In this module, we shall be taking a page out of a book written by Dr. Abdu Sattar Abbasi and Razak Raj. So this is a book which is relevant to Islamic banking and finance, although a major focus is on Islamic ethics for contemporary workplaces. Let us read page number 141 and because the sentence doesn't finish at the end of page 141, we would be going slightly over to read page number 142 as well. Code of ethical business conduct. This is on page 141 of the book. There are two notable global bodies to provide guidelines for code of ethical business conduct in Islamic finance. Number one, accounting and auditing organization for Islamic financial institutions, AOFE. Number two, Islamic financial services board, IEFSB. I think it's a very good reference given that some people say that Islamic banks are not entirely ethical. Actually, there are two bodies which attempt to ensure that the business of Islamic banks and financial institutions adheres to some ethical standards. Accounting and auditing organization for Islamic financial institutions, AOFE outlines following structure of code of ethics for Islamic finance professionals. Number one, integrity. Islam is a religion that highly values integrity and makes it govern all acts. Islam also values the capability to perform duties which requires that the accountant and others who are in charge be competent and adequately qualified. This is confirmed in the Holy Quran. Verily, the best of men for you to hire is the strong, the trustworthy. Al-Quran, 28, 26. Number two, sincerity. This means the IFI, Islamic financial institution, professional should seek to obey Allah in performing his work and not to seek hypocrisy, fame, flattery, boasting or ostentation. Being sincere entails that the professional does not subject himself to external influences and pressures, but applies himself to his work on a religious commitment as well as a performance of his professional duty. Thus, his ordinary occupational and professional duty turns into a form of worship because one of the established sharia fundamentals is that good intention turns a habit into worship. Hence, the professional becomes worthy of reward from Almighty Allah, apart from the material gain and the usual praise he receives for his efforts without making such gains and praise his sole objective. So this is a very good read which emphasizes on the ethical dimension of the business of Islamic banking and finance. So one should conclude from here that Islamic banking and finance is not just technically, juristically good, it has a very explicit ethical dimension as well.


I'm going to bring up stage Mario. I think without Mario, we might not be holding this event today because of all his efforts and a strong supporter of all these FOSC Asia projects. Mario is the CEO of OpenTech. He's a technologist with 15 years of experience in leading international development teams in Europe, Asia, and India. Mario helped to get FOSC Asia started and works with the community of Susie AI and open hardware solutions, including Pocket Science Lab that you saw earlier. So Mario also steers the development of the Eventier Project. Mario, a lot of things on your plate. Most of us have interacted with Mario in some form or other, but few of us know that he's also very fascinated by drums, global music, and an interest in architecture. So Mario, please take over. OK, thank you very much. Yeah, so that was really nice to have this look into the back and to the past of what happened before. And I want to look a little bit forward as well. So I want to see what's the state of OpenTech and specifically here with what we do in the FOSC Asia community. So what we saw already in the talk of Humphuk, we are doing all of this. OpenTech, open source free software. We are working on open hardware. We share what we have openly. We have a lot of data projects also, like Suzie AI or LockLock. And of course, we try to document it and share all the knowledge that we gained openly. So we're doing all this, and I'm very proud of that. So we're making FOSC and OpenTech become true. We have run hundreds of events. And yeah, we already saw some screenshots here of the FOSC Asia Summit, the GNOME Asia Summit that we did as the first large event in 2009. But we are doing more. So I want to talk about what we will do from here on. More regional events connecting with more developers locally. Then we have built a very active developer community online. We are one of the top ranked projects among the top 100 organizations on GitHub, currently number 14. And yeah, we have more than 3,000 people. Of course, sometimes people are busy. But we see that people are coming back, even when they stopped their contribution after some time, because everyone can just register for an online channel. Important is that you see the contributions So on average, there's a much pull request around every 15 minutes on a FOSC Asia project. And you can check that out on GitHub. We also have a lot of chat channels, for example, on Gitter. And yeah, some channels have more than 2,000 members. It is sometimes challenging. So we're trying to break this up so it will not be overwhelmed by the communication. But a lot is going on. But what we have to do, numbers alone don't count. So in the next years, this year, we want to also focus more on quality software development. So we have a lot of projects. Not all the projects are ready for end consumers.  And it's actually not easy to make software work really for everyone. There are a lot of different configurations. App developers know that a lot of different mobile phones. Even like sometimes the same mobile phone, but with different versions, things are challenging. But we will work on this, and we will focus more on quality. Then we have built open hardware. So now we have it. We have the Pocket Science Lab. There will be talks here at the event. There will be a lot of showcases on Saturday. We have the Open Hardware Day with a morning breakfast. So that would be nice. But here, we are sharing the knowledge how we actually produce it. So we have gained this knowledge now. We have worked together in Germany with the Fraunhofer Institute. We are working with companies in China. We tell he flew over to Shenzhen. And we've learned a lot in this process. So we can do more. So what we will do is we create and produce more open hardware. For example, we have started the project, the NeuroLab Hardware Project. A few years ago, we had our friend Willi here from the Brandrino Project. They inspired us to also work in the Neuro area. And we will work very hard to make low-priced NeuroLab hardware that can help you to scan brain waves with EEG. We will make that happen. We're working on it. We already have a few prototypes here. They should be arriving, I think, tonight. So that's what we have done. And we have worked on best practices. Some people, like some students, maybe, they participated with us in GSOC projects. I don't know, years ago. Do we have any student here who worked with us in GSOC? OK, yeah. I see a few here and there. So if you have worked with First Asia, for example, in Coteed or Google some of code programs, you will see that a lot has changed over the year. And we have defined much more of our best practices. And it's much easier, because in the old times here to us, how I have to do this and so on. A lot of free software and open source community, they have their own best practices. And it's not always the same. And we have defined them. There's a very extensive blog article that was written together with Niranjan Rajendran. And he helped us a lot to define that. So we have best practices. We share them with other communities. And we want to do more here as well, not just sharing the best practices, but actually fostering more long-term partnerships by sharing resources as well. So not just best practices. We also need to share resources. So First Asia gets resources, not just coding programs. Now we also earn income more and more. For example, through the Pocket Science Lab sales, through other projects as well. And we want to find more ways to also include more developers. And we have incubated the project. So as Hon Phuk mentioned, we had a lot of talks after last year, because we said we want to make a big incubator and so on. So we met a lot of VCs, actually Sebastian Dekas. He helped us a lot also in this process. And the feedback was, OK, you have big plans. You want to do big things. How about you do in the next year one project, make this one