schedule, and I want to give the deputies a full length of time to speak with you. But in the interim, I do want to have a conversation with three victims and survivors of the atrocities, some of which we dealt with as ambassadors and as deputies. Their bios are in your program, and for the sake of time, I would ask that you read their bios rather than me recount the bios to you. But we have with us Nemat Amadi, who comes to us from Darfur. We have Sari Samaki, who comes to us from Syria. And we have Tia Sefer, who arrives from Bosnia. They all have very different experiences. They've all engaged dynamically here in the United States on the issues that are dear to their experiences and lives. And I want to engage them in a relatively brief discussion to let them share some of that with you so that we can bring the human face of all of this to you as directly as possible. So I'm going to sit now and then ask some questions. If I could ask each of you in John Bellinger's style to give us your short descriptive statements of the experience that brought you to the United States, the experience in your native countries that would bring to the audience's attention the nature and character of the atrocities that you experienced or were so aware of as you made your way to the United States and started your new lives in the United States, I think it's very important for not only this audience, but we are recording all of this. It's on live stream. It'll be on the web. I think this is an opportunity for a global audience to understand what is this all about. Why is what you experience so important for us to understand? So I want to start with Nemat Ab Amadi, and if you could address that I would appreciate it. Thank you Ambassador Schieffer and thank you for the organizers for allowing us this opportunity. Well it is a very long story to tell it in and it is really hard. I don't know what to tell, but to me it is too part of what brought me to the United States. It is the devastation that we have lived through and the hope. And I was one of the luckiest people to be able to go to college among my siblings and in my family, and I was very motivated and encouraged to come back and serve my community as going all the way from the remote Darfur to Khartoum to have an education and I was educated in the best university in country, so I felt I was educated by my community not only my family and I felt I have a lot to pay. Going back I was lucky to work for an international organization that was pursuing development at that moment. I would travel everywhere in the remote villages in Darfur to assist the people and you see the impact of what you do every day. There is nothing like that, but one day my life has changed forever. We were in a village having a village committee training and we left the first village of Darfur to the next village. Coming back two days later the village that we left was completely different. We were frantic, so many people were killed, so many others wounded. We stopped and we were in such a shock. We didn't know what happened. We asked the villagers and they told us they saw the army coming. They welcomed them like, just you may welcome your army and they served them with food and water and there's a shade of a tree and then a man started collecting the belonging of the villagers and someone asked him why you guys are doing this, he immediately shed the man in the head and started shooting. They set fire on the village and that's how it was started. We feed as many people into our small Land Rover cars to bring them to the hospital in my hometown. In our entrance to the Kepka Bay in my hometown, we were prevented by the security and we begged them. They let us go, but they told us not to talk about what happened. We brought these people to the hospital, they're bleeding, they were in a very devastating situation. The security commander in the town ordered the doctor to release them. We don't know where they are until today. We stayed home, our organization, since it is operation. A week later, my mom woke me in the morning and said like, why are you sleeping? What would happen when I run into the gate and I see the smoke coming from all parts of the city. Children running naked, barefoot. You see animals burned while standing, people were thrown, children were thrown into the fire. And I felt I was very prepared for dying. I've never thought I would be alive to come to the United States to see you and be among you today. But I thought I have to do something. These are the people that we went every day to their home. We ate their food and their service and we know them. They are roaming the street. They come when they sit, when they fill their villages, sit under the shade of a tree and then the government will order the soldier and the genuine militia to come and beat them and force them to go back. Until today, if you go to my home cities, there is no separate camp. People start taking people in their homes. We went out and started helping these people. We will accuse that we were obstructing justice, peace in the city.  Someone behind you. I was so well prepared to die, but at least I wanted to die in the middle of the street while helping people. And that continued several attacks on me and many others who have been working on that. Late in 2003, many of us were threatened and they had to flee. Some of them we never met and some of them lost their life. A group of people advised me, said, Nemat, you are an outspoken. If you stay, we may all be killed. And if you leave, you can tell the world about what's happening today. And they may help. At that moment, the government of Sudan was restricting any access to therefore. So it wasn't an option. It wasn't an easy decision to make. And my mom looked at me and said this, you can speak for your people. And with that hope, I left. And coming to the United States was not an option. And I wasn't having a plan. And I had 12 years ago, I walked out in the middle of the night. I didn't know where I was going and what my fate would be. But I have a little hope that people put their hope in me that I can be their voice. I ended up coming to the United States in 2007. And at the time I met Ambassador Shipper. Since then I have been going everywhere speaking about telling my story and the stories of others. Unfortunately, today therefore, it's still burning. Now it's entering into its 14 years. Villages are still bumped, burning, looting. RIP has been very systematic use as a weapon of war. Mastery to women and girls. And with all the effort that we've been talking and doing, I think the people of the United States are therefore dead down by our international institutions. Because today we have over 3 million people living as an internal displaced. Nearly 1 million people are refugees. Majority of them are in Chad, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana. Name it. People went to Syria. They trapped in conflict. Or people went to Libya. If you see the Facebook pictures that are roaming around, people are tortured to death in their way, trying to go to Europe. And today, unfortunately and sadly, it's not even sad, but it is appalling to see that President Bashir, who's stand accused by the International Criminal Court for the world's worst crimes, genocide or crimes and crimes against humanity, become a celebrity whereby the international community is rushing to engage and to collaborate with. Currently, we are very concerned and disappointed that the European Union is establishing collaboration with the government of Sudan to stop the migration, African migration to Europe. The United States recently lifted sanctions. And I think it is very, very important to know that when genocide is taking place, only justice can end it and bring peace. And in the case of Darfur, it is a long way to go. And today Darfur is the darkest place in the planet. But you don't know, you don't hear Darfur in the news. And because of that, many of you may have saw Darfur is ending, but it is not ending. It is still going on. I will stop here, but telling my story is not about me anymore. It is about those who are still trapped, including my mother, my siblings, and millions of women who endure rape more than five times in their 14 years of displacement and still yearning and hoping that someday that there will be peace, there will be justice, and that their plight will be recognized and their dignity will be restored. So... I just want to emphasize after that very eloquent statement that Nimaad heads up of NGO to save the women of Darfur, and it is in her bio. I strongly encourage you to go to the website, and it is an organization that I think merits our strongest support. Thank you, Nimaad. And I want to now go to Sari Samaki, who arrives from Syria, and I'm going to leave it at that and ask you, Sari, to tell your story. Thank you, Ambassador. My journey started at... Where did you get it? I was finishing my freshman year of high school at a public school in Elapo, and, you know, when the Syrian Revolution started with the demonstrations the first six months, which were largely peaceful, you know, I couldn't go to school anymore, along with many other students, mainly because my school turned into a military base. Now, still, even with such actions, we did not expect that, you know, the Syrian government, mainly because we had large hope in the president at the time. We saw that the president was unlike his father in that he was, you know, educated outside, he was a doctor, and so we believe that he will genuinely listen to the people and bring forth change. You know, as many of you know, the first six months, no one was asking for a regime change, we were just asking for change.  