WEBVTT - David Miliband on Global Disorder, Labour’s ‘Mistakes’ and Deploying $1 Billion on Crises 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:07.240 Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:13.760 We've got to recognize that the recession of democracy is 0:00:14.080 --> 0:00:17.759 a phenomenon and the international rule of law is in 0:00:17.840 --> 0:00:18.680 retreat as well. 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:25.480 David Milliband, once a top British politician and now running 0:00:25.600 --> 0:00:29.160 one of the world's largest aid organizations, I think was 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:31.600 the elephant in the room in this conversation is the 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:32.519 United States. 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:34.240 What comes to my mind is that the US was 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:37.000 the anchor of the global system. Didn't mean that it 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.519 played a role in every part of it, didn't mean 0:00:39.520 --> 0:00:41.880 that it got everything right, but it was the anchor. 0:00:41.920 --> 0:00:43.920 And the anchor has been pulled up avour. 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:49.720 From Bloomberg Weekend, this is the Michelle Hussein Show. I'm 0:00:49.720 --> 0:00:57.080 Michelle Hussein. I'm sure there's never been an easy time 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:01.680 to run an aid agency, but this moment feels particularly charged. 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:05.559 There are millions of people around the world in desperate need, 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:09.480 and at the same time, powerful governments are cutting back 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:13.160 on their giving. That's the world that David Milliband has 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:17.800 to navigate every day. He's been running the International Rescue 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:21.000 Committee for more than a decade now. It's a New 0:01:21.080 --> 0:01:24.679 York based organization. It works in the US and around 0:01:24.680 --> 0:01:28.160 the world. And he came to the job as a politician. 0:01:28.680 --> 0:01:32.760 He'd been Britain's Foreign secretary, the top diplomat, seen as 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.600 a future prime minister, and then he had a shock 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:39.720 in twenty ten when in a Labor leadership election his 0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:44.440 party chose his brother over him. That's a long time 0:01:44.480 --> 0:01:46.720 ago now, and he has built a new career with 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:50.480 energy and passion. But his old friends in Labor are 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.400 now in power in the UK and that government, like others, 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:58.600 is cutting back on foreign aid. So obviously, when he 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:01.240 came into the studio in Life London, I wanted to 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:04.960 know how he feels about that. There is, as you 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:09.520 might expect, British political chat in this conversation, and David 0:02:09.560 --> 0:02:13.760 Millibound also talks about his old boss, Tony Blair. I'd 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:17.400 also been thinking though about his background, and it's linked 0:02:17.440 --> 0:02:21.119 to his work now, how his parents, both Jewish, had 0:02:21.240 --> 0:02:25.919 narrow escapes from Nazi occupied Europe as children, and that's 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.200 where this conversation begins. 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:34.840 My dad's family story involved a lot of trauma and tragedy. 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.480 But he came to the UK in nineteen forty sixteen 0:02:38.560 --> 0:02:41.680 year old became a student. He thought it was ridiculous 0:02:41.680 --> 0:02:44.360 to be studying in Cambridge instead of fighting fascism, so 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.440 he joined the Royal Navy, and despite the trauma there 0:02:47.480 --> 0:02:50.079 and he was not a sort of himself as a 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:52.760 heroic figure in the war effort. There was a lot 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:54.079 of talk about it. There was a lot of talk 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:58.960 about how his mother and sister survived a call to 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:03.120 report to Brussels railway station, where many of their relatives 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:04.160 did and were never seen again. 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:06.320 And he had just got out literally in the last 0:03:06.400 --> 0:03:08.240 chance till his father's chance. 0:03:08.440 --> 0:03:11.960 His mother and sister were saved effectively by a Catholic 0:03:11.960 --> 0:03:14.840 family south of Brussels. So on his side there was 0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.400 more discussion, including of forty three family members that he 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.960 lost in the Holocaust. On my mother's side, she found 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:23.959 it much more difficult to talk about it. In fact, 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:25.639 she did didn't talk about it. 