Transcripts For CSPAN2 Book Discussion On City Of Thorns 20160208

Good afternoon. My name is jerry fowler, and im a senior policy analyst here at the open society foundations, so im pleased to welcome you to this event thats hosted by open society and by our friends at politics to welcome you to this event by our friends at politics prose. And vera very proud actually while an open Society Fellow we are happy to make that contribution as an editor of the Washington Post will be interviewing and will say borer but i will tell you about caring and. Share reported for the Associated Press and her work has appeared in publications across the world. With the sarah reporters salon and has also made Television Appearances on international the works. With degrees from columbia and northwestern and a fulbright scholar in donna. She will interview bed for a while then there will be the question and answer period. So as you saw politics is a prose has copies of the books outside. While the book signing is going on simultaneously we will remove the chairs from the roof for the reception that i hope you stay for. And where people should live up to do the book signing and have for the reception allout once. His. I welcome you to open society and particularly happy ben and karen have joined us. We are happy to be here and theyre excited to talk about this book city of thorns. As a former researcher for humanrights around the horn of africa and the author and has written for a wide range of publications. And for city of thorns he spent four years making repeated trips for the people in this camp aprowl so very often called a refugee camp of the makeshift tents but in the city of thorns that is powered by a conflict and International Bureaucracy and the geopolitics with the human need for survival. And though lack thereof with the government of kenya but it has a lot to do with relationships and the need for survival that are in extraordinary circumstances. That lets them between a rock and a hard place. Budget i would like to start big a and then go back out again. Just give us a background and the sense of history. To be established in 1991 and following the collapse in 1990 with the u. S. And u. N. Interventions busy from the u. S. Withdrawal in the country spiral further and further with the various flareups and to now a fragile peace or other parts of the country that initial camp was three towns to be arranged in a hemisphere around the al posted in northern kenya. Password 25 years later each between 70 and want hundred thousand people with three generations of people there is us character in the book and a person who was in the book in 1981 was of very young boy. And some of them will soon be having children and now on to our Third Generation and from the famine in 2011 to describe the makeshift mitropoulos the we have seen images of the crazy aerial photos of what is hard to picture is the people coming and going and making a living falling in love and falling out of love. One thing i didnt know some parts are quite cosmopolitan. Can you talk about the other populations . From the horn of africa at the time i joked with my colleagues because we need to go there so often it is the outpost of all conflict in that region from those to come from somalia end to find what was going on. And then of course, the human rights crisis which later on in 2010 there were two reports done the way that we approach that in the book for those who were born or raised in the camp and fact of friend was one of the thousands of the lost boys and those who stayed in the region. Monday was one of those. So they met and fell in love. And pretty much there was a witch hunt to capture and sacrifice of the dignity of the family had been offended so part of that story is defended with the lost boys with their spears that is far from the other part in fact, as i was researching a story through the Sudanese Community to be burned down from the muslim people from the ongoing tension. But i will stop there for now. But they are real people to get to now. In the first to rise if and then that pocket history he doesnt really know then the helicopter was shot shot down. He was 16 you going to Primary School in mogadishu and one day in his geography class he was taken to a Training Camp and for a month he worked for the up police and this is in the aftermath which was very brutal and at that time to cover the abuses. But of course, he could not stay. So he made his way it across that 17 miles of no mans land. Into even get there is an incredible challenge is very hostile to refugees to have a bus ride to the camp you have to make your own way. Lowes likely the Kenyan Police wellhouse brought you up and ran the shaky down and taking back. Bid order to reach the camp but once youre there you present yourself to the un then you can begin your life as a refugee. But that journey from the first few chapters. If you can use these to explain those factors. And very bright and Archer Panera real and as the book progresses of the ngo world with that middle of transparency. En to have their entire lives with the interactions of them. In a situation and then even doesnt want to a knowledge resistance. And end to be there from the start those who came bin they call it the good old days. With access to education was easier than most would go to Primary School it was mostly rice and beans and now would is things people dont know how to cook. But that group is the 92 group and many have since been resettled. And for the last 25 years have gone to primary and secondary school. Did people have degrees of mind. So that they are preparing for of life outside. And as time goes on and to be increasingly unlikely. And to feel increasingly tenuous. And with that until state kept more more and more flexible and to have hope so to leave outside the camp. And then the next day with gloom and doom and depression but is still affected with the trauma. It then talking guy of his brothers were murdered and did is like a pressure cooker. The stable attitude very much makes that and then they are really struggling. In with that social support. In the cairo but it doesnt really apply. These are the normal people. That have not been sexually abused or Domestic Violence they dont have firsthand experience with conflict their problems are very much a result of living in the camp. That is the reality of the life. What about truelove facebook . Is a bitter pill to be honest. In digest kills him if he got a ticket to be resettled is massively unfair why one person should get it or not. In there are facebook groups and everybody talks to reach other. In this has changed and remember each other and it is painful and welfare said in rand having a nice life and suffering. And i recently checked in there is a photo of him with his face a photoshop on top. And they say that they are from ohio or london to construct these profiles for themselves. And for what they can do one facebook. To those that follow and they end up together. Their romance places heavy demands with that domestic reality but it drove many marriages. That is a pressure cooker. Can you talk about that . But before he fled she got married. And they got married when they were 16. End had to make a phone call to tell them that he was okay. The to get ahold of cash is very difficult. There is no way to read a living so the first thing he did with his rations is to tell her he is okay. The un will give us the house and he oversold and. And then said i am coming. You have to give me a ticket. How much do you need . But she needed 