SECRETARY CLINTON:
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this event about Feed the Future
and the work we are doing together. I am delighted to be here with
someone whom I admire so much and am very enthusiastic about, and that
is President Joyce Banda from Malawi. Thank you so much, my friend.
(Applause.)
And I want to thank Nick Kristof, who will moderate the discussion
this morning, but I’m not thanking him for that. I want to thank him for
covering all of those incredibly important issues, whether it’s Feed
the Future and increasing agricultural productivity – but as a former
farm boy, he understands and appreciates that – or emphasizing human
trafficking, as he did again in reporting on the President’s historic
speech at the Clinton Global Initiative. Nick had a column about Feed
the Future, and I can’t remember the exact title, but it was something
like, “the most boring program you’ve never heard of that’s making a
difference.” (Laughter.) So Nick, thank you for staying the course with
us and being – swimming against the tide. There are headlines and there
are trend lines, and sometimes we confuse the two, and oftentimes we
neglect the trend lines for the headlines. And Nick hasn’t done that,
and we’re very grateful to you.
I also want to thank our partners from Burkina Faso who are here,
including the Foreign Minister. Thank you, sir, for being here. I also
want to thank the Minister of External Affairs from Sri Lanka. Thank you
for being with us. And the Minister of Agriculture and Water Resources
from Burkina Faso.
I want to acknowledge Dr. Raj Shah, the USAID Administrator, who has
been hands-on and pushing forward on so many of the changes that we are
bringing about. I want to thank my Chief of Staff and Counselor Cheryl
Mills, who’s been one of the driving forces behind what the United
States has done. And I want to thank the Director General of the Food
and Agriculture Organization, who is also here. Thank you.
Now, you will get to hear more from a lot of these people. And a
person that you just heard that you may not have known you were
listening to, who narrated the video, Matt Damon. And I want thank Matt
for once again lending his talent to helping us highlight this important
issue.
Now, this is the fourth time that we have gathered on
the margins of the UN General Assembly to focus the world’s attention on
food security. In 2009, we reaffirmed the principles reflected in the
L’Aquila Food Security Initiative, the international community’s $22
billion pledge to support agricultural development worldwide, including
the President Obama’s pledge of $3.5 billion through what we were
beginning to call our Feed the Future Initiative for global hunger and
food security.
In 2010, I launched the 1,000 Days partnership with
Ireland, the United Nations, and other international partners to improve
nutrition from pregnancy through a child’s second birthday, which is
critical for lifelong health and development.
And then last year, we focused on supporting women in
agriculture, because women often do the work at every link of the
agricultural chain: They grow the food, they store it, they sell it, and
prepare it. So we must ensure that women get the support they need if
we are serious about improving food security.
As a result of all the work of so many people over the
last four years, food security is now at the top of our national and
foreign policy agendas, as well as that of so many other nations in the
world, because we understand it is a humanitarian and moral imperative,
but it also directly relates to global security and stability. I’ve seen
in my travels how increased investments in agriculture and nutrition
are paying off in rising prosperity, healthier children, better markets,
and stronger communities.
So we meet here today knowing that progress is possible, is taking
place. But I want to say a few words about our civil society partners,
because along with the private sector, which already is giving
unprecedented support to agricultural development in Africa, and now
through our New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, are really
increasing their investment and their collaboration.
But civil society organizations are crucial to our success in both
the public and the private sector. They have longstanding relationships
in communities and valuable technical expertise, and they work every
single day on their commitment to try to make the world a better place
for all of us.
So today, I am pleased to announce a new commitment by civil society
groups: InterAction, an alliance of 198 U.S.-based organizations – and
Sam Worthington, its president, is here today – is pledging more than $1
billion of private, nongovernmental funds over the next three years to
improve food security and nutrition worldwide. (Applause.)
Of this $1 billion, five U.S.-based organizations together have
pledged to invest more than $900 million in this effort. They are World
Vision, Heifer International, Catholic Relief Services, Save the
Children, and ChildFund International. Let’s give all five of these
great organizations a round of applause. (Applause.)
