The last five years have illuminated our growing global interconnectedness: from the pandemic to volatile food prices and shortages to global tech outages. As we enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century, the twin threats of climate change and conflict are now converging with urgent global consequences for all: destruction of food systems and livelihoods; mass displacement and migration; and fierce competition over depleting natural resources. This convergence has unraveled decades of progress and strained our global systems to their breaking point. It is no coincidence that the world’s most worrisome hotspots are mired in conflict alongside the worst real-time impacts of climate change. Our hotter and more hostile world requires a bold new agenda for a shared humanity. Neither conflict nor climate change can be ignored or addressed by individual nations acting alone and in self-interest. Neither can we address climate change or conflict separately, as if they are somehow disconnected global challenges with divergent impacts and solutions. We must come together and partner with those most impacted by conflict and on the frontlines of climate change to forge innovative, cross-sector solutions born from communities themselves to build a better world where everyone can thrive.
MELANI CAMMETT: --everyone. My name is Melani Cammett. I'm the Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs here at Harvard. I'm really delighted to welcome you to the Samuel and Elizabeth Jodidi Lecture, which is among our most prominent lectures here at the Weatherhead Center, and one of the most distinguished lectures at Harvard University.
The lecture was established in 1955, and the series provides for, quote, "The delivery of lectures by eminent and well-qualified persons for the promotion of tolerance, understanding, and goodwill among nations and the peace of the world." And really, our speaker today personifies all of that. So we're most honored to have her deliver the 2024 Jodidi lecture.
Our speaker, as you know, is Tjada D'Oyen McKenna, who is an esteemed member of the Weatherhead Center's advisory board, and is the CEO of Mercy Corps, an alum of Harvard College, and of the Harvard Business School. And she's also a newly elected director of the Harvard Alumni Association. So lots of Harvard hats.
As the Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps, Tjada leads a global team of nearly 6,000 humanitarians who provide immediate relief and help communities to forge new pathways to prosperity in the faith of-- in the face of disaster, poverty, and the impacts of climate change. In 2023, this aid reached 29 million people in more than 40 countries. And so her organization is having a really important impact globally in these incredibly challenging times.
Previously, Tjada served as the Chief Operating Officer of CARE, where she oversaw the organization's programming and global operations. And she spent more than a decade working to end world hunger in roles with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the US government. During the Obama administration, Tjada served as the Deputy Coordinator of Development for Feed The Future, of the US government's global hunger and food security initiative, and the assistant to the administrator of the US Agency for International Development's Bureau for Food Security in Washington, DC.
She brings a passion for innovation to her work. And she developed early in her career these various talents also through roles at McKinsey & Company, American Express and General Electric. So diverse private sector, and now, humanitarian experience, and government experience as well.
So let me just say a couple of words about the format for today's lecture and event. Tjada is going to speak for about 30 minutes, and then she and I will be in conversation for about 20, 25 minutes, and then we'll open it up so we can hear from all of you. You're welcome to pose your questions at the microphones located on either side of the auditorium here. And then, I believe we have a reception to follow. And you're all most welcome to join us there. So please, welcome Tjada McKenna.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Thank you so much, Melani, for that very generous introduction. Good evening, everyone. It truly is my pleasure to do this today and to be back here. This opportunity is especially meaningful for me. I truly never would have imagined that I'd be doing this more than 25 years ago when I was living in my freshman dorm, not very far away from here.
And when I think back to what led me to my career, one of the formative steps was a class I took freshman year. It was a core course back when Harvard had a core, and it was called Industrial East Asia, and it was taught by Ezra Vogel, who was the founder of the US-Japan Project Center here. And he just passed within the past five years.
But it really played a formative step for me. And I walked away from that class learning about the industrialization of Japan and Taiwan and Hong Kong and wondering how we could apply that to other parts of the world. And that spiraled me out into many directions. So it's really great to be here.
It's especially poignant to speak today at this Jodidi lecture series, which is supposed to address important topics such as tolerance, understanding, goodwill among nations and peace of the world. When we look around us today, these goals can seem very distant, and very distant in a very personal way. You at Harvard last year faced the turmoil and upheaval of different protests that simultaneously probably left a lot of Jewish, Arab, and Muslim students all feeling quite alone in the world. That led to a lot of administrative upheaval that probably still continues today.
On October 8, I was scheduled to leave for a week long trip to the West Bank in Gaza. Obviously, I did not go on that trip. And it's been quite a journey.
But this goal of tolerance and understanding, it just feels distant in a very personal way, particularly here in the US as we face an election in two weeks. But what I want to share with you today is a message of urgency and optimism, the urgency of ensuring that amid these siren voices of isolation, we continue to focus on our shared future as a global community and a community of human human beings, that we take urgent action together as a result.
I also want to share with you today an optimism that we can make progress happen, even in the face of the climate crisis and increasing conflict. The numbers are overwhelming and can feel hopeless, but as a practitioner, I get to see the change in real people's lives. So the optimism that I hope to share today is not an empty hope, but the result of seeing first hand the real and tangible impact that my team at Mercy Corps and organizations like ours are helping to deliver every day on the frontlines of climate and conflict-- climate change and conflict in more than 40 countries around the world.
So let me begin with the urgency of the moment we find ourselves in today, on the cusp of the second quarter of the 21st century. Looking back over my 15 to 20 years in this space, I am struck by how different this moment feels in comparison with when I was completing my own studies here more than a quarter century ago. Then, coming up into 2000, amid a global wave of increased trade, aid, and debt relief, we were beginning to witness incredible progress in what had previously been viewed as intractable challenges.
The global mobilization behind the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000 and concluded in 2015 helped to deliver arguably the greatest global progress for the greatest number of people ever in human history. More than a billion people emerged from extreme poverty. The number of children without access to primary school worldwide fell by almost half.
In just a few years, countries across Africa made improvements in infant, child, and maternal survival rates that had taken decades to achieve in Europe. Access to antiretroviral treatment saved millions of lives that would otherwise have been lost. The progress was not inevitable. It was hard won, and there were setbacks.
