JEREMY EDWARDS: Good evening,
everyone, and welcome.
Friends, distinguished
guests, and Rotarians,
on behalf of the University of
Chicago and the Harris School,
I have the distinct
pleasure of welcoming you
to Chicago and to the inaugural
event in "The Pathways
to Peace" series.
My name is Jeremy Edwards, and
I serve as the Senior Associate
Dean of Academic and Student
Affairs at the Harris School.
And we are so thrilled to
have you with us this evening.
Today's event represents
Harris Public Policy
and Rotary International's
shared commitment
to making a positive change in
communities around the world.
And although we have different
approaches and models
to service, together we
are uniquely positioned
to be drivers of
significant change.
And I believe this is the key
objective of our partnership
tonight.
In fact, a little personal
anecdote I'd like to offer,
my mentor and professor
in graduate school years
ago, Michael Diamond,
also a Rotarian,
served as the Director of
Humanitarian Programs and Polio
Plus for Rotary
from 1992 to 2000.
And the stories
that Michael would
share with me about
his time with Rotary
had a profound impact on me
personally and professionally,
not only in motivating
me to commit my life
and career to public
service in general,
but also it's continued to
remind me that those of us
in the room, collectively,
we do our best work
when we do it together.
And so we are so happy to have
all of you here with us today.
A pivotal component of our
efforts at the Harris School
is that we strive to
inform and advance
public dialogue on the pressing
policy issues of our time.
The 21st century has ushered in
an era of rapid and sometimes
incomprehensible change.
Citizens and communities great
and small around the world
are living in a near constant
state of social, political,
economic, and cultural upheaval.
Even in our own backyard,
from crime in Chicago
to human rights
violations in Syria
and unending war in Afghanistan,
our friends and neighbors
around the world depend on
the insight and the efforts
that we together can make
to improve their lives.
The reality is
that in many ways,
the world is, in fact,
healthier, more prosperous,
and more peaceful than
at any time in history.
And so we face a
very unique paradox
of a world that is both
turbulent and tranquil
at the same time.
Violent conflict represents
one of the defining challenges
of our time, with
profound implications
for both domestic
and foreign policy.
And our scholars at the
Pearson Institute for the Study
and Resolution of
Global Conflicts
are confronting this
issue using the most
rigorous, data-driven
research approaches
to inform policy-making and to
create a world more at peace.
So in short, we are joined
today around a common goal.
So let's ask the tough
questions tonight.
Let's explore
innovative solutions.
And let's learn and lean on
each other as we see it through.
So we have an outstanding
program planned for you
tonight, but before
we get started,
I wanted to extend a few
special thanks to everyone who
has made this evening possible.
For starters, Rotary
International and the
Rotarians for your
vision and your support
in making this series possible.
Your staff and
your team have just
been incredible partners
over the last several months.
So thank you to all of you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
And also to our colleagues
here at the University
of Chicago International
House, the building that
you find yourself in today,
for hosting us this evening.
I can't think of a
more fitting venue
for tonight's conversation.
And I also want to recognize
that our colleagues
at the International
House are celebrating
their 85th
anniversary this year.
And we would like
to congratulate them
on that as well.
Today's event is also
a collaborative effort
with the Global Voices
program at the I House,
and I encourage everyone to
join their mailing list--
a little plug there--
as they have an incredible
lineup of events
and lectures that they
offer throughout the year
that I think would be appealing
to everybody in the room.
And so with that said,
it's my great pleasure
to next introduce the
Rotary International
President, Ian Riseley.
Mr. Riseley is a chartered
accountant and principal
of Ian Riseley and Company, a
firm he established in 1976.
His firm specializes in
income tax and management
advice for individuals
and small businesses.
Mr. Riseley has been a member
of numerous school boards
and involved in Sea Scouts
and sporting groups,
and as well as an
honorary auditor
and advisor for a number of
charitable organizations.
Mr. Riseley's honors include
the Peace Builder Award
from the Australian
government in recognition
of his work in East Timor, the
Medal of the Order of Australia
for services to the Australian
community, the Distinguished
Service Award, and the Regional
Service Award for a Polio Free
World from the
Rotary Foundation.
A Rotarian since
1978, Mr. Riseley
has served as treasurer,
director, foundation trustee,
and member and chair of
numerous Rotary International
and Foundation committees.
We are so thrilled to have
him join us here today.
So please join me in
welcoming President of Rotary
International, Ian Riseley.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much.
IAN RISELEY: Thank
you very much.
Was a great time.
Thanks Thank you, Jeremy,
and good afternoon, everyone.
You may not be aware of the fact
that the Rotary International
headquarters is in
Evanston, Illinois, which
could mean that we are in
territory that is in opposition
to the University of Chicago,
especially when you think
that we have a clear view of
the campus of Northwestern
University from the
boardroom in Evanston.
But in all
seriousness, can I say
how pleased I am that Rotary has
established this relationship
with an outstanding
university, and in particular,
the Pearson Institute,
because Rotary
believes in the
importance of peace.
Peace and conflict
resolution and prevention
is one of the six
areas of focus which
guide the work of our 1.2
million Rotarians right
around the world.
Rotarians have been involved in
working for peace for decades.
This includes the
Universal Declaration
of Human Rights in
1940, and the chattering
of the United Nations in 1945,
amongst many other activities.
We're very proud of our
Peace Center's program, which
started in 2002 and now has
over 1,100 alumni working
in all parts of the globe.
And you'll hear from one
alumnus, Brooks Stearns Lawson,
this evening.
And these partnerships with
six quality universities
truly do make a difference.
In the first part
of 2018, we will
hold six peace-building
conferences
in diverse parts of the
world to draw together
experts who can provide
guidance in specific areas
of peace-building.
But clearly we all need to
be open to creative solutions
to the challenges faced
by societies today.
The level of refugees
present around the world
and the massive impact that
conflict has on economies
are a clear indication that
a new approach is required.
In 2016-- and I am an
accountant-- the 2016,
the economic impact of
violence on the global economy
was estimated to be
$14.3 trillion per annum.
And as a very humble suburban
accountant from Australia,
that is a seriously
large figure.
And we believe that
partnerships are the way
to go for us in the
pursuit of peace.
Accordingly, I'm
pleased to advise
that Rotary International has
formed a strategic partnership
with the Institute for
Economics and Peace,
which is a leader in the
study of peace and conflict
from my home country
of Australia.
As a result, Rotarians,
Peace Fellows, and others
can carry out stronger
projects for peace.
Further, at the Annual Rotary
Day at the United Nations,
which this year will be held in
Geneva on the 11th of November,
we will recognize four
Rotarians and two Peace Fellow
alumni for their personal
efforts in peace.
And this brings me to
this exciting evening,
which is first in "The
Pathways to Peace" series,
in partnership with the
Harris Public Policy School
here at the
University of Chicago.
In this series of
functions, we'll
draw together experts to
reassess how we understand
and approach conflict.
And what more fitting
venue could there
be than International House,
which, like Rotary, has been
at the forefront of global
and cultural understanding
for many years.
So like you, I look
forward to hearing
from our esteemed panelists
and invite you now to join me
in welcoming them to the stage.
[APPLAUSE]
JEROME MCDONNELL: Thank you.
Nice to see everyone.
Thank you, Harris Associate
Dean Jeremy Edwards
and Rotary International
President Ian Riseley.
I'm Jerome McDonnell.
I host "World View" on WBEZ.
It's the public
affairs program that's
heard each weekday on
the public radio station.
And lots of people
have heard it?
Good.
[LAUGHTER]
[APPLAUSE]
We're going to record
tonight's events for the radio
and play it back hopefully
in a couple of weeks.
We'll have to excerpt
it in some way,
because this event is
longer than the "World View"
program you hear on the radio.
But keep your eye open for that.
This event is part
of a three part
series on issues of
peace and conflict
hosted by Harris and
Rotary International,
and I'm delighted to be
here and help kick it off.
And the focus of the series
is something of a paradox,
when you think about it.
While the world is,
by many measures,
wealthier healthier,
more prosperous
and peaceful than ever
before, the last decade
has seen declines in
global peacefulness
with spikes in civil war, battle
deaths, deaths from terrorism,
and there is a
number of refugees
and internally
displaced people having
doubled in the last decade.
And I will admit to being
nervous about all this
on a bunch of levels.