And just as these organizations hold governments accountable, they
have agreed to be held accountable themselves. Starting in 2013,
InterAction will make annual reports here at the UN General Assembly on
its commitments and disbursements worldwide. And I am so grateful to
InterAction and its members for their outstanding support and
generosity.
Let’s keep in mind the principles that guide us. This week at the UN
General Assembly, developing and developed countries together are
emphasizing what we know to be true: Country ownership is critical to
successful development. When developing countries themselves are in the
lead, when programs are designed for their specific strengths and needs,
when we work together to build capacity at the local level that can
carry progress forward independently, and when new resources are brought
to the table in a transparent, collaborative manner, that is the best
strategy for achieving concrete, sustainable results. These commitments
by civil society reflect this approach, and we all need to rededicate
ourselves to it, not only in global food security, but more broadly as
we work to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and look beyond
those deadlines to our long-term development work. I think we are on the
right track, so we just have to keep pushing forward.
Now this will be my last time chairing this meeting. A year from now I
will be a private citizen again. But I want to take this opportunity to
say to all of you how personally gratifying this work has been for me,
as Secretary of State and as an old NGO activist myself, going back more
years than I care to remember. I so believe in it and I am so grateful
to all of you who have devoted your time and energy and resources to
this shared mission.
Now let me recognize and introduce someone who I have a great
admiration for and someone who’s been an inspirational leader to all
those who work on food security worldwide. She started her own civil
society organizations in Malawi, and I was so pleased to be able to
visit her a short time ago and see the progress she’s making, hear more
about her plans, go out and visit some women in a dairy cooperative,
deliver a big bull to them, which had all kinds of double meanings –
(laughter) – but nevertheless, it seemed to be the right thing to do.
And I am delighted that we’re going to have a conversation with Nick,
and so Nick Kristof, please kick it off.
MR. KRISTOF: Thanks very much. And let me just say that
there’s also, I think, a larger significance to this than just the
content of the discussion. It really is, it seems to me, kind of
remarkable that during the busiest diplomatic week of the annual
calendar that we should be having this conversation not about those
issues in the headlines, as you said, but about the trend lines, about
some of the – about how to address the needs in some of the world’s most
vulnerable people. And thanks to both of you for hosting this event in
that sense.
President Banda, let me ask you a question for starters: We’re
focusing today in part on power of civil society. You very much emerged
from the civil society; that was where your career came from. And since
you became President, I’ve heard little scattered bits and pieces about
your career origins and I think it had something to do at some point
with going to a USAID office. In journalism we have an expression that
some stories are too good check – (laughter) – and so I’m a little
nervous to ask you. Maybe it will be more banal than that. But can you
tell us a little bit about how you did come to emerge as a civil society
player before you became President?
PRESIDENT BANDA: Thank you very much distinguished ladies and
gentlemen. It’s a pleasure to share this podium with a very good old
friend and a friend of Africa. I start my story from being married
early, spending ten years in an abusive marriage, and then later on
going shopping again and finding a better husband. (Laughter.)
It was very clear in my mind at that point that I think what had gone
wrong is that I was not prepared for marriage and I was not
economically empowered. So having corrected that bit of my own life,
with great risk – it almost killed my mom – I began to look back and
wondered what was happening to most of those women who are locked up in
abusive situations but didn’t have the courage to walk out. Because
socially, as an African woman, you need to – you want to remain married,
because that’s the right thing to do. You don’t walk away from an
abusive relationship. It doesn’t make sense. So you stick there, but I
walked out.
What was happening to the rest of the women who wished to walk out
but couldn’t? As I was being bothered by these thoughts, at that point I
was economically empowered myself, running one of the largest
industrial garment manufacturing industries owned by a woman in that
country, employing hundreds of people. I started to worry about my
fellow women. And that’s when USAID came on the scene.