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:28.480 Did She spend much of the war in hiding d 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:30.880 She lived through Nazi occupation. 0:03:31.080 --> 0:03:33.079 She was younger, so she was born in nineteen thirty four. 0:03:33.240 --> 0:03:36.120 My dad was born in nineteen twenty four, and so 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:40.640 for her hidden in a convent first of all, hidden 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:44.000 then by a family that they knew in Warsaw, so 0:03:44.080 --> 0:03:46.600 it was and then she lost her father in a 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:50.360 concentration camp, and her mother sent her just as a 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:52.960 twelve year old to the UK in nineteen forty six 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:55.080 on her own to say was stay as part of 0:03:55.120 --> 0:03:58.280 a group of Jewish kids who were sent actually orphan. 0:03:58.120 --> 0:03:59.440 Kids start a new life. 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.600 Yeah, And I think that for her it was just 0:04:02.760 --> 0:04:05.360 too the trauma was too great, so she didn't talk 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:07.920 about it. So I think I once wrote, the first 0:04:07.960 --> 0:04:11.600 refugees I ever met were my parents, and that's the truth. 0:04:11.680 --> 0:04:15.560 And they did want to give us the security that 0:04:15.560 --> 0:04:19.640 they didn't have. But there was this slightly bifurcated. One 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:21.440 part of the story filled in, another part of the 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:25.640 story less filled in. Ironically, when I went to apply 0:04:25.880 --> 0:04:29.120 to be the CEO of the International Rescue Committee, they said, 0:04:29.360 --> 0:04:31.440 why do you want this job? You're in politics at 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:33.960 the moment, I was a backbench MP. I said, well, one, 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:38.560 I like really difficult problems and how you deliver humanitarian 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.960 aid in Syria between the ASTAD and government, the Russians, 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.159 branches of ALCAI. It is a really difficult problem we 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:47.039 want to work on that. I'd like to work on 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:51.320 difficult problems. Secondly, I said, an organization founded by Albert 0:04:51.360 --> 0:04:54.320 Einstein in the nineteen thirties. You don't get better shoulders 0:04:54.360 --> 0:04:58.159 to stand on than that founded by alber Einstein, who'd 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:02.839 written letters to Ellen Roosevelt pleading with her to persuade 0:05:02.880 --> 0:05:06.320 her husband, the President, to let Jews and others from 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:08.719 Europe come into America and failed in that, and so 0:05:08.760 --> 0:05:11.080 set up the International Rescue Committee really as a response 0:05:11.120 --> 0:05:13.800 to that. But then thirdly, I said, my parents were 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:17.400 both refugees, and so some of the clients of the 0:05:17.400 --> 0:05:20.000 International Rescue Committee are people who fled across borders. Others 0:05:20.040 --> 0:05:22.880 are still stuck in war zones. And so I felt 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.120 in some way, I guess I was closing a bit 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:28.880 of a circle, helping people of different generation, different religion probably, 0:05:29.360 --> 0:05:33.080 but whose circumstances I could at least relate to through 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:34.440 the experience of my parents. 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:38.440 And it's absolutely understandable that that trauma that your mother experienced, 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:40.560 that it was very difficult for her to talk about it. 0:05:40.760 --> 0:05:43.680 Did you just understand that and navigate around it, or 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:47.040 do you remember asking her and trying to find out. 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:50.200 I think we must have picked up the vibes. I 0:05:50.200 --> 0:05:53.120 think I don't remember doing the equivalent of a Bloomberg 0:05:53.200 --> 0:05:56.640 or Today program interview, trying to pump her the for 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:00.720 the answers. Her mother was still alive. I remember my grandmother, 0:06:01.160 --> 0:06:04.560 but obviously different people take it in different ways and 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.000 come through learning different lessons. 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:09.640 I guess she named you, didn't she after her father? 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.119 Your grandfather, Your murdered grandfather was David. 