In 2008, a global crisis driven by the surging prices of wheat, rice, and other cereals triggered panic, instability, and hunger around the world. I joined the Obama administration to launch a global hunger initiative aimed at tackling that crisis. By the time I had left the administration in 2015, we had, together with partners across the world, made such progress in addressing hunger that as we developed the successor to the Millennium Development Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals, we collectively set our sights on this audacious goal of ending extreme hunger by the year 2030, and we really thought that was possible.
So in just seven years, from 2008 to 2015, we were able to go from the depths of crisis to the heights of ambition. Yet, today, we face a global inflection point. The achievements of recent decades are in grave jeopardy, both because of the shocks of COVID, climate change, and conflict, and because of the unraveling of the global solidarity that led to the incredible rise in living standards that we saw at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one.
The COVID pandemic was a truly global emergency that led to the deaths of nearly 16 million people worldwide and disrupted economic, social, and family life on every continent. COVID was a global problem, but as we all know too well, not everyone suffered equally. We saw this in our communities. We saw this in our country, that those who had been the most marginalized amongst us suffered the most in COVID. And we saw that play out on a global scale as countries hoarded vaccines and testing.
For those who were on the brink of poverty, the pandemic had the additional impact of rolling back years of progress. Extreme poverty increased in 2030 for the first time in decades. Today, more than 300 million people around the world face acute hunger, almost 200 million more than before the pandemic.
As we began to emerge from the shadow of COVID, the twin threats of climate change and conflict are now increasingly the pressure that's put on the world's most vulnerable people, those who live in fragile states. Fragility is defined by the combination of exposure to risk and a lack of a coping capacity to manage, absorb, or mitigate those risks. Fragile states are home to a quarter of the world's population, some 1.9 billion people, but as many as 3/4 of people living in extreme poverty live in these fragile states.
When I started my career in this space, ending extreme poverty was seen-- the magic bullet, if there was one, was seen as helping smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and India increase their incomes. That was too simplistic. Fragile states are where it has been hardest to make and maintain progress in tackling poverty, and we've got to be looking at fragile states if we want to end extreme poverty. And climate change and conflict are making those challenges to progress even greater still.
Each month since June, 2023, has ranked as the planet's hottest on record. Climate change is a lived reality for us all. We see it here in the US with annual raging fires and heat waves that have left no state untouched, more intense hurricanes and flooding, as we've seen recently with the devastation in North Carolina and Florida. But the climate crisis has the most severe impact on vulnerable communities in the countries that not only have contributed the least to the problem, but also have the fewest resources to cope with climate change or adapt to a hotter world.
At the same time, we have seen a global resurgence of conflict, even beyond the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East that dominate our news feeds. Last year saw the highest number of state-based conflicts since 1946. And these wars are increasingly being waged with too little care for the protection of civilians. In fact, the past three years were the most violent and deadly for civilians since before the turn of the century.
Conflict and climate change each cause devastation, but they are increasingly converging to create ever-escalating challenges for vulnerable communities. Climate change and conflict go hand-in-hand and they escalate one another. Climate change increases competition for resources. It strains social safety nets. It gives people more opportunities to be disappointed in those charged with saving them and being there for them in times of emergencies.
It isn't by chance that the world's most worrisome hotspots are also mired in conflict alongside the devastating impacts of climate change. The compounding effects of climate change and conflict have created an epic crisis of displacement. 120 million people have been forced to flee their homes worldwide, and as many as 339 million people around the world rely on humanitarian assistance to survive, more than twice as many as five years ago.
Every year for the past decade, we've been able to say, sadly, this is the worst number of disasters, the worst number of displaced people. It just increases. So the urgency of this moment could not be greater.
Yet, just as the need for international cooperation and commitment is greater than it has been in any time in this century, we are instead seeing a global retreat into nationalism and populism. This year, we'll see more people go to the polls than in any year in history, almost half of the world's population. Around the world, from Indonesia to Europe, from South Africa to the United States, voters are saying that they are most concerned about their cost of living and affordability.
In the West, parties that offer anti-immigrant and nationalist policies in response are surging in popularity, even while economists in those same countries argue that aging demographics mean that a decline in immigration will actually increase the economic challenges facing those same countries. In Japan, decades of popular and political objection to immigration have shown the impact of those trends. With birth rates at a record low and almost one third of citizens over the age of 65, Japan is struggling to meet the cost of a struggling working age population.
At the same time, we are seeing retrenchment across countries from the International cooperation and collaboration that yielded such progress in the past 25 years. As politicians and publics turn inwards, leaders and governments have slashed funding for foreign aid and assistance development. UK aid is predicted to shrink to not 0.36% of its gross national income, which is the lowest proportion it has seen since 2007.
Even worse than that, a substantial portion of UK aid is actually being used to fund hosting refugees in countries, so diverting from the citizens that it was designed to protect. France's draft budget is shrinking from $6 billion to 5 euros billion, which is a 12.5% decrease. And Germany also is looking at slashing 1 euro billion from its aid budget.
People have increasingly withdrawn from international trade, aid, and debt relief agreements. Yet, this withdrawal is just as short-sighted as anti-immigration rhetoric. Cooperation has been the greatest engine of economic growth and advancement for all countries, not just the world's poorest.
And as the COVID pandemic showed us all, today's greatest challenges do not respect borders. When Russia invaded Ukraine, our team was out within that same week about what the invasion of Ukraine would mean for food prices in Lebanon. Many countries across Africa and the Middle East worried about the food price crisis as a breadbasket became a war zone.
Right now, where we are working to help civilians in Sudan fighting the war, and where we are in the Sahel in Niger, we are running across Russia's the Wagner Group, which has renamed itself Africa Corps, to our great chagrin. We're looking at Iranian and Russian missiles, dealing with disinformation from other countries. These things do not respect borders. And great power competition is playing out all over the world in these myriad of conflicts.