project successful, and go to the market and sell it. Also the big difference to, like let's say, a First Asia incubator, we are not building the multi-billion dollar business that dominates the world. Our goal is to make sustainable, fast software and hardware happen. So we want to grow the ecosystem, and we want to have a sustainable income model. So that is different, and we achieve this now already with one project and the Pocket Science Lab. And we will do more. Make more projects ready for end users and make them ready to incubate. So for example, of course, the Susie AI project, some people said, oh, here on the web app, not so much is going on. Where are you? What's going on? It's a huge project to build an open source, free software, personal assistant. It's a big task, and in the last six months, we mainly focused on making the hardware work. So the goal is that people can take the hardware and walk around, and even that a lot of functionalities we want that they work offline. So big challenge, but we've achieved a lot. And here at the event, Michael and the developers will share their progress in the last few months. So another point. We have run coding programs. We have already mentioned this with thousands of developers, actually. We found models that scale. It's very difficult to scale. You can always communicate face to face, but how do you scale? Best practice and so on is a way. But what we will do is we also have to go out and meet people. Because just because you reach 1,000 people on a global scale is still just very few people. So the question is, how can we scale? And we can't scale without having face to face meetings. So this is the great way. And we have a lot of universities, for example, that want to host us. We were here in BVRIT in Heiderbad. And they had wonderful food. It was a nice event. It was Jougart Fest. This idea of making something work. And we transferred this idea to technology. So the Jougart Fest hacked the Indian way. And it was a very nice event. And in the evening, there was also a kind of ad hoc social gathering. And when we were sitting down, there was very nice food of the university. And then one of the teachers started to sing a song in Sanskrit. And I was so, so impressed. I didn't know that people still use. Guru Swami, are you here already? Are you here? Guru Swami. I think you will arrive later tonight. And I hope we can get him to sing at the social event, a song in Sanskrit. I never had heard it before. So very nice. So to sum it up, open tech is here. It solves people's problems. It is growing. And we are doing it. So we've achieved that. So let's continue to make Fawcett Asia an open tech around the world of reality. Thank you. Good. So Mario, that's really forward-looking. I think many things happening. And you've done well to bring it this far.


Good afternoon. Welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. My name is Andrew Schwartz and I'm our Vice President for External Relations here. I'd like to welcome you on behalf of not just the Center for Strategic and International Studies, but also the University of Miami and particularly the Knight Center for International Media. We have this wonderful partnership with the University of Miami that explores these Millennium Development Goals and issues associated with the Millennium Development Goals. Many of you have been to our series before and many of you have watched them on the web. I can also tell you that this will be a living archive. You'll be able to find full video and audio and a transcript of this event at www.csis.org. If you're an iTunes user, you can find it on the CSIS page on the iTunes U platform as well. You can also find us at Facebook. We're very connected. But I again, I wanted to welcome you and I also again want to thank the Knight Foundation and the University of Miami for making this great series possible and really allowing us to be the only think tank in Washington that is able to explore and dissect the Millennium Development Goals and issues associated with in a very thorough way and a comprehensive way and in an ongoing way. I'd like to introduce, before we get to our panel, I'd like to introduce Under Secretary of State for Economic Policy Robert Hormats. Secretary Hormats serves as the senior economic official at the State Department. He advises the Secretary of State on international economic policy and leads the work of the department on issues ranging from trade, agriculture and aviation to bilateral relations with America's economic partners. Bob is formerly Vice Chairman of Goldman Sachs International. He joined Goldman in 1982. Bob also served as Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs from 1981 to 1982, Ambassador and Deputy U.S. Trade Representative from 1979 to 1981, and Senior Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs at the Department of State from 1977 to 1979. He also served as a senior staff member for the International Economic Affairs, the National Security Council from 1969 to 1977, where he was a senior economic advisor to Dr. Henry Kissinger, General Brent Scrowcroft and Dr. Zabig Brzezinski, all CSIS trustees. Without further ado, I'd like to introduce Secretary Hormats who's going to deliver some opening remarks, and then we'll get to our panel. Well, thank you very much, Andrew, for that very warm introduction, and thanks to all of you for coming. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak before you. CSIS is a group that I've known and worked with and visited for many, many years when I was in Washington the first time, which as Andrew has indicated was about 25 years ago, and the kind of conversations and the kind of meetings and discussions you have here really are a very important part of political life in Washington because a lot of the ideas that we need in order to do our jobs in the federal government come from discussions of the kind we're having today. I also want to pay special tribute to my predecessor, Ruben Jeffrey, who not only was in the job I have just before me, but we worked together for a number of years at Goldman Sachs as well, and he's a very close friend, so I'm very pleased that he is on the panel today. Today's topic of discussion, responsible trade in natural resources, is one that deserves a great deal of attention, and so I'm very pleased that this forum could take place, and particularly the role of the University of Miami's Night Center for International Media because it's important to have these discussions, but it's also important to get the word out to people throughout the country and indeed throughout the world about the kind of challenge as we face in areas that I'm particularly going to focus on which are the eastern part of the Congo, but also some of the broader issues that relate to the question of responsible use of natural resources around the world. At no other time has the world been so invested in the growth of a knowledge-based global economy, and with good reason. New technology, new ideas, and new means of production have had a dramatic effect on economic growth and job creation in spreading the benefits of globalization to more and more communities and more and more countries around the world. But even so, our growth, our progress, even in the knowledge-based economy is supported by natural resources. Oil and gas fuel our cars and heat our homes. Wood, iron, and many other metals are worked and forged into many of the products we take for granted today. Computers, cell phones, many other modern products of the information era are based to a substantial degree on products produced by extractive industries. And in the developing world these extractive industries, energy, mining, timber, or otherwise, play an overwhelming role in the economies of many countries. Such resources can provide enormous benefits to countries in helping them to achieve economic growth, helping provide resources to improve the lives of their people, and indeed increasing opportunities for productive employment in various parts of the world. But in cases where governance is absent or is ineffective or corruption is rampant, there are enormous problems where accountability is weak, profits will inevitably trump principle. And where oppression smothers the seeds of opportunity, no investment in development can effectively bear fruit. We all know what can happen in the worst case scenario. In some countries proceeds from the sale of unregulated diamonds, for instance, have been used by armed groups to fund their