Ladies and gentlemen, I think we'll try to begin. We know we're a little bit pressed for time on each end, and so with apologies to those who are just coming in, there are a number of seats on this side. There's also a couple on this side. My name's George Lopez. I have the privilege of being a Vice President here for the Academy at USIP with a lot of interest in UN peacekeeping, and delighted to have this panel and this opportunity today. Both because of the theme of our conference, obviously you can't do serious peacebuilding without there often being serious peacekeeping, and that's increasingly involved the United Nations, DPKO, and the progress we've made over the last two decades in this enterprise. Also as many of you know, May 29th is the international day of UN peacekeeping, which has been declared by the General Assembly effective last year. So there's all sorts of reasons to analyze, celebrate, and talk about what we're doing. Because of the time, I'm going to leave it to the bios in the program to remind you of who's here and their credentials. The one exception in the program is Tori Holt from IO could not join us today because of her schedule, and I'm much gratitude to Rafi Grigorian of the Office of Peace Operations in state to join us to talk about state's perspective on this. Our panel will proceed with Rafi, Peter, Oliver, and then Lee. So I begin and open with Rafi, and thank you very much for joining us. Thank you, George. In the interest of time, I'll try to go through this very quickly. I've just now excised a couple of paragraphs, but I've already wasted time telling you all that, so I'll just get on with it. I suppose the big surprise I had from working on or preparing for this is that a lot of the work I did in Bosnia turns out to be peace-building. I didn't even know that, they had a name. But that's apparently a lot of what we do these days. I am, of course, grateful to be here. Tori sends her apologies. She's actually on an airplane returning from Addis Ababa where she's been working on issues related to renewal of the UN mission in South Sudan mandate. You think that's coming to a positive conclusion in the very near future. I do want to talk to you briefly, I hope, about connection between peacekeeping and peace-building. A formal connection emerged. Indeed, it may only have become possible with the end of the Cold War and the expansion of multidimensional UN peacekeeping that followed. I plan to speak briefly about our perspective as a member of the UN Security Council in trying to develop tools to address evolving challenges to international peace and security. Unshackled from Cold War restraints, the Security Council struggled in the first half of the 1990s to address intrastate conflicts in places like Somalia and Rwanda, as well as the international armed conflicts that marked the breakup of Yugoslavia. But these challenges exceeded the capabilities of existing policies, practices and tools available to the Security Council. In fact, does anyone here even remember the debate over whether UNHCR could help internally displaced persons in the Balkans because they were not in legal terms refugees? Used to authorizing peacekeeping missions under Chapter 6 of the UN Charter to implement not enforce a peace agreement between warring states. The Council struggled in places where there was no peace to keep and failed to prevent genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda, or to bring stability to Somalia. Similarly, NATO, whose members in the early 1990s discussed whether to dissolve the alliance, had to first agree that it could even act out of area before it could begin to support UN humanitarian assistance operations in the Balkans, let alone conduct airstrikes to enforce ceasefires. The UN, as well as NATO, had yet to develop policies and doctrines in the early 1990s that would allow them to address such situations, including through peace enforcement operations. With about half of all countries that emerged from war, particularly civil war, lapsing back into conflict within a short time, the Security Council needed new policies and doctrines to bring about the end to conflicts, a subject in its own right, but also to launch efforts to ensure that the resulting peace was sustainable over time. The incorporation of peace-building activities into UN peacekeeping operations was, in essence, the response to the set of challenges. Butres Butres Gali's 1992 Agenda for Peace was the seminal UN document that formalized the idea of peacebuilding as a feature of what we call today multi-dimensional peacekeeping. It's worth recalling what he wrote, quote, peacemaking and peacekeeping operations to be truly successful must come to include comprehensive efforts to identify and support structures which will tend to consolidate peace and advance a sense of confidence and well-being among people. Through agreements ending civil strife, these may include disarming the previously warring parties and the restoration of order, the custody and possible destruction of weapons, repatriating refugees, advisory and training support for security personnel, monitoring elections, advancing efforts to protect human rights, reforming or strengthening governmental institutions, and promoting formal and informal process of political participation, unquote. This description codified the elements of the UN transitional administration in Cambodia or UNTAC mandate from the year before and influenced the mandates of the post-date and accord missions in the former Yugoslavia, the UN missions in Sierra Leone, East Timor and Kosovo all launched in 1999. The 2000 Brahimi report pointed out how peacebuilding to prevent the recurrence of conflict and focus on long-term institution building and reconciliation and advocated for peacekeeping operations to lay the groundwork for peacebuilding activities from their inception. The report recommended quick impact development style projects to improve the lives of citizens and focus on rule of law, DDR and other activities to help post-conflict states rebuild their institutions. At the 2005 World Summit, member states emphasized the need for a coordinated, coherent and integrated approach to post-conflict peacebuilding, creating the Peacebuilding Commission or PBC. The PBC was to be an intergovernmental body that would bring together all relevant actors including international donors, international financial institutions, national governments, troop contributing countries and civil society representatives to coordinate efforts, martial resources and advise on integrated strategies for post-conflict peacebuilding and recovery, often at the tail end of a peacekeeping operation. Almost 10 years later, there is general consensus that the PBC has not quite lived up to its founding expectations. We have seen some successes in Sierra Leone, of course, and in Liberia, where the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia also remains. PBC efforts have focused on support for the government's justice, security and reconciliation priorities, including regional justice and security hubs that provide basic services outside Monrovia. Yet the PBC has not been able to prevent violence in places such as the Central African Republic. The PBC's impact often depends on the personality of the individual chair for country configuration. We know it is critical, for example, that the chair develops a strong and collaborative relationship with the SRSG of your special political mission or peacekeeping mission in the country in order to be effective. We also know that successful peacebuilding requires national ownership, social and political inclusivity, particularly the involvement of women, institution building and sustained and predictable financing. Other aspects of the so-called peacebuilding architecture, the peacebuilding support office and the peacebuilding fund have been more successful. The PBF in particular has proven to be more nimble and able to quickly address needs on the ground in countries in crisis such as the Central African Republic. The UN will conduct a peacebuilding review coming up in 2015, and we certainly look forward to using that to make our collective efforts more effective and relevant. But back to peacekeeping. In January of last year, the Security Council adopted Resolution 2086, which endorses a multi-dimensional approach to peacekeeping. The resolution notes to quote the contributions that peacekeepers and peacekeeping missions make to early peacebuilding and emphasizes, unquote, and emphasizes that UN peacekeeping activities should facilitate post-conflict peacebuilding, prevention of relapse of armed conflict and progress towards sustainable peace and development. I believe it also endorsed motherhood and apple pie. It calls on peacekeeping operations to help their host countries with peacebuilding strategies. Some of the peacebuilding activities that lays out include security sector reform, disarmament demobilization, reintegration of former combatants, rule of law, mine action, and good offices for advancing political process, much of the same things that Butrus Butrus Golly laid out some 10 years before. Resolution also notes the delivery of humanitarian assistance, the promotion of human rights, protection of civilians and coordination with UN funds and agencies. Today's multi-dimensional peacekeeping operations certainly have more complex mandates that call for many of these peacebuilding activities. MINUSMA, or the multi-dimensional stabilization mission in Mali, is mandated with supporting the re-establishment of state authority, but also with supporting the implementation of the transitional road map and national dialogue, protection of civilians, promotion of human rights and support for humanitarian assistance, cultural preservation, national international justice. Given these sorts of new tasks, outside of providing security, conducting patrols and monitoring ceasefires, we're learning that in these multi-dimensional integrated missions, the capacity of UN civilian staff with the right expertise is absolutely critical. Various entities are working to improve the recruitment and retention of the right personnel. The UN civilian capacity review, or CIVCAP, is an attempt to address the challenges in a timely manner, a problem first highlighted in the Secretary General's 2009 report on peacebuilding. One question we post ourselves now is, has the pendulum with respect to peacebuilding and peacekeeping, has the pendulum swung too far in that direction? Due to the violence in South Sudan in late 2013, we are having to alter course and revise the mission's prior mandate from one focused on capacity building and civilian protection and conflict resolution strategies geared towards low-level inter-communal tensions related to cattle rating and so forth, to basically suspending the state building activities in favor of a focus on physical security of civilians, facilitating humanitarian assistance, promoting human rights and supporting a cessation of hostilities. And there has been some criticism among the very council members who determined these mandates, including the one on Central African Republic that was just adopted the other month, that the peacekeeping mandates today resemble Christmas trees with ornaments being hung on that favor various members of the council. There was a meeting not long ago in Edinburgh by political directors of the P5 countries, and this was one of the themes that came up over and over again, but apparently they didn't look in the mirror, including