Our hotter and more hostile world requires a bold new agenda for a shared humanity. Neither climate nor conflict change can be ignored or addressed by individual nations acting alone and in self-interest. Addressing climate and conflict change requires not a retreat from global collaboration, but a recognition that in a world so interconnected, our futures are bound together with people we have never met, human beings with their own stories, human beings that are increasingly sharing their stories across social media.
There are no mysteries around what is happening. I went to Poland about two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, and I saw a scenario there that I wish for every displaced person or refugee in the world. In the early stages, you see mostly middle class people streaming out with their pets and with all their belongings. There were tents set up with food. There were even pet tents set up alongside tents with strollers.
There were welcome centers set up. And as I walked into one, it was like a bazaar. It was like there were booths from each country. So the Netherlands, free housing for six weeks. France, there's all kinds of-- every country making their pitch to these refugees coming in from Ukraine to come to their country and organize transportation for them.
That same week, I left to go to Lebanon. And one of the things that Syrian refugees were legally allowed to do in Lebanon was agriculture work. And so I went to visit one of our projects where we were training Syrian refugees to do agriculture labor.
And when I spoke to those Syrian refugees, I was asking them what they had done in Raqqa before they left. They had the same profile as the Ukrainian refugees I'd met earlier that week. They were government officials. They were medical students. They were middle class professionals, now being very happy to get agricultural work.
The world noticed those discrepancies. We have to recognize that our world is so interconnected, our futures are bound together with people we have never met who look different from us, who are on the other side of the world. Because in a world of pandemics, climate crisis, and conflict, there is no us and them. There is only us.
So with this shift in mindset, progress is possible, even in the face of conflicts and climate change. I mentioned at the start of this talk that I wanted to bring optimism to this challenge, alongside urgency. And to do so, I want to share with you just a few examples of the ways that we at Mercy Corps are taking practical action to help people on the frontlines of conflict and climate change to cope in response to crisis, adapt to a changing planet, and even thrive, forging solutions for a more resilient future.
We can see the link between climate change and conflict unfold in real time in the border regions of three countries neighboring each other in East Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda. Growing crops and-- growing crops and raising livestock are ways of life for the people living in these areas, but communities have experienced decades of conflict over land access. The tensions over land use and access have been heightened in recent years by ever more erratic rainfall, floods, droughts and land degradation that affects not only crops, but also pasture for livestock.
First, let me share an example of where our team helped these communities to cope in response to this. In 2022, following four consecutive failed rainy seasons in the Somali region in the east of Ethiopia, water sources had dried up and pastureland was depleted, leading to a rapid spiral in sickness and death among the livestock that is essential to the lives and livelihoods of millions of farmers. A terrible hunger crisis followed.
Our team in Ethiopia provided rapid response through cash assistance to help families through the immediate and hardest impact of the drought, providing emergency access to animal feed and veterinary services to ensure that livestock could be fed and healthy, and subsidies for local livestock traders to buy animals from pastoralists who needed to reduce their herd size. As well as helping communities cope with the impact of climate shock, these efforts also helped to prevent the rapid escalation of violence that can take place in competition over scarce resources.
Taking a step from the Somali region of Ethiopia across the border to Northern Kenya, our team has been helping communities adapt to the long-term impacts of unpredictable rainfall and more frequently occurring droughts. By partnering with local Kenyan authorities and a global software company, we supported the creation of a geographic information system lab to provide climate information the community needs to manage through longer periods of drought and the heavy downpours that frequently follow them. We especially targeted this towards pastoralist communities who historically had been underserved by these Kenyan authorities.
Critically, community members helped to provide the inputs into the system, mapping the natural resources, social dynamics, and cultural values tied to their rangelands. By gaining this knowledge and insight from the community, our team and partners have been able to help create sustainable strategies to protect the environment while also meeting the needs of people who rely on it. We are also helping authorities and the system meet the needs of their community.
As an organization, our ambition goes beyond helping communities to cope in crisis, or even adapt to changing conditions. We ultimately want to help communities find a way to thrive, even against the odds. Across the border from Kenya, Uganda contributes only a fraction of a single percent to global greenhouse emissions, yet, according to the UN, as much as 40% of the land area in Uganda today regularly experiences drought in the country's Karamoja region.
Tension over these resources fuel violence, with disputes over access to water, land for dry season grazing, and other natural resources. Fearing for their safety, people do not go far from home, limiting the ways in which they can make a living. Working with community members and local government, our team helped develop and formalize agreements to share resources between pastoral communities vying for land and access to water. These policies govern access and use of land and water across different groups, and has included protecting one of the region's most important, but diminishing water resources.
The Kobebe Reservoir once provided water for more than two million livestock that graze across the land. But as rainfall levels decreased, the reservoir could only support a few hundred thousand animals. To protect the integrity of the reservoir, our team worked with the local community to plant more than 4,000 trees along the water's edge, helping to reduce soil erosion and evaporation, and providing protection for this vital resource. This, in turn, has helped to reduce conflict over access to water and provided more opportunities for people in the region to pursue their livelihoods in peace.
These are a few examples where we have worked with communities to tackle the twin threats of climate and conflict, but it requires all parts of society to play their part, from the private sector to donors, from multilateral institutions to local and national governments, and from community members to local civil society organizations. But these examples also show that progress is possible, even for communities on the front lines. Our current moment demands that we all do what we can to reimagine global cooperation and a commitment to supporting those of us most impacted by our shared global challenges.
I want to share with you one example of positive macro achievement in this area. The Global Fragility Act, which was adopted by Congress in 2019, created the first ever US government strategy to prevent the causes of conflict around the world. Before, these conflicts destroyed families, communities, and livelihoods. This act has dedicated $1.15 billion to prevent conflict and building peace.
Research has shown that this is not only in our shared interest, it's a smart economic investment, because every dollar in peace building is estimated to reduce the cost of conflict by $16. This act is delivering real and beneficial impact for vulnerable communities around the world, and it was made possible by congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle. A bipartisan group of 26 senators and 20 representatives co-sponsored the bill, and their support was key.