At 15, I started interested in, so I became interested in nonviolent resistance in photography and so forth. And so I started taking pictures of my city. I don't really take pictures of demonstrations or so. I was taking pictures knowing that these places will probably disappear. And so with that, I was caught by the military intelligence in Lapo.  I was caught, I was 15 at the time, along with my cousin, and accused on the spot of supporting terrorism and working with foreign news agencies. And as you know, at the beginning of the revolution, foreign news agencies were not allowed into the country. As we were thrown into the intelligence center, it was on a Friday and Fridays were known to be, each Friday was named differently in the Syrian Revolution. We were the first to arrive that day. The moment we arrived to the basement, we were thrown on the floor, the beating started. And, you know, really the beating stopped when they realized that my ID says that I'm a Canadian citizen. You know, I was born in Canada, I lived there for two years, but then we moved back to Syria and they stopped. And here, as I'm being hit by my own government, I start contemplating the idea of I am put at a, you know, treated differently simply because I'm a foreign citizen, not because I'm Syrian, which I am. And they took me upstairs to investigation and they changed immediately.  After being let out, you know, a lot of things happened in there, but after being let out a month later, I was kidnapped by the Free Syrian Army, this time under the accusation of working with the government, which I was like, guys, I was taken by the government last month. They're like, you were working with the government. It's me and my father, they accused my father of supporting the government through weapons, with money and so forth, which were all false accusations. I was taken for 10 days, experienced psychological torture along with torture. And, you know, we still have recordings of all the negotiations that happened. My brother was handling the negotiations. It was a ransom of $2 million. And we recorded the negotiations. And in one of them, I called home asking to, you know, to speak to my mother and ask for her forgiveness, given that I was told that I will die today. I returned back to Aleppo. And when I'd finally decided to leave Aleppo, I was making and selling yogurt in Aleppo. I was 17 at the time. I've started making yogurt and selling it. I've decided that, you know, I want to leave and to continue my education. And for me, the idea of education wasn't simply, you know, get a degree and work with the degree, but something to learn a different perspective on our history, see how people see us and how we see other people, broaden our horizon rating. On the way out of Syria, I had to escape Syria. I have, so far, I think it's five arrest warrants I have under my name in Syria of escaping military service. So I had to escape out of Syria. And I was taken again by Jabhat al-Nusra, this time because I looked American, which my response to that was just speaking in Arabic as fast as I can, as much as I can. Just tell them, guys, I'm not American. Why do you want to chop off my head? Luckily I was let out, gone to Turkey and then from Turkey to Jordan. And that's where I started looking for schools in Jordan. Now I get the question of why didn't you go to Canada? And the reason why I didn't go to Canada is because I understood at the time as a 17 year old, if I decide to go to Canada and pursue my education there, I will become a foreigner. And that is the idea of becoming a foreigner this moment you leave out of your community is actually something to be contemplated by us natives and also by policy makers and change makers, is that you're really a foreigner, regardless of the amount of knowledge you put together.  And a lot of decisions that are being made right now, whether by this administration or previous administrations have been done under the idea of, this is a foreign, you're approaching this the wrong way. And so I really enjoyed, thank you for the ambassadors that spoke about the need to speak to the civil society, the people working on the ground. Thank you very much for that. I went to Jordan, got rejected also from schools in Jordan until it was finally accepted. And then when it came time to apply to universities, I wanted to come to the US. Now I did not speak any English five years ago. And if you asked me what Georgetown is, my current university, I would be like, I have no idea what you're talking about. I got rejected from all the schools that I applied to in the US. I had to withdraw my application from two, from one that's just around the corner here. Yeah. And I was only accepted by Georgetown University under a scholarship. Now the reason why I decided to come to Georgetown and not go to Canada is because first of all, you know, again, I go, I hold talks talking about my experience about the need for education about also the need to listen to the Syrian people. However, the need, the reason why I decided to come to Georgetown is first of all, this is a very critical time to be in Washington DC under President Trump's administration. It was very critical time to be outspoken.  You're going, you're going just to be basically neighbors with the White House. I'm like, yes, I, because I want to be there. I want to be on the forefront when we're accused of being terrorists and dehumanized. This idea of dehumanizing the immigrant. In the recent speech given by President Trump in Philadelphia, I was talking about ending chain migration and was referencing the attack that happened in New York City. However, what he did not know, he was referencing an attacker who was here on a green card, which couldn't have possibly allowed him to cause a change, my chain migration. Yet he could not stop saying that the attacker could have probably brought 22 other relatives of his. This idea of dehumanizing, whether they're Syrian people, whether anyone can experiencing hostility and atrocities, fleeing their own countries to seek a better life is done every day through the media, through the classrooms as well, through not understanding the history and so forth. And so to be able to be able to stand here and speak to such a group of people is an honor. Thanks so much, Ambassador. Thank you very much. Thank you, sorry. Tia Ciefer from Bosnia. Hi, everyone, and thank you so much, Ambassador, for the invitation, as well as for everybody's time today. It's been so enlightening to hear from everybody this morning and I'm looking forward to the continued conversations. My name is Tia Sefer. I'm from Bosnia and Herzegovina. My family's story and my story is also a long and convoluted one as it tends to be when you're a refugee, but it actually goes back to 1992. I was actually born in May of 1992, which those of you who worked on this issue recall it as the beginning of the conflict in Bosnia. My mother at eight months pregnant flew to Serbia, actually, to give birth to me because my mom is Serbian and my father is Bosnian. This presented a myriad of challenges for my family from that point and up until today, basically. So I was born in Smederevo in Serbia. My sister, who was seven, also was with my mother at the time. And the core of the issues there being, as the conflict was arising throughout the region and at that point there had already been conflict in Croatia, to some extent Slovenia split off, you really didn't know who to trust. And while we were, while I was a newborn, my father actually had stayed back in Bosnianskinovi with our family and that is when he was captured, arrested and put into what I would call a concentration camp in the actual soccer stadium where he grew up playing soccer, along with my uncle, many of our community members. And it's a key moment that has been told to me many, many times as the day your best friend from childhood comes to take you. And the day everybody who not just you knew as a child, but your parents grew up together and for generations who had each other's backs have decided that what your fate is. My dad experienced torture, very vile things from beatings, the psychological torture, obviously not knowing if me and my mom and my sister were okay, what happened to the rest of our family, because when he and my uncle were taken, basically all the women were left defenseless. Luckily in Bosnianskinovi, and for my family, they did not face the same fate as many of the women in Foca or in Srebrenica, did face with the severe assault, and sexual assaults and rapes of women and children. But nonetheless, it was a very difficult time. After some months, my father and uncle were able to actually leave through some of their Serbian friends that were willing to put their lives on the line and protect them and basically pay their way out. And through, again, you have to understand for those who are not aware, with the dissolution of Yugoslavia, it was overnight that borders were being put up. You had to have the right paper, but the government issuing the paper didn't exist. It was a lot of, it was very complicated, and so we ended up being reunited some four months later and eventually all coming to Zagreb in Croatia as refugees, as not even citizens, even though both my parents went to college in Zagreb and my mom actually grew up in Split and is a Croatian national also. So regardless of those facts, we