ourselves, because we are the ones that are doing this. We are the ones that are adding that stuff now, I'm being told to end right now. And the best, so let me just end on one final note, and that is about the focus that the council increasingly has on trying to transfer tasks from UN peacekeeping missions to parts of the UN country team. There's good reasons for considering that. Take UNDP, present in 170 different countries. It's probably there before conflict starts. It may well be there during a conflict, and it's probably going to be there long after the peacekeeping mission has left, yet they receive a different funding stream than the peacekeeping mission. So it's not easy to just have the council say we'll transfer tasks from this peacekeeping mission to the UN country team, because that's essentially an unfunded mandate. The security council doesn't control the UNDP, for example. So easier said than done. The other thing is to be quite explicit when the council is discussing the elements of the security council resolution and the mandate. Menusco, for example, twice now, in the last two iterations of this. Some of the members of the council, including from the United States, complained about the number of tasks that Menusco has, 80, 90, 100, whatever. Funny thing is when you do an actual assessment of it, what you'll find is about four or five core tasks, and the other tasks are really subsidiary, implied tasks that come from that in terms of how the mission goes about fulfilling those tasks. It's about protection of civilians, security sector reform, and so on. Those are the main tasks and emphasis of the mission. So part of the challenge we have as council members, as I suggested just a minute ago, is to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what kinds of things, kind of ornaments do we really need to hang on this Christmas tree? Bear in mind that the security council resolution that endorsed the U.N. operation in Congo in 1960 was four paragraphs long. The one on car, I think we just passed, was like eight or nine pages. Thank you very much. Rafi, thank you so much for that tight, synthetic presentation. In an attempt to get the panel off quickly, I not only forgot my colleague and friend Allison at the end of the table, but also forgot to mention that she's going second. And now that she has plenty of time to prepare for that, I'm happy to turn it over to Allison. I love surprises. OK, how's the volume level? Good, great. So I'm with the Stimson Center, and in the interest of time, I'm going to cut out a lot of the examples that I was going to give just to let you know, I just got back from Congo a week and a half ago. I was in the Central African Republic two months ago, and I was in South Sudan in November. So if you have questions about those in Mali in September, so if you have questions about those specific things, please bring them up in Q&A. I'm going to talk about a couple different things, which are interrelated. And I'm going to specifically speak to some of the challenges, which is probably why I'm going second, so the more positive views can come after me. I'm going to talk about peace building, state building and stabilization. And I'm going to talk about some of the challenges of what that means from the international national to local level, because that's a lot of those are where the challenges often arise. And then I'm going to talk really quickly about the tensions and trade-offs between those goals, which are more longer term goals and protection of civilians, which is more an immediate imminent goal. So first of all, on the peace building, which I'm talking about sort of the negotiations all the way through to getting the peace agreement signed, and then through implementation. And one of the challenges that has been identified by a number of academics and practitioners is that the international community tends to come into these conflict situations with a macro level view. They tend to not often get the interrelated nature of the macro level peace and conflict dynamics with the subnational and the local. And of course, those are key to breaking cycles of violence. When you get down to the national level, you have a political affairs unit, and I'm going to count on Oliver for correcting me on anything, but I'm trying to keep things a little bit simplistic. You have a political affairs unit that often works very much at their smaller units, and they tend to often work at sort of the national level of trying to get laws passed or encourage that sort of national level reform. And it can often be disconnected from things that happen at the local level and the subnational level around conflict. So for example, early warning systems and also the civil affairs, which happens, it's really the sort of conflict negotiation and mediation that happens at the very local level. And hopefully those are larger components and missions, but those aren't always connected in a communication or in a strategic planning sort of way. Also, I think it's really important to mention here that peacekeeping operations have relatively little leverage in comparison to member states who are donors and also who have been very involved in brokering peace agreements. And we can talk a little bit how to mitigate that when we get to the Q&A if you're interested. But that's really important when it comes to the actual implementation of these macro level peace agreements. I was mentioning the civil affairs, which are the folks that are down at the local level really doing sort of the conflict prevention mitigation and in some places play a big role in protection of civilians. Rafi was mentioning the civilian capacities review. This is in part coming because peacekeeping operations find it very difficult to recruit the right civilians to fill a lot of these roles with the right trainings. Sometimes peacekeeping operations tend to be more top heavy and those top heavy positions tend to be more expensive. There are less people who are willing to sort of go out into these really conflict affected areas where you don't have as nice of living standards and latrines and those sorts of things. And those are the kind of foot soldiers as far as civilians are concerned that we really need out there serving inside company operating bases and forward operating bases on the front line. And one of the positive things is that the UN is getting much better at developing those sorts of capacities like what are called community liaison systems that also help with language as well as culture because they're people who are hired from the ground. On state building, now state building is an interesting term because it sometimes is about the extension of state authority, which can be everything from flying state authorities from the capital out to where the people that they actually represent. But it also includes things like capacity building, technical assistance and technical advice. And I'll let somebody else try and talk about what the differences between those things are. But I would raise the fact that I don't know that it's really clear what the differences are between that language that is put into a mandate and it's left to the peacekeeping operation to really sort that out. But when you get down to the local level and you're talking to an individual police officer that is co-located with police on the ground and are supposed to be doing that capacity building, technical advice, technical assistance, there's often a lot of confusion about how you sort of play that role of trying to get the buy-in of what are often very low capacity police officers and be mentoring them at the same time you're supposed to be sort of reporting on what they might be doing that isn't representative, that isn't about protection of civilians, et cetera. I'm gonna skip ahead a little bit right now just to talk about how that state building works between the peacekeeping operation and the UN agencies which Rafi also brought up. As there are these, they're supposed to be working very closely together in order to do the state building. The UN agencies are doing the more development focused stuff through UNDP and also humanitarian activities. They do come up with integrated strategic frameworks and plans but unfortunately those don't always work on the ground and one of the problems of course is that they're funded different but there are also other interoperability issues. I mean, they don't share the same email systems. They don't often have phone rosters of people who are sitting in bases next door to them and so they can't communicate in the ways that they need to in the actual implementation of this stuff on the ground. Some of it's that simple, some of it's much larger. What is supposed to happen is you have a large civilian component doing police corrections is that they may be working in one area geographically or issue-wise and then a UN agency is doing the other things and when it works well that's the way it works but what we often see is turf battles and we see a lot of miscommunication both at the national level and the local level and so it's hard both when you have both of them on the ground as well as when you're trying to do the trade-off that was being talked about. The third thing I'll talk about is offensive force and stabilization. Peacekeeping operations are more and more having this S in their mandate, the stabilization terminology and that means that we're moving more towards not having the crouched reactive defensive sort of deterrent role but also doing offensive things to try and clear areas of armed actors. Now some of this they say is for protection of civilians but often it's just to sort of rather than just deter by sitting there and using force when somebody comes up to you it's about going out and compelling and even in the terms that have been used at least in Manusko's mandate and Congo neutralizing. Now neutralizing doesn't mean wiping them out with force. It means simply putting enough pressure on them with a combination of force and politics that you get them to sort of give up the guns and come to the peace table hopefully or just give up the guns. But what we don't have are really the forces and the kinds of equipment that we need to be doing this kind of proactive military force. There isn't the command and control that you would have in a national military force where there's similar language, similar doctrine, similar training. You have often infantry battalions coming that are used to more static approaches to military operations versus more proactive where we need more like special forces to go out there and do that kind of thing. There's also really little tolerance for the kind of unintended consequences that come from offensive use of force. Even in places like Afghanistan there's very little appetite for civilian casualties but in a peacekeeping operation the credibility and legitimacy of the mission really depends on not harming people and protecting people and so that creates an extra burden. They're also very slow at deploying and moving in part because of the way in which troops are generated and the way in which they're deployed but also because of the fact that they're running under logistics that are really a civilian logistics support system versus a military. If they can't deploy quickly think of the expectations that come up in the Central African Republic or South Sudan when DPKO, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations says they can deploy troops in two to three weeks and it actually takes four months to a