The United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Iraq Ad Melkert gave a lecture at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace today assessing the conditions in Iraq ahead of its March elections, and what that can mean for its future.
Melkert, who was very optimistic for a successful Iraqi election, said that it is important that development in Iraq is known and to understand what the role of international community should be. He outlined three major points for his lecture: first, that it is necessary to acknowledge the need for ongoing engagement in Iraq; second, that this engagement should be respectful and with Iraqis “in the lead;” and third, that it is time to draw a line and understand the divisions that have marked so much of the debate on Iraq.
Click here for POMED’s notes in PDF. Otherwise, continue below the fold.
POMED and the Heinrich Boll Foundation hosted a panel discussion to discuss the role of U.S. military assistance in America’s attempt to maintain strategic interests without undermining democracy promotion and human rights. The event was the third in a series examining U.S. credibility on human rights and featured both Steven Cook, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Arab and Turkish politics as well as U.S.-Middle East policy, and Emile Hokayem, a non-resident Research Fellow with the Henry L. Stimson Center’s Southwest Asia/Gulf program and Politics Editor of the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper The National. The event was moderated by Sebastian Graefe, Program Director for Foreign and Security Policy and Transatlantic Issues at the Heinrich Boll Foundation. Grafe opened by clarifying the focus of the event by asking several pointed questions: does military assistance undermine U.S. credibility? Are existing mechanisms sufficient to monitor human rights abuses? Are the provisions that govern assistance in need of updating?
The U.S. Institute of Peace hosted Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) to offer his views on how the U.S. should approach Iran on the issues of human rights and democracy. Kirk is a member of the House Appropriations Committee and serves on its Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, which is responsible for determining annual U.S. foreign assistance funding. Serving his fifth term in the House of Representatives, Kirk is the co-chair of the bipartisan Iran Working Group, sponsor of bipartisan legislation condemning Iran’s human rights violations and chief architect of the plan to restrict gasoline to Iran in response to its violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions. The meeting was opened with an introduction from Richard Solomon, President of USIP.
The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission held a meeting to discuss recent movements in the international community to create resolutions against the defamation of religion. The event hosted Joseph Cassidy, Director of the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the Bureau of Democracy; Leonard Leo, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom; Angela Wu, international director of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty; Tad Stahnke, director of Policy and Programs at Human Rights First; Zainab al-Suwaij, cofounder and president of the American Islamic Congress; and Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights of the American Jewish Committee. Panelists focused on the recent U.S.-Egyptian draft resolution protecting the freedom of speech as well as other anti-religious defamation efforts in the international community.
For POMED’s full notes of the event, please click here.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee received testimony from Ambassador Jeffrey D. Feltman, Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. The committee questioned Feltman about U.S. policy and diplomatic efforts regarding Iran, Israel and Palestine, Lebanese government develop, Syrian relations, and other issues confronting American interests in the Middle East.
For POMED’s full notes of the event, please click here.
The United States Institute of Peace hosted a roundtable event examining the recent Afghan elections and their future implications. The expert panel included Noah Coburn, a traditional justice specialist for USIP and presidential fellow, who spent 18 months researching local political structures north of Kabul; John Dempsey is the former USAID advisor to the Afghanistan Ministry of Justice and is currently a USIP head of office in Afghanistan and a rule of law advisor that has contributed to the new Rule of Law Strategy in Afghanistan. Palwasha Hassan serves as the Country Director for the NGO Rights and Democracy in Afghanistan, she has worked for than fifteen years in women’s development in the country and is currently a Jennings Randolph Fellow at USIP. The event was moderated by J. Alexander Their, director for Afghanistan and Pakistan at USIP, he has served as a rule of law advisor, was a member of the Afghanistan Study Group and has co-authored the book The Future of Afghanistan (USIP, 2009).
On Tuesday morning, the Center for American Progress held a public panel discussion examining the recent Afghan presidential and provincial council elections. The panel speakers were Eric Bjornlund of Democracy International, Jackie Northam of National Public Radio and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress. Caroline Wadhams of the Center for American Progress moderated.
The panelists discussed the prospects for legitimacy of the Afghan elections and how such a determination will affect U.S. policy in the country. For POMED’s detailed notes of the event, please click here.
POMED and the Heinrich Boell Foundation North America co-hosted a panel discussion yesterday, which focused on the ways in which multilateral frameworks work to promote or to inhibit human rights reforms in the Middle East. The three panelists were Moataz El-Fegiery, executive director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Marc Schade-Poulsen, executive director of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network, and Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division. POMED’s Executive Director Andrew Albertson moderated.
The panelists discussed, among other topics, the techniques authoritarian regimes employ to undermine the effectiveness of multilateral organizations. For a detailed summary of the discussion, click here.