were still viewed in that moment as the enemy and even more dangerous because of my parents' mixed marriage. Through hard work and sheer dumb luck, I would call it, we were able to escape and leave at the end of 1993 and we took a one-way ticket to Toronto and didn't look back for a very long time. We were able to get a Siley status in Canada and start pursuing some sort of semblance of rebuilding our lives. During the war, we lost our community, any sense of an idea or possibility of a multi-ethnic country or anywhere that we could live. My family continues to struggle today in that every time we try to go home, this concept of where we're from, there's borders we have to cross and people we have to deal with and words you have to watch how you say and what you say. And while it is currently a day-to-day peaceful situation, there are extreme concerns about foreign involvement in the region where money is coming from and going to off a country that primarily functions from remittances, seeing large amounts of money being used for lobbying on behalf of the public sub-scout, which is the smaller entity in Bosnia, coming straight actually to DC, upwards of $30 million over the past 10 years, lobbying to make that entity its own country. My hometown is in that entity while most of the country lives in poverty, that Republic of Sub-Sat cannot afford $30 million to lobby. So questioning where is that coming from and being aware of Russia's involvement in the region is really key. I continue to organize and work within the diaspora. The fact of the matter is this conflict, I'm 25 years old, this conflict ended over 20 years ago, but our community has just started living. We have been surviving for the past 20 years, not just from the trauma, but also starting over when you don't know the language, when your law degree or medical degree from back home doesn't matter, when you didn't have an education back home and trying to start over whether we were in the US or in Canada or so many other locations. And so I'm very grateful to be here today and to speak about this. There's so many folks in my community that I would also love to share their stories and represent them because we're very strong-willed people and that have all had to start over and faced serious issues and I think the nuance of, especially my family being Bosnian and Serbian, and the current fact of the matter is that our constitution in Bosnia is based off of the Dayton Peace Accord and therefore I have to choose between voting as a Bosnian or a Serbian for one of three presidents, which if you wanna talk about inefficient government, I could get there with y'all, but it is at its current state, a country where I physically cannot exist because of who I am and my identities, not even to speak to the communities, such as the Jewish community, the Roma and other newer immigrants that have come to Bosnia that simply do not have any sort of democratic representation. So yeah, I'm happy to be speaking with y'all and I really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Tia. We are unfortunately very constrained by time now but what I'd like to do is pose one more question to our three panelists and ask them to briefly respond to it. And the question is, because we have an American audience in front of you today, what more could the US government and indeed the United Nations do to address the atrocities and the situation as we would know in Bosnia and Herzegovina today, what more could be done in your view to address that situation and make progress in your native country? Is there something that our government, something that the United Nations could do that it's not doing today? Nima, for Darfur? Well, I think there is a lot that the United States and the United Nations could do. In the case of Darfur today, it is what it is, there is nothing change. I think first, pursuing justice is very important in our case. We have seen, we have a government that committed genocide against its own people. They have no intent to change their heart or their approach or of their policy. They're still pursuing that and they have negotiated wherever, whenever they are invited to negotiate, because they go negotiate, sign a paper and come back and throw it again and start like killing people, including those who joined them to be part of their own government. I think accountability is very important and to me it is important to the people of Sudan to replace the rule of force that have been ruling the Sudan for a year, for a century and show them that there is a rule of law, that if we disagree, two people know where to go. Tell them the culture of that, you can go to court, you don't need to fight. That's very important. Number two, genocide is not an overnight process. It is a process of marginalization, exclusion, demonization and in order to end it sustainable, empowering the people, support the people. We have come to see that for years we have been begging for the international community. We have been begging for help and support but people remain there. If these people are empowered given education, capacity building and even justice that we are calling and asking for, they would be partner in change making and that is what we are therefore women action group believe in it and I think that the United Nation and the United States and pursuing justice is very cheap comparing to so many letting the government continue to kill people and trying to bring humanitarian assistance but also they are restricting and the government is the number one benefiting from those humanitarian assistance by placing a red tape on international NGOs to get money versus getting food and all of that. So I think it is very, very important and number three is that we as people here we need to speak up and tell our leaders that we can live in a world whereby genocide can be normalized is therefore is too far from here. It's very remote but if we allow genocide to happen there is nothing serious in genocide in therefore or in Syria or somewhere and we said, oh that doesn't affect us it can happen in our backyard. From my experience speaking about violence against women about rape when I started I was so angry I thought it was in therefore I found that right in my neighborhood in Washington DC in the compasses in universities that sexual violence exist and that's why I felt like women issues need to be addressed in one voice and that's why it is important that we can all stand up and speak up and tell the truth to our leaders and compel them to act. Thank you so much Nima. Sorry. The first thing you know the question I get a lot is would you have supported the U.S. intervention U.S. intervention in Syria or not? Now in terms of U.S. intervention obviously just to go and intervention like a similar one that happened in Iraq and they've destroyed the social fabric of the society I obviously was against that. However, if we would consider an intervention that would not create a power vacuum that would support a centralized opposition group by Syrians supported guided really by the United Nation by America in order to set up itself as you really a first step because changing a country overnight to a democratic country is not possible, is not logical. We tried doing it, it never worked. Second, so establishing no fly zones to protect the internally displaced supporting a centralized opposition that we had in the Syrian Revolution is that our opposition was scattered all over the place. We didn't have one centralized opposition and so supporting one, helping establishing one, supporting the local NGOs. Also another thing is really looking at how countries for example that have hosted so many of the Syrian refugees in the Middle East are suffering. We always hear of the European refugee crisis which if we think about it in terms of how many refugees have gone into Europe in terms of the amount of money that Europe can put in in comparison to countries like Jordan who took in over one million refugees and Jordan basically works on grace. They have their own secret. And so when we see countries like that who are now experiencing limited funding whether from the United States and from the UN. Another thing is we start talking about we bring the Assad regime and I'm talking about the Assad regime not only Assad himself because the regime is an entity everyone is responsible. Bringing the beginning, bringing Assad regimes, people in the Assad regime to justice. If it's hard for us to bring the Assad himself to justice then we start bringing his regime to justice. There's a lot of evidence in that. Yes, Russia has been a big obstacle but we have the power to condemn these people. We have the power to bring them to justice. And finally is whether it's through your classrooms whether it's through the media and this is not only applied to Syrians but only applies to every marginalized group which is to begin humanize these people. You know, when you look at the amount of attention an immigrant attacker receive in comparison to someone who's white and American it just blows your mind about the bias about the way we dehumanize these people. Yes, they are bad people and they deserve justice but why don't we shed light on all the good people out there? So beginning the humanization process is important. The education, we teach people about how rich this region is in culture and also the idea of respecting culture not only for the region but really to any other country to understand the people, the culture and the way of life. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, that's tremendous. Tia, you have the final word. No pressure, right? So I'd like to start with actually saying something that's been really good. You know, it's been a difficult 25, 30 years and I think one of the things I can always look to is the allies that we do have on the Hill and the allies that we do have at the State Department and of course, so many of the folks that are in this room that have listened to us and have continued to be willing to have these conversations and seek out that truth. I of course have to commend the work of the advisory council for Bosnia and Herzegovina and all the education work that they've been doing over the past 10 years here and for the formation and continued progress that they're working on with the Bosnian caucus on the Hill, it's really transformative. That is all to say and kind of what Sarri said around education, right? War criminals, people who commit war crimes and war atrocities, they have a keen ability to twist the truth and twist reality and make it look a lot more complicated than it is. We saw this in Bosnia for all of 91 to 95. We saw this, we saw the conflicting reports and from 92 when they said it is, these are acts of genocide to 93 when they started saying it's a civil war. You could see that shift and that shift is the product of people misusing and misplacing what is the real reality and what is the real truth. So I urge everybody to continue seeking where do we have the evidence? What is the truth? No one in this room and no one that does this work is naive enough to believe that this is simple, otherwise none of us would be here, right? We like that challenge, but really step into it and do not use the complexity of these conflicts and genocide and these situations to absolve yourself of responsibility for taking action and for doing due diligence when researching and doing this work and moving forward. I'm not saying it's easy, but I think that's one of the big lessons that we have learned from Bosnia. Those same people that were spinning the truth in the 90s are still spinning the truth today. The Bosnian community is facing repeated attacks with genocide denial, with completely trying to rewrite history. I mean, it's enough that our schools are segregated back home, but across the United States, across in the UN, everywhere the pressure is there to completely ignore the fact that this was a genocide, even if it has been proven by the international tribunal. People are willing to counter those facts and those thousands of hours of testimony and thousands of pieces of evidence. So in times when you are unsure of what the truth is, look back to what you have found. It sounds like a very basic tenant, but it becomes more and more apparent every single day. With the closing of the ICTY and all the amazing work that has come out of it, it is the time for justice and the legal system in Bosnia to take over and continue seeking out war criminals. Like we've heard in even just the past few months, there are war criminals that lied as they immigrated to the US and are living in the United States that committed terrible atrocities. And when they have been found, they've been expelled and that's one step. But when we look to the government in Bosnia, we really need the support of American diplomatic power to continue to challenge the folks in power in Bosnia, because our war criminals are the people who tortured my father, the people who killed my friends' families. They are walking the streets. They are in positions of power. They are in government and they're dictating where money goes and how we talk about things. And that is inexcusable. And when I say hiding in plain sight, they're not hiding, they're living publicly and being hidden by others and being honored. And there's nothing more offensive to the memories of everyone we lost and the experiences that we have all had than letting those people continue to live their lives as if nothing happened, live their lives and profit without them actually facing consequences for their actions. So I really appreciate this opportunity to speak with you all and all the work that is being done. We cannot stop now. And my last kind of comment is to give you all some perspective today, actually at the UN headquarters in New York, they're doing an exhibition on the concentration camp that was in Yacena Vats. My grandmother's family is actually from Yacena Vats. So and fled from being murdered during that genocide. So I don't know how many generations in my family have to flee genocide in order for the international community to get the point and for us to keep ourselves accountable in the region to stop this. But I'm hoping that I get to live the rest of my life without having to face another conflict. But we cannot let down and we cannot pretend that this is not gonna happen again. And that involves, requires continued involvement and an economic investment in the region so that we can remain multi-ethnic and a democratic state. Thank you very much, Tia. Nemat has asked for just one very brief point.  So I think we all have to ask for tougher laws in term of preventing those who committed this kind of crimes from coming into the United States. In addition, the genocide affected refugees was now everywhere that is refugee crisis, Europe and the United States. I urge you that to speak up for the genocide affected refugees, the people of Darfur are everywhere and living in a very deplorable and devastating situation in different countries. And for years, they have not been relocated. A few of them have been taken by some countries but right now they don't know where to go and the government is actively planning to return them. So there are several countries to start deporting genocide victims back to their genocide. So I urge you to speak up and speak for the people of Darfur. Thank you so much, Nimad.  I think we've had extraordinary statements and stories conveyed to us. I want to thank Anne Fom for actually identifying our survivors so that we can bring them up on the stage today. So thank you, Anne, very much. What we're going to do since we're very far behind is of course accelerate things by we're gonna switch out the panel immediately to the deputies panel. We're gonna let the deputies panel go until about one o'clock or so. You'll have about three or four minutes to get your box lunches or whatever is the buffet, back to your tables and then we'll ask our luncheon speaker to address you so that we get you out of here on time. So if the deputies could come up and also a very round of applause for our speakers. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we're already there. Yeah, I think we're already there. Like the e-mail. So maybe at some point. the way of what you normally do. That's right down here. Well, I guess I'll talk to you about that. You know, I don't know. She's wearing turquoise. Okay, I think we'll get started. That's fine, so does Diane. Thank you so much for being here. It hasn't been said, but I think this is the first event at which all former ambassadors at large and their deputies have all been in the same room at the same time. So we need to not let the North Koreans or the Syrians know, obviously, because this would be a natural target. Unfortunately, Tom Warwick, who was the first deputy with Ambassador Sheffer, has an IPC, so he's still in the game, so he's had to leave us. He was here this morning, so we were technically all in the same room at the same time. I'm going to dispense with introductions. Everyone's biography is in your program, but the one thing I can say that I think is a thread throughout this entire group is that not only did they have incredible runs as deputies to their ambassador at large, but they also have had really illustrious careers elsewhere in the US government around the interagency in the private sector working with the UN on peacekeeping issues. So they've stayed engaged with this work as academics writing in this area, putting out books. Diane has a new book coming out on the impact of the ICTY in Bosnia and Serbia. Jane is working on a book on the ICC and the impact around deterrence issues. Anna is now working at the US Holocaust Museum at the New Forens Institute on International Justice. Sandy has worked around the US government now in the private sector. Milbert is now working in the UN with a peacekeeping mission in Mali, so really tremendous careers here. The first question I'd love to ask, which, you know, it's such an interesting relationship to be the deputy. Could you talk a little bit about how that relationship, what was your division of labor? You know, my ambassador took his at-large designation very seriously. To you, how did you work out? Who took on what roles? When did you deploy your ambassador versus when did you try and manage things? And we'll just go down the line and then we'll go from there. So if you want to start, Sandy? Hi. Well, thank you again. It's just a privilege to be here with everybody here in the audience, as well as the panelists and hearing from the ambassadors this morning. I mean, I think the division of labor in any small office was whoever got to the issue first started working on it, sought higher guidance from the ambassador at all times, and tried to divide it up the way that it made sense. I mean, I suspect everybody faced the same resource challenges at different times with the way that these offices tend to get staffed. And so, you know, the division of labor always is that the ambassador is the one setting the tone and setting the leadership