So I remember attending an event organized by UNDP looking at why
Malawi’s private sector wasn’t growing and why wasn’t it being regarded
as the engine for growth. And I remember standing up at a meeting – at
that meeting, I was one of only two women – and saying, “Well, as long
as women are sidelined, there’s no way this country is going to move
from where it is. Women have to get to the table.” And it was during the
dictatorship, so you – freedom of speech didn’t exist at that time, so I
remember at break time, a tall American guy walked over to me and said,
“Are you not worried about making such statements in public? Don’t you
know what can happen to you?” Because those day you went to jail for
nothing.
And I said, “Well, it doesn’t matter. Somebody has to say it.
Somebody has to do it.” And they pulled out their card and told me that
if in the future you ever want support, here is my card. I looked at the
card. It said USAID project, RED Project, Rural Enterprise Development.
And three women who were in business were looking for ways of coming to
the U.S. for a study tour. And USAID supported me, sponsored the three
of us. And we got here and were hosted by African-American Institute.
It was during that trip, while I was still worried about what is it
that I can do back home, and was provided with an opportunity by USAID
to interact with women’s groups in this country that it became very
clear in my mind that I needed to get back home and organize a group of
women and act as a pressure group to press for equal opportunities for
women in business. At that moment, I thought I was just forming a club.
It was going to be 100 women here and there.
So I went back home. But so many things happened, and I would spend
the whole day explaining, but when I – I remember going back home and
phoning Carol Peasley, who was the country director of USAID, and said,
“Well, you started it. You sponsored me to go the U.S. and I’m back. Now
I want to organize women and how can you support me?” And she said,
“Well, what is the matter with women? What’s going on?” And then three
sentences into my presentation, she folded her pad and put her pen away,
and I knew that I had succeeded in making a total fool of myself.
(Laughter.)
And so I had to start all over again. So I went back to her and I
realized that I didn’t have my figures right, I didn’t done the proper
checking, no data had been collected, needs assessment (inaudible). So
that whole process I went back to Carol and that is what USAID did for
us. I formed the National Association of Businesswomen, and of course
there was some times that I was confronted with near arrest, and I
remember once or twice running back to USAID to hide in the USAID
quarters.
So last time when I came, I said, “Well, I’m a product of USAID,” and
somebody said, “How come?” But there’s so much that we can talk about,
and I thought that I’d start by expressing that gratitude, that all
along the way, the first office that we opened in Malawi, the first
group of women that were mobilized, the first cars that we had,
institutional development grant, everything was provided by USAID.
MR. KRISTOF: Wow. Raj, you’ve got to find that person and give her a raise. (Applause.)
Secretary Clinton, now the traditional approach of foreign assistance
largely involved writing big checks from a distance. And now we’re
evolving to something that’s much more based on public-private
partnerships, on working with civil society, on bringing a larger
community together. Why that change?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I think we just heard a description
of why that change. Empowering local people by giving them the tools to
start their own organizations, find their own voices, run their own
programs – which is what the President has done – is a much more
effective, sustainable kind of development assistance. Moving from aid
to trade so that we really help people develop businesses, which then in
turn can employ local people and open markets, is a much more effective
form of development assistance. Putting the country and the community
in charge of setting the priorities, so it’s not our priorities sitting
in Washington or New York or anywhere else, other than on-the-ground, in
the places that are going to make the decisions, whether or not what is
being provided has staying power.
And I think, Nick, that it – the United States has been, both through
our government and particularly through philanthropy, NGOs, our faith
communities, has been extraordinarily generous, and has helped so many
people over so many years with immediate humanitarian crises that had to
be addressed in the here and now. But over the last several years, and
as someone who’s been doing this for a very long time, it became clearer
and clearer that what we really wanted to do was work ourselves out of
the business of development, but for those crises that overwhelmed any
country – the earthquake in Haiti – something that was just impossible
for any country to respond to.