But this $1.15 billion is really a drop in the bucket. We need to build on this success and raise our ambitions further. We need a bold new agenda to shockproof international food systems.
We need the billions of dollars of global climate change assistance that have already been promised to actually be delivered, and for much more of those funds to flow to the fragile countries where the need is the greatest. We need an end to impunity and an international recommitment to the laws of war with accountability for its violations. And we all have a shared responsibility to come together to help communities facing the greatest impact of these challenges.
At Mercy Corps, we believe that a better world is possible. It's important to remember that not all progress has been lost. Diseases like polio are being eradicated with new vaccines for RSV and malaria that will save lives. Our capacity to generate renewable energy is expanding at a remarkable rate.
Two out of three people in the world have access to the internet, transforming access to information and opportunities to make a living. We're pursuing innovative ways to change the model of refugee support, moving from handouts to self-reliance by helping refugees to start small businesses. We know that investments to support communities to better prepare for climate shocks that help people adapt and cope not only helps prevent-- it not only helps prevent damage, but also helps people to generate new sources of income. We've also seen this in Caribbean, where equipping community centers and local organizations with supplies and information helps them to be their own first responders to hurricanes.
The challenges we face are immense, but we can rise to them together. The true lesson of the 21st century must be that in a world that is so interconnected-- I like to say hopelessly interconnected-- our future is bound together with people we have never met. In a world of pandemics, climate change, global hunger, supply chain shocks, wars, and grinding conflicts, there is no us and them. There is only us. We can prevail if we face these challenges together with urgency and determined to leave no one behind as we work for a shared humanity and toward an inclusive, resilient future where everyone can thrive. Thank you.
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MELANI CAMMETT: Well, thank you so much. It's nice to have something hopeful. Because it's tough these days. So on that note, one thing I've noticed, you did highlight a sort of macro level example of hope, this Global Fragility Act. But it seems like the real sources of hope come in these little examples, these micro level communities, these stories. And not just stories, but real experiences of places that are cooperating across different sectors to improve people's lives in concrete ways.
And yet, we open up the media every day and are just bombarded by numbers of people facing tragedies, and it seems like there's no end. It's almost like a contagious disease, war and disaster. And so we know, as humans, we don't process that well. We get these images of disaster and overwhelming despair, and it becomes sort of abstract.
And so to bring this to your work, I imagine this has real implications for the kind of work you're doing. I mean, people are now seeing stories like this over and over again, people in the places that maybe are in a position to donate or to advocate, and so forth, and yet, maybe they feel immobilized. Are you feeling this? Is there a sense of humanitarian fatigue?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, we do feel it. We worry a lot about disaster fatigue. The numbers really flatten things. And increasingly, the stories, they really don't touch the human impacts of what's happening or what people on the ground are.
The numbers overwhelm, and then the story becomes the picture of the bombed out infrastructure or something. And obviously, there are things that people need to see, that they need to know that these things are happening, but they also need to see that people can recover, that people still remain in these places throughout war and conflict, that people still are trying to educate their children and feed themselves, and that they're still there in their homes building for the future. So the macro is important in terms of making sure that we have the right peace processes and that we are investing, but these stories at the level of local authorities and communities working together and people really trying to pull themselves out, it's important that we hold on to that and know that and give people those opportunities to do so.
It's also increasingly important that we're there for people just as human beings. Addressing the psychosocial support needs of people in these situations is extremely important. And so we worry about the fatigue. We worry about don't-- we worry about a sense of helplessness taking over, where people just say, I know A's not getting in. Why am I going to give money to that?
Or it's just a drop in the bucket, or there's going to be something the next time. But the reality is people emerge. And the idea, the goal is to make people more resilient and to enable them to thrive and to build for themselves, and to lessen the impacts of these things and to make it less of an option to go into conflict, honestly.
MELANI CAMMETT: Another point or a key theme of your remarks focused on solidarity, which these days feels sort of aspirational. Although I couldn't agree more that we need a we. But we know, as social scientists-- many people in this room study these questions-- it's really hard to maintain a sense of we, and that there is a tendency to divide in us and them. And this is happening at the micro level in conflicts. It's also seemingly happening at the macro level, at the highest level, at the global level, where it feels like the global architecture, the rules-based order is cracking, if not broken. Maybe cracking is too optimistic. And you operate in a world, as a humanitarian actor, in a world of international humanitarian law, in a world in which the United Nations plays a key role. So I'm wondering, how does this affect the kind of work that you do and your sector that we have such paralysis, to put it mildly, in the global humanitarian architecture?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: I got to restart. Let me start with this, the rules-based order, but also just the polarization and the us versus them. And I can even talk about it within my own staff, really, because I see it very starkly within my own team.
I started to talk about the Ukraine example, and I still, like, I'm still astounded that now, we're at a point where support for Ukraine is even in question. It just feels crazy to me. I don't know how we got here.
But when the war in Ukraine broke out, I remember I had separate back-to-back calls with different groups of staff in the Middle East and Africa, and they were just angry. People were like, Syrians, a couple of years ago, they weren't treated like this. And someone on the news said they look like us, and people-- it just was all so visible to people and it was so visceral. And this like, outpouring of support, it just felt so hollow to them and there was such an anger.
There was a UN General Assembly meeting a couple months later, and it's not funny, but I like to joke, like, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine is just such a master at communication. And so it was one of these global events where they were 40 heads of state there, and everyone was giving their speeches, blah, blah, blah, and President Zelenskyy, just like, pops up on the screen.
But what was striking in that thing was every single Global North leader started their remarks expressing solidarity for the people of Ukraine and their commitment to Ukraine. Every single representative from the Global South or non-aligned country was silent on Ukraine. And it was just really, like, one by one to see that and to think about, what does this mean for the long term? Like, this is not helpful.