I think so much of the violence
we see today, too much of it
has to do with civilians.
And this is a trend that's
been going on for decades here.
And it is so often
random violence.
It's something that
makes me pretty angry.
I don't like seeing
these armed groups.
I never used to have to--
20 years ago when I
started doing "World View,"
I never said armed
groups on the radio.
It was something
new in my vocabulary
that I had to insert.
And I think it was Columbia
that first inserted it
in my vocabulary.
And now I use it all the time.
I'm worried about
some of the people who
are supposed to keep the peace.
It seems like security forces
are an armed group themselves
sometimes.
We see a militarization of our
own police in this country.
I had the filmmaker Tom
Palazzolo, quite a character,
a Chicagoan who made
films in the '60s and '70s
that were quite interesting.
And he went to Marquette Park
to record the Nazi march there
in the early '70s.
And you know, it
was a heated thing.
There were a lot of hot
demonstrators there.
And there were the police
there to keep the peace.
And it was some guys
with billy clubs and they
kind of had one of those
helmets you flip down and--
but other than that, they
were in their shirt sleeves.
There were no vests.
There was no armor.
There was nothing beyond a
police car sitting there.
There were no military
vehicles like we practically
see at every
demonstration these days.
So I'm really worried
that keeping the peace
sometimes looks like
just more violence.
I'm also worried
about how fear is
used by the politicians
and the media,
and the fear of violence,
to mobilize people.
You know, we're getting a
picture blasted at us every day
in the media and by
politicians that sometimes I
think is divorced from reality.
And it's being used
to manipulate people
all the time in this city and
in places all over the world.
And I am kind of surprised
at how well all that works.
Tonight on our "Pathway
to Peace" conversation
we're going to address
some of these uncertainties
in how urban violence
affects our communities here
and abroad.
And our panelists have
worked here and all
over the globe on
urban global violence.
And I am going to
introduce them in order.
Gary Slutkin next to me
is the founder and CEO
of Cure Violence.
And he's a Professor
of Epidemiology
and International Health at the
University of Illinois Chicago
School of Public
Health, and he's
applied lessons learned from
more than a decade of fighting
epidemics in Africa and Asia to
the creation of a public health
model to reduce violence through
behavior change and disease
control methods.
I'm sure lots of people here
saw the movie The Interrupters
about the work of Cure Violence.
Anne Richard is the
former Assistant Secretary
for Population,
Refugees, and Migration
at the US State
Department where she
was responsible for helping
refugees around the world.
She has years of experience
working in public service
and relief agencies.
She's currently
a visiting fellow
at Perry World House at the
University of Pennsylvania
and is familiar with
both of our friends
at the Harris School and Rotary.
She's an alumni of Harris and
was a Rotary Youth Exchange
student in high school.
Way to go, Anne.
ANNE RICHARD: Way to go Rotary.
[LAUGHTER]
JEROME MCDONNELL: And to her
left is Christopher Blattman.
He is the Ramalee
E. Pearson Professor
of Global Conflict Studies
at the University of Chicago
and the Pearson Institute.
As an economist and
political scientist,
Professor Blattman
focuses his study
on the causes and solutions
of poverty, crime, violence
in developing countries,
with the current work
in Uganda and Columbia.
And Professor Blattman also
leads the crime and violence
sector at MIT's
Poverty Action Lab
and the Peace and
Recovery Program
at Innovations for
Poverty Action.
To Christopher's left is
Brooke Stearns Lawson.
She is a Senior Conflict
Advisor at USAID Africa Bureau,
where her work focuses on
conflict in Southern and West
Africa.
And prior to joining USAID,
she was a doctoral fellow
at the Rand Corporation.
And we would be remiss not
to reiterate that Brooke was
a Rotary Peace Fellow alumna.
And she was in the second class
of Rotary Peace Fellow alumnus.
So of those 1,100 people,
she was like, number seven.
[LAUGHTER]
And we're going to
do this with opening
statements by each panelist,
just a few minutes long.
But you'll get to know
more about their work
and their perceptions of
conflict and indicators.
And then we'll have a
conversation half hour-ish
long.
And then we'll do some
questions up at the microphone.
And so we're kind of kicking
off with urban violence
in the communities in the
context of your own work
and presenting that idea to
each of the people on the panel.
And Gary is going to start.
GARY SLUTKIN: All right.
Good evening.
How's everybody?
So I'm a physician
and I get credit
for having gone
to medical school
a couple of blocks this way.
And I'm an epidemiologist.
And my previous work was at
World Health Organization.
As Jerome said, I
worked on epidemics
of cholera and
tuberculosis and AIDS,
mostly in Central
and East Africa--
to a lesser extent in
Asia and Latin America--
for about 15 years.
I ran the intervention
unit for World Health.
And this was a unit
that was charged
with developing behavior change
methods and guiding countries
around the world in how
to do behavior change.
For the last 20 years or
so, I've been working with--
I founded what's
called Cure Violence.
I did this when I
came back to the US.
And this is an NGO that is
dedicated to reducing violence
using epidemic control or
behavior change methods.
Looking at violence, we can
see through maps and charts
and graphs, it behaves exactly
like all other epidemic issues.
And we're now one of the
more highly rated NGOs
in the world, which is not
something we set out to be.
We're working in
25 cities in the US
and about 10 countries in
Latin America, including
Mexico and Honduras
and El Salvador,
and also in the Caribbean.
And we're working in Syria
and in the West Bank.
And we have some
work in South Africa.
And we worked in
the Kenya election
in 2013 using these methods.
And we're now getting
involved in conflict zones.
We see violence, as
I just mentioned,
as an epidemic process.
And the scientific literature
is now confirming this.
And the Institute of Medicine
put out a report in 2013
showing it in this way,
which is a different way
than the usual way
of thinking about it.
And we're now seeing
even the brain processes
that cause this contagion.
I mean, we can see this
contagion in the streets
here in the form
of retaliations.
You can look at Rwanda's
epidemic as a point source
epidemic with secondary waves.
And of course, Syria, which
has caused so much disaster.
The mass shootings
and violent extremism
are also contagious processes.
To this, the results
that we've been getting
have been in the range
of 40% to 70% reductions
in shootings and killings.
We're getting 50%
in Mexico, and we're
in 88% in Honduras
in San Pedro Sula.
And there's been about six or
eight independent evaluations
of this work.
And this is reviewed on the
second page of this handout,
which has been distributed.
To this question of whether this
is a particularly violent time,
you know, it just really
means compared to what.
So compared to five
years ago, definitely.
Compared to World War II, no.
But in terms of
risks, I don't think
that it has a lesser
risk than any period
because we're playing
nuclear chicken with Korea.
And in terms of impact of the
violence, as will be discussed
here by others on the panel I'm
sure, the number of refugees,
the number of displaced
people, the political impact,
the fear--
all of this is nearly
unprecedented, and certainly
in the last 50 or 70 years.
So I think I'll
leave it at that,
to say that there's a lot
of political instability
in this country.
The ground of economic
inequality and lack
of trust in government
that's in this country
and in other countries,
this is to epidemiologists
the dirty water, as
compared to cholera.
This is always proceeding and
underlying epidemic processes.
And what I hope we
can get to is that you
can't predict when epidemics
are going to happen,
but you need to be
sure that you have
the infrastructure
for preventing
first events and their spread.
And that infrastructure does
not exist internationally.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Gary Slutkin.
Anne Richard, Former
Assistant Secretary
of State for Population
and Refugees Migration
in the US State Department.
You're next.
ANNE RICHARD: Thank you.
And I am very, very
grateful to Rotary
for sparking what has turned out
to be an international career
by giving me the opportunity
to travel and live overseas
as a schoolgirl and
learn a foreign language
and really see that there is a
lot of commonality in the world
and there are also
some differences.
And so I've never quite
recovered from that year
abroad.
I want to talk about the very,
very large scale displacement
that we're seeing in
the world right now.
We're seeing record levels
of refugees and migrants.
And I want to talk
about them not
as people who spread
violence, but rather people
who are fleeing persecution,
war, conflict, violence.
And sort of where
we are right now
in terms of providing
assistance to them
and respecting their rights.
There are 65 million
people who have
been uprooted by all the
crises around the world today.
Most of them are still
in their home countries.
These are the internally
displaced persons.
