEY: Why don’t you identify yourself for the – QUESTION: I’m Matt Lee with the Associated Press. I’m wondering, considering the situation there right now and the fact that the UN appears to be not completely functional, the – you know, a hundred people trapped and their command – their communications out, and the fact that this humanitarian response is – can’t really function unless there is – unless there is law and order there, I’m wondering if there’s been any thought given to sending troops to complement the UN forces who may or may not be able to secure the area. GEN FRASER: We’re really looking at that capacity. And as you heard, from my standpoint, the destruction is very focused, at least it appears right now, in Port-au-Prince. MINUSTAH has forces all around the island of Haiti. So we’re working with them right now to get an assessment.
As a matter of circumstance, my deputy commander happened to be in Haiti during the earthquake, so he’s working with MINUSTAH to coordinate those efforts. So that is a significant concern that we have with security, so we’re working with MINUSTAH and then doing the assessment to understand what kind of follow-on capability we’re going to need. QUESTION: So it is possible that American troops might be sent to – at least temporarily to help the UN and secure – GEN FRASER: We’re very seriously looking at that. We’re looking at the possibility of sending a large-deck amphibious ship that will have a Marine expeditionary unit embarked on that, and so that will be in support of MINUSTAH and the Embassy and USAID as we continue this effort. MS. MILLS: I would just – also just stress that the commander of MINUSTAH happened to be out of Haiti at the time, and so the Coast Guard is providing him with transportation back, so he will be able to also establish command-and-control. And so in that regard, we have a fortuity of events and – GEN FRASER: Right. He should get in early this afternoon. QUESTION: Elise Labott with CNN. Thank you for doing this. I have a couple, and maybe a few, if you can just take each one. MS. MILLS: You have a multi-part question. QUESTION: Multi-part. We’re famous for them.
Cheryl, in terms of the Americans, we understand that you’ve only heard from a couple dozen out of 40- to 45,000 Americans. Is that – do you think that’s a factor of the lack of communications and the ability to get around, or are you bracing yourselves for serious American casualties? And what’s being done about that?
Then on the – just if you could talk a little bit about the communications with the government to this point. It seems as if the government itself – because you have your own kind of U.S. communications that are working well – but the rest of the government doesn’t necessarily have communications. So how are you working with them not just on kind of talking, but given the state of Haiti even before the earthquake, they had a lack of capacity, a lack of infrastructure, you know, the government, while stable, certainly needed a lot of help to begin with.
So, I mean, how are you dealing with this delicate balance of dealing with the Haitian Government that was – needed help to begin with and now not trying to be seen as taking over, but seriously know that you can provide a lot of capability right now? MS. MILLS: Let me try to address both of your questions. In terms of U.S. casualties, we are a – we’ve activated our warden system there, which is in communication with our folks that are on the ground there and American citizens there. We have not yet had reports of major U.S. casualties. We are obviously going to continue to monitor the situation. We do have – we have relatively good communication in terms of being able to start doing some assessments of where folks are, and so that’s what we’re going to continue to do, and we’re going to continue to be hopeful that this – it works out for everybody on the ground there, Haitian or American.
With respect to government communications, Ambassador Joseph from Haiti has indicated a request for communication support, and that’s something that we are going to be providing. USAID and DOD are providing support that will actually arrive there today and be able to provide that kind of support, because I do believe that one of the challenges is being able to communicate among themselves as a government and to their people, and we’re going to do the very best that we can to provide that kind of support to them so they can do so. QUESTION: Administrator Shah, could you just pick up on the point of the kind of – even before the earthquake, the lack of development and infrastructure in the country puts Haiti – this seems to be a country that can afford it the least right now. So how do you, you know, not be seen as taking over, but know that certainly the government doesn’t have the resources to provide? ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Well, it’s without question that Haiti has had less capacity than we have here, of course, to administer these types of efforts and to run these types of emergency operations. We’re working in close coordination with the Haitian Government. We are – the principle of our assistance, whether humanitarian or development and its orientation, is around deep partnership with those whom we work with and serve. And so we are being responsive to their stated request for health and medical services, for example, by deploying specific assets to meet the needs that they have there and exploring a range of other things we can do by standing up emergency medical services and emergency medical facilities in Port-au-Prince.