and generally going to the high level events, doing all of the talking there and going to the higher level meetings at the White House. The deputy spent, I think, traditionally a little bit more time staffing up the paperwork and the issues behind working within the building and in the interagency to try to build consensus on issues so that the ambassador's time was best focused at addressing those high level issues and advocating for them. And I do mention the interagency because I thought it was a great point brought this morning that you really do need to focus a lot of your effort on building consensus at home. And that's where the deputies, I think, were very, very helpful over the years in trying to make sure the homework was getting done at home so that the high level appearance of the ambassador could best be leveraged for the good of the office. I think that's very much what I was going to say. So one thing I would add that though is that in a way it's sort of like, you know, you are in the engine room and you need to keep the office going when the ambassador is away. And so it's sort of, you know, like being Scotty the engineer to do Captain Kirk in terms of keeping the office going. In addition, there are substantive areas I think all of the deputies had extraordinary substantive knowledge and experience in this field. And so there are areas that that we took a significant role in, for example, I worked a lot on the decision ultimately for the US government to fund support funding for the Cambodian Tribunal. And I think a part of the work also is in really finding a good synergy among the different skills that we have in the office. I think one of the things that's great about the office is that we have people from the military, we have people who are Foreign Service officers. We have people like Clinton and myself would work in the tribunals and had come out of that world as well. And there's a lot to learn from each other. And one of the key roles I think for the deputies to make sure that you have this ongoing on a day-to-day basis, this dialogue and exchange, which really brings forth the enriched value and contribution of the office to the process. Not surprisingly, I also was going to make the point about the at-large diplomacy versus the internal, but I won't make that point now. I'll pick up instead on Milbert's point about sort of playing off of the skill sets of the people in your office. One of the things that I think Ambassador Rapp did that was notable was all three of his deputies were international law professors, Beth and Jane and I, who had expertise over a fairly long period of work in the area of transitional justice and international justice. And Ambassador Rapp don't get me started on all of his skill sets. They're amazing, but they include really understanding how to put together a complex criminal prosecution and one that requires the cooperation of a lot of different governments and institutions. And I hadn't thought about it in advance, but seeing the importance of having all of those different skill sets represented in the office was hugely important over time for reasons that are obvious, but also because the thing that I was told before I went into this position that turned out to be the most prescient was somebody who had worked in government at senior level said, what you're going to find is that you are going to constantly be getting urgent calls and emails saying, you know, this humongous crisis has just blown and you have to resolve it in the next five minutes. And what you're going to find is you're going to get 10 or 20 of those messages simultaneously. And what he didn't tell me is that's going to happen every day, hour after hour. And you don't have time to do the research and so being able to have a concentration of expertise in the area that may be relevant at the moment you have to make decisions turns out to be hugely important and valuable. Who was very much at large and I think often the distinction was he was at large. I was at home. He played the outside game. I played the inside game. I focused because he did so much. I think extremely valuable traveling. I focused a lot on building the relationships at home that are so important to really moving the ball forward. So for example, I think I attended virtually all the IPCs on South Sudan and worked very hard to develop a relationship with our special envoy Don Booth with the regional experts with other parts of the building and the department and the interagency so that we could move the ball forward on issues like the hybrid court, which is floundering for various reasons. But that kind of focus on building the relationships within the building, I think it was an effective division of labor that we had. I also really worked hard to make sure that the GCJ team had a seat at the table. As people probably know, GCJ is a very small but very mighty office of about 12 people. And we punch above our weight. We have a lot of expertise, but making sure that that expertise is actually available to senior level policymakers is critical. And of course, when Ambassador Rapp was in town, he clearly had a seat at the table, but when he was away, making sure that as deputy and that the experts in the office had opportunities to share their expertise was something I focused a lot on supporting this incredibly talented team. And I'm delighted to see so many of them here today. As Diane said, I think there were some different skill sets. I mean, nobody could have the expertise that Ambassador Rapp has on criminal prosecution of the tribunals, all the aspects that go with that. But I think I brought to the table an interest in long term rule of law building and the question of justice on the ground. The question of trying to make sure that accountability involves not only a few trials in the Hague or in some capital but involves a serious effort to try to build domestic capacity through hybrid tribunals through engagement with victim communities. And I think Ambassador Rapp and I together were able to do a lot on those issues through our respective sort of backgrounds. So I guess I'll stop right there. One thing I would add, given Todd's long history and expertise working on ICC, he clearly had that portfolio and I gladly handed it to him. But given my background on the regional side and working on many of the conflicts in Africa, I think we generally tried to split up a bit on taking me taking some of the country situations and working the policy process and internal process. And Todd utilizing his expertise on the ICC and other areas. The other issue that I think many of the folks touched on here is the importance in a small office, particularly one like GCJ, which has a very niche mandate and one that I think kind of goes counter in a way to how the rest of the department is usually staffed, which is very, you know, a generalist model. And GCJ comes in with ideally that technical expertise. And so heading into a period of transition I took, I really wanted to make sure that we maintained that technical expertise that I inherited from the deputies before me and ensure that they had a place to stay and could hopefully advance in their career. So I think hopefully that that has continued to pay dividends since then. Great. So our office is very much associated with promoting international justice, criminal justice. And we were first formed, as Ambassador Sheffer mentioned, to be a point person for the ICTY and the ICTR. And since then, we've continued in that vein, supporting a number of hybrid tribunals around the world being the kind of centralized point of conversation with the International Criminal Court. But with the establishment of the Atrocities Prevention Board, that has highlighted the role that we have also played more on the prevention side, looking farther upstream and working with the intelligence community. And Ambassador Sheffer mentioned having an interagency working group that was on that beat. And then it sort of went into the more institution-building phase with the Albright Cohen report. And then under Diane, the sort of conceptualizing of the Atrocities Prevention Board, it got stood up under my watch. Anna worked very closely on it. I'd welcome any of you to speak a little bit about what have we learned in the sort of years that we've taken this more upstream approach around Atrocities Prevention. What has worked? What hasn't worked? How can we do it better? Where are the blockages? How could we think about how to unlock some of that so that we can do a better job of trying to help prevent these atrocities so we don't have to use only retributive criminal justice exercises or transitional justice mechanisms after the fact? I'll start. So I had the pleasure of working on a atrocity prevention issue from multiple vantage points. One, working with Diane and actually helping to draft the basis for what became the Atrocities Prevention Agenda and the Atrocities Prevention Board more specifically. And then from the NSC as an Africa director working on a number of crises that the board took up, Burundi, Central African Republic, DRC. And then, again, as the deputy in GCJ, I would use one maybe case as an illustration that I think contrasts in part to the Rwanda example. And many of those same players actually were in the room who had lived through Rwanda and then were looking at CAR. And I think that's a really good example where we were doing the legwork nine months, ten months, a year before the crisis really, really exploded. And I remember hearing senior