year. In that break you get not just the civilians but also the armed actors that are no longer being deterred and it creates force protection issues for the military. Last with tensions of POC and state building and peace building. When I think of peace building and state building and stabilization that is something that is going to require a long time, a decade, two decades, three decades the security sector reform, the elections, et cetera and often this gets completed with protection of civilians. I wanna be really clear that when people think about protection of civilians and the credibility and legitimacy of the mission they're talking about protection from imminent threat of violence. They're talking about protection from hundreds of women being raped and even though the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and DFS have put together a much clearer concept that protection means both using political, not just a military thing, it's about imminent threat from physical violence and it's about environment building. Whether we like it or not it's really about imminent threat of physical violence. And as we know, state building often actually and peace negotiations can actually cause violence and because I have the end now sign I can talk more about that in Q and A but if you think about it, elections, decentralization of power, breaking war economies, use of force, even peace negotiations where military trying to jockey for more power all can actually increase violence in the short term and there needs to be ways to be thinking about that as you're doing your longer peace building and state building work, thanks. Thanks so much, Allison. We turn to Peter. Great, well thank you for having me today. I appreciate it. I'm gonna talk a little bit about how peacekeeping is being integrated into the global discussions about the goals that will follow the Millennium Development Goals and then how UN peacekeeping can be an important implementing force to, as we think about making the next set of goals a reality. There are seven countries in the world that are unlikely to meet even one of the Millennium Development Goals. Six of those are considered fragile countries. So when we think about the successes of the Millennium Development Goals in terms of ending extreme poverty, increasing access to education and healthcare, it's clear that there are hundreds of millions of people that have been left out of it and in fact, when you think about the fact that there are 400 million people in fragile states living in extreme poverty and that number hasn't budged since 1990, which was the beginning of the Millennium Development Goals. So while the rest of the world has seen enormous growth, 700 million people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the Millennium Development Goals, you have not seen this progress at all in fragile states. So, and USAID put out a paper earlier this year that put it succinctly, which is a country that experienced major violence over the period from 1981 to 2005 has an extreme poverty rate, 21 percentage points higher than a country with no violence. So this is the frame under which the various groups that are writing the world's next development goals are considering these goals, whether it's the high level panel or the open working group, both of whom have suggested peace and security goals as part of the new framework that we're gonna consider development and human rights issues moving forward. It is not a slam dunk that peace and security will be considered and approved as a development goal as we think about 2015, but we do know that we're off to a good start. The secretary general's high level panel which put together 30 eminent people from around the world recommended not one, but two peace and security goals be adopted by the world. The first is ensure stable and peaceful societies. The second one is ensure good governance and effective institutions and the panel stressed that and I quote, freedom from fear, conflict and violence is the most fundamental human right and essential foundation for building peaceful and prosperous societies. So as they were thinking about what are the targets that you would implement these very broad goals, they talked about increasing the capacity, professionalism and accountability of security forces, military forces and the judiciary as well as reducing violent deaths as well as reducing the external stressors that lead to conflict. So the high level panel was not only thinking about how you write the goals but then how you measure them 15 years from now. The open working group which is taking the work of the high level panel to the next stage is actually the member states themselves and this is a group that is considering at the moment 16 focus areas of which one which is peaceful and inclusive societies, rule of law and capable institutions and itself and the open working group itself has put together a series of draft targets that they would measure the world would measure our progress on that front. I think the third element to consider is we think about what is a very much more open process that these development goals are being considered is the UN development program is running global consultations around the world, every country in the world is almost every country in the world has had thematic consultations about what people want in the next development goals. The My World Survey which is an online survey has reached over 2.1 million people and what's interesting is that an honest and responsive government is stirred in terms of what people are looking for in terms of global goals and protection from violence and crime is seven. Both of these are in this scheme of things fairly high rankings in terms of the My World Survey. So it's clear that as we think about peace building and we think about building stable societies that in fact we're pushing out on open door as it relates to what people around the world want but as I said, it's not a slam dunk. There is a lot of opposition to peace and security and stability and governance goals that are in this global process. Some critics believe that these goals are tantamount to the securitization of development. Others think it's an encroachment on internal affairs. Others believe that these security issues are best left to the Security Council. So there is still opposition but I remain relatively optimistic in part because the United States has been aggressively pushing for peace and security goals as well as good governance goals that in fact there's gonna be something at the end of the day that we can point to. So as we think about peacekeeping, it's important to remember that peacekeeping is an important implementing partner in terms of securing peace in fragile states and implementing what will hopefully be global goals as it relates to peace and security. As Kofi and An suggested in his in larger freedom report, the peacekeeping and peacebuilding really do need to be simultaneous activities and both Rafi and Allison have outlined how the multi-dimensional peacekeeping missions that we're seeing today are very different than we were seeing 10 years ago where peacekeeping was much more focused on maintaining a ceasefire line between two warring parties, two warring countries that had agreed to end their fighting and somebody needed to monitor the ceasefire. UN peacekeeping has moved on extensively since then and all the new missions that are coming online are far more complicated and in fact do exactly what Kofi and An called for which is multi-dimensional peacekeeping where you have peacekeepers and other UN partners working to develop reconciliation processes with governance, human rights at the same time that they are providing the security environment that allows there to be peace and reconciliation and most importantly a political process to develop so that there's local ownership of the solutions that are ultimately agreed to. So peacekeepers today are not only about providing the security environment that allows the politics to get right, but they're also about the broader set of activities that can be undertaken. Just two examples, which is I went to Timor-Lest as right after the Indonesian troops had pulled out and saw the unbelievable physical devastation and human devastation that had been caused in Timor-Lest and it was exciting when peacekeepers were deployed and it's even more exciting that in 2012 after 13 years the peacekeepers have left because they did their job. When you look at Timor-Lest today as a good partner and a good neighbor to Indonesia and to Australia, nobody would have predicted 13 years ago that Timor-Lest would have good relations with Indonesia and Australia is on the right side of development. When you look at the indicators in Timor-Lest in terms of education, politics, elections, it's all headed in the positive direction. So that is certainly a case where you saw peacekeepers and peacebuilding happening at the same time under the same umbrella was close coordination between all sets of UN partners. I just want to mention Central African Republic is a challenge as we think about the deployment of peacekeepers there. It is going to be multi-dimensional and what's interesting in Central African Republic is that their security council and has clearly indicated there's going to be a very large need for a civilian component as part of the peacekeepers there. So we will not just be deployed military, deployed police that are providing security in Central African Republic. It's going to be an extensive civilian force that is working on the broader set of peacebuilding activities that will ultimately determine whether we're going to have a similar success story there or not. I would just note that from an American perspective we have a challenge which is that for the first time since 2009, the US has returned to arrears in UN peacekeeping we currently owe by the end of the year a total of $350 million to the United Nations. So we're in arrears again. And this is a huge challenge as we think about America's role and it's important that as we think about the FY15 appropriations process that we fully fund UN peacekeeping. So just to wrap up as we think about the next 15 years and next development goals, it's quite clear that building peaceful and just societies including the full range of peacebuilding activities that it's important that they be included as part of these global goals, whatever they're called, millennium development goals, part two sustainable development goals or something else and another PR firm comes up with in the near future. But because right now we refer to it as the post 2015 process, which is just dry as toast. And so it's important though that peace and stability be part of these goals. And as we think about the targets that are going to be part of the goals that UN peacekeeping has got to be viewed as a, not the sole, a core element in terms of its implementation. So thank you very much. Thank you so much. Along with Rafi, Oliver has joined us as a late time stand-in coming from New York just before to be part of our operation. We're very delighted to have you. Thank you. Thanks very much and thanks for inviting GPQ. And I'm glad I was able to jump in at the last minute, Pupo, I like surprises. I managed to jot down a few things on the way here. So going forth has the benefit of me not having to repeat some of the very good points Rafi made and also maybe being able to rebut some of the points that Alison made. Correct, maybe not rebut, but I'll try to still stay