There's over 40 million
IDPs, internally displaced.
Another 22 million roughly have
crossed an international border
and they are
considered refugees.
They're fleeing because
they fear for their lives
or the lives of their families.
Often they've already
been threatened or harmed
in some way.
They may be missing
a family member.
And they are looking to
the international community
of nations to help them because
their own governments have
been unable to.
And so they have fled very,
very dangerous situations.
Of these 22 million refugees,
60% are living in cities.
80% of the IDPs are
living in cities--
or as the experts like to
say, urban environments.
I like to say cities.
And--
[LAUGHTER]
Somebody got that.
That's good.
And you might not know that
because when a journalist goes
out and his editor says, take
a picture of the refugees,
they're going to go to a camp.
So we think of tent cities, like
the big one in northern Jordan,
Zaatari, or huts in Africa, like
in the Dadaab camp in Kenya--
that are very, very large.
Hundreds of thousands
of people live in them.
But most refugees are trying
to make it on their own.
And why?
It's because they want to live
as normal lives as possible.
They want their kids
to go to local school.
They want work and
support themselves.
They want to go
shopping and decide
what they'll eat
instead of lining up
to be handed a ration.
So what this has meant is
that we need particular ways
of helping them.
In some cases, it
makes more sense
to hand them an ATM card than
to ask them to come in and get
a food package.
And then with that
ATM card, they
can shop at a local merchant.
So it's sort of a
potential for win-win.
Most refugees are not
spreading violence.
They are the
victims of violence.
They are trying to find
stability for their families,
a future for their families.
And it's been very difficult
the last few years,
this idea that
refugees could somehow
be terrorists, that these
two terms have almost
become synonymous.
Another trend has been that--
I talked to the President of
the International Committee
of the Red Cross
about this yesterday
when he was in Washington.
Many governments are
comfortable providing aid
to people overseas,
but they're not really
working hard to uphold
rights, to sue for peace,
to prevent mistreatment
and detention of prisoners,
to allow people to
leave dangerous places
and aid to get in, of
protecting aid workers
as they go about their business.
These so-called
humanitarian principles
that are part of the
Red Cross Movement
that many countries are supposed
to adhere to are being eroded.
And we see this in Syria.
That's another place where it
is a very good example, where
cities have been besieged and
people have been starving,
and they don't know
where to go for safety.
So are refugees
involved in violence?
Yes.
They're fleeing violence.
Are they spreading violence?
No.
Most of them,
especially the ones
who are coming to
the United States
in the Refugee
Resettlement Program that's
in the news today and
tomorrow, are people
who are highly motivated.
They are people
who've taken action.
They have propelled
themselves to get to safety.
They want a future
for themselves.
They work very hard.
And they know a lot though.
They have a personal
history often with violence.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Anne Richard.
Next we're moving over
to Christopher Blattman
from the Pearson Center for
Global Conflict Studies.
Nice to meet you.
CHRISTOPHER BLATTMAN: Great.
Thank you very much.
And the Pearson,
which is so new,
it's so nice to have
such a local and such
an established partner
in this kind of work.
From the sense of urban
violence, most of my experience
comes from three places.
One is a long time working
in Monrovia, Liberia--
Liberia broadly, but especially
the capital, Monrovia,
which many people may
not know is essentially
America's African colony.
I've been spending
the last two years,
a lot of time in
Medellin, Colombia,
which if you've been
watching Narcos on Netflix,
you've seen Medellin
in the 1980s.
But some of that urban violence
still continues to this day.
Monrovia is a place where
a lot of the violence
perhaps could not be
more disorganized.
Crime and violence is
extremely disorganized.
And it's perhaps harder to
find places other than Medellin
where violence is
more organized.
So very different places.
And then just in
the last two months,
I've started working on
the south side of Chicago.
So I don't consider myself
anywhere near an expert,
but somewhere that in
some sense is in between,
but in many ways, is closer to
the Liberia style of violence
than Medellin.
And I think this typology
and this sort of category,
it's important not to think of
urban violence as some thing.
There's lots of different
kinds of violence.
I think if I just sort
of crudely clump things
into buckets, I'd
say, well, there's
violence that comes
from a profit motive.
So somebody who's killed
as a byproduct of a mugging
or people who may be killed
or explicitly murdered
in the pursuit of a drug trade.
These are murders that either
may serve an economic purpose,
or perhaps are just a byproduct
of an economic purpose.
And that's an important
cluster of violence.
There's violence that arises,
and partly or maybe largely,
out of passions.
This is violence between people
who often know one another.
It might be a husband and wife.
It might be two young
men on the same block.
It might be two young men from
rival gangs, which may just
mean a few blocks away.
A lot of that passion, a lot of
this violence-- not all of it,
but a lot of this violence
is spur of the moment.
A lot of it looks
a lot like the sort
of epidemic style of violence
that Gary is describing.
It's a reasonably
good description.
And it can be impulsive.
It can be the wrong decision
for a lot of people.
So it's not strategic
in that sense.
And then I'd say there's
a third class of violence.
I came from studying a
lot of civil conflict
and ethnic conflict before
getting into urban violence.
A lot of conflict you can
think of as armed groups,
or essentially organizations
in conflict in active warfare.
And there may be
passions involved
and there is probably some form
of greed or profit involved,
but a lot of the time
you can think of this
as, in most places most of
the time and most of the world
and most of history, these
groups have managed to co-exist
and gain what they want.
They strike some bargain.
And violence in this case is--
and war between these
groups, whether it's
state actors or non-state
actors, is in some sense
an evidence of
bargains breaking down.
So these are three really
different forms of violence.
And it's important to think
about these causes of violence
as distinct because
every solution
to something like urban violence
has behind it a problem, right?
In some sense, the
solution in itself has a--
is a solution to a
specific problem.
And if we don't try to think
about what the problem is,
if we take for granted what
the problem is and we never
stop and pause, which is
a problem that confronts
a lot of poverty,
then we may end up
deciding the wrong solution.
So if I were to go
to Medellin-- as I
went to Medellin for the
first time two years ago,
and thinking that some of this
epidemiological style of work
and some of the
behavioral work that I've
been doing to cool the
passions and eliminate
certain types of violence.
This is relevant, but to
a very small fraction.
It's simply not probably going--
the solution that's
appropriate for that context.
Now, often it's
very hard to know
what the problem and what
the source of urban violence
is in a city.
It's very uncertain.
Very smart people disagree.
Sometimes they're all right.
And so what I've found
is that one method
of discovering what
the problem is,
is by a process of
trial and error,
by experimenting with solutions.
And this is, in
some sense, I think
exactly where some
of Gary's work
sort of grew out of in Chicago.
Lots of community
organizations, among them
Cure Violence, trying new
things-- bringing ideas,
experimenting trial and
error on a small scale.
Sometimes they cooperate
with academics like me
and it becomes more rigorous
and more structured.
But that's not the important
part of experimentation.
The important part
of experimentation
is lots of organizations
experimenting and figuring out
what works.
One of Anne's
previous organizations
where she worked for many
years, the International Rescue
Committee, is a humanitarian
refugee organization.
It's at the forefront of doing
this in a very formal way.
USAID is now catching up
and now has an innovation.
I'm going to Innovation
Week tomorrow
at USAID, which is in some sense
embracing a lot of this trial
and error approach.
So this is happening
and it's bringing
to bear a lot of the most
successful solutions.
The opposite of that is what
you see most of the time.
It's the big idea.
It's the guy or the woman
with the book and the answer,
the grand government program
that goes to scale immediately
without being tested,
without experimenting
in many different ways
to figure out what works.
That's the opposite.
The philosopher
Karl Popper talked
about the trial and error
sort of social engineer
as the piecemeal
social engineer.
This is the policy-maker or
the scholar or the individual
or the community organizer who
learns from their mistakes, who
tries many different
things, who is always
on the lookout for
possible ill effects
and possible unintended
consequences,
and always trying to
improve on the margin.
And he contrasted that to
the Utopian social engineer,
who is looking for a great
and revolutionary change.
And so when I think about
what is the root cause
or what is one of the
causes of urban violence,
another way to think of
it is it's our failure
to be piecemeal engineers,
and it's our failure
to figure out what is the
problem for which we're
proposing a solution, and
to put grand solutions ahead
of this more piecemeal trial
and error experimental and very
humble approach.