The Middle East Institute hosted a lively discussion with Ambassador Deborah Jones, the current American ambassador in Kuwait.As a major strategic partner to the United States, as well as a thriving indigenous democracy, Kuwait “punches above its weight,” she claimed.
The Heritage Foundation held an event analyzing last week’s Afghan presidential and provincial council elections and the challenges facing both Afghanistan and the United States moving forward. Speaking at the event were Lt. Gen. (Ret.) David Barno of the National Defense University, Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute, analyst David Isby, and Heritage’s own Lisa Curtis. Senior Research Fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs James Phillips moderated.
To read POMED’s account of the discussion, click here.
Yesterday, the Brookings Institution hosted the first public discussion in Washington since the Afghan elections with Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Michael O’Hanlon, Director of Research at Brookings Foreign Policy program, Kimberly Kagan, from the Institute for the Study of War and Anthony Cordesman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, moderated by Brookings’ Martin Indyk.
Yesterday the Middle East Institute hosted an event with Dr. Shamsh Kassin-Lakha, a veteran government and education policymaker and former President of the Aga Khan University, to discuss the growing participation of philanthropy, government and civil society in Pakistani development initiatives.
One week before Afghanistan’s elections, the Center for American Progress hosted a discussion with the Afghanistan-Pakistan Interagency Team led by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke unveiled his team’s Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy. Moderator John Podesta, Center of American Progress president, praised the multidisciplinary nature of Ambassador Holbrooke’s team that optimizes delivery of security and development assistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The discussion included Holbrooke’s Senior Advisors Vali Nasr, Rina Amiri, Jane Marriott and Barnett R. Rubin, Senior Treasury Advisor Rami Shy, USAID Senior Development Advisor Beth Dunford, USDA Senior Agricultural Advisor Otto J. Gonzalez, Special Advisor Ashley Bommer, and DOD Senior Defense Advisor Vikram Singh.
Yesterday, Henri Barkey, Qubad Talabani and Joost Hiltermann, participated in a discussion focused on the outcomes of July’s Kurdish elections in Iraq at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The United States Institute of Peace hosted Sheikh Dr. Khalid al-Atiya, First Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi parliament. Al-Atiya made the case that many of the power-sharing structures in the Iraqi government are crippling legislation and governance. Rend al-Rahim and Daniel Serwer of USIP introduced al-Atiya and moderated the discussion, respectively.
Yesterday, the United Nations Development Program hosted a half day event with panels and a round table discussion to present its Arab Human Development Report, which was released in Beirut last week. POMED’s notes cover two discussions at yesterday’s event: Marina Ottaway and Baghat Korany participated on the Arab State and Human Security Panel moderated by UNDP’s Washington Senior Advisor David Yang. A roundtable focusing on obstacles to Arab human development was moderated by Riz Khan and included Ambassador Wendy Chamberlin, Thomas Friedman, Robin Wright, and again Baghat Korany.
Yesterday afternoon, POMED and the Heinrich Böll Foundation released a new publication, The Federal Budget and Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2010: Democracy, Governance, and Human Rights in the Middle East, written by POMED’s Director of Advocacy Stephen McInerney. McInerney presented the report’s findings, launching a discussion with Thomas Melia of Freedom House and Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Andrew Albertson, Executive Director of POMED, moderated.
McInerney highlighted the report’s key conclusions, that the Obama administration’s first annual budget requests significant increases for overall foreign assistance to the Broader Middle East and North Africa, including large increases for democracy and governance assistance. These increases are especially focused in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, but the remaining countries and programs in the region also receive increased democracy and goverance funding, with the notable exceptions of Egypt and Jordan.
Tom Melia warned against drawing conclusions too broadly based on budget numbers alone, and he asked whether this budget can truly be seen to represent the approach of the new administration, which has yet to fill many key positions, including the administrator of USAID. Marina Ottaway questioned the effectiveness of spending large sums of money on democracy and goverance programs in the region if they are unaccompanied by diplomatic pressure and other policy support.
In a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing chaired by Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA), the House held its first committee discussion on the recent political crisis in Iran since its June 12 elections.Testifying before the committee were: Patrick Clawson, Washington Institute for Near East Policy; Suzanne Maloney, Brookings Institution; Abbas Milani, Iran Democracy Project and Stanford University; Karim Sadjadpour, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Michael Rubin, American Enterprise Institute; and Orde F. Kittrie, Iran Energy Project, Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) hosted a Capitol Hill briefing focused on humanitarian law and the humanitarian situation in Gaza. The session was moderated by ADC’s Yousef Munayyer and featured Joe Stork from Human Rights Watch and Zahir Janmohamed from Amnesty International.