And I think the UN is such an important institution, particularly for the international humanitarian architecture, like in the rules of international humanitarian law, things around proportionality or not bombing essential services or power lines or hospitals.
Those are the things that we would want if something were to happen to us. But they're also the kinds of things that keep my team safe. We also have these deconfliction mechanisms that we've had for decades that have served us well and allowed us to get aid and in and out of these places. And what we're seeing now is those are fraying.
I think what's felt as a double standard is something that we're all going to regret. But I think more importantly, you're just seeing a lot more new actors come into the scene. So, for instance, when we had to negotiate-- when negotiations had to happen with Russia to get Black Sea access open, it was Turkey who brokered that, right? Peace negotiations for Sudan are happening in the UAE.
There are all these new countries-- or not new, but different countries-- are emerging. And yet we have this architecture for the system that completely excludes leadership from most of the Global South. And it's not sustainable. And so we've got to-- there does need to be a rethinking of the architecture. And there does need to be a recommitment to international humanitarian law and the International Criminal Court and other things to keep some semblance of balance and fair play in an increasingly dirty situation.
MELANI CAMMETT: Yeah, you started to talk about access, negotiating access. And I'm curious if you can talk more about how that plays out. I remember a number of years ago, the Weatherhead Center had an event where representatives from-- I think it was Save the Children-- were talking about the work they were doing in Syria. And this was at the height of conflict across Syria.
And they were talking about the many different actors on the ground, militias and so forth, that they had to negotiate with just to get basic aid in. And I'm sure every situation is different and has its own array of actors. But could you tell us a little bit about how that's playing out and maybe how it's changed over time?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, we're still in Syria. And actually, what's really upsetting about what's happening in Lebanon now is we see people going back into Syria, which is crazy. Because they're so vulnerable. And the areas of Syria that people are going back into are controlled by the government. So it's really troubling.
I think one of the things that organizations like ours or some of the bigger organizations have is we've been in these communities for a long time before these conflicts. So we do have different relationships. We also have relationships with a lot of local actors on the ground. In some of the more traditional conflicts there have been-- you're able to negotiate.
The UN has played really important roles in creating corridors of access and systems for us to get in for aid where they haven't existed. Like Sudan, where there are some aid access challenges, we are working through our local partners. We have a really rich network of local partners in Sudan. And we know that local markets are still functioning in Sudan, and those partners are still able to serve.
So we've been funneling resources to them. But we also look at the local private sector as an important part of partnerships. So it is every situation is a little bit different, but you do have to rely on that local knowledge. And sometimes the negotiations really are area by area. Right now in Afghanistan, it really is a governorate by governorate situation in terms of making sure our women are allowed to do some work and getting in.
And that's part of the benefit of being in places for a long time and especially of having local relationships and having staff. 90% of our staff is from the communities that we serve. And that plays a really important role as well.
MELANI CAMMETT: OK, well, I just want to ask one final question before we open it up maybe a little bit more on the personal side. You mentioned you took this class with Professor Ezra Vogel. And so that sort of started you thinking of this as a pathway. And I wonder if you could fill that out a little bit more and tell us more how you got drawn to this.
I mentioned to Jada before her talk that in my alternate life I would have been a humanitarian aid worker. So she's my hero. And so I'm wondering how did you get there? And also, what would you say to anyone out there who is interested in this?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: So my path is very circuitous. And I graduated before Harvard had more robust financial aid. It was good financial aid, but more robust. And so I-- Peace Corps was not an option for me. I needed to go and earn money and do things. And so I started in the private sector, and it kind of-- then I worked for an agribusiness. And then that led to the Gates Foundation.
But I think the common thread when I think about it-- because my route was very-- I entered Harvard as a 16-year-old freshman. I really had no clue what I was doing. I just kind of tripped on things and continuing to follow what was interesting to me. So oh, this industrial East Asia class is interesting. How does this apply to this?
And I ended up going through-- I ended up with a gov degree because it took all my credits from the other majors that I'd started and stopped. But even when I was at McKinsey-- like, a third of all Harvard undergrads end up there-- I would say to people, I'm really interested in African Development. I'm really interested. How do I apply what I'm learning here to other things?
And that's when someone said you should work on their agriculture work with us. And so just kind of continuing to voice different things and to tell people that interest kind of led me to these places. But I never would have predicted any of it. But I think that-- just continue to ask questions and tell people and engage and follow those little nuggets of things that interest you.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great, so we have plenty of time for questions. I invite anyone to come up to the mic and pose any questions you might have.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: No answers.
AUDIENCE: Hi, I've got a question if that's OK.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great, go ahead.
AUDIENCE: Hi. So first of all, thank you for all the work you do. It's really kind of amazing thing that you've been able to keep this going through the incredible challenges that you've discussed. Just reading as a kind of news junkie, one thing that strikes me as being just more prominent now than it used to be, and I don't know if it's just the news or if it's the world. But it seems like a lot of humanitarian workers have become targets in a lot of these conflicts.
And it just feels to me like it must be more dangerous on the ground for humanitarian aid workers. And so I'm wondering how you handle this question of security. That deconfliction, you said was fraying. And it just feels all around like the good people of the world are actually becoming pawns in some of these conflicts. And so I'm wondering if that's an accurate reading and how you cope with all that?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: It is an accurate reading. It is the thing that keeps me up at night. We actually lost our first staff member in Gaza over the weekend. We had a staff member killed in a strike. I think it's very troubling. It's very alarming.
And I think that's why we as leaders have really been calling for people to one, to not bash the UN, to respect it, to respect the systems, to respect international humanitarian law. Because it does make us more vulnerable. But the other piece of it is that most of our staff-- and I think it's true for most of our organizations-- are from the communities where we work and serve.
And so we have staff that are from these communities that care about their neighbors, that in the midst of all this, are still working to serve and to be of service. And it keeps us up at night. We think of duty of care.
We've been trying to house, as there have been multiple displacements of people around Gaza. We've been trying to provide housing to our staff. In one of my last conversations with them, they were asking if the war ends, can you still provide US housing? Because there's no housing left. We still provide our coordinates about where things are.