We will continue to stay connected and communicate with them. That’s why we’re sending the communications package to allow the leadership there to have regular access to effective communications. And we made that a priority and put that on the first plane down. So we will continue to work with them to stand this up, but you’re right, it’s going to be a challenging operation for everyone involved. But we have the resources and the capacities to be effective, and so we’re going to work that way. QUESTION: Thank you. MR. CROWLEY: Michelle. QUESTION: Michelle Kelllerman with National Public Radio. You talk about saving lives is the priority, but I wonder if you have any sense of where these teams of – rescue teams are going to head first. I mean, do they go first to the UN Headquarters or their hospitals? Talk about – a little bit about the priorities. ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Sure, and I may ask my colleagues to help address that. That’s why we send the Disaster Assistance Response Team in to do the assessment. We’re also getting information, of course, from our partner countries around the world from the UN system, and of course, some of the challenging situations they are facing right now, and from our various partners in Haiti. But we will have a team on the ground that can actually survey firsthand. We have overflight data right now that’s getting better by the moment that’s allowing us to get a sense of where the destruction is and what the priorities ought to be. And our goals will be to save as many lives as possible in the first 72 hours, because that is the window in which that is a possible outcome. So we’ll stay very focused on that while meeting the obvious priorities of supporting our American personnel there and the personnel of our partners. MS. MILLS: Can I just – I’ll only add one thing. The UN is also sending in a disaster team that is going to help coordinate all the different efforts that are coming in from multiple countries, and so we anticipate being in close partnership with them as they go about making those assessments as well and providing whatever support that we can. MR. CROWLEY: Charles. QUESTION: Charlie Wolfson with CBS. First of all, General Fraser, can you tell us how many Marines are on that ship, the Vinson? I believe it is called the Vinson. GEN FRASER: Well, on the first ship going down there, there are no Marines down there. On the aircraft carrier that’s going in, it’s really going to be to provide the support lift. That ship just happened to be out of port. It was training and it has a limited capacity onboard, and so that’s why as it goes south we’re going to put a complement of helicopters on it. So we’re providing and provisioning the carrier as it steams south, so there is not a complement of Marines on there right now.
The ship that I was talking about where there may be is a large-deck amphibious ship. That’s another day or two away, and so it will have a standard Marine expeditionary unit. Don’t tie me to the precise numbers – roughly, 2,000 Marines potentially on there. But we’re still determining that right now. MR. CROWLEY: Margaret. QUESTION: Margaret Warner, the PBS NewsHour. General Fraser, under what circumstances would you feel it is necessary to deploy the Marines there? In other words, is it a question of keeping civil order, or is it just facilitating the disbursement of supplies? And what is the situation on the ground in terms of the degree of order or disorder? GEN FRASER: From what I’ve been told by General Keen, who is my deputy commander who is on the ground, is the situation is calm right now. And so we’re anticipating going in being able to provide that humanitarian assistance, that lifesaving effort, and that’s going to be the focus primarily getting out there. So it’s going to be our assessments that are going to determine, in conjunction with MINUSTAH and the other international partners who are there, how best to deal with any security situations that come up. QUESTION: So are you saying the Marines are being sent there as – for a security situation or simply that they may be actually needed to help facilitate the delivery of aid? GEN FRASER: What I’m saying is we don’t know precisely what the situation is on the ground, so we’re leaning forward to provide as much capability as quickly as we can to respond to whatever the need is when we get there. ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Could I also address that? This is about having options. And the President has asked us to make sure we look across the entire government, all of our capabilities, and make sure we generate as many options as possible. We’re doing that on the health side, where we’re standing up two or three different types of emergency medical service provision strategies. And as we get real information on the ground about what is the best way to pursue the President’s goal of saving lives in this critical timeframe, we’ll be able to narrow those options and make strategic decisions. But we are in the process of trying to generate as many potential options and put as many assets as we have into where they could potentially be used quickly and efficiently to achieve that goal. QUESTION: Yes, for General Fraser. This is Luis Martinez with ABC News. You mentioned the Marines, but the Army also has the Global Response Force with the 82nd Airborne and the brigade out there. Have you given any consideration to them possibly assisting in this effort? GEN FRASER: We have given consideration to that, so we have put various forces around the Armed Forces on alert so that as we get the assessments in we are postured to move those forces in an expeditious manner. So we have put a brigade on alert just in the circumstance. So we’ll determine that as we get the assessments. QUESTION: In the flow of air resources flying in, do you anticipate tomorrow C-17s coming on a regular pattern or – GEN FRASER: I think it’s going to be an international effort that we go – we’re working with USAID. We’re trying to understand what the other partners are doing there. I think it’s also important to understand that there’s really one airfield, one runway, limited ramp space. The terminal is not functional right now, or we’re not certain what the status of it is, so it’s a difficult environment that we’re going into. So we’re trying to understand that. We think that we’re going to – we’re working our team in there to make sure that we can operate that airfield as efficiently as we can to keep the flights moving in and out of it. We’re also taking an assessment of the port, because in likelihood, the port of Port-au-Prince will be more important in being able to move a volume of goods through. We don’t know what the status of that is, so we’re looking at all of the options to try and make sure that we have as much flexibility as possible. QUESTION: Mike Emanuel from Fox News. I know it’s early on the disaster, but I’m wondering if there’s a relevant disaster that this seems to compare to from experience so the American public maybe can get their minds around exactly what’s going on there. ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Well, rather than comparing this to a previous disaster, I would just say that this does present unique challenges because so many of our partners and many of our own people are in a position where we’re still accounting for their safety and their security. And certainly, that’s the case, as was mentioned, with the UN team out there.
