Congresswoman Jacobs Presides Over House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee Hearing On Implementation Of The Global Fragility Act

Statement

On Wednesday, May 11, 2022, Congresswoman Sara Jacobs (D-CA-53) chaired a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Development, International Organizations, and Global Corporate Social Impact hearing on the implementation of the Global Fragility Act. The hearing featured testimony from officials from the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Department of Defense on how the Global Fragility Act is improving our ability to respond to and prevent conflict. (Full video of the hearing available here.)

Witnesses for the hearing included: The Honorable Anne A. Witkowsky, Assistant Secretary Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the U.S. Department of State; Robert Jenkins, Assistant to the Administrator, Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization at the U.S. Agency for International Development; and James Saenz, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Counternarcotics and Stabilization Policy at the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Global Fragility Act passed Congress with bipartisan support in 2019 and became law through the FY2020 appropriations package. The legislation directs the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and the U.S. Department of Defense to collaborate on a proactive interagency strategy to prevent violence and conflict in the world's most fragile countries. Under the Global Fragility Act, Congress will provide $1.15 billion over five years to support peacebuilding efforts that take place in collaboration with designated countries and regions. In April, the White House announced that the priority countries under the Global Fragility Act are Haiti, Libya, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, and a grouping of Coastal West African countries comprised of Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo.

During the hearing, witnesses agreed to provide Congress with an identification of authorities, staffing, and resources needed to implement the Global Fragility Act, which is required by Section 504(c) of the Global Fragility Act. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Saenz also agreed to coordinate and consult with relevant State Department colleagues on any potential Section 127e programs, which provide authority for special operations to combat terrorism, in Global Fragility Act priority countries.

Congresswoman Jacobs' Opening Statement as Delivered (video here):

Good morning, everyone.

Pursuant to notice, we are holding a hearing today on improving the United States' ability to prevent and stabilize conflict through implementation of the Global Fragility Act.

Responding to conflicts around the world is one of the most difficult tasks the U.S. Government takes on. And we see how often the need to respond to a crisis actually shifts focus from competing priorities. And once we are in a response mode, our options tend to be limited, expensive, and include a lot of trade-offs.

Which is why moving forward we must focus on prevention.

The Global Fragility Act calls for a new strategy to better align U.S. efforts to prevent and stabilize conflict abroad by creating long-term, 10-year strategies across all relevant U.S. agencies in five countries/regions.

The bipartisan law incorporates lessons learned from our 20 years in Afghanistan and other interventions by the U.S. Government to ensure we don't keep making the same mistakes over and over again

Because we can't afford to.

Over nearly 20 years, over 10,000 Americans lost their lives and 50,000 were wounded in counterterrorism operations around the world, at an estimated cost of $5.9 trillion dollars to U.S. taxpayers.

Conflict and violence have cost the world more than $14 trillion dollars per year and drives 80% of the world's humanitarian needs.

But there is another way -- we know that a strategy of prevention would save us money. In fact, the UN and the Institute for Economics and Peace estimated the cost-effectiveness ratio of investments geared toward prevention at $16 dollars saved for every $1 dollar invested.

On April 1st, the Biden Administration announced four priority countries and one region for the Global Fragility Act: Haiti, Libya, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, and Coastal West Africa (which includes Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo).

I look forward to hearing from each of our witnesses about their assessment of the drivers of conflict and instability in each of these contexts.

In Mozambique, we have seen decades of instability and socioeconomic and political marginalization in the north, which has now led to violent extremist activity.

In Haiti, the U.S. has tried decades of interventions that have unfortunately in some cases caused more harm than good.

Libya, and the littoral West African states, face varying degrees of political instability and transitions.

And in Papua New Guinea, communities face vulnerabilities to climate change and unresolved territorial disputes.

So there are a few questions this hearing will be looking to answer for the Members of the Subcommittee.

The first is: what do the State Department, USAID, and Department of Defense actually need to be successful in this new approach?

Having worked on similar efforts in the past, I know that part of what has hamstrung our efforts has included lack of proper resources, staffing, and authorities that are too stringent, so I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today what their respective agencies really need.

The second is how exactly implementation is going? What are we talking about in terms of a timeline for the country strategies, what does this process look like, and which officials, and at what level, are in these meetings?

The third is how the U.S. Government plans to incorporate lessons learned from past, less successful, efforts.

In Afghanistan, for example, we have a wealth of knowledge of what went wrong.

The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction identified several challenges over 20 years of stabilization efforts, including the U.S. Government consistently struggling to develop and implement a coherent strategy -- not understanding the Afghan contexts and neglecting to tailor its efforts accordingly -- and rarely conducting sufficient monitoring and evaluation to understand the impacts of our efforts.

In the Sahel, we have consistently come up short in our attempts to address violent extremism across the region.

The last two years have been particularly deadly, with attacks claiming more than 3,200 victims in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger despite roughly a decade of U.S. and multilateral efforts in the region.

This is in addition to significant democratic backsliding, including an alarming trend in Mali, Guinea, Chad, and Burkina Faso of coups, some of which were carried out by U.S. trained and equipped military personnel.

The 2018 Stabilization Assistance Review found that U.S. security sector programs are "largely disconnected from a political strategy writ large."

But in addition with those lessons learned from some of our less successful efforts, we also know what has worked, and what we need going forward

We need to focus on locally led approaches, more burden sharing and purposeful division of labor among multilateral institutions; we need more flexible funding to allow for faster and more targeted approaches; and we need to institutionalize learning and evaluation in all of our programs.

We will be discussing all of these topics and more with our distinguished panel today.

I am very much looking forward to your testimonies. Thank you again for your strong partnership on reforming the U.S. approach to conflicts abroad. And with that, I'll turn it over to Ranking Member Nicole Malliotakis for her opening remarks.

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