within my 10 minute time slot. I'm glad Rafi mentioned 2086, which was passed last January because we do see that particular resolution as the sort of high watermark and hopefully final word from the council and therefore for the New York community of delegates and the secretary colleagues on the linkages. It was preceded by two or three years of consensus building and quite a lot of debates inside the New York peacekeeping and peacebuilding community. And I think it reflects extremely well how we see and how the council now sees the linkages between those two general categories. It's also important to note that it was passed under the presidency of Pakistan. And for us was quite significant that one of the largest traditional two computers played that role. I don't think it could have passed potentially under a different presidency. At least a couple of the P5s, I think would have found it much more difficult to pass that resolution. And it represents, I think, that the total shift in the approach of some of our larger TCCs towards their role as peacebuilders. I think if you had asked Pakistan and some of the others three or four years ago, do you think peacekeepers are early peacebuilders? They would have immediately found that fairly problematic proposition that would dilute their role as military TCCs and would potentially divert funding in a different direction, et cetera. But I think they've really embraced the concept of peacekeepers as early peacebuilders. The resolution also talks very specifically about the three different roles that we have been talking about before that peacekeepers perform vis-a-vis peacebuilding, a strategy formulation role that brings together the national government, the mission country team and other partners around a shared sense of priorities for peacebuilding and enabling role where we create an environment where other peacebuilding actors can actually perform their role primarily through the security umbrella that we hopefully provide. And last but not least, a role of direct implementation where peacekeepers themselves implement a number of peacebuilding tasks and many of them have been mentioned, I won't repeat them. It is important for us to keep reminding delegates in New York of that resolution and that consensus because you'd be surprised how new delegates, including among council members, come to New York and immediately hear about peacebuilding being talked about in the context of the PVC, the PVSO and the so-called peacebuilding architecture, which I think is a very unfortunate term because it includes so many other actors if it was really supposed to be the architecture that aren't in the construct created in 2005. So we constantly have to remind them that peacebuilding is something that peacekeepers do and which they do in countries that are not on the peacebuilding agenda, which is almost all of the countries where we have peacekeeping missions. The second point I quickly wanted to talk about is how a peacebuilding lens or a peacebuilding perspective makes us better peacekeepers. I think one thing that peacebuilding has done and going back all the way to the agenda for peace and the formulation in that document in 1992 is to focus our minds on one of the primary purposes or probably the primary purpose of us being in those countries is to reduce the relapse, the risk of relapse into conflict and create a trajectory where peace can be self-sustaining. That's obviously much, much easier said than done, but I do think that the peacebuilding lens and the focus on conflict drivers and related factors has helped us in our early strategic planning and conflict analysis to prioritize within the Christmas tree mandates that Rafi was referring to on issues that are likely to cause a relapse either while we're there or after we leave. We also know from the literature and from 20 years of experience with multidimensional peacekeeping that two of the most important causes of relapse are insufficiently inclusive political settlements and processes and weak institutions. And I think, again, the institution building part of what we do has probably risen in prominence over the last couple of decades, maybe even the last few years in particular. There's some doubts now being expressed about what exactly our role should be vis-à-vis institution building, but I think if you look at our mandates, they are full of institution building tasks and getting better at how we build out institutions in a way that's legitimate, sustainable, et cetera, is obviously a huge challenge, but something that I think the peacebuilding lens has helped us focus on. The peacebuilding lens also helps us, I think I'd be very clear about the collective endeavor that is peacekeeping and peacebuilding and the need to work very, very effectively with a very broad range of actors that have to address all of the recurring peacebuilding priorities that were first articulated in the 2009 issues report are more or less reflected in the five peace and state building goals from the international dialogue and are almost, again, identical to what the WDR on conflict peace and development articulated two or three years ago. There's a remarkable consensus of what those recurring priorities are and it's pretty clear that we need to pursue them concurrently in a prioritized and sequenced way, but neglecting one at the expense of the other has had some pretty dire consequences and I'll come back to that in a second. A few challenges I wanted to run through that we see from New York and the perspective of our missions. Obviously, the most important challenge that can reverse gains very, very quickly and roughly refer to the events in South Sudan is to make sure that the political process, settlement, deal, whatever you wanna call it is sustained and becomes increasingly inclusive and is seen as legitimate by the key actors and hopefully a growing percentage of the general population and I agree with Allison that our leverage can be quite limited but it's not limited from the start, it declines over time. Missions and other national actors are in the same position, I would say. Once you've run through one or two even three election cycles, quite understandably the national leadership in a particular country is much less inclined to listen to what we have to say about how they should run their political process, how much they should reach out to marginalized groups, et cetera, et cetera. So that is a significant problem in many cases even in cases in places where we've been for 10 to 15 years. Second, I already alluded to the institution building mandates that we have and the capacity building mandates, we could maybe come back to that in the Q&A but how do we get better at building those institutions? It's a hugely difficult task that we know takes 30 to 40 years. What is our role exactly in getting those institutions onto the right track? Not all institutions, but within the rule of law, within the human rights area, within the electoral areas, sort of the core institutions that PCB Englishians tend to be mandated to help build. And then how can we get better at coordinating more effectively across the various international actors that always play a major role, including, of course, some of the P5 members that have a significant role to play on the ground, the World Bank, the EU, other bilaterals, China in many cases, et cetera. And how do we do that in a way that helps us cut across the political security development silos that will always be there to some extent, but I think we've known for a long time that we need to integrate those streams much more effectively. It will always be an up and struggle, the New Deal and the compacts that have come out of it have tried to move us in that direction. And I think we've done better in a number of countries than in others. So Mali, I think is a good example. Mali, probably not such a great example, we're trying to improve on the way it has been working in Mali in the case of CER. So there are different kinds of circumstances that are still very important to get that right. And one challenge we've had, I think since Cambodia and probably before, is the development actors that we depend on to move in after we create, for example, a more secure environment in some of the more remote areas are incredibly slow. And they're incredibly difficult to influence at times when they're not in the process of planning and prioritizing. And their planning timeframes are incredibly long. So if you're talking to the commission of the European Union in day five of their seven year planning timeframe and asking them to reprioritize something, it's a difficult conversation, the same with the World Bank. The NDP is more flexible, but it's a huge challenge, particularly the speed with which they're able to move in when we need them to. For us, the Holy Grail really is early alignment, oh, and early alignment across these different actors, and we're trying very hard to achieve that in CER, where the key development actors are lining up, hopefully behind the priorities agreed across the board. I was gonna talk a little bit, but I've run out of time about one particular mandate area that Alison also mentioned, extension of state authority. We're doing a bit more work in New York and with our missions on what experience have we had with that? How can we get better at that? How can we strike the right balance between the center and the periphery? How can we strike the right balance between the different mandates we have and how they interplay? How can we extend state authority without undermining reconciliation and political processes? Events in Kedal over the last weekend are a reminder of how difficult that can be. And I'll probably have to stop there. Just one last point. I completely agree with Rafi that we need very strong civilian components and strong staff to perform these roles. There's been a bit of a tendency in New York in the budgetary committees to question why we need all these civilians. Couldn't we just go back to basics? I think that's a dangerous proposition and unhelpful since we know since the early 90s that we cannot succeed in peacekeeping without those elements. And lastly, related also to some comments before a challenge that we're I think getting better at dealing with is when is it the right time for us to exit and transition out and I don't particularly like the word handover because many things we do cannot be handed over to a UNDP office. But when how do we exit in a way that's responsible not too early and allows the political and institution building and other processes to continue without too much interruption? I think we've done that quite well in a couple of recent cases and we're hopefully gonna do it well in a couple of other places that are on that trajectory. Thanks so much, Oliver. If we began with a US but then global perspective it's appropriate that we end with Tiwa who's come the furthest from Beijing to be with us to share her perspective and this is in my experience one of the most synthetic analysts of a Beijing perspective. So we're delighted you were able to join us. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting us and I will especially thank my research partner from AFSC from New York and Drew bring me here and also USIP and AFP holding such a great event for me to feel very privileged here to communicate with you. And it's really a pity for me that I haven't been to any of these fragile states. And as Alison mentioned those countries I think I will just say basically specifically based on the China perspective talking about peacekeeping and peacebuilding the policies and some other challenges we might confront it in the near future. And first question I would like to talk and share is some interests specifically shaping Chinese engagements abroad especially those kind of military or peace operations. And I will just analyze it from three layers in terms of the interest. Firstly is everybody knows that China has greatly expand or national interest everywhere throughout the world and so we need to protect our national interests abroad and also in terms of those kind of peace operations there is another kind of analysis that China mostly in the peaceful time still need to train our military and probably peacekeeping those kind of NATO system way would be the best solution for China to train our troops during the peace time and we call it something like military operations not for war, that would be the real and very substantial interest for China. And second layer is that it's about this kind of international norm building or institution participation for China. And as for in the UN studies we normally will divide to several different types as for a country would be a supporter to a norm or would be reformer or would abandon or violate a norm or institution. As for China it remains to be a really hard problem or option to choose because now we have really kind of dual identity here. On one hand we can be considered as developing country and on the other China has been categorized into the developed one to some extent. So we need to firstly confirm what we are and then we can choose how we should reform or how we should follow or how we can cooperate with the other main actors on the world stage. And the third if we consider about the image of China now we emphasize a lot about being a responsible good power and I guess some of you might heard about this concept. Though it's very complicated and I think we can put everything into this basket responsible good power but it has been underlined repeatedly in our foreign policy making and also there is something like called China uniquely Chinese or uniquely unique. I think it's very interesting to just define like China model or something in terms of it. And I will quote safer worlds report in terms of this issue and it just compares China together with the other Western countries and it said that China is kind of one of humanitarian and development aid plus influence without interference in contrast to the Western coercive approach of sanction plus military intervention. So I think it partly explained the questions but not in a full picture. And also sometimes it would be boiled down that China pay attention to this kind of commercial together with humanitarian approach in our intervention or participation in those peace operations and sometimes it was called pragmatism. Chinese pragmatism in the involvement. And second question I would like to discuss is the routine course of the conflicts in the fragile states. I think it's very important to adjust this problem is that we firstly need to know what composes to be the most important variables and then we can decide how we give the medicines. So firstly I think most important is the political system of those fragile states. And just now I remember that Peter mentioned that there are about six fragile states according to some index but according to the G7 Plus framework now there are already 18 countries involved in this framework. So I think things might be even worse than what we have expected. And we have also witnessed that the political systems in those countries are not very, I will say not very similar with the westerns but I still think that it shouldn't be necessary democratic because I have heard a lot of democratic elections this morning but I don't think it should be the primary goal or ultimate goal. Second I think resources are very important and there is some kind of thinking that for those fragile states or for those kind of conflict affected states we have seen the two extremities. One is that the country is abundant with resources and there would be really huge wars and whatever civil wars or like interference or intervention from the outside. And the other would be the countries that are really short of everything. Just like we say poor or deficit, whatever. And so we also need to pay attention to that too. The third one I think historical background also composes to be an important factor to those countries. As for China has quite similar history with those countries sometimes we have those kind of common understandings with the mostly African countries. And the third question I would like to talk is about our attitude. And I think after I have listed those routine courses and I think if we would like to solve the problem we should just address the root courses first. And then in PKO China has got a very consistent policy in it and also I think the three pillars initiated proposed by Hamasheot's whole state consent impartiality, non-use of force. We still stick on that. And also at the same time we just increase our contribution to UN peacekeeping from the new century millennium. And we have seen that China has been the greatest contributor among the P5 states. And at the same time we still will contribute more both financially and in personnel way. And some of our colleagues mentioned PBF though the fund hasn't got a really big pool now but China has consistently donated probably one million annually and from 2006. And it is anticipated that China will keep increasing our financial contribution for peacekeeping before we were about 3% and now we are almost at six. Probably in the future we are going to close to seven or 8% to that extent. For peacebuilding, Hu Jintao has already mentioned that we should jointly consider peacekeeping and peacebuilding. For example, like we prefer those kinds of comprehensive approach including security, civilian, administrative, political, humanitarian, human rights and economic tools. And I found that it was also proposed by some of our European colleagues, this comprehensive approach. And the fourth thing I would like to talk is about the challenges and risks we confronted. Domestically, I think first thing I need to mention is the domestic political stability in China. Though when we mentioned the fragile states we just care a lot about their stability and now China has got this problem too. We need to have this stability first. And the second is our own economic growth. Could we just sustain the really fast speed of growth or not, still remains to be a question. Third is environment degradation. And for most of the Chinese now we don't care about number at all, like 10% GDP growth. But we have seen and especially in Beijing you have heard the smog there. It hurts a lot and people are becoming to consider about those things. And forces terrorism and separationists now also has just put a lot of threat to Chinese security. Internationally, I think first thing we need to, okay, I will be very brave. First is the geographical conflicts with our neighboring countries. I found some American expert mentioned that the biggest problem for China is that we have too many neighbors. And now it just got the problem now whatever on the seaside and also on our territory board. And the second is the mutual trust with our partners, whatever Western partners and African partners. And third is our skills and expertise in UNNIO. And things I have been working in universities for several years. It has been just great demand from our government and from also UN, China should just have more skillful and well-trained students and expertise in that field. And that's probably the things I would like to share. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we've had a group of talented panelists with a lot more to say, be very disciplined and very focused in their comments. So I'd ask for the 10 minutes that we have for some Q and A that you respond appropriately and be focused in your question, both in sparing a particular talk before you pose the question. And if you would like to address it to a particular panelist, please do so. I'm gonna take three or four on the ledger and then we'll go start over here. It looks like the front row demands attention with the hands. Please. Yeah, just first of all, thank you for all your presentations. My name's Kieran Singh and I come from the International Storytelling Center here in the United States. My question's really about the idea of the cultural dimension to peacekeeping and peacebuilding and the idea does mention of the Millennium Development Goals and the 2015, but within the MDG goals, there was no mention of culture. I'm thinking about how conflicts arise, where they come from, centuries past and more recent and the cultural dimensions of that. And I'm wondering if what your views might be in terms of the role of culture and the arts, particularly now that we're in the middle or slap bang in the middle of the digital age. We heard a presentation about the gaming industry, social media, so your thoughts on culture and the arts in moving forward. Thank you. This gentleman right here in the front row. Thank you. My name's Ted Johnson and I teach in the master's program on conflict and coexistence and sustainable international development at Brandeis. Many of you have spoken about the whole idea of multi-dimensional approaches and the whole idea of good governance. And I think it might have been all over that talked about one of the challenges of being the whole issue of building better institutions. So what I mean, I know there's a lot of literature in this, but just from your experiences, when you talk about better institutions in this Christmas tree analogy, you can't build everything all at once. There must be some recommendations or some good practices that talk about prioritizing where do you start in that whole area? Thank you. Doris next here. No. Thank you. I'm Doris Mariani, Chief Executive Officer of Nonviolent Peace Force. We do something called Unarmed Civilian Peacekeeping and we have about 225 people on the ground, 125 in South Sudan today doing a very difficult task of protecting civilians. So my question to that panel is, and we are fortunate to be working alongside UN peacekeepers and UNMOS and working with UNICEF and UNHCR. My question to you is UN peacekeeping is expensive and it takes a long time to deploy the missions. And you've all emphasized the importance of the civilian component. I'd like to hear your views how the civilian component could be scaled up. What does it take to either make our organization or any organization, I don't care who it is, to scale up that civilian component in the peacekeeping? Thank you. I'm gonna give Megan the last question here. My question is somewhat along the lines of the gentleman over there and I had originally wanted to pose it to Ms. Giffin. I also had questions about the cultural dimension but not in terms of the millennium development goals but more in terms of peacekeeping and stabilization operations. We've seen the benefits that, I hate to use the term traditional because there's the connotation there. I think indigenous might be more effective. Indigenous institutions have in rebuilding a country in Gachacha in Rwanda. And I'm curious as to whether the UN and other organizations are talking about the ways in which culturally appropriate approaches to stabilization and peacekeeping can be implemented. Excellent. Allison, we're gonna begin with you and give each panelist who wants one minute