And so we have consciously, in this Administration and certainly
working in collaboration with AID and with the private and
not-for-profit sectors, we’ve been very focused on that. I went to
Busan, South Korea and made a speech about how we had to put country
ownership in the lead. It was and remains controversial in some areas,
because it really calls upon those of us who are writing the checks and
doling out the support to be a little more humble and a little more
receptive to hearing, not just talking, about what we’re trying to
accomplish together.
So Feed the Future, of course, is backed with enormous amounts of
investment from governments, private sectors, and not-for-profit, and
then with this excellent announcement today about interaction in our
five organizations. We are still very much in the lead in providing
funding. But everything we’re trying to do now is to build capacity.
So the final thing I would say is one of the great programs the
United States ran was PEPFAR, something that has made such a difference
in providing AIDS drugs and treatment. But we realized in this
Administration we had to also help build health systems, because if all
we were was a drug dispensary, then when the drugs stopped, maybe the
countries would not be able to continue providing what their patient
populations needed. So we’re working with countries like South Africa
others to help them make the transition, and we’re going to do more to
help them have systematic foundational support.
So I think it’s something that’s very exciting in development,
especially for some of us who have been doing this for a while to see
leaders like the President step forward and say, “Look, I was in civil
society. I’m now in government. I think we know what our priorities
should be, so align what you’re giving us with what our priorities are
for the long term.”
MR. KRISTOF: But Secretary Clinton, I’m sure there’s NGOs out
there and they’re thinking about their field offices, where the
photocopier doesn’t work and the car is leaking oil. And they’re
thinking you represent this incredible government with these astounding
resources that seems to do anything, and what extra benefit do those
NGOs or does civil society bring you? Why – in a sense, why do you need
them, given their photocopiers don’t work and their cars don’t work and
everything else?
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, because we believe in collaboration.
And the kind of partnership that we want with governments and NGOs and
others is indispensible to our overall goals. There are civil society
groups and organizations, some of them just very small on the ground
without the photocopier working, and then there are multimillion dollar
enterprises with very new cars and lots of photocopiers. And at all
levels, what we’re looking for is what’s the value added.
And as Joyce was just talking about, an AID representative in Malawi
could be providing all kinds of ideas for her as she began searching for
a way to organize. And then maybe there’s an NGO, an American or
international NGO, that has done this work. And so they’re down the road
and they can provide some additional value. But if all of us have the
mindset shift that we are now going to be guided by what the Joyce
Bandas of the world want, not the Hillary Clintons or the Raj Shahs, we
then will facilitate, catalyze, leverage, support people like Joyce and
governments like hers in achieving the progress that they’re seeking.
So there’s a – this is a big playing field. There’s room for so many
different individuals and groups. But what we’re trying to do is knit
together an overall shift in attitude among the aid givers to be very
respectful of those who are on the receiving end so that they are
feeling empowered to build on the progress that is being made.
PRESIDENT BANDA: In addition, I would like to add to what
Secretary Clinton just said, that at the point when I started the
National Association of Businesswomen, USAID had established in Malawi
what they called the shared project. And through the shared project, the
civil society could go and seek support, financial support,
institutional capacity support, program support, and I think we went
from maybe 10 NGOs to 400 NGOs because of that opportunity. The National
Association of Businesswomen in a period of seven months – I mean,
seven years reached out 50,000 women. Now all the organizations that I
have founded, it is now a total of 1.1 million beneficiaries. Now, when
you look back, if it hadn’t been for the intervention or the support
provided by USAID in the first place some of us would not have done as
much as we have been able to do.
MR. KRISTOF: And President Banda, I think one of the lessons
learned from the past 50 years, one of the mistakes that we in the West
have made, is that we often have a bunch of really smart Americans
sitting around a conference room and come up with great ideas but
haven’t listened enough to civil society like that. And I think there’s
often a frustration from those groups about that fact. So you have the
microphone. What do we Americans need to learn from African civil
society? What message do we need to get better?
PRESIDENT BANDA: Listen.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Listen.