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.040 Yes, he was David Kozak. And actually there was a 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:18.160 certain element of closure, including for her. In twenty sixteen, 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.520 out of the blue, I got an email from a 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:27.520 German voluntary historical society saying, we think we've now concluded 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:32.880 our work about the Heilfingen concentration camp, and we're convinced 0:06:32.880 --> 0:06:35.560 that we've now located the records that show that your 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.160 grandfather was brought here from Auschwitz in November nineteen forty four, 0:06:39.200 --> 0:06:42.960 and he was killed in January nineteen forty five. And 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:47.040 we've done that for many of those who lost their 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:48.880 lives here, and we're going to have a ceremony to 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:50.920 mark this place. And so I was able to go 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:55.960 with Brotherred and with my mother and her sister to finally, 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:00.760 sixty years later, seventy years later, mark the the loss 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:01.520 of her father. 0:07:02.000 --> 0:07:03.680 How did you feel standing there? 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:08.160 I felt the weight of terrible trauma. Really, I looked 0:07:08.200 --> 0:07:10.800 at my mother who was ten years old when she 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:13.560 lost her father. She hadn't seen him for four years, 0:07:14.040 --> 0:07:16.800 and you just think, there but for the grace of God. Really, 0:07:16.840 --> 0:07:21.960 I mean, it's a feeling of the emptiness on one 0:07:22.000 --> 0:07:23.960 side and the fortune on the other. 0:07:24.240 --> 0:07:27.520 And also January nineteen forty five, when camps are being 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:31.960 liberated elsewhere, I mean, it's nearly at the end. 0:07:32.280 --> 0:07:38.240 Yeah, And it's obviously far from the only story of 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.080 this kind, so one doesn't want to absorb it as 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:41.880 a personal story. 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.560 But I wondered, you do you think about this heritage 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:49.400 when you come face to face with people in desperate situations, 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:50.000 which you do. 0:07:50.400 --> 0:07:53.400 You don't need family heritage for your head and your 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:58.200 heart to just bond with that person in a really 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:02.520 I think profound and way. And so I think that 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:07.440 I wouldn't want to overplay that. There is one element though, 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:10.760 which maybe relates to something we'll talk about later. Whenever 0:08:10.800 --> 0:08:12.560 any of us grew up, we think what we're experiencing 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.520 is normal. And I grew up in a relatively middle 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:19.520 class family in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties in London, 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:23.640 in Leeds, and that seemed like the norm. We lived 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:27.480 in a democratic country, we live in the country of liberties. 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:31.240 With all that's going on in the world today, suddenly 0:08:31.280 --> 0:08:37.000 the period nineteen forty five to two thousand and twenty 0:08:37.200 --> 0:08:40.160 six in Western Europe, and certainly the period of the 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.160 Cold War and the immediate post Cold War doesn't look 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:45.480 like the norm. It looks like the exception. And so 0:08:45.559 --> 0:08:47.760 these questions that are being raised by all sorts of 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:52.160 people about remembering that it's a narrow corridor, the one 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:55.040 between a state that's too strong and is dictatorial and 0:08:55.080 --> 0:08:56.920 a state that's too weak and you've got anarchy. I 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.040 was lucky enough to grow up in this narrow corridor. 0:08:59.120 --> 0:09:01.360 Well, as it happens, speaking of how the world has changed, 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.000 I found myself reading back a speech you gave in 0:09:04.080 --> 0:09:06.839 two thousand and seven when you were British Foreign Secretary, 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.840 and it's well, it's fascinating to read it now, and 0:09:10.840 --> 0:09:12.559 I'm not doing it in a kind of hindsight is 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:13.840 a wonderful thing kind of way. 0:09:13.920 --> 0:09:15.280 Hope I had a bit of foresights in there. 