because we need to go to a video. Okay, quickly, I'm actually gonna pass that to Oliver because he probably knows more about rule of law corrections and how they're working with traditional justice systems as my colleague who specializes in that does but I don't. On sequencing, I think this is really important and I've been recommending a three-stage mandate where first you try and get some military on the ground for some quick security and then you do better assessments for how you can be doing sequencing on your state building and especially to make sure that it's being done in a way that doesn't reify atrocities or targeted violence or those types of conflict gains that have happened on the ground. And so, and I think that's being done now in South Sudan and Khar to a certain extent is that when the state really falls apart and there's high levels of violence, how you can focus on protection and security first and hopefully get things like the human rights due diligence policy really working and in place and then to start building back the state building components and institution building. And I'll just say one other thing is that I think this is a really big opportunity for peacekeeping. I think some of the best work is being done right now within the UN secretariat under people like Oliver and policy and best practices. And we have a real opportunity in places like Central African Republic and in South Sudan even though there are real tragedies to get peacekeeping to work better not just at the top levels but at the bottom. Thank you. I'll tackle the issue of cultural developments in the context of millennium development goals. You are correct when we think about the millennium development goals that were agreed 15 years ago there was not a discussion about culture and the arts. There are elements of culture that are being discussed in the context of the new goals that will follow after 2015 everything from ending cultural acceptance of corruption and again promoting as you mentioned indigenous institutions that promote reconciliation and of course a separate goal in education itself. I think I have not heard of a more explicit discussion about cultural promotion and arts in the terms of the new goals and the two things that it would take are a driver within the UN system and a driver among a member state. So I'd have to probably do a little bit more research as to whether individual member states are raising these specific cultural and arts issues in the context of post-2015 and also UNESCO is the key driver from a UN perspective. I will respond to a bit in terms of the better institutions question and as it has been considered also in my research for a long time until I just stepped into the research about G7 Plus and I found it could be considered as improved pattern even though it's now still shipping itself but I think in terms of G7 Plus is also have like two parties. One is the donors and the other is those recipient states but in terms of the donors it can be composed by whatever UN agencies and OECD or even some private sectors and I think the special part lies to the recipient states because this kind of framework emphasizes a lot of ownership of those states themselves which means that the states will just start their assessment first and then let the donors know what we need and it could compose to be a better way to operationalize. Thank you. I'll try to be very brief. Institution building the question from professor in the front row, we've done quite a lot of work just the last couple of years actually about how we could get better at the diagnostic part of your question. It used to be called the state of the state assessment. We don't use that language anymore but it's essentially recognizes that we're actually not very good as the international community at assessing the state of the institutions as we're entering and I very much include in that the traditional indigenous institutions that exist particularly in the more remote areas in every country where we deploy. We've worked very closely with the Wolfpack and some others to establish a diagnostic, develop a diagnostic tool that we're hopefully going to pilot in CER. I agree with Alice in CER as a nice, it's a horrible situation but it's a good case for us to try to improve on what we've been doing including through that. I don't think we're very good at having an overarching institution building strategy because we still operate in silos based on different bits of the institution building mandates that we have but we can maybe talk about that over lunch. Scaling up civilian components, I wish I had a really good answer. Recruiting for Mali was hard. Recruiting for CER is going to be 10 times harder. We would be very open to ideas that we haven't explored. Civil affairs components are absolutely critical. Finding civil affairs officers that are willing to spend a couple of years in remote areas of CER is extremely difficult. We work with UNVs, we work with lots of other channels and mechanisms but I completely agree. Getting those people deployed quickly is often more effective than military components arriving six months later. So we completely agree. My thanks to everyone on the panel. We're ending this portion a little bit early so that AFP can show a video. As you know, for lunch we're having a conversation with John and Susan Collins-Marx about their work and we have a prepared video which will introduce them for those who don't know them and be a bit of a tribute to them. During some of the darkest days of the Cold War, John Marx had a vision that there had to be a better way to achieve a just and peaceful world. He understood that while conflict is an inevitable part of the human condition, violence is not. He saw the possibility of a win-win non-aversarial world and he founded Search for Common Ground to achieve it. Let me tell you a little about John who has not always been a peacemaker. He first worked as a foreign service officer including a spell in Vietnam during our war there. He was, like so many others, disillusioned by what he saw but he wasn't discouraged. I met John during his journalism career and then I watched in awe when he switched from profit-couture to peacemaker. He started Search for Common Ground in 1982 and has tackled many problems but he's always aimed for the big prize. Our focus tonight is on yet another aspect in the extraordinary evolving relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. If you find it difficult to believe that the CIA and the KGB may be on the verge of cooperating with one another in the near future, your instincts are probably right. Nevertheless, high-ranking former officials from both agencies have been meeting out in California this week at a conference sponsored by the WAN Corporation and an organization called Search for Common Ground. In 1993, John traveled to Cape Town to make a television series called South Africa Searches for Common Ground. After a day's work, he went out for a few beers with his South African producer who asked John if he were married. I'm divorced, said John, but I'm looking. Looking for what? asked the producer. A tall, beautiful mediator, replied John. The producer said, I know her. And the next day he introduced John to Susan Collins. Within 30 hours they realized that this was it. There's something about a shared vision and a shared love going together. And for us, it was when we first met each other, it was that sense of the love that we felt for each other, of course, was just overwhelming. Nine months later, they married and Susan moved to Washington where she quickly established herself as John's partner in running Search for Common Ground and in transforming conflict around the world. What's unique about Susan is this ability to meet people and present herself in such a warm, open manner that you're inevitably drawn to her. She makes you respect her and you can trust her. And that trust is just so important going forward in her work and in her life. Susan's also a spiritual person and she brings that dimension to her work in negotiation, mediation, and peace building. We share a vision. We have something we can talk about incessantly. We are able to do work that complements what the other person is doing. We're able to combine the characteristics of two people which makes us a much more powerful individual and couple. No one has done more to advance the field of practical conflict resolution around the globe than John and Susan Marx. And they've done it with initiative and intelligence, with head and heart, with passion and persistence to advance the cause of peace. John and Susan believe that the genius of Search lies in the committed, gifted colleagues who share their vision. And the right people always appeared when the organization started opening field offices in such places as Macedonia, Burundi, and Angola, and when it launched a major initiative to improve relations between the US and Iran. Here for the first time, I experience a kind of atmosphere, a kind of spirit in a conference, in a gathering which permits people to open themselves up without reservation. And speak out of their hearts. So what did two presidents in Washington and Tehran do when they want better relations but are afraid the effort could blow up in their face? Well, they move carefully and they turn not necessarily to diplomats but rather to private individuals who hold no official position. At this week's conference, Iranian and American diplomats spoke in generalities. But it is someone like John Marx who is actually doing something. Marx organized a visit of American wrestlers to Iran in February. It was the first time the American flag had been displayed there since 1979. When the wrestlers returned to the US, President Clinton invited them and searched for common ground to the White House in order to signal to the Iranians that he wanted to improve relations. Today, search has grown into the world's largest conflict prevention organization with offices in 34 countries and a staff of 560. Its largest program, which Susan started 13 years ago, is in the Congo.  It includes retraining tens of thousands of soldiers and police. We see the media as a really important and profound tool for working in conflict areas. For one thing, you reach a huge amount of people. And so we see it as a way of putting the spotlight on the approaches to peace-building that normally people get through dialogues or through a workshop, but then you're reaching 20 or 30 or 40 people. With the media, you can reach millions of people. Movies and TV around the world are saturated with images of violence and horror. But is it possible to use pop culture in a different way to promote peace and understanding across a country? It's for a new soap opera series that's taking on one of the most serious issues for Kenyans today, the hatred and violence that arise from tribal divisions. John Marks is the visionary behind the soap opera, The Team. Call it soap opera for social change. The key to peace is to be the peace we want to see in the world. And this is how we do it by everything we think and say and do. So the answer to the question, what can I do, is such a simple one, is to live that peace every day in whatever our circle is of our lives. And in that way, we truly do contribute to peace. So given that peace is really about walking each other home in a peaceful way, about caring and compassion for ourselves, each other and the planet, let's do it together. This gears you up for our lunch, and please join me in thanking our panel.