We're really struggling with how to deal with this. We are really, really struggling. The thing that keeps us most safe most times is that the communities that we work in know us. And they say they're the good guys. They help us through, but we are more powerless. We're more powerless in certain situations. And that's something that we're facing.
AUDIENCE: Hi. Thank you for your lecture today and thank you and your team for all of your service. I was listening to you, and I was just struck by what this last year must have been for all of you. The UN published a report today saying that if we stick to current government policies, the world is likely to warm up to 3.1 degrees by the end of the century, which, as you mentioned, would be terrible for vulnerable communities.
You also talked about the Syrian refugees that came into Lebanon. And they were middle class professionals and only had access to agricultural work. And I'm sure that has a lot to do with the fact that government policies don't give refugees the right to work. So if we're seeing international climate finance decrease, governments backing out of their commitments, and governments not allowing refugees the right to work, I'm struck by the word thrive.
And I'm optimistic that we can live in a world where refugees can thrive. But is it realistic for us or for you to believe that vulnerable communities can thrive if governments are not? If the financial capacity isn't there, the policies aren't there. And what can we do as a community to change that?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Thank you. It's interesting because we spend a lot of time in the Global North across the US and Europe bemoaning refugees or trying to restrict immigration. And the countries that are really dealing head-on with refugee crisis are other countries in the Global South. So it's places like Uganda and Jordan.
And luckily, those places have been a little bit more generous in the policies and seeking to adapt people. You also have people who are lifelong refugees who are stateless. I mentioned that example about the Global Fragility Act just because global policy is important. And I think doing research to show that these things work is really critical.
And countries like Uganda have done great jobs in allowing more pathways and social access. Colombia has done a wonderful job with Venezuelan migrants and really showing the evidence of those. But that's where this kind of shared us and this change in policy is the thing that's going to get us out. We can't-- there's a limit to what we will achieve without it, so. -
MELANI CAMMETT: Great, I think you're next, and then we'll come to Kim.
AUDIENCE: Thank you for that speech which describes a very dire situation but also offers hope. I'm thinking that the major problem in what you've scoped out the terrain is the nation state. I think it is the centerpiece even if there is multilateral and intergovernmental work. It is a centerpiece for efficacy.
And now for different reasons, collective action problems, or the fact that they have splintered capacities, these states are not coming up to the plate. So if we were to think of the problem not us and them, but us being the state and we being global community, we have a problem. What does it mean to be a global community?
And also, I wonder if we were to think strategically, how could this global community, which is nascent in its structures, organize itself not to go after every problem, but to go after specific problems in which it can make a difference. Even if it that means not addressing all but being strategic and acting where you can make a difference and from there creating a dynamic-- how would that look?
How would groups like yours federate themselves and force states to respond and force states to recognize basically that success and their shortcomings and have them act and have them address these shortcomings and these failures? Maybe this is too abstract or maybe it's--
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: I will try.
AUDIENCE: --too diffuse. But the problem is too diffuse. We just have-- the problems are so vast that maybe it's time to think a little bit in silos and see where we can make the most of an impact.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Because of the interconnectedness, for me-- because of the interconnectedness and the way that different states play off of each other in different regions, it's hard for me to really conceive of deprioritizing a place or saying it's not as important. I will say that it's really important that we work with institutions in places where we work, governments, states, whatever those authorities are.
In Syria, there are several different governing authorities depending on where you are. But they know that there's some basic compact to their citizenry. There is something there where they do want to serve and they do need to serve-- and so helping to build that capacity where we're not running up against terrorism violations or other things that prevent that.
But there's also a macro level. Because in almost all these places, you have other governments or other states in the middle of the problem, meddling or doing things for their own benefit. Like I mentioned, there are multiple nations in the middle of the Sudan war. In DRC, there are multiple neighboring countries funding rebel groups.
And there has to be that kind of accountability to each other globally or calling out or something there. So it's the nation state, but other nation states are contributing to the problems at the nation state level. And these conditions are ripe for bad actors in different places. So I think the transparency around that happening, some calling to account of that-- and then there are lots of incentives to get-- whether it's debt relief or aid or just technical support.
Because people realize that a population whose needs aren't met will not sit still for a long period of time either. My favorite saying is a hungry crowd is an angry crowd. And so there are some natural built-in incentives to serve.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: But it's complicated.
AUDIENCE: Hi, my name is Ken Juster. And I to thank you, along with everyone else, for your wonderful presentation and for the work that you and your team does every day on the ground, which is very inspiring. I also want to come back to the point that Melani was making that you touched on a bit as well. That there is the micro issues that you face, but there's a macro problem that the world order that we've known since the creation of the UN is really cracking.
And I don't think it's going to be easily repaired. I think it's going to be transformed. And you see this most especially in Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Here is one of the permanent five members of the security council violating the basic preconditions and precepts of international law, whether it's territorial integrity, sovereignty, bombing civilian with no-- not accidentally but purposefully-- civilian infrastructure.
And yet it is astounding to me, as you mentioned, that the Global South really is not energized by this. And I'd like to understand your thinking as to why that may be. Is it because I tend to think when the United States and others impose sanctions, we didn't look at what the collateral damage would be?
And we didn't try to provide an advance for food relief or fertilizer relief for inflationary pressures. And had we done more prework, we might have kept some of those countries on board. Or is it just the fact that they feel we've had problems of a humanitarian nature. You referred to the Sudan, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and the west wasn't energized about those.
So why should we be energized about what you're doing? Is there anything we could have done more? Or does this just show at a macro level why there's just disengagement and everyone is focused more on their own backyard rather than someone else's backyard?
And then finally, at a micro level, how does that affect the morale of your troops on the ground? I mean, are they people who go into this business like you, optimists and you keep persevering? Or at some point, does the problem become so overwhelming that you really have to manage your team's morale and resilience to keep them going?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, thank you for asking that. On the Global South especially, there are two things. One part of the answer was in part of your question. But from the Global South's perspective, Russia has been a good partner. Russia, China, all these countries have made inroads and really been working to create these partnerships with countries in the Global South.