murderous rebellion against their governments and against other people in their countries. And today, arguably, the most pressing concern is the ongoing crisis in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The illicit exploitation of trade and natural resources financed armed groups that target civilians and perpetuate widespread human rights abuses in the eastern part of the Congo. These devastating attacks have cost millions of lives, prolonging the world's deadliest conflict since World War II. It is not commonly known, but more people have died in the conflict in the eastern Congo than in any conflict since the Second World War, roughly five million people. And therefore, this is an issue that requires our attention from a moral point of view as well as from the point of view of the issues of instability, social and political and economic instability in that region. Even though in some parts of the eastern Congo, the conflict is subsided, the crisis itself has undermined the ability of the Congolese people to benefit from that country's vast mineral resource wealth and destroyed large swaths of fertile land once used for agriculture. I'm reminded of Gandhi's president statement that poverty is the worst form of violence. And the more this conflict, the longer this conflict lasts. And the more people whose lives are disrupted, the greater the degree of suffering in that region, both human suffering and economic suffering. And the less likely it is that they will be able to achieve the kind of growth that will help them to relieve the kind of poverty that you see in that region. So the question we have to ask ourselves is what is to be done? How do we support extractive industries that can lift people out of poverty and put them on the path to prosperity? How do we ensure that the desire for economic growth is balanced by the need to affirm social, political, human and economic rights? First, we must accept one simple proposition, a simple uncompromising truth. There are no quick fixes. Lasting solutions require long-term investments of time, of energy, and of resources. Second, we must note that the challenge posed by illegal or unregulated extraction of natural resources touches upon a wide range of issues. Human rights, economic stability, good governance, development, trade, state authority, and national security. Therefore, our response must be equally extensive. We have to promote transparency, accountability, and the rule of law within state authority so that people can trust governments to affirm their rights. We have to build the capacity of civil society to demand a future without corruption, one that cements the gains of meaningful democracy. And we must strengthen the infrastructure for legitimate trade, investment, and economic growth. This is an enormous task, but it is a very important one. And the State Department, in an effort led by Secretary Clinton, under Secretary Maria Otero, Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnny Carson and myself, we are playing a very active role in working with all the stakeholders to create a global architecture of cooperation for the responsible trade and natural resources. At its core, this is a global problem, and it will require a global solution. But this is not the first time we have secured the support of the international community and of government stakeholders of the private sector and civil society to promote sustainability in extractive industries. Since the year 2002, the United States has been a strong supporter of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, EITI, an international coalition of nations, of companies, of NGOs, and of representatives from civil society, which have called for full public disclosure and verification of oil, gas, and mining company payments to host governments. And we've already seen considerable progress. Last year, for example, Liberia became the first African nation to attain EITI compliance and has done an extensive review of its forestry sector, setting a great example for other countries working to promote revenue transparency. But EITI is only one part of our efforts to improve governance. We also support a multilateral and collaborative approach to creating due diligence guidelines adopted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, and the UN Security Council, mandated group of experts in the DRC. The new OECD due diligence guidelines will provide practical guidance for mining companies doing business in conflict-affected and high-risk areas like the DRC. Another recent USG effort is the Energy Governance and Capacity Initiative, EGCI, which is a flexible dynamic program that complements a number of our reform efforts. The EGCI aims to strengthen energy sector governance by providing technical support to governments of developing countries that are on the verge of receiving sizable financial windfalls. As many of you now know, the United States has been a key participant in the development of the Kimberley process, another multi-stakeholder initiative that certifies the origins of rough diamonds from conflict zones. Last year, the United States became chair of the KP's Working Group on Statistics. By taking on this role, the United States has assumed responsibility for the transparency and accuracy of rough diamond trade statistics or a linchpin of the KP's ability to ensure conflict-free trade. Since its inception, the Kimberley process has reduced the trade in conflict diamonds to less than 1% of the world's total of rough diamond trade. With 49 members representing 75 countries, the Kimberley process shows what can happen when the international community exercises the political will to halt the trade of resources that fuel the cycle of violence. We are also exploring ways to dovetail our efforts with those of PROMENES. PROMENES is a project that is based on the integration of World Bank and UK Department for International Development funded programs, which seeks to provide a wide range of technical assistance to build much needed capacity throughout the DRC's mining sector. In order to protect the fundamental needs shared by all individuals working in extractive industries, the United States, the United Kingdom, and others have developed the voluntary principles of security and human rights to strengthen human rights, safeguards in energy and mining companies security arrangements. So we're taking the lessons we've learned from EITI, the Kimberley process, the voluntary principles, and other programs and applying them towards the issues of conflict resources, especially in the DRC. But the State Department is also moving forward with a new strategic action plan on conflict minerals as part of our largest strategy on the DRC. It builds on our past and ongoing activities and has six areas of focus. One, raising the public profile on this issue. Two, enhancing diplomatic efforts to target the conflict minerals trade. Three, encouraging responsible natural resources trade. Four, supporting the UN mission in the DRC. Five, building DRC capacity. And six, protecting small-scale artisanal miners and mining communities. Two weeks ago, a team of staffers from the State Department, including a member of my own staff, went to the DRC to meet with representatives from the mining industry, civil society in the private sector, and the Congolese government. What they found was that artisanal or small-scale mining touches the lives of hundreds of communities in the eastern part of the country. And if we can promote transparency, accountability, security, and professionalization of the industry, it can enhance the well-being and self-sufficiency of several thousand men, women, and children. That means that more miners will be able to exercise their right to work without coercion. That means more parents will be able to provide for their children without succumbing to debt and indentured servitude, which is an enormous problem there now. And more boys and girls will be able to go to school and live up to their full potential. More than anything else, we are working with all of our partners to set up an infrastructure that can withstand external forces, which lead to corruption, rape, murder, exploitation of children, debt bondage, and forced prostitution. These gorges characterize many parts of this region, and these are the kinds of things that we must aim to eradicate and eradicate as quickly as possible. If our efforts work, if we can succeed, we can do this not only in the eastern part of the Congo, but we can