PRESIDENT BANDA: Listen. (Laughter and applause.) I’ve always
said that we know exactly what we want to do. We know how to move from
Point A to Point B. I knew from a very young age, as I’ve said, what I
needed to do to empower fellow women. What we’re looking for is
partnership and that is what we are finding. Just this week we signed a
MOU with the Clinton Development Initiative. Why? Because I’m satisfied
it’s going to be a partnership. The organizations that come into Africa
and recognize that there’s leadership in Africa, and respect us and know
that we want to achieve what we’re going to achieve with dignity, so
they don’t come and impose themselves upon us.
It really does break my heart when large NGOs, civil society
organizations, come to Africa, believe that they can do it alone. Then
they waste so much money. Twenty years later, they leave and they say
you know, Africans – we’ve been trying, they can’t be assisted. But it’s
because they did it wrong; they didn’t listen to us. There are so many
Joyce Bandas where I come from.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Nick, could I just add on to what Joyce has
said? Because this is really the heart of what we’ve tried to do over
the last four years, and it comes from our own recognition that we’ve
done a lot of very good things, but I think the impact and the lasting
sustainability of a lot of what we’ve done could certainly have been
enhanced if what we were doing had been embedded more in civil society,
more in government ministries. And yes, that’s a risk. Not doing it is a
risk. And I’d rather take the risk on that side.
I remember being in a refugee camp, and I was wandering around as you
do when you make these visits, and was talking to some of the people.
And some of the women were telling me that they were still afraid to go
out and collect firewood. Some of their babies had diarrhea. And this
was in a camp run by a very good consortium of international NGOs and
government-funded development agencies. And one woman said to me, “Who
can I get to listen to me about what we need?” And it’s just – when
you’re focused on what you think of as the emergency, you get really
busy, and it’s easy to shut your ears because you just don’t have time
to stop and listen. And yet what I was being told in a short visit,
because people were coming to me almost out of desperation, was
something that wasn’t new, but it just hadn’t been heard.
So – and I think that’s a really important point of Joyce’s. Those of
us who are – who do this work, in whatever capacity, you’ve got – you
always have to be asking yourself, “Is this really serving the way that I
wish to serve to help people or not?” And listen, listen, listen. If
nothing else is taken away from this morning, I think President Banda’s
admonition is really important.
MR. KRISTOF: Well, we’re going to adhere to that admonition,
okay, because in a moment we’re going to have another panel precisely
listening to civil society. But we’re out of time for this panel, so
please join me in thanking President Banda and Secretary Clinton for
their participation and for hosting this event. (Applause.)
![Secretary Clinton With Young Women at the Labor Roundtable U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks with participants of the Lower Mekong Initiative Women's event in Siem Reap, Cambodia, on July 13, 2012. [State Department photo by Paul Watzlavick/ Public Domain]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vcRcJu_rPUheflIxl1JjXyN99tXqbQDVhXAplss_X4kdLTWQ7at9u-5p9hnZriWmb-3CiuPemXf5QqCHemGyjN2prus48qShAB7co6obEU_NfpyrX17p_qtpso6ZDl2G7tXv8NuIjkPwYGK8dDuUPIVfR2jIU=s0-d)
When
I became Secretary of State, I asked our diplomats and development
experts: “How can we do better?” I could see our strengths, including
tens of thousands of public servants who get up every day thinking about
how to advance America’s interests and promote our values around the
world. At the same time, I could also see areas where we could be
stronger partners, and where we could do more to get the most out of
every hour of effort and dollar of funding. I saw it in our diplomacy,
in our development efforts—and in our global health work.
We
started by defining a set of seven principles for our work under the
Global Health Initiative. Among them, we emphasized country
ownership—the end state where a nation’s efforts are led, implemented,
and eventually paid for by its government, communities, civil society
and private sector. We elevated the role of women across all our
programs, because the evidence shows that healthy women lead to healthy
families and societies. And we emphasized strengthening health systems
to build sustainability and to ensure that programs were working more
efficiently together.