JEROME MCDONNELL:
Christopher Blattman
from the Pearson Center.
Brooke Stearns Lawson, Senior
Conflict Adviser Organized
Crime, USAID Africa Bureau,
and Rotary Peace Fellow.
BROOKE STEARNS LAWSON: Thanks.
I also was an ambassadorial
scholar in 2001
in South Africa.
And with the help
from Peter Kyle,
who I see in the
audience, was one
of the founding members of the
DC Area Dupont Rotary Clubs.
It was a happy hour club,
because it was largely
created by former
Rotary exchange
students, ambassadorial fellow
scholars, and Peace Fellows.
So lots of rotary connections.
I'm really honored
to be here tonight,
especially with such
a distinguished panel.
So I like the concept of threes.
And I think it's valuable for
me in looking at this work
and thinking about the
question about whether violence
is increasing and what
are the causes of it,
to look at three
different levels.
The first is kind of the
international global level.
And as you mentioned
in your remarks,
if you're looking at
over the past decade,
the number of
conflicts has actually
decreased around the
globe, but the intensity
of those conflicts has
increased and the nature
of those conflicts is changing.
And it is more
one-sided violence.
It is an increase of
terrorist attacks.
That creates an
environment of uncertainty.
And I think that
perpetrators of violence
are much more quick
to evolve than those
of us that are the peacemakers
that are responding to them.
And I think that's where
a lot of what Chris
is talking about in
terms of trial and error
and being innovative is really
critical, because sometimes
we're behind the eight
ball and not catching up
to where the new forms
of violence are going.
And we need to be more
innovative on that.
So hopefully you'll get into
some of that at the Innovation
Week next week and other times.
The second level that
I like to think about
is at the community and the
communal level violence.
And these are not
distinct categories.
All three of them
feed into each other.
They're interconnected
and interrelated.
Most countries that have
national level violence
also have a series of
sub-national level of violence.
So you can think of a place
like the Democratic Republic
of Congo that has multiple
different conflicts happening
in urban centers,
outside of urban centers,
at a national scale,
at a localized scale.
And not-- I think
it's harder for us
to know whether community level
violence is increasing or not
increasing globally or
within your own community,
because we don't have as
good of metrics or data
to look at or understand that.
But I think one thing that's
critical to understand
or to think about is the
sense of tension that can be
happening at a community level.
I live in Venice Beach,
California right now.
And I think that as a resident
of a community, oftentimes
you can feel it.
It's palpable.
You can see that
the signs are there,
that tensions are increasing.
It can be spurred by media.
As was discussed, it can be
spurred by local leaders.
And being in tune
to that I think
is really critical
to help ensure
or help mitigate so that
latent conflicts don't
result in violence.
And the third level
is the personal
or the individual level.
And I think a lot
of times folks work
at either one or the
other level and we
forget to work between the two.
So one of the key
pieces of information
that I think is really
critical to remember
is, in many instances, most
perpetrators of violence
are victims of
violence themselves,
or were victims of violence.
We like to think of
things in this dichotomy
of good guys and bad guys.
Those who perpetrate
violence are bad guys.
Those who are peace
builders are good guys.
And that construct just
simply doesn't hold.
And so digging a little bit more
deeply and thinking about that
and trying to make those
connections and linkages
is really critical.
All too often, we try to work
at either the macro level
of conflict or we are
working at community
and trying to do
community-based reconciliation.
Or we're working on
individual level programming.
But carrying that strand and
working at all three levels
will get us a lot farther.
In terms of the
causes of violence,
some of USAID's work and
the broader literature
on peace and conflict at
the international level
identifies five key
social societal patterns
that are linked
statistically with conflict.
Elitism.
And when you hear
these lists, I guess
I would say think
of your community,
your country,
wherever you're from.
And I would say maybe take heed.
So elitism, exclusion--
that's where one group--
it's not based on--
elitism is kind of like
vertical inequality,
or exclusion-ism, where
one group is excluded
and the other has
access to rights.
That's based on identity.
So you can think of
the Rwandan Hutu Tutsi.
There's chronic
capacity deficits,
when the state or
institutions aren't
providing their
services that are
expected for their population.
The next is unmet expectations,
particularly around
transitions.
And the final is corruption,
which is not linked.
There's no conflict that
has been linked solely
to corruption, but
it's a factor that
features across a
majority of the conflicts
that we see around the world.
At the community level,
those same societal patterns
play out.
And then at the
individual level,
there's a lot of
work that's been
done to help understand
what risk factors are
present for an individual
to commit violence.
So you have the Adverse
Childhood Experiences Study.
And this goes back
to what I was talking
about earlier, that most
perpetrators of violence
are victims of
violence themselves.
You also have a
lot of work that's
been done on what
drives violent extremism
at an individual level.
And I think a lot
of the narrative
is people are poor so they're
going to become violent.
But what we're
seeing is that it's
much more about a sense
of marginalization,
a sense of exclusion.
And often times, getting back
to something that Anne had said,
it's a perceived injustice,
oftentimes committed
by the state,
oftentimes committed
by the security actors
that are in place.
So trying to think about
those different levels
and linking them
together I think
is really important as we try
to think about our responses
to reduce violence and evolve
as the threat evolves as well.
JEROME MCDONNELL: All right.
Now we're going to have
a conversation here
for about a half hour
and kind of pick apart
some of the ideas that
have been thrown out there.
And almost everyone
did a nice job
of kind of honing in and
defining things and making
things seem more easy
to get a handle on.
I'm concerned about
how everybody--
how violence, it
gets so distorted.
I don't think the general
public can do anything about it
because it's so
hysterically politicized
all the time, whether
it's the urban violence
in Chicago, which I
think get hysterically
politicized sometimes.
I think the refugee situation
gets hysterically politicized.
Something like
Liberia or Africa,
you know, you just throw
up a bunch of images
and nobody has any
idea what's going on.
Is this like-- it almost seems
purposeful that people don't
want you to fix a problem.
I don't know if it's maybe
most obvious in refugees.
I mean, we see--
ANNE RICHARD: I can think
of things people can do.
I mean, you know, one big one
is to invest in diplomacy,
which it doesn't have the
same gripping illustration
as the aid worker doctor
inoculating the baby.
Usually it's people in
suits, in conference rooms.
It doesn't make for
a very moving photo.
But it is the only
way to bring some
of these long-running
conflicts to a close.
I also think the
time of violence--
JEROME MCDONNELL: Can I ask you
about the definition of refugee
being degraded, because it
seems like almost everybody
on the planet is doing it
in developed countries when
a bunch of people from Central
America came to the US who
certainly seemed
like refugees to me--
they were children riding
on the top of trains--
we put them in camps and
then shipped them back.
I just talked to the German
Ambassador the other day
on the program and all
the political parties
before the election agreed.
We have a lot of
people in our country
who are not legitimate refugees.
We're going to ship them.
We're going to get them
out because they're
messing up our country.
Is that--
ANNE RICHARD: The big
flows towards Europe
were a mix of people who meet
the definition of a refugee.
They're fleeing persecution
or threats against them
for reason of race,
religion, nationality,
membership in a
particular social group,
or political belief.
And also though,
as the numbers grew
greater and greater
and more people entered
that flow from
sub-Saharan Africa
across the Mediterranean, from
Afghanistan, from Pakistan,
mixed in were people
who fit that definition,
were economic migrants--
people who were really seeking
opportunity, a better life.
Sort of like my
forefathers did here.
And so nations have
the right to determine
who comes across their borders.
What was happening in Europe
was that they weren't screening
and they weren't screening
out who was coming,
who was a criminal, who was
a bona fide refugee who they
ought to provide
asylum to and who
was an economic migrant,
who if they were smart,
they might want to use
in their workforce,
especially in
Europe, but that they
had the right to turn back.
And in Central
America, we have youth
fleeing these terrible criminal
gangs from the Northern
Triangle, three countries--
El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras-- of Central America.
That flight did not fit
the traditional definition.
So some judges are saying
we should give them asylum.
They're fleeing for their lives.
The threats are real.
And some have said,
well, they don't really
fit the definition.
And I remember discussing
this with some US senators,
including one who's now
the Attorney General, who
said, you know, there's
criminality everywhere.
We don't have a
special responsibility
to protect people
from criminals.