use this process and use many of the things we've learned in other parts of the world. It can be replicated in other areas of the world that suffer from the kinds of problems that the eastern Congo currently suffers from. That's why we're fashioning cross-cutting relationships here at home and abroad with lawyers, academics, development activists, NGOs, economists, and the private industry. Every sector of our society has a role to play. Unions and organizations like the Solidarity Center are helping to teach mine workers their rights under Congolese law. Independent media outlets and international NGOs are raising the issue and highlighting the various problems that are faced in this part of the reach of the world, demanding accountability from foreign governments and from our own government. Lawyers and law students are taking up pro bono cases on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed, working to fight the culture of impunity that sustains abuses by the Congolese military and by armed militias. We're seeing more and more companies doing well by doing good in this region. Just last week, I had the opportunity to meet with representatives from the electronics, automotive, jewelry, and manufacturing industries. First and foremost, they expressed a willingness to tackle this issue head on. And I want to acknowledge their efforts to increase transparency in supply chains. Companies from the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition and the Global E-Sustainability Initiative are developing new techniques to verify and audit smelters. Industrial plants, which transform the raw material or into metal for the sale or export of the products. So a lot is going on in the private sector and we're attempting to work with the private sector because none of these solutions will work without cooperation between the private sector, NGOs, the federal government, and other groups that are involved. A new joint operation between USAID and the members of the mining industry in the Great Lakes region of Africa has secured a new $5 million funding, a line of credit, which is aimed at strengthening microlending. Firms are increasing access to education by building schools and supporting teacher training. All of these are going to be helpful in creating new opportunities and creating greater stability in the region. And a number of federal agencies, including the US Department of Agriculture, are providing technical assistance in agricultural research to promote sustainable agribusiness in areas once ravaged by conflict and war. The Obama administration is working to reinforce Congolese leadership and oversight at all levels of government. We are building the capacity of local civil society groups and media to work toward increasing accountability, encouraging responsible natural resources trade, enhancing diplomatic efforts to target the conflict minerals trade and supporting the United Nations mission to the DRC. But we have a lot more work to do. This is an issue that calls for moral leadership, extensive public and private sector cooperation, and concerted efforts to do more to address this complicated and serious set of problems. This is also an issue that transcends partisanship and profession, which is why I'm delighted that this event has drawn such a large cross-section of professionals of concerned individuals from around Washington. We all share responsibility to come to the table to help find solutions. I look forward to what will be a stimulating conversation in this room, and I look forward to working with you in the future to deal with a problem that raises important moral, important economic, and important security issues for all of us in this country, in the Congo and other parts of the world. Thank you very much. Thank you, Secretary Hormetz. I'd like to introduce now the rest of our panel. To my immediate left, Jennifer Cook, my colleague at CSIS, is director of the CSIS Africa program, which she joined in the year 2000. She works on a range of U.S. Africa policy issues and including security, health, conflict, and democracy. She's written numerous reports, articles, and commentary for a range of U.S. and international audiences. She's also co-editor of U.S. Africa policy beyond the Bush administration, critical challenges for the Obama administration. You can find online at CSIS.org. To my right, we have Dr. Kenneth Goodman, co-director of the University of Miami's ethics programs, including its business ethics programs. Ken is the founder and director of the university's bioethics program and its Pan-American Bioethics Initiative. He also directs the ethics program's World Health Organization, collaborating center in ethics and global health policy. Ken is a co-author to book on ethics and public health and one on artificial intelligence, edited a book on ethics and medical computing, and co-edited a book on artificial intelligence. His articles and op-eds have appeared in numerous journals and also mainstream publications, including The New York Times and The Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune. I'm also delighted to say here that we have my colleague, Ruben Jeffrey III, who most recently served in Bob's current position as the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy, and Agricultural Affairs, which was the senior economic position at the State Department. Ruben is a CSIS counselor. He adds tremendous value to our center and he also represents a real continuum in this policy that Secretary Hormats just spoke of. In fact, policies that we're talking about here have been under bipartisan discussion, dating back to the previous administration and also to the administration before that. One of the things I wanted to start out with though is I just wanted to ask under Secretary Hormats. Last week you alluded to the met with industry representatives from consumer electronics, jewelry, manufacturing industries regarding their efforts to ensure that the minerals they use do not come from conflict regions with an emphasis on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. What steps are you now have you seen them take to ensure this and what steps can the United States and the State Department take to enable companies to ensure that their minerals don't come from conflicted regions such as the DRC? Well the the first of all I'm very glad you mentioned that this is and should be and will continue to be bipartisan. This is not a partisan issue this is a moral a very compelling moral issue and Ruben and his colleagues have worked very hard on this. Ruben and I actually had breakfast just yesterday to talk about this and many other things. This has to be a full court press by our entire country and every facet of Washington and of our civil society and our business community has to be involved in this and I think when you look at what's going on in the Congress you see a lot of bipartisan interest in this. What are the companies doing? They're in many cases adopting due diligence guidelines to assure that ensure that their supply chains do not include minerals that have fueled the conflict and this is not so easy to do. Those of you who are familiar with us know that what happens with these mining products is that particularly the ones that come out of small mines they go through a series of distributors. The person who mines it might sell it to someone else and that person sells to someone else and someone else. They of course the Congo doesn't have a water doesn't have ports so it has to go out through Uganda or Wanda or Rundi or and then Kenya or Tanzania. So a lot of transfer of the products takes place before it even gets to the port and then these things get smelted together so you can have minerals from one region mixed with minerals from another and then they're combined in countries like Malaysia or Thailand or elsewhere into the final product. Many of these products are used by the way in your cell phones so doing mapping out that supply chain is very difficult and we're trying to get countries companies to do this due diligence and come as as close as they can to identifying where these minerals come from. Do they come from mines that are involved in this conflict? Do they not? And if we can do that at least we can get some better sense from them as to what's happening and then working back on the supply chain identify ways of ensuring that when they use these supplies they come from mines that are where the money is not going into fueling the conflict. It's not easy to do