Russia has systematically, via the Wagner Group and others, really gone through West Africa and tried to be the partner of choice versus France in these countries. I have a news alert for Mercy Corps, and I won't mention the country just for safety reasons. But in one of the countries, every other day there's some-- basically it's all this Russian propaganda coming that's bashing US. And we must be the CIA. We must be this. We must be evil, just this drumbeat of things.
So Russia, China, these other nations, the UAE, are currying favor. And so I think a lot of Global South countries, they have options in terms of who they partner with. In some cases, these other partners are easier partners than the US. Especially think about the US. US cooperation comes with a lot of lectures, and they watch those lectures through the Trump years, right? And they're like, hello, what's going on over there?
And so I think it's a much more multipolar world. And I think the second part goes back to about the institutions. We're not set up to handle it. We're not set up to police it. I think there's increasing trade with each other. India is everybody's friend. Like. India has not picked sides anywhere.
And it's been-- and we still need India as a partner. So I think we have to-- the international system has to change to be more empowering. So basically, if you're the Global South, you're sitting there watching these two P5 countries, watching this kind of Global North to Global North thing play out. Why get in the middle of it?
So I think not only the international architecture has to change, but I think we as the US have to get-- or we as different global have to get much more creative about the way that we partner with these countries or what our offering is. Or what are the ways that we-- at the end of the day, we still need to get aligned allies.
And we've probably just let things sit as they are for too long and have not recognized the agency and the leadership and the really talent in these countries. And they're open for business, so--
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you, please.
AUDIENCE: I'm going to echo everybody else. It was very inspiring. So thank you so much for the talk. Very, very inspiring. So yeah, I'm coming from teaching in a low-income community. I did Sit a Year. I did Teach for America the past couple of years. And I do. I think it's just the biggest injustice in America right now-- schools in the suburbs versus schools in a low-income community.
My mother still works in one. My girlfriend still works at one. Kids are going to school hungry very frequently. Teachers are burning out. Teachers are under qualified in low-income communities compared to in the suburbs. I left after a few years. Maybe I'll return. I work here now. I love it here.
MELANI CAMMETT: It's a big difference.
AUDIENCE: It is different. And just as an expert, I'm just curious. What are your thoughts on the school system in America right now?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, I'm not an expert on the school system of America. My own two children are in public schools in America. I'm not an expert on it, but obviously there's a lot of work we have to do. I think we still have some of the best public schools in the world.
We've got to do a lot more to get the right resources and to really think about equity across what we're teaching so that we're not leaving whole communities behind. We have so much talent. And I think that's what drives me to do this work is talent is distributed evenly, but opportunities are not.
And so I feel like the more you give people the opportunities to self-actualize, the better we all are as a world. And in the US, we've got to see that. We've got to understand that. And we've also got to see that it's something that our enemies use against us too. They say you think the US is so great. Look at what they're doing. So that's our own issues with our collective we and just age old things around race that we've got to break down, honestly.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, thank you.
MELANI CAMMETT: Thank you.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: But I'm not an expert in that, so just an interested citizen.
MELANI CAMMETT: But it is-- I will say one point on that, which is we often think sitting here in the United States that development and humanitarian work is something that happens overseas. But actually, there are parts of this country that are on par with the poorest developing countries when it comes to certain social outcomes. So I think it's an important point to keep in mind.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, yes.
AUDIENCE: Hi, I'm Ashutosh. Thanks for inspiring-- I mean, inspiring talk. Do you think that these humanitarian acts are temporary solution rather than permanent? Because as we know that-- I mean, who created all these problems?
Always two countries by fighting wars and at the same time providing aids to the crisis-- the same country are providing the aids for the humanitarian crisis as well as they are fighting war, which is responsible for the crisis.
So do you think that the wider-- the humanitarian problems are created by social inequalities, created by the perennial system, social system of some countries or the all societies or the hierarchies which we have in our own all societies in every parts of the world that are more important. And one should work more on that so that we should have a permanent solution of such crises and all.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, we talk about building inclusive, resilient communities. And that word inclusive is doing a whole lot of work. And just like what we saw with COVID here, every society has groups who are marginalized who are left behind. But whenever there are emergencies or crises, people turn-- the first source of support are their local communities.
So really working to break down barriers to make sure that there is equal access to resources is really important. So that inclusion within communities is very, very important. That being said, there are some situations where-- the war between two states or when everything-- you do need that outside help. And the way that we-- we actually do-- a lot of our humanitarian assistance really thinks about long-term systems building.
So we're one of the leaders in providing cash in emergencies so people can keep their markets going. They can make their own choices. People can invest in their businesses maybe. We try to do that to help build the system. But it is like that immediate first thing is a bit of a Band-Aid.
And I think we are always thinking about what we're doing to keep up institutions or systems while we provide them. Because you don't want to erode those. And that's also why looking at safety nets in countries is so important-- and that inclusion. So it's multi-layered. Sometimes it's imposed by others. Sometimes it's within. But at the end of the day, communities turn to each other.
AUDIENCE: Thank you.
MELANI CAMMETT: Yeah, please.
AUDIENCE: First of all, I just wanted to say so I am the Chief Impact Officer at Ábaco, which is a financial startup that works on financial inclusion for SMEs. And we are actually are beneficiaries of--
MELANI CAMMETT: Oh, awesome.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: That's awesome.
AUDIENCE: --venture capitalist investment.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yes.
AUDIENCE: We're the first one in Central America. So first of all, I wanted to say it is super important, the support to local organizations. And we really appreciate it. And it helps us have a hope for sustainable solutions on the ground.
But also, I wanted to say in our experience and how-- my question was how can we elevate this idea that many of these large issues that affect nations, like migration or refugees-- at the end of the day, they're individual decisions and many times economically driven.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yes, almost all.