And so that gets
very complicated.
And that's why I think you
see sort of a mixed response
to it, not
particularly coherent.
JEROME MCDONNELL:
Gary, do you have
any thoughts about how urban
violence is depicted in Chicago
and what's real and what's not?
It seems like sometimes
leadership kind of walls
off certain areas and things.
Well, the problem is there.
And is there a kind of
willfulness not to address it?
GARY SLUTKIN: I've spent
quite a bit of time thinking
about this as well.
I was working on this.
And as you know, we've
talked about this.
And originally I was
trying to figure out
whether it's didn't care,
don't know what to do,
or doesn't affect me.
And I landed on didn't
know what to do.
Now I'm not exactly sure
that that is the right answer
because there is a lot of
data on what works here.
And so just to say a few
more things about Chicago--
as some of you may know, Chicago
is in a very serious epidemic
right now that the city went
from 425 killings in the year
2014 not to 450 or to 500 or
to 600 or to 700, but to 760.
So a major city to have
that kind of a jump,
there's no other city that
has done that in this country.
And that curve-- you can
look at our website--
that curve shifted
from going down
to going up in March of 2015.
It was predicted.
It was the moment at which the
budget of the state was stopped
and funds stop flowing
and 13 out of 14 groups,
13 out of 14 communities
that were getting reductions,
including nine that were at
0 for the last three or four
months, were discontinued.
And one community that continued
to have this public health
intervention--
that was South Shore, the
fourth police district--
continued to go down.
And the one that had the
largest amount of intervention
was the one that
went up the most.
Now there are other
factors that happened later
in that year, such as the
Laquan McDonald thing and lack
of trust and all of this.
And the police are said
to have pulled back,
but they pulled back also
on many other cities.
In New York, stop and frisk has
been replaced by Cure Violence.
So in this city and
across this country--
and we've been talking about
this for two days at a meeting
that I just came
from this morning--
is that the idea still is about
the people who are doing it,
which was described here.
So if the perpetrator and
the-- if a victim becomes
a perpetrator and
a perpetrator was
a victim, what's going on here?
How does that happen?
It's because exposure-- and
this is the insight that I came
to years and years
ago is when I asked,
what was the greatest
predictor of violence?
The answer given was a
preceding act of violence.
And so if you have--
just let me do this
for one second--
if you have a tuberculosis
patient who's giving TB
to somebody else, guess what?
He got it from
somebody else and he's
giving it to somebody else who's
giving it to somebody else.
So what's happening
instead of realizing
this continuity of
the fact that people
are doing it in relation,
direct relation, to exposure--
exposure as a kid and
exposure to friends,
so that the rate of
predictability of a person
can be 700 or 800 times more
if your friends are doing it
than if you're friends or not.
This is interruptable
predictably.
So the idea now is that this
is a health behavioral problem
and the person who's
doing it has a health
problem from having picked
this up from exposure
and from having
been traumatized,
and that interrupters and
outreach workers reliably--
and there's a Justice
Department study,
a study of seven years of work
with a 10 year baseline done
by four universities,
that showed
a 100% reduction in retaliation
with this method, as well
as 40% to 70% drops by
time series analysis.
So what I'm saying
is that this--
but this is not the way.
The person who did it
is not being thought
of as having a health problem.
He's being thought of in
the lens of good and bad.
He's being thought through a
moralistic lens rather than
a scientific lens.
And that worldview is
the largest obstacle
to the use of
effective interventions
in the opinion of most of us
in the public health community
now.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Christopher
and Brooke, you both
talked about some
of the conditions.
And Gary is saying, well,
it's a vision problem.
And you've talked,
Christopher, about it
being kind of an
experiment problem
where you've got to use
various techniques to reduce
violence or address it.
Is it just too
complicated, if you've
got to use Gary's technique
and somebody else's technique
and also create pre-schools
or something that's
kind of an economic thing?
Is that kind of too tough
for people sometimes?
CHRISTOPHER BLATTMAN:
So I think--
all of us, certainly
me, probably all of us,
there was some moment
starting in our career
where this seemed just as
bewildering and impossible.
And I certainly fell into
studying violence by accident.
Specifically I met my wife,
who was working in a very, very
slow internet cafe in Kenya.
And she was working
in a conflict zone,
so I decided I should follow
this woman I'd met there.
And before I knew it, I
was studying conflict.
So not all of us
find this because--
[LAUGHTER]
JEROME MCDONNELL:
That's one way to--
CHRISTOPHER
BLATTMAN: And now I'm
a Professor of Global
Conflict Studies.
And so we all follow
circuitous paths.
And we don't come into
this knowing the answer.
And so it is a hard--
I'm not going to pretend
it's an easy problem,
but I think Anne and Gary
are right in that we've
learned a lot.
I think there are--
and I don't want what
I described to sound
like a technical solution.
What I want is I want
lots of organizations
like Gary's trying
lots of things out.
But then when they
find something
that seems to have
some traction and works
in a number of places,
as I think this does,
then you've got to just--
you've got to come and
sit on stages like this
and tell people, let's do
more of what we're doing
and don't defund it.
And then when you defund it
and you see murders go up,
well, let's try to get
something from that.
So I'm very hopeful.
But it's not like
there's one answer.
So the interruption approach
is really interesting.
I think it's really important.
But right now, I'm doing a
study of a different kind
of intervention that indeed
Gary's organization is one
of the implementers in Chicago.
And it's saying actually,
well, in addition to
trying to interrupt when this
cycle of violence begins,
maybe we can inoculate
to some degree.
You can correct all of
my medical analogies.
[LAUGHTER]
But maybe we can
identify-- maybe
we can use what knowledge
there is on the street
and what knowledge
there is in the system
and artificial intelligence
to try to identify and predict
who's likely to shoot.
And then what can we
do to provide jobs
and to provide behavioral
therapy and coaching
and mentoring and
a host of services
that's going to avert this.
And that's very expensive.
Maybe it will work.
Maybe it won't.
Maybe it will work but it
will be so un-godly costly
that it won't make any
sense to do anywhere else.
Maybe it will be
something that we
need Gary and me to go on
stages around the world
sort of proclaiming afterwards.
We don't really know,
but we're trying it
on this small scale
in one place where
we're watching very closely,
and then maybe we learn.
So that's not a technical
complicated process.
That's something that
people do every day
and we're just trying to
do it with a little bit
more discipline.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Why do we
get the enforcement solution
all the time?
That seems to be
the kind of go to.
You don't take out your
toolkit of social fixers
and go to work.
You bring out the enforcement.
And we see it all layered
with racism these days.
And we got an answer.
GARY SLUTKIN: This is
largely from "World View."
This is-- I don't know if that's
the name of your show or not.
I mean, it's largely
about the worldview
that the people are bad.
They need to be taught a lesson.
They need to be shown
that we mean business.
Whereas behavior
is-- and for those
who have studied
behavior, and you just
pick up at the
University bookstore
here, Social Psychology
101, I pick up the new one
every two or three years.
Punishment is
extraordinarily overvalued.
It's not the main way in
which people learn behavior.
It's not the main way behavior
is maintained nor changed,
especially among teenagers who
are wired to take risk and be
defiant and care mostly about
what their friends think rather
than the risk of other
things, including
death or consequences.
And so on.
So what are the main
manifestations of behavior
are what you see around you
unconsciously that you pick up
and what you think
your friends do,
even though people
don't admit that.
By the way, I see that
nobody's smoking here.
And so whereas when I was in
medical school, a third of us
were smoking while we
were watching angiograms.
But I don't see the police here.
Maybe they are, but that
isn't why we're not smoking.
The norms have changed.
And this is a behavior.
Smoking behavior, eating
behavior, violent behavior,
sexual behavior.
These are just behaviors, and
they're formed in the same way
and they're changed
essentially in the same way--
by peers and by what you think
your friends expect of you.
And that's the approach
that's being used.
But the challenge is still
that punishment is being valued
and the people are being
thought of as B-A-D.
And in science, there's
essentially no such thing.
I mean, you look
under the microscope,
you don't find the badness.
[LAUGHTER]
I mean, it doesn't
exist in science.
Someone comes in with
chest pain you don't say,
is it good or bad?
You're trying to understand
what it is and why
and what you need to do.
And that's the
approach that is--
and to Chris's point,
this is not completely,
what do you say?