Next question is from Jose M279. What's your advice for someone who used to be chubby and is now scared to put on weight due to body dysmorphia? Okay, so again, I'm not an expert in the psychology behind body dysmorphia. I have a lot of experience with it just through training clients. And in my experience, the most effective thing I could do as a trainer for somebody who has any type of body dysmorphia, whether it be, you know, I need to build more muscle. I'm too skinny or I'm afraid to gain weight or any of that stuff, is I would take their focus off of how they look and focus completely on performance. It was always the most effective thing that I found again as a trainer. So when someone would come to me and we'd have these conversations about body dysmorphia, I would say, okay, we're not going to weigh you. We're not going to test your body fat.  All we're going to keep track of and focus on is your reps, how much weight you can lift, how fast you can move. All your strength metrics. Your work load, how much more exercises we could do, your total volume. And then what ends up happening is a person moves their focus towards performance. And here's the thing, all of the behaviors that we have that are negative around body dysmorphia, it's hard to do them when you're looking at your performance. So in other words, it's hard to starve yourself and get stronger and improve your performance. So what it would do is it would just move their focus for long enough time to where they started to really enjoy the performance gains. And then we could sometimes go back to aesthetics or sometimes not at all. I can't tell you how many times I had clients with body dysmorphia that love the performance so much that they never went back to really focus. And then they would notice, holy cow, I look good because I'm just focused on my performance. I think too, I'm always having like this, and this same thing, right? So I'm like, I'm not an expert in this, but yet we've, this is very, very common. And like there's a wide spectrum on this on how extreme it is. And I'm always reminding this person that, you know, the body that you're trying to build, right? It's the super body, the super car that we're trying to build. And right now I want to build the most powerful engine that I can. I care more about that before we start worrying about the aesthetics, the body, the frame of the car. Like let's build the most powerful engine we possibly can. And that is what we're trying to do when we're trying to build muscle because the more muscle that we can put on your body, the faster your metabolism is going to work, which it's only going to make it that much easier for us to lean out and to build this physique that you want. So keeping them focused on the goal is to speed up our metabolism and then focusing on strength like Sal is saying. I'm communicating that over and over so many different ways to get that across to them that stop worrying about the aesthetics right now of what we look like. Like the long game, we're going to get there. Don't worry about that. But we have to first lay the foundation or build the engine. And that's what we're trying to accomplish by focusing on the strength, adding the calories in and building muscle. Don't get caught up in the inches, the scale on the way, even what you may look like in the mirror. This is the long game that we're trying to do. And that's why you've hired me. And my theory around this really is, you know, I've experienced body dysmorphia personally. And there is an obsessive component to it in terms of the thought process where you kind of become a little obsessed with how you look and this is what you think about all the time. And when I moved that thought process from how I looked to performance, I was still a little obsessive with my thought process, but it was in a healthier direction. And again, take the focus off of your body and how it looks. There was a gentleman that hung out with us at one of our last live events who was asking me about this.  So I know how much, you know, water weight I'm gaining. And I'm really keeping track and I have this thing.  And I told him, I said, take your scale. And I want you to put it in the closet and don't use it anymore. And he freaked out. And I said, just trust me, take the scale, put it in the closet. Don't focus. Don't weigh yourself at all. I'll give you a timeframe because I know you're freaking out. So let's say 60 days from now, two months, you can weigh yourself again. In the meantime, I just want you to track your strength, your sets, your reps, your performance. And he came back. He emailed me, you know, several times. He's like, I'm getting stronger. I'm feeling better. I really want to weigh myself, but I'm not. I know you said not to whatever. Well, anyway, at the end of 60 days, he got on the scale and the guy's body improved by him not focusing on how he looked and just focusing on his performance. I just think it's a healthier mentality in general. Like, even if somebody's coming in to just completely focus. Even if they don't have dysmorphia, right? Even if they don't have dysmorphia, it's just a better way to treat yourself. And I think we always speak to this in terms of like punishing yourself by working out. Like we got to get rid of that mentality. And that's definitely a component is viewing your body in a certain light and bringing that energy into working on yourself. And I really just feel that, you know, focusing on strength and actual tangibles, it's way more objective. Like we got to get out of this objective of like, I look this way, I'm holding water and this, you know, it becomes an erotic obsession eventually, even if you don't realize that it is. And so I just think if people were able to kind of shift that mentality because you're going to get to your goal, you're going to get to your goal by focusing on strength. You will get there and you'll make our alterations to make that happen and to achieve that. So your body is going to reflect it eventually.


I'm Diane Cowan and I am the Virtual Services Librarian at the Santa Cruz Public Libraries and I'm going to be talking to you today about SoundSwell, the Santa Cruz Public Libraries local music collection. SoundSwell was originally funded by an LSTA Eureka grant for the proof of concept phase of the project and it was created in partnership with the Santa Cruz rehearsal studios. So SoundSwell is the streaming database of local music that library card holders can download for free. It establishes a historical archive of local music that people can listen to for years to come. It is the only discovery tool for local music that I'm aware of and it really expands access to local music in a way that compensates and respects the art of the musician and we pay a two-year licensing fee for our users to be able to download the music and then after the contracts expire, the music is still available in a streaming format only but not in a downloadable format. So it's always a good idea to start with why and I'll be perfectly honest. As Heather mentioned, I was a Eureka Leadership Institute member in 2012 and I was looking for a project. So I had just seen this article in Library Journal about the Iowa City local music project. I was wondering, you know, oh, is this something that would be a good fit for my community because I know we had a lot of good musicians but I wasn't really connected to the local music scene and I didn't know if we were going to have a lot of community support for something like that. So it was just kind of sitting on the back burner there for a while. And then something really amazing happened. This part of my job is the Virtual Services Librarian. Of course, I monitored the library's social networks and really literally just as I was pondering the question of community support for a project like this, I got messages or the library received messages on both Facebook and Twitter from a member of the community who had also learned about the Iowa City local music project from a civilian news blog, I think it was Boing Boing. And she said that this would be a great thing and couldn't we do this with our library and she even offered to help. So I set up a conversation with her and it turned out that this person was deeply entrenched in the local music scene that she owned a small record label and the local rehearsal studio. So at this point I really felt like the planet's at a line and I had my project and then it really merited some serious consideration. So I thought it was time to take a little look outward and really do some investigation into the music community and the community as a whole to see kind of how we could make it have the most impact. So I did a community assessment that really focused in on the music and had some interesting findings. There's the great morgani. What I found was that Santa Cruz is of course a unique community with an artistic flair and we have a really, really huge and active local music scene with a lot of artists working in a variety of genres. And Santa Cruz is trying to promote this artistic flair in terms of economic development by establishing a new identity for itself as an arts destination. But a look at the arts master plan really reveals that the visual arts are completely overshadowing the musical arts in terms of institutional support which has been events based and biased towards certain genres like jazz and classical. So the music community in Santa Cruz is really facing some challenges. First of all, music lovers don't have a lot of opportunities for discovering local music beyond that chance encounter at a restaurant or a bar. iTunes and subscription services usually don't have a geographic based discovery tool. And then of course they take a big chunk out of the fees which can be challenging for just starting out musicians. And then when it comes to those large scale local events, I found that our local musicians were often competing with out of the area performers. So when it comes to planning and institutional support, musicians in Santa Cruz are really getting thrown under the bus to the detriment of the musicians and I think the community as a whole. So I really kind of see sounds well as both a compliment and an alternative to this event based local music discovery and promotion. It's free, it's year round, it's weather resistant and it's kind of a one stop location where you can discover local music in Santa Cruz. And then by helping musicians to grow their fan base locally, I think it can really have an impact on venue attendance and possibly stimulate economic development in the musical arts. It also, it really communicates the value of local music on an institutional level because after all the library is a government agency. But most importantly, sounds well builds community. And I think Bo Bradbury said it way better than I ever could and this is a direct quote and there he is there. It's so exciting that you're doing this project because it really brings the listeners and the musical and artistic community together. And sounds well definitely does bring the musical community and its listeners together. But it's also positioned the library as a real player in the local arts and music scene. And we have a whole new set of relationships between the library, the arts, the media and musicians than we used to. So building the database really focused on these three project areas, at least for the proof of concept phase. Securing content, building the database and so much data entry that I try to block it out. And of course the biggest part of securing content was relationship building. You know of course before then we had to develop a license agreement which Iowa City was kind enough to share with me. And develop selection criteria for inclusion in the database. Now that turned out to be way more complicated than I had ever imagined. Even just defining local music turned out to be a huge challenge. And I learned a lot about what it means for a local music scene to have a really strong geographic identity. And learning that lesson actually is what really helped me be able to go out there and build those relationships and talk to musicians in a different way and create the materials I needed to form these partnerships. So we used OMEKA to build the database which is an open source digital archive software that you know libraries, archives