So of course, these are people who have gone through a lot in the last day and now are also called upon to help protect and serve others. And it will be challenging, they will need all of our support, and that’s why when the President asked us to be swift and aggressive and coordinated in doing this, we’re bringing together the entire federal government to make sure we have as many options as we possibly can to provide that support as quickly as possible. QUESTION: Thank you. MR. CROWLEY: Ken. QUESTION: Ken Dulaney and USA Today. Administrator Shah, you mentioned you were looking to deploy more urban search-and-rescue teams. Does the federal government have that capability or are other countries pledging to move those in? Or where are you looking for those teams? ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Well, both, and in particular through our partnership with FEMA, we can expand our capacities and make sure that in addition to the teams that the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance has ready to go, we can explore using other teams and getting them ready and getting them in place quickly. So that’s what we’re doing to try to expand the search and rescue immediately. QUESTION: But – so why was it just the two initially? Is that all that were ready to deploy sort of at a moment’s notice? ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Well, two teams of 72 people each with significant equipment, training with all of their visas and international training and status ready to go is a significant capability. In addition to that, and really in parallel, it was not something where we waited before we deployed. We built – we have a partnership with FEMA and are trying – and are deploying a third team. And we will look to get other teams onboard as well. Part of the challenge will be getting information from the ground, which we will start to do in a matter of hours, understanding the priorities, and letting that guide the capabilities we have so that we can affect this work in a really coordinated way. QUESTION: Where’s the third team coming from? ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: The third team is currently based in Miami. MR. CROWLEY: Goyal. QUESTION: Raghubir Goyal, India Globe & Asia Today. Administrator Shah, if you go back 2001, January 26th, in your state where you come from, the state of Gujarat in India, thousands of people died and millions were homeless. And what – the people of Gujarat were not ready just like the people of Haiti this time – what can you learn from that? And what you have for the people of Haiti this time? ADMIINSTRATOR SHAH: Well, that’s a broader question. We’re going to stay very focused in the short term on the search and rescue and saving lives in the first 72 hours. The question does touch on when the rebuilding commences, and it will commence, thinking in a smart and strategic way about building the right types of structures and building the right types of institutions that can be more resilient in the future.
And of course, our agencies and many of the other agencies that we are working with around the federal government have had a wealth of experience working in disaster environments, and there are ways to be prepared. But right now, our focus is entirely on the search-and-rescue effort, and the effort to save lives in the first 72 hours. QUESTION: I mean, what sort of international help you are seeking from other countries, like let’s say, including India? Because maybe in this case, doctors and medical help and all that sort of – ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Well, there are a wide range of countries that have offered to provide support, and those are coming in by the moment. So we are working through that and trying to have a coordinated approach on the ground to make sure we execute that in a way that’s most effective. For example, I believe the Dominican Republic is offering helicopter transport support and a few other capacities. Those are important partnerships that we hope to have with a range of international partners. QUESTION: Are you specifically coordinating the international assistance, or is this done through the Haitians with your assistance, or how does that work? ADMINISTRATOR SHAH: Well, we’re working with the Haitian Government. We’re working with the U.S. Government in a broad way, the Department of State and others. Right now, we have an Embassy that is standing and with some communications, so we will do everything we possibly can with the capabilities we have to make sure that we’re serving the Haitian people and that we’re serving American citizens in that environment and trying to save lives. And if that means being more active and aggressive and fast about trying to secure commitments and support from other countries and trying to coordinate that effort, we’re prepared to do that. MR. CROWLEY: One or two more. QUESTION: He already responded to the question that was about international coordination, so we are – MR. CROWLEY: Very good. Thank you very much. QUESTION: Thank you. GEN FRASER: Thank you.
A previous post expressed dismay at Senator Richard Shelby’s continuation of the “hold” on Deputy Secretary of the Air Force nominee, Erin Conaton. Matthew Yglesias notes a similar concern about Conaton and the three other “holdees”:
From the 
On Thursday, December 6, 1956. And before Dr. King had pointed us to the mountaintop, before he told us about his dream in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King came here, as a 27-year-old preacher, to speak on what he called “The Challenge of a New Age.” “The Challenge of a New Age.” It was a period of triumph, but also uncertainty, for Dr. King and his followers — because just weeks earlier, the Supreme Court had ordered the desegregation of Montgomery’s buses, a hard-wrought, hard-fought victory that would put an end to the 381-day historic boycott down in Montgomery, Alabama.