Like protocol-ed.
But you know, so
there needs to be
adaptations and
experimentation like you say.
But it's not just interruption.
It's interruption and
behavior change and services
and shifting norms.
And how are norms shifted?
They're shifted by what you
think your friends expect
of you, which by the
way, is why I'm wearing
this ridiculous
thing, because I think
that you expected this of
me, but I didn't really
pay attention.
I didn't think that through.
It's just what I automatically
unconsciously did.
Look at this thing, for example.
BROOKE STEARNS
LAWSON: I just wanted
to say too on that, I think
part of it, as you raise,
is that enforcement is easy.
We understand what
that looks like.
It's discreet.
And the outcome is clear
and it's clearly linked
to the action--
at least initially.
Then what we don't see is that
a majority of violent extremists
use, as the UNDP study that
just came out indicate,
like 76% of them said
that what they perceived
as an unjust action
by government
was the main reason that they
join an extremist organization.
But the enforcement
part of it's easy.
What's harder is to think about
cognitive behavioral therapy.
What's harder and takes more
time and takes more commitment
is to make changes
to the social norms.
And I think that the
peace-building community--
and it does have to be adapted
to the particular situation
and the particular
causes of violence.
And that's nuanced.
And I think that
solutions that are nuanced
are challenging to articulate,
to get support for,
and to show the impacts of.
And so that nuance that's
so critical for the success
is part of the downfall
for getting the attention
and the efforts in.
It's much easier just to
go to an enforcement focus.
GARY SLUTKIN: Well, there's
a whole other thing.
I mean, nobody knows
what public health does.
Nobody has any idea.
All that we've done is
increase life expectancy
by three or four decades,
made sure that kids now
live when they used
to die, and they
have eliminated major diseases
like smallpox and leprosy and--
ANNE RICHARD: You did that?
GARY SLUTKIN: Yeah.
No.
[LAUGHTER]
All I've done is learn
some of those methods
and apply them to something
else and then to something else.
That's all.
ANNE RICHARD: Don't get polio.
You're speaking to
a Rotary audience.
GARY SLUTKIN: But
what I'm saying is--
BROOKE STEARNS LAWSON:
Especially polio.
GARY SLUTKIN: Why does no one
know what public health does?
Yeah, polio, which Rotary
is a super global hero in.
Really, it's unbelievable.
Polio like-- so why does no one
know what public health does?
Because we don't say, here's
the tuberculosis patient.
We caught him.
[LAUGHTER]
It's all done behind the scenes.
JEROME MCDONNELL: We used to.
We used to lock them
up in spots for them.
GARY SLUTKIN: You're
exactly right,
just as with violence, we
used to demonize and moralize
around leprosy.
These people are evil, plague.
Take the widows and drag
them around the moat.
Throw people into the well.
Our brain size is the
same as when we did that.
And that's the way they'll look
at us in the future for what
we're doing now.
What we didn't know is
the invisible of bacteria,
we didn't know about
invisible microorganisms.
What is not so clearly
known now, but it is known
and it's written up in
this institute of medicine,
is that the brain processes that
process the seeing of violence
into the likelihood of doing
it, or the approval addiction,
the dopamine pathway
and the pain pathway,
cause people to go on.
We know the brain processes
of copying and following now.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Anne
Richard, you want to--
ANNE RICHARD: Well as
the panel was talking,
I realized I had
forgotten to talk
about one particular type
of violence that refugees
can be victimized
by, which is sexual
and gender based violence.
Whenever there's a big group of
people on the march or fleeing,
there's chaos.
People get separated.
You see an increase in
rape and in other forms
of sexual violence, or GBV,
as the aid workers say.
And you know, our responses
to it are try to help victims
after it happens.
And we're kind of
lousy at preventing it
from happening in
the first place,
even though we know
that the odds are
very good it's going to happen.
And as you were
talking about how
this can be a generational
passing along,
this introduces then
violence into a family that's
under a great deal of stress.
And that's where perhaps
the next generation,
the children of refugees,
could potentially--
they've witnessed violence.
They've seen that already.
They've experienced
it in their family.
So that could
reoccur, I suppose.
JEROME MCDONNELL:
Brooke Stearns Lawson,
I really enjoyed that list
you gave there-- elitism,
exclusion, capacity deficit,
state, unmet expectations,
corruption.
So we just change the social
norms and everything is fixed.
Is there somebody-- can you tell
us something about your work
in southern Africa and a
place that is kind of doing--
is getting somewhere
with some of this?
BROOKE STEARNS LAWSON: Yeah.
No.
I think it's--
I mean, I think that's
a lot of the work
that aid tries to work on.
A lot of it is
difficult because--
and this is one of
the places where
I think we need to be modest--
if you're trying to address
something like elitism,
that's a difficult problem to
fix with foreign assistance.
That's embedded cultural norms.
I think where there's
greater progress
is more on the chronic
capacity deficits.
And that's where a lot
of the foreign assistance
support to health systems,
to education systems--
particularly when it is in
support of the government,
when it is supporting the
government carrying out
its functions, is
really critical.
And that's something that
USAID does globally and has
robust programming, whether
it's the President's Malaria
Initiative or the
President's Emergency Program
for AIDS Relief,
Pepfar, PMI, or work
that we're doing
with Rotary on polio.
That type of systemic
change and helping
to increase the legitimacy
and effectiveness
of the government, when
it's done through government
institutions, I think
can go a long way.
There's also a lot
of good work that
can be done on
anti-corruption and that's
being done around the world.
And those are kind
of the two areas
where I think foreign
assistance is most effective.
Elitism and exclusion are
a little more difficult.
We also do a lot
of work-- and Gary,
you were talking about
the Kenya elections.
The US government obviously
is investing a lot now
in the current elections
and the upcoming--
the pending future
Kenya elections as well,
given the outcome of the last.
And that's like that moment
of political transition
where you have
unmet expectations.
There's a lot of
work that can be
done around having peaceful
dialogues and discussions
around politics, a lot of things
I think that can be usefully
applied in the United
States as well that I
think are really critical.
JEROME MCDONNELL: I want to
get the questions rolling.
If people want to pop
up to the microphone,
make a nice orderly line, and
we'll kind of roll through--
BROOKE STEARNS
LAWSON: Peacefully.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Peacefully.
We're going to have a peaceful
question and answer session.
We could do that.
And ma'am, if you want
to just fire right up.
AUDIENCE: The
United States today
has more people behind bars
than virtually any other country
almost in the world, more than
Stalin's authoritarian regime
that we so deplored
ever sent to the gulag.
Would you all care
to address how
that may impact on
the violence not only
in how we're trying
to deal with it,
but whether it really makes
things far, far worse?
JEROME MCDONNELL:
Mass incarceration.
Everybody is looking
at you, Gary.
GARY SLUTKIN: Oh, really?
Does anybody else
want to take it?
JEROME MCDONNELL: I
heard you, Christopher.
Want to?
GARY SLUTKIN: Chris, do
you want to say something?
CHRISTOPHER
BLATTMAN: I've worked
for two months in Chicago.
[LAUGHTER]
ANNE RICHARD: I have
one short thing to say,
which is you know how sometimes
we look back on the Middle Ages
and we go, leeches,
what were they thinking?
I think mass incarceration is
going to be one of those things
that, in the future,
people will look back at us
and say, what were
they thinking?
And you know, that it was
sort of an open secret
that rape was happening and
people were so ill-treated
and they were like finishing
schools for criminals.
I'm not at all authorized or
knowledgeable about this issue.
But I thought I'd say that.
BROOKE STEARNS LAWSON: I think
globally they already are.
I think globally people
already are looking at the US
and saying--
JEROME MCDONNELL: Oh, yeah.
CHRISTOPHER BLATTMAN:
And I will say,
two days ago,
David Rudman, who's
I think a really
interesting sort of quasi
scholarly, quasi policy
person, he now leads a think
tank whose name is escaping me.
Put out-- if you just
Google David Rudman mass
incarceration.
What he did is he reanalyzed
maybe the 40 studies out there
that we have.
And all of this from across
the US, different states,
different time periods.
And it overturns a lot of
mistaken beliefs and, I think,
finds just absolutely
no evidence that this
is achieving what people
thought it might achieve,
which is reduce crime.