officials, you know, Secretary Kerry, Ambassador Power, Ambassador Rice saying, you know, we're seeing some of the signs that we started to see in Rwanda in the early days and we have to do something about it. Because the machinery of government had been working through the policy process for ten months, I don't think it was a perfect response by any stretch. I think there's always more that we could have done. But within, I would say, 48 hours, we had a $100 million package drawdown to actually provide military assistance. We had a recording by President Obama urging peace that was translated into languages across Central African Republic. We had worked with the French on bolstering the regional peacekeeping force. So there was a whole set of actions that had been prepared in advance, taking some of the lessons, Ambassador Shepherd, that you laid the groundwork for. And I think that that gives credence to this idea that the Central African Republics of the world would not have been raised, it would have been a blip on the screen, and instead it was getting, you know, presidential level attention. I worked at the Pentagon with Bill Litzow, who's here somewhere, when the Atrocity Prevention Board was being set up. And I think there was a real support for the APB in the, in DOD because a real sense that it's far better to address these difficult situations early on to try to prevent atrocities than have situations explode into violence that might then call for some kind of intervention that's far more costly. And obviously you want to prevent atrocities whenever it's humanly possible. So there was a lot of support for the APB, I think, coming out of the Pentagon and coming out of other parts of the interagency. And the idea was to create a whole of government approach to try to bring to the table people from all the different agencies with an array of skills and array of tools that Anna was describing, you know, the ability to quickly impose sanctions to reach out to folks within a community, maybe religious leaders who might be sources of reconciliation, to try to figure out ways to respond documenting atrocities in real time. I mean, there are a whole host of tools that we I think came to see could be useful. We also, I think, work to train foreign service officers to expose ambassadors to the challenges of dealing with a rapidly escalating situation. But I think there were some important ways in which we tried to bake into the DNA of the department and appreciation for the challenges and for the ways in which you could address atrocity situations where I think we didn't do a very good job I think is navigating how much of our focus should be on early prevention that is looking at situations way far out and taking structural steps to address them. Maybe we were a little better at that than we were on the hair on fire situations. You know, when you're in a real time crisis like Syria or like South Sudan, what do you do to try to stop atrocities in real time. And I think we we learned a bit in the process, but I think we never did as well on those on those kind of issues as I think we needed to. And frankly, that's something that a lot of you in NGOs, a lot of you in academics can give some thought to, to how one can do better in those situations going forward. I would just add one point to what my colleague has said. So, as Jane explained, part of it, the theory of the APB was, there's a moment of escalation in a crisis.  But the part of the idea is let's identify this point as you start to escalate and intervene here where hopefully the interventions are going to work better and will be less costly in terms of lives and other things. And part of the idea was also that you do, I mean, we thought of it in the early stages is in a sense doing a body slam to the bureaucracy and sort of shaking things up and figuring out how to institutionalize a concern and attention to and knowledge about these issues so that it wasn't just kind of the lone wolves in the pneumatic offices are saying hey guys, hey guys. And I think there's been real progress in that regard. And there has been a sense of spreading ownership of this issue throughout the foreign policy, I'm sorry, foreign service bureaucracy, and I think that's hugely terrific. The point I would really add though is that I think one of our lessons in all of this is that there's a huge need for sustained engagement over a really long period. I think the panelists on the last panel really helped us understand that point or reminded us of that point. We have a tendency to move on fairly quickly to the next crisis or to agree that we'll intervene in Libya but maybe not stay around and do the hard work of helping the country recover from a really grievous tragedy. And I think I came to see part of the value of having a dedicated pneumatic office is that we're there when the inevitable crises arise. We don't always marshal an adequate response, but transitions are messy. Transitions after mass atrocities are always messy. They're not overnight successes. And so I think one of the areas where I think we need to keep on improving is sort of remaining able to intervene in a timely way when there's a serious threat and they do arise all the time. If I could just add briefly the the APB came after my time but one of the things I would really underscore is that within the UN world and I'm speaking here my personal capacity, but in the United Nations world there's a much stronger emphasis on the continually a stronger emphasis on the importance of prevention and how how complex that is and I think the idea of going further upstream to try to address is extremely important but at the same time this point exactly about the sustained engagement is absolutely essential. This is I'm working in Mali right now it's the fifth peacekeeping mission I've been working in and the process is extremely difficult. What happens after the the peace occurs is extremely complex. And it's sometimes extremely important to keep these countries in the in the national consciousness because there are continually a series of urgent situations that come up and it takes a lot of work to make sure that we get to the point of that irreversible progress towards peace in many of these contexts. And for that purpose I think that the an office like like Swicky or that's the second of our most familiar with is a global criminal justice. Yes, thank you. But the an office like that that really brings together the technical side and we've spoken about the multidisciplinary approach of the opposite technical side as as well as a policy and the legal aspects is extremely important for that that sustained engagement as well. So we we've talked a little bit about the Afghanistan situation and how the office of the prosecutor has indicated her intention to move forward on more of a formal investigation after having had the situation under consideration as a preliminary examination which is really just a kind of do we have jurisdiction or not inquiry. I'd love to get the panel's thoughts on what should GCJ and the department and the interagency be doing now with respect to that matter. What do you think is actually happening now with respect to that development. And is there going to be a way for the US to chart a course that walks the line between continuing to support the ICC's work in all the other situation countries which we have historically done because that their work there has been consistent with our own policies in those countries. And but not throwing the baby out with the bathwater vis-à-vis this which is obviously going to be very salient because there are US personnel that are potentially now subject to her investigative powers. Is there a way to walk that line or are we are we risking a return to the first bit verse administration where it was decidedly hostile overtly hostile relationship with the court. Well I'll take an initial crack at that one having spent a good amount of time working some of the challenging Guantanamo issues early on as well. Look I mean the best way to try to address it is as I think it was Ambassador Prosper mentioned this morning but it's the complementarity principle. I mean we have to have some mechanism or method of communicating that what we're taking and the steps we're taking at home are effective and adequate and that they are the alternative in this particular case. I mean I think it will require diplomatic efforts. I think it will require an interagency consensus on a series of steps. But I think one of the challenges will be the difference between what the perception is of those alleged acts and what evidence again is presented back at home. So if there's not buy-in within the US government that there were in fact these crimes committed then it will be harder to get those concrete steps that will meet you know enough international muster I think. And so it'll be challenging but I think that the same way that we try to address it day by day and improve the credibility working with outside organizations to show transparency I think the governments can have to attack it that way. Just to add very briefly I think what Sandy said and what the panel this morning said really sets out pretty clearly I think the appropriate approach to this issue. But one one small addition is I think that a lot of the procedures of the ICC are very unfamiliar to people who know criminal law in the United States. So one of the things that I think could help is to to avoid getting an overly alarmist response from certain sectors of the American public to