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:19.840 Well, you'll certainly there is much to celebrate. You say, 0:09:19.840 --> 0:09:23.640 there are fewer countries at war than ever before, more trade, 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:28.440 more travel, more connections around the globe, aspiration unleashed. Do 0:09:28.440 --> 0:09:30.760 you remember standing there on that stage and feeling like 0:09:30.800 --> 0:09:33.280 there was so much that Britain could do on the 0:09:33.280 --> 0:09:33.880 world stage. 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:35.560 Well, I remember standing that. I don't remember what I 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:39.880 said quite in anything like the detail that you. I remember. 0:09:39.920 --> 0:09:42.040 It was the first time I think I spoken to 0:09:42.080 --> 0:09:48.320 lay body conferences from Minister. It was still a optimistic time. 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.439 It was before the financial crisis. It was after the 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:57.680 really difficult problems in Iraq. Afghanistan was very difficult, but 0:09:57.679 --> 0:10:02.400 there was still a feeling. It was after Vladimir Putin's 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:05.440 Munich Security Conference speech in February two thousand and seven 0:10:05.480 --> 0:10:07.880 when he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:10.720 was the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century. So there 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.960 were some the drums were beating, but I think that 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:17.679 there was still a sense of a tide of history. 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:21.679 Remember you'd got the enormous wave of democratization of the 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:25.280 nineteen nineties, never mind the release of Nelson Mandela and 0:10:25.400 --> 0:10:29.840 the end of apartheid, and the global system had just 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:32.960 united behind the idea of the responsibility to protect, which 0:10:33.000 --> 0:10:36.840 was the idea if states were oppressing their own citizens, 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.880 it wasn't just their business, and that state sovereignty was 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:41.960 a foundation of the international system. 0:10:41.679 --> 0:10:44.600 Age intervention, so were human rights. Yeah, of course it 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:46.840 wouldn't have been that great if you were listening to 0:10:46.840 --> 0:10:49.040 that speech and you were in Iraqi or afghan civilian. 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:52.000 I wondered, though, even as you look back, and even 0:10:52.040 --> 0:10:56.560 as we make this contrast, whether you think Mark Carney 0:10:56.640 --> 0:11:00.000 was right when he at Davos talked about the idea 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:03.200 of the rules based international order being partially false. You 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:06.880 were at Davos yourself that there were always exceptions to this, 0:11:07.200 --> 0:11:09.720 There was a version of mitis right then as well. 0:11:09.800 --> 0:11:12.360 It was a very significant and very important speech, And 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.560 I think not just that we should recognize that he 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:19.960 was correct to call out that the rules based order 0:11:20.520 --> 0:11:22.960 operated with more than you use the word exceptions. I 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:25.920 think that's probably generous. I wrote a piece in Foreign 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:28.800 Affairs two and a half years ago which said that 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.760 the Ukraine War had united the West but divided us 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.520 from the rest, And I asked why did it divide 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:36.360 us from the rest? And the reason was that for 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:39.760 the rest, which are democratic countries like India and South 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:45.000 Africa and also undemocratic countries. They saw the emphasis on 0:11:45.360 --> 0:11:50.520 territorial integrity, on sovereignty as being given to an honored 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:52.840 in the Ukraine case, but not honored in enough other cases. 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:54.480 And there's a range of other ways in which. 0:11:54.360 --> 0:11:56.880 The rules based shooting Iraq, I have to say because 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:59.880 I was in South Asia when the all invasion of 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:03.880 Ukraine took place and I heard exactly this, your country 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:05.760 was part of an invasion. 0:12:05.760 --> 0:12:07.320 And of course two wrongs don't make it right, but 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:11.240 still it's right to say that it was honored in 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:13.160 the breach as well as in the observance the idea 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:14.760 of a rules based or Now the question then is 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.040 do you want to correct the breaches or do you 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:21.640 want to dispense with the honoring. And I still think 0:12:21.720 --> 0:12:25.080 that the idea that alongside the rights of states, there 0:12:25.080 --> 0:12:28.679 are rights of individuals, which was the essential lesson that 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:31.360 the post war pioneers took from the inter war period 0:12:31.400 --> 0:12:34.920 and from the rest of history. That's still an important lesson. 