So in terms of--
maybe the only thing I
can add is the sum total
of dozens of studies
and all the data
seems to suggest this is not
achieving the whole purpose
for what it set out.
So this suggests that
Anne maybe right.
GARY SLUTKIN: This is a scandal.
And this is also a
demonstration of how
data does not drive policy.
So there's all this
data, all this data,
and there isn't, as
Chris just pointed out,
this is not an evidence
based approach.
So-- right
AUDIENCE: I have
one other question.
GARY SLUTKIN: Can I just
add to one thing I had--
a person's rap sheet
should be viewed
as a list of untreated moments.
It should be seen in this way.
AUDIENCE: I was a prosecutor
in Cook County in '74.
And then the murder rate was
every bit as high as it is now.
So what happens?
You alluded to it,
but maybe you could
spend more time, Mr. Slutkin,
talking about what drives it up
and what drives it down.
GARY SLUTKIN: Violence
has an epidemic nature.
It drives itself up and
then it exhausts itself.
I mean, it may have
initiating factors.
In the US curves, you can say
some things about the '60s
and say some things
about the '80s and '90s
because there is a bump and
then there's another bump.
But it reverses itself when it
becomes a mathematical issue
as to when there is a
certain ratio of what
we call susceptibles
and people resistant.
And many wars end
in this way, too.
So I don't want to go too much
more into that as to how--
there's a lot of--
I can't come to the bottom
line on how this started.
I can name some factors.
Chris probably could, and
probably others could, too.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Thank
you for your question.
AUDIENCE: Good evening.
My name is Steven Akana.
Glad to have another
Peace Fellow on the panel.
I'm going to make a comment
and then ask a question.
One of the things that I didn't
see properly problematized
is the role of the state
in driving everything
that you've just mentioned.
So could you please provide
me with a proper explanation
that the state plays in
perpetuating violence?
Secondly, in terms of the
peace-building approach,
can you speak more to the agency
that you get in communities
that have, as you indicated,
longtime coexistence to solve
the problems and what we are
doing, especially in USAID,
to enhance the capacity that is
actually there because they've
got experience of
resolving conflict
and to put the
resources in their hands
to resolve the conflicts that
they experience because they
know them.
Thank you.
BROOKE STEARNS LAWSON:
Those are great questions.
And absolutely the role of
state in perpetrating violence
is a huge problem and
challenge on the continent.
Also the level of effectiveness
for the state to mitigate
is one of the key
determinants of whether--
there's poverty everywhere.
In places where the
state is effectively
playing its role in
an equitable manner,
there typically is not violence.
There's a much lower
risk of violence.
In places where the state's
not, there is higher.
And I'll just say one
thing, and I said this
at a Rotary Peace Convention
in a district in California.
When I'm in Africa, when
I'm in sub-Saharan Africa,
if I see a security official--
a police, military,
whatever it is--
I go the other way.
I think that that is
an opportunity for me
to be at risk.
When I'm in the US, if I need
directions, if I need help,
I will seek out or go
to a security official.
Not everybody in
the US can say that.
And that's a huge
problem in my opinion.
So absolutely the role
of the state is critical,
and in many of the instances,
it's either state oppression,
not respect for human rights
like you brought up earlier,
that can be some of the
key causes for violence.
And in terms of local
solutions, I completely agree.
I think that the international
community recognizes
the importance and
the value, including
within USAID, of
supporting local solutions
and facilitating local change.
We've supported a group
of violence prevention
and reduction in Monrovia,
where Chris has worked.
Whenever I go out and
do conflict assessments,
we try to meet with local
groups to figure out
how to best support them.
To be honest with you,
the foreign assistance
infrastructure is
clumsy, but we're
trying to get better at
being able to provide
our resources in a way that
has the accountability that we
require for Congress, for
the American taxpayers,
but also to be getting down
to those local solutions.
And so it's a
layered process where
we have implementing
partners who
then try to find local
partners and advance that.
But it's something that
we definitely need to be,
and are, working to
try to be better at.
JEROME MCDONNELL:
There's something
that's so obvious that
maybe we haven't said it,
but there's a lot of
societies that don't have guns
in their population
and then there's
a lot of societies that do.
The ones that do seem to be--
they have a little more problem
with peace breaking out.
And we've got a lot of them and
so do a lot of other places.
And--
CHRISTOPHER BLATTMAN:
Well, you know,
so Liberia doesn't have
a lot of guns right now.
It also doesn't have a state.
So I mean the other
side of the equation
is, like most of the places I
work, I wish there was a state.
There's mass incarceration.
I mean, it's not a fate
I would wish on anyone.
But in Liberia, there's
no incarceration.
There's no--
If someone needs to go to jail,
there's no money for the jail.
You Your relative would
have to camp out literally
in order to feed you.
And if that doesn't happen, then
they'll have to release you.
And so strategically,
you never camp out.
So that brings its
own host of problems.
So as with all
things, punishment
might not be the first and
best and only answer, but also
the state--
most of the places I work,
there's not enough state.
And this is a problem.
But it also surely
helps that one
of the things the post-war
demobilization did in Liberia
was get rid of most of the guns.
And that means
maybe there's just
as many muggers or just as many
young men from rival groups
punching each other
in the nose, getting
into disputes and fights.
There's just a limit to
how much damage you can do.
And that may in turn limit
the need and the desire,
the injustice that
drives retaliation.
So I personally believe that.
But, I don't know.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Let's
take another question.
AUDIENCE: Good evening.
Thank you.
Very interesting points of
view with regards to the peace.
My name is Patrice
Amasabi from the Consul
General for El Salvador.
And I wanted to get to the back
countries of the United States.
Central America and
El Salvador, it's
become a very complicated issue.
And we have to go
way back in the '80s
to see where all
this violence came
from with the so-called
peace accords.
Since the internal conflict
of El Salvador that
lasted more than a decade ended,
everybody picked up their-- you
know, it's like, there's
peace in El Salvador.
We're leaving.
But a culture of
violence was left behind.
People were used
to seeing people
in the streets, killings.
And since the economic
opportunity was not there,
people decided to migrate
to the United States.
So there was a
disintegration of family.
So some immigration
reliefs were giving
for a temporary protected
status for Salvadorians,
but only the adults were here.
The children were left behind.
Some moved to LA.
So there was a spread of gangs.
I remember-- I've been doing
this for 20 something years--
I remember when that
Bush administration,
we said to administration, the
gang problem is becoming bad.
And it's going to become worse.
Now we have multi corporations
that they work together
with the different countries,
from Mexico to the Northern
Triangle of Central America.
They deal with money laundering.
They deal with drugs.
They deal with
human trafficking.
And we all know that
the long-term solution
is from education and
building a peace culture
and giving the newer
generations opportunities
through education.
But the short-term, where
does the short-term--
it's like, because the
jails are overcrowded.
Gangs.
I've heard recordings
when people
come to the consulate
via WhatsApp
telling the person that's
here, if you don't send me--
and this is a low wage person
earning minimum salary--
telling them, if you
don't send me $6,000,
so-and-so is going
to get killed.
And they go forward and
do them if they don't, you
know, just to give them some
proof that they're telling
them what's going to happen.
JEROME MCDONNELL: So you
want short-term solutions.
AUDIENCE: Short-term solutions.
And one thing, one
correction with when
the minors were coming in
the crisis in the border,
it was a market thing.
There were already-- and they
were not just turned back.
The Office of
Refugee Resettlement
worked really closely
with our government.
So it's been successful,
the family reunification.
I just wonder, what is
the short-term solutions
or the possible short-term
solutions that you see?
JEROME MCDONNELL: The El
Salvador one is a fantastic
example of cyclical--
I mean, boy, we were sending
the gangs, and it's amazing.
Do you have any
thoughts on that?
GARY SLUTKIN: Yeah.
Three things quickly.
One, what you've demonstrated
is contagious nature of violence
independent of what
people are calling causes,
because the Civil War in several
of these Central American
countries-- it's also the
case in South Africa--
civil war stopped and the
violence continued to increase.
So the reason was gone.
So it was the continuous--
the kids don't know
what reasons are,
no matter what they're saying.
They are doing it
because they're
continuing to do it
because they think this
is what is expected of them.
These guys who are
doing violence,
they, if you sit down
with them quietly,
they don't want to
be doing it and they
don't want it done to them.