and I think these companies want to do it. I think they understand their reputational issues here and their conversations we've had have been very constructive and they're working on this. You know is it perfect? No but is the process underway? I think the answer is yes. And we're going to continue to have these conversations also. Along those lines I'd like to put the question to both Rubin and Jen. How do you help when government and institutions in places like the Democratic Republic of Congo are virtually non-existent? How do you help the people there? Well that's a good question. You know I think first of all I think this gets to one aspect of the conflict that it's certainly not the sole driver but it takes away one complex kind of level that has kind of fueled on both sides both the rebel side and the government side provides means and motives for further conflict. To me importantly the initiative kind of raises the issue in the U.S. public's mind and really takes U.S. consumers and U.S. industry out of the equation but perhaps more importantly builds a public constituency here in the United States that pushes for a more robust policy towards Congo because the impact of this on the conflict itself is pretty uncertain in fact. I think that the key is taking U.S. consumers out of it. Part of that bigger comprehensive strategy in my mind has to be pushing the government of the DRC and President Kabila to make peace in the east a priority and I think that's debatable right now whether it is there's an election coming up next year it's going to be a very contentious issue there's a lot of political wrangling. Make peace that priority fulfill the government's sovereign duties as a government. He claims the mantle of sovereignty he needs to perform those functions with adequate security sector reform with services provision working cooperatively with these communities and being accountable to Congolese citizenry as a whole. So I would start first with finding the pressures and the technical help but also the pressures to push the political will because without this without that political will it's going to be very hard to get a handle on it not just in Congo but in the neighboring countries as well where they're pretty significant vested interests politically connected who are benefiting from the trade as well. So I appreciate the under secretaries depiction of this as very complicated and a very long process that's not going to work overnight. Yeah Andrew I would echo Jennifer's comments and by way of response to your question say that this very effort is designed to help the people of the Congo and I think it's a it's a it's a sort of classic version of at least what I as a layperson think of as the astute exercise of smart or soft power in parallel to other diplomatic security efforts that the US the international community and other countries acting bilateral in the Congo in the eastern Congo in particular are doing along the way and so it's very much supplementary to not an overall effort which is highly complex very problematic long term but has been lacking here to four. I mean there have been bits and pieces of the effort but there hasn't been the same degree of international focus the same degree of US focus on this one particular problem but the problem and the approach outlined by Secretary Hormats and you know I'm not the person in here I can't speak to them who doesn't wouldn't applaud the effort conceptually is very much and in substance is very much dependent upon other pieces of the overall political security economic civil society picture of the Congo coming together and also working constructively multilaterally with not just the multilateral institutions like the UN but other like-minded countries. Dr. Goodman and I are both recovering journalists so I'd like to ask Ken what is what is the role of the the news media in this? I was going to say when Hormats gave his remarks I hope you all appreciated that you received talk about ethics at least as much as anything else and specifically about the relationship between ethics and public policy so one of the ways that the news media can contribute to this not that we want the news media to contribute in a way that would be offensive to someone sitting in a newsroom but one of the ways that you could identify this as a moral responsibility of the news media is to say why do we care about the people of the Congo and the answer is generally speaking we care about people around the world what do we care about about the extraction of certain minerals that cause social upheaval and the answer is well but for us Hither and Jan they wouldn't be doing it we have some moral responsibility to use what good offices we have to mitigate some of the consequences of our of our diet this used to be called another you know it's a it's a wonderful cartoon of these of these two gents walking down the street a terrible snowstorm and the snow is coming in the sleet and the newspaper rack there says terrible snowstorm and one turns to the other and says every year we get this unpredictable weather we used to call these the after dinner economies in Latin America and elsewhere we're we're land that had been used for growing crops that produce protein were given over to sugar and tobacco and there's certain kinds of fruit products and so forth in a similar way and we identified our moral responsibility to say that's not the way we want development to go we want to be able to share in these natural resources but surely we have a responsibility to support and foster the responsible development of these natural resources now obviously it's complicated now and the news media has its hands I mean suppose hypothetically the United States has solved the problem of safe extraction of minerals from the earth um so our our challenges are there's a menacing effect here that makes the challenge all the greater what I would hope for is that that relationship between ethics and public policy that includes civil society includes the news media includes the people of the north of north america europe and so forth would would allow us to rise to the collective occasion and say this is not simply that we're watching from a distance wringing our hands over but in fact we have a direct immediate moral response to act I think that's by the way that's good news I mean it's good it's juicy news it's stuff that raises difficult issues in the same way that great literature is great in part because it addresses great moral tensions I'd want to make the case in the news media as well great journalism addresses big issues and they I think now include the relationship between ethics and public policy and this speaks to a larger issue currently you know the united states is fighting two wars we're fighting a larger war on terror we're facing we're faced with a crippling economic crisis for the last several years we're dealing with sweeping legislation in this country on health care reform and tough issues like immigration I like to put it to the entire panel but first to secretary cormats why is this particular initiative a national security priority and a foreign policy priority for the united states right now well it it not only is one right now it's been one for for quite some time and the reason is that if I'll go back to the point the morality point let me just there's a very moving story if you read the story of Albert Einstein when he decided to become an American citizen he was asked well Dr. Einstein why do you want to become an American citizen what does America what caused America to stand out in your minds of place reunities one of these things he said because its policy is based on a very compelling morality and you know this and this was in the time the world was very chaotic and prior to world war two the the basic point here is that the united states one of one of and one would some would argue the most important factor the most important characteristic the U.S. can bring to its worldview and to the way others see the united states is a compelling morality is that we stand for something bigger than just immediate power politics or the strength of a military we stand for something in the world that is very attractive to other people when we practice it properly and that is that we need to have a a policy which is based on morality and when we do that that other countries around the world see this it becomes a very attractive part of what's known as soft power in fact probably the most important part of soft power is