what's going on here is explain exactly what this means what where it stands in the procedure. Most people don't know that there is not even something called an indictment at the ICC. So these are the kinds of things that would help make it a lot more clear to much of the American public what's going on. And I think that as much as we work at sometimes trying to explain what we're trying to do to the broader world. It really helps a lot to understand more how the how these international criminals work and the ICC in particular. Yes it has some complex procedures and and I think a lot more can be done to explain that to to people. We seem to agree with each other a lot and I agree with everything that's been said so far. I would just like to say a little bit more about the risks of overreacting. Now Milbert Milbert talked about not being overly alarmist. And I think one of the things that worries me a lot beyond the opportunity this presents to project a positive message and reaffirm our importance of torture and reaffirm our commitment to accountability ourselves. That's a positive message. I hope we send and take the opportunities and but I worry about also the negative fallout of an overreaction. So I hope we don't see it. I think that there is a risk that an overreaction which fortunately we haven't seen so far could be seen as confused with a message of support for torture. And that would be hugely unfortunate. It would be unfortunate for all the obvious reasons but unfortunately also when we when the United States seems to be condoning practices like that. It sends a message to other countries whose commitment to the rule of law is not as robust and deep as ours. So I'd like to avoid that kind of messaging. I also think it's really important for us to be sensitive to the fact that this investigation this goes partly to Milbert's point about education isn't essentially about the United States. It's essentially about other you know crimes that have been alleged by the Taliban and Afghan forces others and and the targets principle focus of the inquiry are not Americans but are actors whose governments have signed on to be parties to the ICC. The United States policy as I understand it has always been has always been toward the ICC that that we respect other countries freedom to choose to be parties to the ICC and support states that make that choice in finding accountability for appropriate crimes before the ICC. And we have to be super careful about not undermining the relationship of other governments and their civil society actors who support accountability and support the work of the ICC. So our messaging is important both in a very positive way and also we have to be on guard about the potential for a negative impact that we might not anticipate if you know if we overreact. Well just building on the thoughtful comments of my colleagues here. I'll just make a few quick points one I think we do need to be calm and react prudently and wisely and not overreact as others have said, and it will take a long time for an investigation to unfold there will be plenty of time to to consider the situation. Secondly, I think we do need to make the best and most persuasive case that we can on complementarity and that includes I think doing more transparently to make clear what has been done, because getting that out in the public domain in a clear more transparent way, but also looking at what more we can do and should do with regard to holding folks accountable and I think Ambassador Rapp talked a bit about that. Third, I think as Diane said we need to be very clear about the US opposition to torture. I mean we took a very serious wrong turn after 911 and President Obama and John McCain and a lot of people did a lot of work to turn the corner on this to enact statutory limitations and restrictions. We've made strong statements during the Obama administration before the human right or the committee against torture that we oppose torture under all circumstances in all circumstances with no exceptions. Secretary Mattis has made clear his opposition to torture, and I think this administration, this current administration needs to make a strong and clear statement that it will honor its treaty and statutory obligations against torture. This is the right thing to do. It ought to enjoy bipartisan consensus. It will also help the US make a stronger case on complementarity that it actually has turned the corner and that it is moving away from the practices documented so horrifyingly in the Senate report. A fourth point I would make is that as the US addresses the challenges of the Afghanistan situation and there will certainly be challenges. This is not an easy situation for the US. I think one thing we can't do is to in any sense call into question our commitment to justice and accountability for egregious atrocities. You know, torture in the Assad regime prisons, chemical weapon use against children, mass rape, ISIL atrocities. We need to stand firm against these atrocities and accountability for these atrocities. We also need to acknowledge that we frequently both Republican and Democratic administrations have found the ICC to be a very important instrument in seeking justice. We supported the referral of the situation in Darfur. We supported the referral of the situation in Libya. We helped make sure that certain suspects, Vasco Nataganda and Dominic Angwin appeared before the court. And also the court is having a number of impacts that are very much in the US interest.  So the track record of the court is something that we've strongly supported. Secondly, the court is helping to catalyze domestic accountability in places like Guinea in Columbia, and that's very much in the US interest. Third, the court is helping to empower civil society actors around justice. It's creating space in certain societies for them to advocate for justice. That's very much in the US interest. And fourth and finally, it's having at least some impacts in some situations on deterrence and prevention. So there are a whole host of ways in which the work of the ICC is very much in the US interest. And as we navigate the very challenging situation we now find ourselves in with respect to Afghanistan, we need to do so in a way that keeps in mind those important impacts that are very much in US interest. So my final question, and I know that Jane and Diane may need to slip out to go teach, so maybe we can start with you two. It's similar question to that Ambassador Sheffer asked, which is, is there a single initiative that you're most proud of or that you made really great progress on? But I'd add a caveat or a second part to that question, which is, is there an initiative that was really a favorite of yours that just did not move forward or that failed for whatever reason? And what were the forces that were at work that determined whether or not you or GCJ was able to push something forward within the department or the interagency? And what were the forces that actually prevented something that you cared about and were trying to promote from moving forward? Thanks, boy. That's a lot. And I'm going to try to be really brief. It's hard to pick one thing that I'm really proud of because it was such a phenomenal opportunity to be able to serve in the government for two and a half years in this capacity. And as Jane has often said, the office is small but mighty and really punches above its weight. So there were a lot of ways in which I was surprised at how effective the office was in moving the ball forward. But since you asked for a specific, so a couple of moments that were great. One was the panel earlier today of the ambassadors. I think almost everyone mentioned a moment when notorious work criminal was arrested. And in my time, that was Rutko Mladic. A lot of effort went in and I can't be specific on a lot of actress parts to that moment. But I can say that we worked really hard on that. And it was, in the research I've done, including the research for my book, I know what a shadow it was over the experience of justice for so many Bosnians that he was at large for so long, 16 years. And his case had become deeply resonant and symbolic. So that moment of his arrest, the product of relentless, relentless, relentless effort by a lot of key actors. But including the United States and including the White House, that was a wonderful moment. Another, several people mentioned earlier on the panel with the ambassadors. And that was getting the U.S. government as a whole on an interagency basis to engage with the ICC on a constructive basis, the benefits of which Jane really beautifully elaborated. And I don't know that it's sort of widely understood that there was work to be done when Obama entered into office. It was, as several people mentioned earlier, enormously essential that the pivot that John Belanger talked about had taken place before Obama entered into office. But there had not been a whole-of-government review process yet. And so when we came in, there was a need to sort of go back and engage across government and address the equities and concerns of a lot of different agencies who hadn't been part in a sort of deep way in the pivot. And as Ambassador Rapp mentioned earlier, the culmination of the review process in the first year, the sort of moment was when we went to our first ASP meeting, having been absent for quite a long time and having never been to an ASP meeting before. And because we were an observer and not a party, and because our country begins with U instead of A, we were way up in the rafters in this enormous conference center behind the United States. And people were just mobbing us. And I don't mean to say everybody was like, didn't have doubts or wasn't skeptical, but there was an enormous appreciation that we were there. And it was, I will never forget Ambassador Rapp's intervention because he not only showed up, but he sent a message that was really important, and I still see echoes of that message in U.S. statements. And the message was, we haven't been here at an ASP meeting before, but we haven't been absent on the issue of justice. We stand shoulder to shoulder with you. This has been our cause for a long time. It's been our cause even before we came to an ASP meeting last ten years, before we came to an ASP meeting. We sponsored a side event at the Campala review session a few months later, and in a lot of ways we were using the sometimes amazing power of diplomacy. Send a message that I think situated us to be an effective partner in a lot of efforts to promote effective justice globally, despite being a non-party to the ICC. I would say over the overarching theme I'd like to stress is, and in all credit to the amazing staff of GCJ, is infusing the expertise and the talent of the GCJ staff into so many decisions being taken at the highest levels.  