0:12:34.880 --> 0:12:36.640 I think was the elephant in the room in this 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:40.480 conversation is something directly about the United States. That is 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:42.439 the big change, isn't it in the last year. 0:12:42.480 --> 0:12:44.520 Well, it's not the only change. It's the biggest change yet, 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:46.560 and it's the biggest change in the last year. In 0:12:46.640 --> 0:12:49.440 the national security strategy that the Trump administration had put out, 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:52.200 they talk about themselves as America will no longer be Atlas, 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:56.080 quote unquote propping up the global system. That's not the 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:58.440 what came to my mind. What comes to my mind 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.600 is that the US was the anchor of global system. 0:13:01.720 --> 0:13:04.320 Didn't mean that it played a role in every part 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.200 of it, didn't mean that it got everything right, but 0:13:07.240 --> 0:13:08.959 it was the anchor. And the anchor has been pulled 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:13.640 up avowedly. The Trump administration are very consistent. They said 0:13:13.640 --> 0:13:16.280 in the campaign, we don't believe in this role for America. 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:18.720 But I'm afraid it's not only the US. We've got 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:27.199 to recognize that the recession of democracy is a phenomenon 0:13:27.559 --> 0:13:30.800 such that now there are more autocracies than democracies in 0:13:30.800 --> 0:13:33.920 the world today. That's significant. And then the international rule 0:13:33.960 --> 0:13:37.120 of law is in retreat as well, and so the 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.720 rights that were given to individuals in the UN Charter 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:46.520 and in Associated Conventions are in retreat. And so I 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:50.440 think this dual process, both of the international system and 0:13:50.880 --> 0:13:53.079 domestically is worth calling out. 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:54.839 And you live in the US. You live in New York. 0:13:54.920 --> 0:13:57.200 You made it your home since you began leading the 0:13:57.240 --> 0:14:01.040 IRC twelve years ago. Twelve years ago. What are the 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:04.400 conversations you have behind the scenes. Do you have any 0:14:05.000 --> 0:14:06.839 one in the Trump administration that you speak to. 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.000 Well, we talk to people in and around the administration. 0:14:09.160 --> 0:14:11.720 We knew yourself. Yeah, you've got that kind of access. 0:14:11.720 --> 0:14:14.120 I've talked to Yeah, but I don't want to exaggerate it. 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:16.720 We've had a partnership with the US government for a 0:14:16.800 --> 0:14:20.880 very long time. I think that there's a very strong 0:14:20.920 --> 0:14:25.600 feeling that they've got a mandate for what they self 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:28.680 describe as a revolution in America's role in the world, 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:33.320 where they want to think globally in economics, but they're 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:35.680 not going to think globally in politics. They're going to 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:39.280 think about the Western hemisphere in politics. And that's a 0:14:39.360 --> 0:14:42.960 very big change. And their messages get used to it. 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:47.320 This is the new dispensation that's been. 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:50.080 And what can you say in response? What's the way 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:51.520 that you can make the case. 0:14:51.840 --> 0:14:54.960 I make the case that it's in the strategic interest 0:14:55.000 --> 0:14:57.760 as well as the moral interest. If you say to people, 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.080 there are forty five million children under the age of 0:15:00.080 --> 0:15:03.560 who are acutely malnourished in the world today. There's no 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:05.120 one in the Trumpe adminisration who says, oh, that's a 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:07.480 good thing. That's not the response that you get. They say, 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.840 we're going to have to find better ways of reaching 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:12.920 those people, more efficient ways of reaching those people, more 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:15.720 effective ways, more impactful, and more innovative ways of reaching 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:20.880 those people. And so we try and find