that we stand for something around the world and that I think is that's the key element here if we don't if we're not seen by the rest of the world is standing for something of this nature and dealing with a problem of this sort where people are dying at a very rapid rate and large numbers have died it takes quite a bit away from what how we want to project ourselves the rest of the world so i would say and the fact that it's bipartisan is very important the fact that american business is involved in it is very important in the business community it doesn't want to just be seen as bottom line it wants to be seen as being good citizens good social citizens being good corporate citizens of the world so i would say that that's the important part that and let me just address one of the thing that the point that Ruben made a moment ago and that is that this is something that we've got a project in the eastern part of the Congo but also bring other countries into this as i mentioned this has to be done modally out of the way and one of the things we're attempting to do i'm involved in the planning for the g8 and the g20 summits well what that are going to be held in Canada in a very few weeks three weeks and one of the points that i've tried to make as a sharper for the g8 is to bring other countries and say look this is an issue we may not be able to resolve this issue with the summit but we can focus international attention on the need to resolve it and if you do that you really create a very a very strong set of pressures on companies and other governments and particularly governments of the region operate and i totally agree with you kabila bring kabila around is very important and the more international attention focused on it the the better it will be so if we can do this i mean we tend to forget the hellsinky process people say what's the hellsinky process about it put a lot of pressure for change on the soviet union and i think if we do the same kinds of things here we can put a lot of pressure on uh president kabila and the heads of state of other countries in the region the business community and and by the way ourselves you should hold us accountable because that's what civil society is all about just working with the federal government making sure we do the kind of things that respond to these sorts of concerns as well so we have we have a responsibility to all of you who are interested in this to work with you and this came up in my confirmation hearings and a number of of NGOs were where they are just focusing on whether we were going to do the right thing and the answer is we're trying to and if there are suggestions you have or criticisms we should be open to them because it's a very compelling moral issue and we do not have all the answers i assure you although we're trying well on the on the u.s interest i think the undersecretaries laid it out very well um first of all there's huge opportunities too in congo if they are able to regulate their uh their economy and the mineral trade there's big business in business opportunities for us and for the congo and so on and so that's that's there's opportunity upside to this down the line as well but importantly you know this is a bipartisan issue and it's really found resonance with the american people as well congo was neglected for a very long time because it's remote there's no good guys and bad guys except for innocent civilians who suffer from all sides you can't distinguish it media didn't get in there that often uh darfur and sudan were really preoccupying us and as people know more and more that you know four to five million people have died since 1998 uh the horrific abuses that civilians endure uh the the the levels of rape and depredation and predatory behavior by by armed forces on all sides i think american people want to respond and so it's it's less a question almost of hard u.s interest it's the american people a reflection of the american people's desire to do and i i'm just taking over that point one other thing the upside is exactly what you said that that is if you can take these mineral profits and use them properly you will create a lot of jobs for a lot of people in this region it will help economic development in eastern congo and other countries in in the neighborhood in the great lakes area and it creates uh prosperity reduces our need to provide development assistance because they've got money themselves and it will produce will produce jobs one of the initiatives that i mentioned earlier to help countries that are on the verge of of of being able to tap new oil resources in particular like uganda for instance is to help them utilize this big windfall and like albert and there are many countries the world like this guy on and many countries have found new sources of oil and we're trying to help them to develop means of economic governance of proper accounting uh and a number of other things that will enable that money to be used for the benefit of their citizens rather than skimmed off and used for purposes that are not only unsupported development but can be used for a lot of of nefarious purposes also we want to avoid that ribbon i think you covered it nicely bob the uh thinking this looking at once you get beyond the overarching moral principle at stake here not just in the eastern congo but in other such affected regions and you get down to the real politic of what's happening there and in so many other places and one tries to widen the aperture of the subject matter area that bob's talking about what you're really talking about as a matter of u.s national interest and world national interest is helping distressed populations in failed or failing or troubled states build civil society develop the institutional infrastructure to allow some modicum of governance which then if one if one believes the analysis which certainly i do and i think this has been demonstrated successfully in other contexts create the conditions for people to improve their lives it's very simple uh it's a simple to articulate very very difficult to do and in terms of again in terms of u.s national interest it's very much in our interest one of the reasons we signed up for the millennium development goal we're supportive of the millennium millennium development goals to see that kind of development in these most distressed of areas in the world in which sadly a disproportionate number of those reside in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Goodman you know in order for us to do all this we we certainly need the buy-in of multinational companies and u.s company they'd be subject to new rules audience and all sorts of things they may indeed hurt their bottom lines how do we encourage them to take a moral and ethical responsibility as as good corporate citizens to help this process actually i believe there's pretty good evidence good reason to believe that the interests of u.s security and the interests of multinational corporations have never been served and will never be served by a lack of accountability a lack of transparency a lack of veracity i mean those are the core values and i think they're universal values and i think that we share them in light and self-interest is is really quite effective for this we actually working with our colleagues to give an example in terms of the need to gather more information to identify the best approaches to this and these are data-driven questions in many respects and working with our colleagues in Jamaica for example at the University of the West Indies we coined a motto having to do with the the need to gather data an evidence-based approach to policy and to the ethical application of of different tools of policy it was it was no ethics no research no research no health no health no development that the that we cannot tease these things apart it's if someone would say well we believe we'll be able to improve development in the Congo or in Indonesia or in Latin America or anywhere else if only we could just fudge a little on the accountability transparency and veracity they'd be mistaken and that's not because well out of sentiment there's a really good reason to believe that those engines which work quite well in civil society as is documented in democracies thriving around the world actually works no sentiment here this is not epic some people are of the unhappy belief that when we do ethics we we hold hands in a circle and get in touch with our feelings we could do that later perhaps if you like but in fact the real heavy