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Presidential Memorandum to Strengthen Our Work to Advance Gender Equality Globally

By Juliana Thong

Many steps have been taken during the Obama administration to elevate the issues of global gender equality. Perhaps the most critical thus far occurred on January 30, 2013, when President Obama signed a presidential memorandum focusing on these issues. This is important to Global Washington and our member organizations, as it displays our government’s commitment to global development.

The memorandum focuses to better promote gender equality and to empower women and girls globally. It accomplishes this by strengthening and expanding U.S. government capacity and coordination across all its agencies. President Obama’s strategy is to go forward with a collective impact method to translate commitment to results by making gender equality a priority across the federal government. First, the memorandum acknowledges the need for dedicated professionals with expertise and stature to lead efforts and maintain accountability. It directs the Secretary of State (Secretary) to designate an Ambassador at Large to report to the Secretary and lead the Secretary’s Office of Global Women’s Issues. The mission of this Ambassador is to advise on issues related to advancing the status of women and girls and to coordinate with other countries, international organizations, and nongovernmental organizations.

The memorandum maintains the power of the Senior Coordinator for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to advise the USAID Administrator on key priorities for U.S. development assistance. In addition, it establishes an interagency working group on international gender issues, chaired by the National Security Advisor. This working group will provide strategic guidance, promote government-wide coordination, and spur new action across agencies from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to the Peace Corps to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In effect, President Obama is institutionalizing the efforts made during the last four years by executive departments and agencies to issue policy and operational guidance on gender equality. For example, former Secretary Clinton—with the assistance of our first-ever Ambassador at Large for Global Women’s issues, Melanne Verveer—has worked hard to launch the issue of gender equality in our diplomacy and ensure this progress for generations to come. President Obama and newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry have both given their commitment to these issues by assuring a future and centralized theme of global equality and development. Kerry has said, “…at my confirmation hearing, I spoke with Sen. Boxer about the importance of maintaining the momentum Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Melanne Verveer have built through their innovative office and laser-like focus.”

President Obama knows that promoting gender equality and empowering women and girls around the world is “one of the greatest unmet challenges of our time, and one that is vital to achieving our overall foreign policy objectives.” As we know, empowering women and girls promotes economic growth, improves health, and decreases corruption in communities and nations. This is not only a matter of international morality and citizenship but also national security.

Global Washington and our member organizations are pleased to see the U.S. government affirm the critical linkages between gender equality and broader development goals. This gives our country more power and focus as a force for global development, in the state of Washington.

Kerry’s Confirmation Hearing: “Foreign Policy is Economic Policy”

By Anna Jensen-Clem

Senator John Kerry spoke of a broad-based US foreign policy in his Senate confirmation hearings on Wednesday. In his opening remarks, Kerry, a 28-year veteran of the Senate and longtime chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, advocated for a continued policy of economic development and humanitarian aid, often in place of military intervention. He indicated that he would continue Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s policies and expand the State Department’s role in climate change, energy policy, and economic policies both domestically and abroad:

“American foreign policy is also defined by food security and energy security, humanitarian assistance, the fight against disease and the push for development, as much as it is by any single counterterrorism initiative. It is defined by leadership on life-threatening issues like climate change, or fighting to lift up millions of lives by promoting freedom and democracy from Africa to the Americas or speaking out for the prisoners of gulags in North Korea or millions of refugees and displaced persons and victims of human trafficking. It is defined by keeping faith with all that our troops have sacrificed to secure for Afghanistan. America lives up to her values when we give voice to the voiceless.”

Senator Kerry’s confirmation hearing was relatively painless, and he is expected to succeed Secretary Clinton after she steps down next month. His ascension from chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to Secretary of State would be the first since 1897, the New York Times noted this morning.

Update: Kerry was confirmed in a 94-3 Senate vote on Tuesday, January 29th.

Mali: An Early Test of U.S. Military Policy in 2013

By Anna Jensen-Clem

In keeping with this week’s theme of President Obama’s second term military policies, we turn to a brief analysis of the situation in Mali. Humanosphere has a list of resources for those of you who aren’t familiar with the current political turmoil happening there. Essentially, in conjunction with a coup in March 2012, several terrorist and rebel groups overtook the northern (desert) part of the country; al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb has been active in North Africa (Mali, Algeria, Niger, and Libya, among others) for several years. After the coup, AQIM pushed out existing Tuareg rebel groups and took over most of the northern territory. They have since moved south and imposed their own interpretation of sharia law, causing a massive human rights and refugee crisis. In late August, PBS ran a brief story about human rights abuses perpetrated by AQIM, and many of these practices continue today.

The situation is extremely confusing; the New York Times reported Wednesday that “officials in Washington still have only an impressionistic understanding of the militant groups . . . and they are divided about whether some of these groups even pose a threat to the United States.” French troops arrived earlier this month to assist government forces and eliminate the terrorist threat, but so far the United States hasn’t committed any troops, nor has it expressed any intention of doing so. In fact, when he was asked about a response to the situation, the top U.S. general in Africa said only, “now what?”

Now, what does this all mean from a policy perspective? Why am I writing about this at all? In short, because the U.S.’s response to this problem is a microcosm of the Obama Administration’s handling of military power. Although it seems unlikely that the United States will commit large numbers of ground forces, as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military has made use of its existing intelligence networks in Mali to assist French forces. Relying on small groups of highly-trained special forces, large-scale established intelligence networks, and a 21^st-century version of Kennan’s containment policy, the Obama Administration has been slow to take direct military action against AQIM forces in West Africa. In fact, the Washington Post reported last year that special forces “have played an outsize role in the Obama administration’s national security strategy, [and] are working clandestinely all over the globe, not just in war zones.” A large-scale ground war would be extremely costly, both financially and in terms of lives lost; Mali is larger in area than France and the desert in the north is barren and treacherous. Al-Qaeda and Tuareg forces know the area intimately, and sending in ground troops could prove disastrous.

It remains to be seen whether those groups pose a direct threat to U.S. security, but their actions have already precipitated a large-scale health and refugee crisis. Whichever road the Obama Administration chooses, humanitarian aid should play a major role, not only in Mali, but in neighboring countries who are absorbing thousands of refugees despite their own political and economic instabilities. It is this confluence of small, highly-trained military forces, extensive intelligence networks, and humanitarian aid in lieu of a massive ground assault that should and will guide the United States’ interactions in the Sahel over the coming months.