that landing 0:15:20.960 --> 0:15:23.760 zone for the conversation we have with them. 0:15:23.920 --> 0:15:25.800 And I do want to talk about those ideas because 0:15:25.800 --> 0:15:28.640 they're obviously very pressing, and I also want to talk 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:32.000 about the countries that are on your latest emergency watch list, 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:36.160 the crises of twenty twenty six. But you mentioned the 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:39.120 work that you have done with previous administrations as the 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:41.400 International Rescue Committee. A lot of that was around people 0:15:41.560 --> 0:15:45.240 coming across the southern border and arrangements for them, provision 0:15:45.360 --> 0:15:48.760 for them. What do you think of the way that 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:52.520 ICE has been behaving lately, the way that immigration rules 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:53.920 controls are being enforced. 0:15:54.000 --> 0:15:56.880 Well, just to be clear, we've been a major partner 0:15:57.080 --> 0:15:59.720 of the US government on refugee resettlement, which is the 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:06.080 aug organized transfer after very extensive vetting of people from 0:16:06.080 --> 0:16:08.760 around the world to the US over the last well 0:16:08.800 --> 0:16:11.880 since the nineteen eighty Refugee Act, and actually it was 0:16:11.960 --> 0:16:14.400 Ronald Reagan who admitted more refugees to America on that 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:19.120 route than any other president, and that's been stopped, so 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.520 that partnership is over. That program has been wound up. 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:26.240 We do also serve asylum seekers and migrants whove crossed 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:29.480 the border. We also have our own staff who have 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:32.720 got legal status and then are allowed to work. We 0:16:32.760 --> 0:16:35.560 don't work in Minnesota, just to be clear that we're 0:16:35.600 --> 0:16:37.960 in seventeen states, but not in the state of Minnesota, 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.320 so I can't speak to the details of that. What's 0:16:41.360 --> 0:16:45.560 clearly going on there is that all of the tensions 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:51.240 in America are exploding around this issue today. And what 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:53.080 I know from the people that we serve and the 0:16:53.120 --> 0:16:57.960 people that we employ is that they've fled real danger. 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.080 That's how they've got their assign and claim processed and 0:17:01.120 --> 0:17:06.240 being given the right to work. And they also are 0:17:07.440 --> 0:17:11.399 living with a question mark about their own status and 0:17:11.440 --> 0:17:14.879 whether or not their own story is going to be believed, 0:17:16.280 --> 0:17:19.840 and that creates a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. 0:17:20.240 --> 0:17:23.520 I also want to acknowledge that in the most recent 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:27.679 Minnesotan cases, we've been talking about American citizens. The issues 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:31.159 in respect of ICE are about American citizens, not just 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:33.040 assign seks and refugees. 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:55.800 Let's talk then about the countries that you've put on 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:58.720 your emergency watch list, like going into this new year, 0:17:59.359 --> 0:18:03.040 the tenes that you think the world twenty Okay, I 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:05.040 was on a list of the top test where clearly 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:08.120 they're not the only ones. The two crisis you put 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.520 right at the top, Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territory. 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.880 I was looking at the complexity of these, one Sudan 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:19.440 being a conflict in which more than ten other countries 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:24.080 are involved, the other one involving the Palestinians being generational. 0:18:24.680 --> 0:18:27.920 These appear so intractable. Is the only thing you can 0:18:28.000 --> 0:18:30.240 do to deal with the immediate need, rather than have 0:18:30.320 --> 0:18:33.040 any role in finding the ways to end these. 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:37.159 Yes, I mean, in short, remediation of desperate suffering is 0:18:37.200 --> 0:18:43.720 our business. Health or transanitation, nutrition, livelihoods, protection of women 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:46.520 from sexual violence, recovery of women from sexual violence. That's 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:50.080 our business. We plead guilty to treating the symptoms. By 0:18:50.119 --> 0:18:53.680 treating the symptoms, I would add, you can sometimes prevent 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:58.119 further destabilization down the road, because the one thing you 0:18:58.119 --> 0:19:01.439 can guarantee if you don't tend to humanitary crisis, it 0:19:01.480 --> 0:19:04.600 reinforces itself and produces further instability. 