lifting is done having identified the values and say here given given the practical realities on the ground is how we can manage to improve the health support development and and and do our our moral duty in terms of the kinds of issues we're talking about today in terms of extraction of minerals that fuel conflict now ethics does its job and we say here's how we can do this in a way that that that support serves pays homage to our core values which have been so successful yeah and I think you put very well and I would I would just add one thought and that is that the kind of instability that goes on in this region the kind of horrible human rights violations does not improve the profitability of of any company at all they have to operate in the most difficult and dangerous and socially tumultuous environment that could not be good and there's a very interesting example on history and that is the initial talks in London to end apartheid in South Africa were actually initiated by a South African gold company I want to have said well why would a gold company in South Africa do this they were operating very well under the national government of the apartheid government and the answer was because they understood they would do better in an environment where there was social tranquility that didn't have apartheid that didn't have the kind of turmoil that was going on in South Africa so they actually engineered the talks between the nationalist government and the ANC if any of you read the book end game it describes us in very vivid detail they did it for moral reasons but they also did it because they knew that if they achieved this objective of ending apartheid and having the democratic government their own interests would be better served by a more tranquil economic and social and political environment so companies themselves want to find a way of improving this and working with them to find a way of doing it I think serves the broader interest that I've described but it's also very sound economics and you know this is not sort of a come by kind of thing this is going to be very tough and very hard a lot of political pressure is going to have to be applied and we're going to have to do a lot of hard lifting and it's dangerous but in the end it serves our the moral objectives but it also serves economic objectives and more political stability in this region is good for everyone and that's if you have instability in eastern Congo it can affect a lot of other countries in the region that's not good for us or anyone else instability is bad business and we've learned that repeatedly but one of my concerns though is if this is if the onus really is on the private companies and we don't hold the government of Congo responsible for really enforcing it there are companies who don't have the shareholders and the consumers who are sensitive to these kinds of issues back here there are companies that don't have that enlightened long-term view who are perfectly happy or take the risk of operating in these very unstable environments and I think one of the risks is if this becomes too onerous and it isn't driven by the government of Congo itself becomes that those companies with a conscience walk away from Congo there's other sources of koltan and tungsten and the rest of it and this is why the standards have to be set within Congo so that they can enforce it on all investors who come in and this isn't simply a voluntary absolutely there are things that the companies need to do but there are some very tough things that the government of the Congo needs to do and in particular it's to enforce their governance in this part of the country but it's not so easy for them them to do either so we need to provide programs that help them do the World Bank has a new program and they're very substantial new loan there are a lot of these programs that are designed to help the Congo to to develop its own governance process and and the but the government has to assume a greater degree of responsibility and to be able to govern this region in a more effective way and there's no avoidance of that and other governments in the region have to weigh in also we talked about the Helsinki process and you might think of the African Union process that way as well and engaging the African Union not just on Congo but in setting these kind of standards for investment and and conflict minerals and resources and so forth getting it because it will take time but changing the norm and it's possible through the African Union to do that but getting African stakeholders more engaged on this as well I think over the long term will be important the Great Lakes project is part of that but I think the AU was a very good way of looking at it also I'm going to open it up to audience questions in just a minute if you could come forward we have two microphones here and if you could identify yourselves before you ask your question that'd be very helpful but along lines of what we were just talking about how does the United States encourage you know large partners in Asia for instance to cooperate and sign on to our policies and ethical obligations so so when you exert leadership economically and politically and strategically and morally you I mean I will defer to to our colleagues here who actually know how the engines of state do that but in fact when you have businesses and you have governments to say here the values by which we're navigating we've discovered that we're not doing this out of out of warm fuzziness rather than light and self-interest one you have the moral responsibility to have the same insight we do and two if you if you get on board this will this will ultimately serve the values that you otherwise you otherwise embraced it's it's there's no good reason to object to the kind of bipartisan international accord that we had described so far this afternoon that that the best arguments for improving development for supporting improving the lives of people especially in desperately poor regions of the world in fact begin with just the sort of strategies that we're talking about so if any business in Asia or any business in Europe or any business elsewhere in the world doesn't see that they that they they too share the the interests that are that are fostered by improved security then they didn't get the memo I'd like to open it up to your questions sir thank you Norman Bailey Institute of World Politics it's a pleasure to be here with my former colleague Bob Hormats this is a question for any or all of the panelists would you support direct individual or organizational actions such as boycotts let me give a concrete example oil revenues to Venezuela we know go to the FARC and the ELN in Colombia they go to Hisbola and Hamas Sitgo is the U.S. subsidiary of the Venezuelan oil company would boycotting Sitgo gas stations be something that would be acceptable I use that only as an example because there are many other examples that could be used whether it's diamonds or or anything else so one way to think about that is to think about under what circumstances is is a boycott or an embargo morally either defensible or morally required and the people have thought about this have said that one of the places you need to begin with is whether or not the country or the source of the of the of the of the problem where the people they are so for example in South Africa during apartheid many many many South Africans supported embargoes there are other countries where we have introduced various kinds of economic restraints from bargos which are not supported by the people in that country obviously you don't want it to backfire I understand I understand but but ultimately if what you're they're two different things but the goal is similar the same is to use economic pressure to try and drive policy and it would be nice if there's alignment between the interests of the embargoes and boycotters and the citizens in the country that's culpable I'm not sure how effective it would be in this case there's legitimate trade that goes on from Congo as well so it's distinguished between the legitimate and the conflict-afflicted areas that's part of the problem in Sierra Leone pretty much all the diamonds were controlled by the RUF so you could say look no I'm not taking diamonds from Sierra Leone in Congo it is a little more difficult you'd also be cutting off people from from legitimate livelihoods I think so I don't think in this furthermore the demand for these minerals is not just coming from the United States who