It's a much easier behavior
to change than sexual behavior
where they don't want
to wear that thing
and they don't want to go
from six partners to two.
In violence, they
really don't want it.
And even with these two
very well-known groups
that are involved in cartel-ish
work and drug work and things
like that, it has been possible
to reduce the level of violence
that they're doing with each
other and within themselves
by over 80%.
And they have even
come out, some of them
at public meetings, and
say, I've never wanted--
I never thought I could
get out of this life
and I never thought my kid
could get out of this life.
A leader said this
at a soccer match.
I can see a way for my kid now.
Because they want
it interrupted.
They may not want to change
their other businesses,
but they don't want to be
doing the violence actually.
And so when they're socially
off the hook for doing it,
this event and then the
next, the retaliations,
this is showing up.
This has just been published,
the work on Honduras.
I think it's on our web site.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Anybody else
want a crack at El Salvador?
Let's take another question.
Maybe we'll do one more
question after this.
Ma'am?
AUDIENCE: So I had a question
specifically for Gary.
Given that you've
talked so much about
this epidemiological model of
viewing violence, I guess--
and spoke to
essentially how not just
how acts of violence
directly against people,
but how having friends who
are engaged in violence
is such a factor and it
effectively creates this person
to person model of
spreading violence,
how do you feel
this is applicable
to different but similar cases?
For example, substance
abuse, where perhaps it's
not an action done
to someone else,
but it is still something
that's very influenced by peers.
Like how do you feel
like this model can
be applied to other
situations, and do you
feel that other organizations
are applying this model?
GARY SLUTKIN: So
did you say talk
to cops in the first
sentence or no?
No.
I just misheard it.
But the substance abuse, which
is a behavior, and smoking,
which is a behavior, have a
slightly additional problem,
which is that they
are addictive.
However, and you may have seen
this article in The New York
Times, and Nick
Kristof showed, is
that you get a 98% less death
from substance abuse problems
when you're using a public
health approach then when
you're using an approach
that looks at it as a crime.
JEROME MCDONNELL: Enforcement.
GARY SLUTKIN: Right.
1/50th, which is
2% of the problem.
This is they experiment
and experience of Portugal,
but there are other
European countries that
are doing it to lesser extents.
Doing what?
Using public health approaches.
What is a public
health approach?
It means someone who
is acceptable to you,
who you trust, who you know,
helping you figure out,
in one way or another, how
to either not do the violence
or how to come off
the drugs or how
to change your sexual
businesses or whatever it is.
Of course, there is actual
medical stuff required here
on the substance abuse stuff.
People need to go
onto actual treatment.
AUDIENCE: And if I could quickly
ask a question more generally
directed at the panel?
Several of you spoke to
how the media greatly
influences how people
perceive violence,
how people approach violence.
And generally, we--
Gary, you spoke to the
idea of social norms
being very, very
influential on people
in how they end up deciding
to engage or not engage.
And I guess I was
just wondering,
what do you all feel
is the role of NGOs
or governmental organizations
in perhaps influencing
media culture that in turn
influences these social norms?
JEROME MCDONNELL: Can any
of you guys fix the media?
ANNE RICHARD: Well, it's clearly
the media's fault, right?
[LAUGHTER]
I think that starting
with the death
of Alan Kurdi, a little
toddler who washed up--
his body washed up on
the shore of Turkey--
the media really
did start to provide
a lot more coverage of who is on
the move around the world, who
are these people, and have
done a lot of good reporting
on families and
what brought them.
And you can find--
and they sort of
put a human face on what
had been sort of seen
as masses of young men
headed towards Europe.
We're next.
And so I think that's been, for
me, a really positive thing.
But it took this photo of this
child dying-- unless children
died before and after.
But that particular
photo for some reason
really went viral and
caught a lot of attention.
And so I think there
are journalists
who have done similar good
in terms of their reporting
on this.
GARY SLUTKIN: I want
to say something
on this if other people--
CHRISTOPHER BLATTMAN:
You know, one--
it's interesting.
When I-- in the US, when you
see NGOs and civil society
organizations operating
in a place like Chicago,
I think they're from here often.
Maybe they're from those
communities in many cases.
They certainly understand
how things work.
And I think they
look at something
like mass incarceration
or they look at something
like the shooting
violence and they
recognize, at least
on some level,
that there's a bigger
political problem here.
This isn't like a
technical problem
where they just need
to apply a solution.
And I think therefore
civil society
has been really good at getting
that message out in the media.
And indeed a lot of the
media are from here.
They might be from the city.
They're certainly from
the country very often.
And they get it.
And what I find in
most other countries
where the civil society sector--
certainly the civil society
sector with money comes
from other countries.
There are people like us who
are working, maybe spending
our careers over there.
Maybe you work in one
place for a long time,
but often you're working in
a place for a short time.
And there's a set
of blinders that
get put on to the politics.
And you start to
treat every problem--
every outbreak of violence,
every war, every epidemic--
as a technical
problem to be solved
and you kind of ignore
the political problem.
So I'm more worried
about when we're
outside of our home
sphere than when
we're inside our homes sphere.
One of the first places
I worked at conflict
was northern Uganda just at the
very tail end of a 20 year war
where the entire population
of the northern part
of the country--
two million people
had been internally
displaced into camps.
But the most horrific camps--
possibly one of the most
destitute, horrific places
ever to be inhabited by humanity
in the history of humanity.
These were terrible places.
And the NGOs were,
in some sense,
unknowingly complicit in this.
This was, in some sense,
a forced displacement
by the government as a
counterinsurgency strategy.
And the World Food Program
fed them and organizations
helped deliver the basic
things to keep them alive.
And researchers like me went
and played some part in this.
And all of us were
oblivious to this role
we were playing in
this giant war crime
because we were blind
to the politics.
So I look at what's happened--
You may have a very low
opinion of the media
and a very low opinion of what
the civil society sector does
here, but it's just--
if only this existed in a place.
So those of you who are going
abroad, who work abroad,
I think you have to strive every
day to take off those blinders
and try to see the
political problems
and try to understand
how you could unknowingly
become a part of the problem.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
JEROME MCDONNELL:
Gary, you want to--
GARY SLUTKIN: Yeah, I just
wanted to add to this.
This is the value of NPR.
And if the media could be
educators instead of what
they're doing--
so I work with the
Global Program on AIDS
at World Health.
The Director of
the Global Program,
Jonathan Mann, who has
subsequently passed away
in an airplane crash, he did
something that most of us
are not doing.
Right away, he went to the
media in European capitals
and in US capitals and he said--
he didn't say, cover me,
how great we're doing,
whatever, whatever.
He said, I need your help.
I need you as educators,
because the world's population
has this thing wrong.
That's what he said.
They have this thing wrong.
They're looking at
AIDS as bad people.
Sound familiar?
This is what Jonathan did.
He said, they're looking
at them as bad people
and they want to exclude them.
They want to force them out.
They want to imprison them.
They want to put letters
on their forehead.
They don't know how
it's transmitted
and whether they can hug,
whether they can kiss,
whether they can live with,
whether they can touch.
They don't know how to protect
themselves, what to do.
He said, I need your help.
You following me?
And that would be the
ideal role of media.
And he got their help by nature
of his power of persuasion
and his personality and so on.
And we need that here with
violence, because violence
is scientifically different than
the way it is being portrayed
and solutions exist.
Not just what we're doing.
And the whole health
system needs to step up--
not just to curb violence,
which is just a part of it.
The hospitals, they need
to be doing responses
and then follow up
and then interaction
to prevent retaliation.
The pieces of this exist--
some of it in Boston,
some it in Los Angeles.
But they're not
doing this educating
of what this problem really
is, who the people really are,
how they got it, and
how it's preventable.
Instead, they're picking
up press releases
for easy headlines and
for viewership obviously.
JEROME MCDONNELL: I want
to thank the Harris School
and I want to thank
Rotary International
for putting this together and
letting me drive the bus today.
I want to thank our
outstanding panelists.
Gary Slutkin here, the founder
and CEO of Cure Violence.
Anne Richard, former
Assistant Secretary of State
for Population,
Refugees, and Migration.
Christopher Blattman
from the Pearson School.
And Brooke Stearns Lawson
from USAID, the Africa Bureau.
And thank you all.
And thank you for coming and
paying attention to this.
[APPLAUSE]