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:07.440 But you personally, when you go to these places and 0:19:07.720 --> 0:19:10.960 you sit with people and you hear their stories, it's 0:19:11.000 --> 0:19:12.879 such an important part of your work. It gives you 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:15.560 that first hand experience. You then go into places where 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:17.399 powerful people are and you can say I've seen this 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:21.679 with my own eyes. But be honest about how it 0:19:21.720 --> 0:19:24.920 feels to walk away from that. Do you also feel 0:19:25.560 --> 0:19:27.760 relieved sometimes to be able to walk away? 0:19:28.600 --> 0:19:30.240 I mean, actually, my team will tell you I want 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.440 to spend more time talking to the clients because clients 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:36.440 those light being the people in need, and more time 0:19:36.480 --> 0:19:39.760 talking to our staff who are often also in need. 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:43.119 So is your employee employ in that exactly? I mean, 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:45.080 We've got five hundred people working for us in Soudan, 0:19:45.760 --> 0:19:49.480 four hundred and eighty five of them are Sudanese. We've 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:50.720 got people who used to work for the Bank of 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:53.520 Kartoum who are now working for US as humanitar and 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:56.840 aid workers. I don't want to sound cheesy about it, 0:19:56.880 --> 0:20:01.359 but the courage, the tenacity, the ability to laugh sometimes 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.920 as well as to cry. I mean, that's the most 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:07.960 inspiring thing. Someone once said, if you look at the statistics, 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:09.480 you get depressed. If you talk to the people, you 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:09.920 have hope. 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.000 I agree with you. I've seen it as a journalist. 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:14.560 But I also know that there is that privilege of 0:20:14.600 --> 0:20:18.159 being able to walk away, and there are these moments 0:20:18.200 --> 0:20:21.560 which just make you think, I can't explain why, you know, 0:20:21.640 --> 0:20:24.320 my life is so fundamentally different. It's like it's the 0:20:24.400 --> 0:20:25.439 luck of the luck of the. 0:20:25.480 --> 0:20:27.160 Draw, of course, so you can explain it. I mean 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:28.200 that that's the. 0:20:28.720 --> 0:20:30.760 I can't deal with it, That's what I mean. Like, 0:20:30.840 --> 0:20:32.960 do you grapple with that or is it so much 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.520 a part of your work that this this is what 0:20:35.560 --> 0:20:36.120 you have to But. 0:20:36.680 --> 0:20:41.119 You remember the stories, you feel the sense of tragedy. 0:20:42.080 --> 0:20:44.560 But I'll never forget The first trip I did with 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:46.320 the interns for Rice Community was to go and meet 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:51.000 Syrian refugees in Jordan. And I went to talk to 0:20:51.000 --> 0:20:53.280 a group of women and I couldn't believe it. You know, 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:55.640 there was literally first what I was a man going 0:20:55.640 --> 0:20:58.720 into all women's group. They wanted to talk to me. 0:20:58.760 --> 0:21:02.439 They wanted to cry in front of me. They wanted 0:21:02.480 --> 0:21:06.359 to tell each of their stories, and I thought, my god, 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.000 this is you know what these people are going through? 0:21:09.040 --> 0:21:10.679 And then I said to them, do any of you 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:13.560 think you'll ever go back to Syria? And suddenly these 0:21:13.600 --> 0:21:19.120 beaming smiles came through the tears, the sense that they've 0:21:19.160 --> 0:21:22.479 not given up. So what conceivable grounds did I have 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:23.240 to do you. 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:24.879 Have any idea where that group are now? 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:27.800 Some have gone back to Syria. A million people have 0:21:27.840 --> 0:21:30.160 gone back to Syria. The ones in Jordan. I don't 0:21:30.200 --> 0:21:33.680 know those specific ones that that there have been returns 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:38.439 to Syria from Jordan. Of course, that doesn't mean you 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:40.639 overcome the loss or you don't then go and find 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:42.400 terrible further loss, because. 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:44.919 I've struggled with that part too, Keeping up and following 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:47.800 the stories of people who you've covered as a as 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:48.400