Our staff, several members are here, did a lot of work to analyze and advise our ambassador in engaging on the Colombian peace process, which as you know has some innovative, still to be implemented provisions on justice and accountability. In South Sudan we developed very strong relations with our special envoy, our assistant secretary. We helped, and I give a huge amount of credit to Jana Ramsey here, we helped make sure that resources flowed to the Commission of Inquiry, the African Union Commission of Inquiry, to the hybrid tribunal yet to be fully established with enormous obstacles, but still made important progress that I think put some facts on the ground that will hopefully move positively in the future. In the Central African Republic, David Mandel-Anthony tirelessly worked to get resources to the special criminal court that's being established in that country. And in Syria, Sean and many others in the office, we worked to get a determination by Secretary Kerry that ISIS had committed genocide and to make clear our opposition to atrocities committed by the Assad regime working on the Caesar photos, which are so important in documenting those atrocities. So I would say throughout a series of different kinds of conflict situations, the determination, the expertise, the tireless devotion of this small but mighty team was extraordinary. And it was really the greatest honor of my professional life to be the deputy to Ambassador Rapp and to be the person often at home on the ground leading this small but mighty team in all of these different efforts. So just to continue on from the thread that Jane laid out, I think fundamentally to me the mandate of the office is to give voice to the victims who are seeking justice and everything else flows from that. And there are two examples that I would use, one where I think there's still work to be done and then one where I hope to see that it does come to completion with the conviction. So on the latter, I remember when I just joined the office working on Congo, Secretary Clinton had made a historic visit to Goma and the entire department was focused on Congo. And I remember traveling with Ambassador Rapp to Goma where Bosco and Taganda who was wanted for war crimes by the ICC was playing tennis next to the UN peacekeepers. And when we would come to town, we would hear reports that Bosco was very nervous that the U.S. war crimes ambassador was in town and he was nervous about being arrested. Fast forward a few years later after significant pressure, including when I was at the White House as the Central Africa director with President Obama directly intervening and encouraging President Kagame in Rwanda to end support him 23 and hold perpetrators accountable and not a few months later, Bosco turns up at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali. And I think that chain of events starting many years before putting pressure led to a very concrete action of helping to transfer him to the ICC, which is meaningful for those that suffered at his hands. I got a call from a civil society colleague on the ground who said, you know, for the first time the U.S. is standing with the victims in eastern Congo. So that's one example. The second example of seeing that mandate is what Jane alluded to or talked about, which is the ISIS determination that ISIS had committed genocide against Yazidis and other minorities. And I think that took a huge amount of internal churn and lift probably a year's worth of work that Sean and others really were the champions, Susan, were the champions for. And I remember hearing from Yazidi victims whose family members were on Mount Sinjar saying, you know, pleading for the U.S. to do something and to intervene. I think where I still see work to be done and one that I think we did not fulfill our full mandate was the so what question to once you recognize a genocide. What does that mean? And I for one was a bit disappointed that we couldn't marshal a stronger response in after making that genocide. Okay. I'll continue on.  I think you can feel the energy from everybody up here that it was a highlight, I think, of all of our careers. You know, an area that I think was challenging but that we made some progress with was I was in that pivot time period when we were trying again to rebuild our own credibility. So a lot of hard work was put into trying to reach out, talk with more people, explain U.S. policies more transparently than I think they had been before. But one of the areas that I think, you know, returning mostly to the criminal justice issues that I found intriguing and I think also continues to need some work is this idea that there are many, many different types of justice that are possible locally.  I mean, it can be done. We've seen we've done it successfully now twice, but we've built other types of courts and continuing to be a little bit more open minded about the different types of models of justice that may work locally. A particularly challenging one I think that I was certainly involved with was the Iraq High Tribunal. There was a lot of opposition to the fact that the Iraqi way of holding that court and having a court that enabled the death penalty, for example, made it, you know, from the get go and illegitimate court. And I think it's easy to be able to sort of pass judgment on what the locals may or may not want, but it's a lot harder to try to find ways to constructively engage and accept that if you get to an impasse, you know, at some point we may need to just move on and offer support to that local community in whatever way it is that they choose to help move past. And so I think it's an area that still needs more assistance, but along the lines of complementarity, if we are in fact going to make more progress with trying to hold individuals accountable that, you know, as a community we want to be open minded to various types of justice that may, you know, offer substitutes to the very expensive tribunals that can be hard sometimes to get enough buy-in to establish in a timely manner. It just takes time, it takes resources, and it's not always going to be there. And so, you know, I think that's an area that could use continued support and help, and I think it supports complementarity, it supports therefore the ICC, and it supports broader justice. So, but I think it's an area that I got to work on and was proud of some effort that we made through time to look at these alternate methods of justice and that one that I think is still a challenge going forward. Rick, the last word. Thanks. And the last word, I'll just point to two developments during my time, which I felt were particularly important. One of course was the arrest of Radovan Karajic, who went on to be prosecuted by many colleagues of mine from the ICTY. The second is ultimately the decision to support funding for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. What really stands out for me for both of these and what really stands out for me in the context of this symposium is that both were related to the very efforts that were undertaken by previous ambassadors and deputies. I think it's this element, this continuity that you've heard about this morning that you could, that's really significant and that's where our real impact comes from. We heard about the arrest of Radovan Karajic and I myself was part of the prosecution team that prosecuted Radovan Karajic and we finally got our judgment last November. But to me, this is the continuity that's important that we continue to build on the work of people in the past. Ambassador Sheffer, all the work that you've done with the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, that coming finally to the point where we were funding it. These are the things that really I think will create that lasting impact of this office. And for that, I would just mention that one of our speakers on the panels this morning, Tea mentioned the 25 years of these issues going on in the Balkans. We heard about how the situation in Darfur in Syria continues. These issues have a particular nature where they go on for years and I think we need an office that goes on for years and carries this legacy forward. Thank you. Great way to end. So before we break for lunch, please join me in thanking our panelists.