AUDIENCE: At the end of the day, people want to stay at their home countries if they could. And how can we elevate and scale certain of these-- some of these solutions that have to do with individual incentives?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, we have a social ventures lab. And we invest in businesses-- right now really targeting women-owned businesses, but that provide either assistance-- like products that help with climate adaptation or finding access to financial products. Because both are products that help resilience in local communities.
So that's great that you work for one of them. So that's wonderful. A lot of our work-- we kind of focus on four areas in the work that we do, like food, water, economic opportunities, and peace building. And economic opportunities are really central and part of almost everything we do, particularly in emergencies.
Because I think you're exactly right. People want to be able to thrive where they are. They don't want to leave. Those people, those places still have markets. They still have needs that can be met locally. And we really try to equip people to do that so that they have choices and can do what they want to do.
And so that's why even in terms of the cash assistance we give in Ukraine, some of our cash assistance was to business owners to help them stay in business. In Lebanon during the food price crisis, we were funding small and medium-sized enterprises so they could buy more from local partners and thrive and still stay and keep things going.
So we believe it's really, really important. Sometimes for safety reasons, people have to go. But when you talk to them, they always want to go back, right?
MELANI CAMMETT: OK, great. Donna.
AUDIENCE: Oh, hi. My name is Donna Hicks, and I'm an associate here at the Weatherhead Center, and I spent most of my career studying the social psychological dimensions of international conflict. And recently, I heard about something called the inner development goals. Do you know about the inner development--
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: I do not. I think you have a lot to teach us on these.
AUDIENCE: I have a lot to learn about them. Because what I just assume-- does anybody know about the internal development goals that are? Well, so the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals you talked about in the beginning of your presentation-- which was fantastic, by the way, your presentation.
And the goals, as you rightly pointed out, were really being achieved. And then all of a sudden, COVID hit and all these conflicts. And now, we're back to almost ground zero. So there was a group in Stockholm who realized that, wait a minute, these SDGs, these Strategic Development Goals, aren't being achieved.
And it's not because we can't do that. So there must be something else going on. And what these people in Stockholm decided was there's something in our inner development as human beings. Our humanity is not developing enough of an awareness of that collective we that you've been talking about all night long or all afternoon.
And so in order to-- what they've proposed is that in order to really achieve these sustainable development goals, we need to develop as human beings. Our species needs to develop. And so they have this big program. In fact, they just had a summit in Stockholm with over 30,000 people attending. And you all have to look this up.
This is one of the best bits of news that I've come across are these people committed to understanding that we individually have to advance our consciousness of this interconnectedness that you were talking about so beautifully early in your presentation. And without that awareness of the benefits of collaboration over conflict and self-awareness, understanding how we're contributing to the problem-- anyway, for me, it's been a tremendously hopeful, endeavor to learn about.
Really, I just went to a meeting here at Harvard not too long ago, maybe two weeks ago. They had a meeting here. Did you know about it, Melanie? OK, so in any case, I just wondered if you had heard anything about this and how-- I mean, it would be great for Mercy Corps to get involved in it.
MELANI CAMMETT: I have not heard about it. And I find it interesting that a socialist country is the one leading that effort. Because it's like you would think they would be maybe more evolved in that. So it'll be fascinating. I'll ask my team about it.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, inner development goals.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Inner development goals.
AUDIENCE: In fact, there's a chapter right here in Boston. If anybody's interested, you can let me know.
MELANI CAMMETT: It's not shocking.
AUDIENCE: There's chapters all over the world, by the way.
MELANI CAMMETT: Yeah, so interesting. Thank you. Dawn.
AUDIENCE: I just want to pull at a little thread that was mentioned earlier. Specifically, this is a question about the African continent. And how does your organization or other NGOs work with these third-party countries, specifically the PRC, that does so much, I guess, infrastructure and hospital development in a lot of these countries, knowing that it may come at the expense of those countries losing their own natural resources to that third country?
And how do you negotiate this, I guess, sort of complexities that surround that?
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: Yeah, a lot of those are done at the high national levels. So we're not involved other than using the facilities when they're done. But we encounter, and we work in community, I guess is the best way to put it. It might look slightly different in slightly different places, but we work with what's there. That's the best way to put it.
AUDIENCE: So it sounds like there isn't direct--
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: There's not direct. Countries aren't coming to us for advice on should we get this financing for this bridge or how to do it. But certainly, when people are in community, we work in community and deal with what's there. Yeah, and encourage the US government to leverage whatever tools it has-- be it a GO or whatever else-- to be competitive, to be there or encourage other governments or other choices. But we also respect the right of governments to make their choices about who they want to partner with.
MELANI CAMMETT: Sounds like there's a really delicate dance between operating in a world that is governed by political tensions and competition and trying to be a nonpolitical, humanitarian-focused organization.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: We're neutral, and we are neutral humanitarian actors. That's been really hard to explain lately because people-- they want you to choose sides or condemn. We stand up for humanity, and we'll talk about international humanitarian law and call out anyone.
But we are their collective. And it's important for us not to be seen as American or as-- like I said, 90% of our staff are from the communities where we work. They have an interest in the game. The communities where we work, we want them to be in the lead of the work that we're doing for them.
We work really hard. We talk a lot internally about power dynamics and really making sure that we are thoughtful and that we are developing mechanisms for communities to take the lead. And in that sense, we want to be seen as a global player like everyone else.
And we might have more influence in some capitals than other. But honestly, we clearly don't have enough influence anywhere. But there is this tension. And I think sometimes we are called to take sides and we're just on the side of civilians, honestly.
MELANI CAMMETT: Great, well, I think we are all on the side of civilians. And I really take to heart your message about the need for the we. It's hard to do, but I really don't see any other future. And in all of our different ways, we need to figure out how we can get to the we at many different scales. So thank you so much for the work you're doing and for joining us.
TJADA D'OYEN MCKENNA: And thank you all for caring. Thank you.
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