would be presumably the only ones that might sign on to a boycott big Asian market as well where these issues play less in popular debates so there'd be those who'd fill the vacuum I think Jen's right and I also think that's exactly right and the other point first of all some of it is legitimate and these people wouldn't have jobs if you boycotted it second you really wouldn't know what the boycott if you tried because all the stuff gets mixed together somewhere else and you wouldn't be able to do it in an effective way and third our real answer is to get to the bottom of this for the methods we've described that I don't think that would be a useful way of doing it and I don't think I don't think it would work anyway because I don't think it was doable questions come to the microphone please hi I'm Julia from human rights first thanks very much for the presentation when the question about national security was asked I was surprised that no one or a little bit disappointed that no one talked about the criminal networks that some of these play into because I would actually I working for a human rights organization I would like to hear that this that our government has really sees a robust national security problem or robust national security priority here not just a moral one because sadly when push comes to shove that does get shoved aside and if there's a stronger national security priorities such as some of the players in mineral extraction or part of networks that may have some overlap with other networks that were interested in money laundering or things like that I think that it it makes the policy stronger can I address that I think you've made a very compelling point in this particular trade we pretty well know in general about the the money flow but you're you you've raised a broader and a very compelling point and that is a lot of what's going on there's a very close ratio between illegal receipts of from extractive industries from the drug trade from the arms trade and they a lot of these go into either organized crimes in some places the terrorist groups there's there's not a lot of documented evidence that this is the case it goes into terrorist groups or groups that are disruptive in eastern Congo but the bigger issue is the one you've described and that is that we're seeing increasing links between illegal production of you know pirated goods pirated software pirated movies a whole range of other things pirated drugs and money going into terrorist groups between increasingly narco terrorism is becoming a real problem not just in Latin America but increasingly it's going over to western Africa and then it goes into western Europe so there is in areas that are difficult to govern or where there's no governance at all and there are pockets of total instability you get a whole range of activities that lead to illicit trade illicit mining of various sorts and a lot of that money goes into groups that are that are supporting terrorism around the world or supporting armed gangs that cause instability in countries you have that in parts of Latin America that in parts of Africa all of that is a big problem this it turns out is not as as big a problem as some of these other areas can be but there is certainly a link between pirated products between illicit mining between ungovernability of the various parts of the world and money that goes into these groups that are causing instability in some cases goes right to terrorist groups and if they're pockets of non-governance and Somalia is a good example but they're others it really causes does have a national security impact on the United States no question about that and that's one reason we have to we have to deal with it question Laurie Sherman Transparency International I was just hoping that Secretary Hormats could tell a little bit more in detail how you're involving the NGOs in the private sector so that we could get involved sure well we've actually had a number of conversations with NGOs and we will be having many more we would like a lot in a lot of things like John Prendergast for instance this is someone we've talked to on a number of occasions but we would we're very happy to talk to any NGOs and get the views of NGOs in part because a lot of NGOs have people on the ground who are very familiar with us in this in Eastern Congo Sudan many other parts so I think you the answer is we're not only eager to talk to NGOs we're eager to get the input because your your sense of what's happening on the ground is is very important to helping us to undertake the kinds of measures that we would like to undertake and also we'd like to have a chance to test ideas with you as to what you think would work and what would not work because there's a lot of knowledge in the NGO community on this very tragic situation so if you would like to get together we've had some meetings we're going to have more and just count this as a as an as an invitation to have a discussion with us if we haven't had conversations we will we've had some already but we will certainly have more and you can we need that input on a changing gears just a little bit Secretary Horowitz you mentioned the G8 and G20 and in Canada in the next several weeks and that the millennium development goals such as maternal health child health things like that are a paramount importance to you and to this government can you tell us a little bit about that going forth sure well one of the things I've raised at the last we call Sue Sherpa meeting which was held in Vancouver was to try to get the G8 to go along with some language on Eastern Congo and helping to deal with the problems that I've outlined you can't go into great detail but you can certainly shine a very sharp light on this topic by using the heads of state to do it the second element is the broader question of the millennium development goals the two that we're focusing on are maternal and child health care these are the these are of the of the millennium development goals these are two where the world is perhaps furthest behind or farthest farthest from meeting the the the the top the targets that have been set so we're working we're trying to do with the G8 countries is first of all identify why wait first of all how far we've come from meeting the goals and it's not just us there's a responsibility in the part of donor countries there is also a responsibility in the part of recipient countries governance is very important the kind of programs they pursue are very important so this is supposed to be done on the basis of mutuality the industrialized the developed countries have important responsibilities so do the recipient countries so the developing countries so we're trying to find out how far we've come collectively from achieving these goals and then what needs to be done in order to get us closer to these goals by 2015 which is the target here so there are a wide range of programs where a number of countries are providing very substantial some sums from maternal and child health care we're going to be supporting a number of specific programs that will advance this goal and we see this as vitally important Secretary Clinton has been you know focusing on this the president has focused on this in a number of speeches we think this is important and again you think this goes point we're discussing earlier you would think the G8 they discuss sort of lofty issues of state and financial issues but to the extent that we in the industrialized countries can identify goals of this sort it's not just that they're morally important it is that to the extent you can provide for opportunities in these countries help them achieve greater social and political and economic stability you can improve opportunities for our companies to export to these countries they will have more stability so they won't need as much support from the rest of the world once they attain a higher rate of of economic growth and helping women and children is a huge investment in productivity and in future growth in these countries so we really see this as an investment in the future not only of the countries that are going to be assisted that are primarily in Africa but to our own well-being five ten years 15 years down the road I'd like to thank our panelists today it's been a quick session I'd like to also thank again University of Miami Night Center for international media for making this possible I'd like to recognize Dr. Kenneth Goodman for being here with us representing University of Miami Secretary of Bob Hormats