and museums use. It's very flexible, it uses Dublin Core and it allows you to really bring in a lot of different types of objects. And we already had a OMEKA database server built. So I thought yep that's what we're using. But even then there was still a lot to do you know ripping, scanning. And then we also used SoundCloud which is a music sharing site to handle the streaming. So there was a lot of work in getting that to work on the back end. So we also had some challenges. Language turned out to be a really big hurdle. Catalogging and data entry were pretty challenging. And then storage of course. So as far as language goes, I speak librarian, not musician. And I had to learn how to talk to these musicians in a whole different way. In a way that sounded compelling to them. And it really was a completely different language. But one place where librarians speak and musicians speak really came together was when we talked about the historical archive aspect of the project. And every single musician really valued the opportunity to become a part of the historical record of the local music of Santa Cruz. And I just want to share this example. Billy Hawk Epstein is a local musician and he has worked in Santa Cruz for more than 20 years playing shows. And now he has some health conditions that prevent him from performing. And he sent me this beautiful email and he was just so thankful to have a way to get his music out into the community. And to know that it was going to be in the archive. So just really good feedback. And yeah, so cataloging and data entry were really a nightmare when doing this project. There are no authority files for these musicians. And some of them honestly change pseudonyms as often as their socks. Of course we tried to maintain some kind of consistency between the Mark record and the Dublin core. But it was really important to make the database really user friendly. And that's the thing about Dublin core is it can be as user friendly as you want. So there's not a lot of consistency. And then the data entry was just so tedious and time consuming that I'm going to kind of gloss over that because I don't want to think about it. And then finally we had some storage problems. And I know that this is something that goes beyond this project, beyond libraries, organizations everywhere. Storage is expensive and more and more of our stuff is digital and needs to be backed up. This is something we all have to deal with. But it was literally just as we were about to go live, the server was full and we ran out of space. And so we had to come up with a short term fix really quickly, which we did.  And we're still working on that long term solution. But you know all of these challenges and all of that data entry work, it's really worth it because everybody enjoys music. It's part of our individual and shared identities. And music brings people together. Preserving that and making it available to our communities is extremely valuable. And it really reinforces that hyper-local role of libraries as creators and curators and disseminators of that unique content and culture. So the future. So I have some short term plans, some medium term goals, and then some long term ideas and possibilities. In the short term I have to be working on expanding that collection incrementally by getting the word out to more and more musicians and bringing them in. We have to plan for these two-year cycles of complete collection overturn, which means all that data entry work again. And then finding a really nice way to organize the music that comes from the expired contracts into the historical archive, which kind of leads into the medium term goals, which is to bring in other objects, newspaper articles, video clips, other pieces of memorabilia that can be digitized in order to create kind of a band page for each band as we move forward in creating an archive. And then possibly even going back in time and filling in the history of local music. And then in the long term I really do think that the project lends itself to the Discover and Go model where different libraries pay into a centralized IT framework and then negotiate with the musicians in their communities for the benefit of the entire network. And I think you would all agree that the San Francisco Bay Area is the place to do this kind of thing. So talk to me. And now I just thought we'd take a quick look. Super quick. So here we are. It's scmusic.SantaCruisepl.org is the direct URL. And as you can see, we've got a featured album. You can see the most recent editions. And you can browse by genre, browse by album. When you browse by genre, you get this cool little word cloud. And of course the larger words are the genres that we have the most music in. So as you can see, we've got a lot of folk singers in Santa Cruz. I'm going to go ahead and click on Browse Albums. You can, you know, of course title, author, you know, or the date that it was added if you've already downloaded everything in the database and you want to see what's new. Oh yeah, the Raging Grannies are the most recent edition. But actually I think I'm just going to do a search so that I don't end up making you guys listen to something too weird. So this is the album Grow Down. So this here is the sound cloud working on the back end to make it look nice and pretty for us. Ooh, that is touchy. So people can just stream and listen to the music if they want.  Oh, that takes us to the authentication piece. And I'll just, too bad we can't listen to the music while I'm typing. So I've entered my username and password and it just brings up a zip file, which I'm not going to save. Don't worry, tech guy. And then I could just drag it right into my music folder or my iTunes or whatever. That is actually not responding. My contact information would have been on the last slide, but that's all I have for you. Very effective in her time management and we have time for questions directly. Any questions? Just very simply about how many musicians and groups do you think that you touched with? Ah, there we go. We currently have 95 albums and about 70 to 75 different musical performers, groups or individuals. I'm just curious why you decided on a two year contract knowing that you've got to go through that cycle every two years to rework with the musicians. Well, I did want to pretty frequently refresh the collection and kind of aggressively build it. Other than that, that's what Iowa City was doing. Do you have mark records for the content in your own catalog? Or is it completely a separate ecosystem? Oh, not yet, but we are going to be adding the mark records. When we launched this project, we were still using Evergreen, so we really just wanted to wait. Two questions. How much usage is it getting so far? And I noticed you're partnering with SoundCloud. Do you have a backup plan as SoundCloud goes away? Well, if SoundCloud goes away, it is actually possible now to use Omeka itself. Just dream the music, which was, I guess, the most recent update to the Omeka software. It just doesn't look as pretty and awesome, so that's my plan. And I'm sorry, you're going to have to remind me the first part. Well, when the project first went live, we got like 500,000 page views. We're getting about, you know, close to 1,000 page views a month, and that's just page views. We've only just begun getting download statistics out of the system. So I don't know if it's that everybody and their brother in the entire community downloaded everything, and then now that's it, they're done, which is entirely possible. But we're only, we're getting about 10 to 20 download sessions per week in the last three weeks since I've been getting statistics. Diane, are you actively trying to recruit new artists into the database, or do they approach you? Are you having to turn people away, or how does that work? I am actively trying to recruit musicians.  And also, musicians come to me when they learn about it. I have been lucky in that we are able to use some local history funding for this. You know, just a small budget each year to keep outing musicians. I was just curious, sorry to bring up data entry, because it was going to make you cry. But when you said we, who's we, was it all library staff, or do you have a failings of volunteers to help with this? I had, well of course, we have one person on staff who's like the de facto original cataloger. And so she did all of the cataloging of the physical CDs. I have an aide who for three or six hours a week came in and did most of the grant work. And I also had a volunteer who came in for three to six hours a week to do a lot of that grant work. You know, and see the thing is, by using SoundCloud, it would have been nice to have SoundCloud handle the downloading as well as the streaming, but we couldn't do that and keep the authentication. So we had to enter metadata on every song in like four places. It was like out of control. Well, I didn't. I think we have time for one more question. And I see one over here. Did you do some sort of event or kickoff to let the community know about this? Or did everybody kind of know about it already? You know, I really wanted to do some kind of kickoff, but the timing was just, we just did not have the resources to do it at the time that we finally went live a year late. But you know, I'm still hoping to do. I mean, there's nothing that says that we can't do an event. And I think it's a great way to get more musicians involved and it's a great way to get the community involved. You know, my partner in crime at the Santa Cruz rehearsal studios, she did a lot of the outreach work in notifying people about it and getting the musical community to know.  And then we do have the physical collection of CDs like really prominently displayed at the downtown library. So people can find out visually that there's this local music collection and then it also points you to the online resource. Thank you, Diane.


Welcome traders to a Tick-Mail chart here with me Patrick Munnally, I want to draw your attention today to developing opportunities in the Stirling year on the 4 hour time frame and we're looking for a mean reversion setup here. We have been squeezing higher, potentially developing now into an ending diagonal pattern. So I'm looking for a move to extend up into this red reversal zone, watching for bearish reversal patterns between 155 and 155-60, which is this ascending trend line resistance, monthly range resistance 155-20, daily range resistance just below 155. So bearish reversal patterns in this zone to set short positions, targeting a three wave move, initially looking for a test of the weekly bit at 153-50 and then down to a weekly range for 152-50. As always traders, plan the trade, trade the plan and most importantly, manage your risk. Until next time, thanks very much.


Multinational forces assemble and traverse a hasty bridge during Polish-led exercise Anaconda 2016 in Helmow, Poland. The bridge is assembled with multiple M3 amphibious rigs coordinated by British and German forces. Crossing the river is a conventional exercise. It's an exercise that tests the logistical capacity of the unit and really allows us to refine our standards to move a massive unit across several thousand miles. So the German unit is actually building the bridge and providing the ferries across the river. The Polish forces have provided local security and set up the staging area and the reception area on either side of the river. My unit is pretty much just crossing it. Immediately after the river crossing we're conducting a four-passage alliance with the 82nd Airborne just south of Torrin. The exercise allows troops from different countries to work with each other, bridging a figurative gap and solidifying relationships with allied nations. So far it's been interesting, everything is a challenge. We're training together, we're doing the bits and pieces together, we're working together, which we need to do. And we do it, you know, on the ground, soldiers on the ground or at the core face, we make it work. There's not massive differences between any of the nations when we're doing our stuff on the ground. And that's what our soldiers want to see, they want to see us being able to do our bit with each other to make it work. So that we can become smoother, faster, quicker and better. Reporting from Helmholtz, Poland, I'm Army Staff Sergeant Ray Boynton.