50. How would he give 50 . Said he tried to find work in the market to raise the money so she could come. This is for five months after he arrives. So they show up in the camps six months pregnant in this isnt the paradise that he describes it is overcrowded in to be glad that the canada is full. To the extra food in basically she has a meltdown in that i had a washing routine washing machine. That tension is that the center of their relationship. So we want to go back to mogadishu. That leaves pretty much he will get lynched so they always played down that threat with the virtues of the cube. And sometimes in a difficult way. Also those issues of Domestic Violence. And for those who wanted to kill the child they get relocated that are supposedly protected. In that area next to the Police Station and. Its not always the safest place to be. It is the unequal relationship in this causes all types of problems with the normally called and generous with those prostitutes that live right next to the police camp and then the brakes somebodys job than the go to jail that story has a happy ending. The we will not give away and to capture those details as easily. Stated that the choice is that they need to make. Does it take a while to gain the trust . What is that like . I am always surprised and that was a feature but especially it is astonishing with the inequalities of the relationship but it is also a function that life is really boring in to tell your own story to give it some sort of meeting. In the refugees themselves dont seem to share their own victims stories with each other. We can imagine that. Im sure plenty of people in this room are part of of the development community, not only worried for the safety of the people from the kenyan government, from other places in the camp, but also when ngos came and implement projects or one budget cuts and you find yourself really worrying for their wellbeing. There is some silver moment project but where an entrepreneur has an idea and wants to recruit. Whether it is to go back and train to go back and mans solar panels, it causes a fuss in the camp. Number one there is questions about vulnerability and there is some possibility to do no harm and what that means for the development community. What i have tried to do in the camp is to give the total picture to describe the whole world. With people who are dealing with their own Mental Health problem and the way they fled during the famine of 2011 and walked with 16 days and bound their feet with wet rags because they had shredded the show souls on their feet. They generally walked at night because it was cooler. They came they came and lived in the camp for a couple of years. Then an indian philanthropist had a project where he trains them in nonverbal methods of how to fix solar panels. Blocks that had the most affected by sexual violence. Making the blocks more visible the whole thing was done in a different way and they raise their eyebrows the community was select dean who they thought they could spare. Another lady wasnt illiterate and you shall was a teacher back in somalia, so she did not tell him that she actually could read. Nor was she a grandmother at that point. She just looked very old because she had been through the famine. So he collected these women and their promises made and in the end theres travel documents but there is a bureaucratic system that didnt want them to happen. She liquidated her assets and resigned her position for which you was paid a small amount of money and she feels she has conducted herself and did not want to continue on her duties with the school when she knew who she was leaving. This this had terrible consequences for this particular family. Until i followed up and finally we found out the source of the problem. Could you just take a message for me and tell them to come here and apologize. And publicly that did not happen. It also leads to a sense of urgency as well in things like selling rations for instance. Or there was the refugees were not powerless in all of this. In fact there are other examples of refugees who do not take it too seriously at all. And to make fun of them and manipulate the agencies processes and procedures and so on. So talk about the relationship of kenya, in the book not so long after the Westgate Mall attack and i think people will remember that there is pronouncements and declaration, what impact that had on the camps, again what i do like about this book is some of the major news stories that we see on our end of the famine, we see how that really created the effect. Especially after waistcoat, what happened what happened in the camp after the government threatened to close the camp. That was one of the most fascinating things to me was the view and see in the news on full but from there. There is a difference. After all that time and getting to know these in the camp when they said go home the cancer closing it was easy for me to laugh alongside the refugees, how on earth is that going to happen. How are you going to wipe out a city the size of new orleans just like that. The people initially after westgate everybody shut their doors and waited. They they just assumed that there is going to be some revenge from nairobi and the kenyan media was pretty rabbit about it but it never came. Life goes back to normal there are consequences because ngos were working in the camp they take, they follow the lead of the kenyan government and then all of a sudden ngos are less clean to start planning. Theyre reluctant to spend money things start shrinking. Then of course when the World Food Program at about the same time, and theyve done this every november sense now they cut rations because they had a funding crunch at the end of the year. The syrian crisis, another crisis which we now know about in more detail than we know them. It means rations are getting cut. So for the refugees the obvious interpretation is that you are starving us so that well go back to somalia. Quite a few people did. We call the cutback of rations a crime. It is a crime and this is one of the things we get very angry about. We are asking people to stay in this camp, asking them to have hope in an International System that promises them a solution which is supposed to be returned to their home country when it is peaceful. Integration into a country or resettlement to a third country. But that International Regime is broken now. What i note with some irony what americans is kind the European Crisis is that this pipeline is broken. Once upon a time people would go to a refugee refugee camp, they would wait for a solution and the had some realistic prospect perhaps within a decade that situation would be resolved. It would be regular i somehow. But we have now and the overarching context of the book is that we have these cities in limbo which are growing and a number of the cities are growing and people are stuck in the situation so we are asking people where they cant work and they cant leave the camp they will be contained in this presenter will not even going to give them enough food to eat. Can you imagine if people all of the sudden were told so you only have not even that i mean what are about one and a half meals a day. So youre only going to get half a meal today. I dont know why its illegal but these sorts of illegalities or become a normalized refugees are supposed to have the freedom of movement, the right to work, seven years under the constitution youre supposed have the right to citizenship. Nobody is talking about the crisis as a crime against humanity which as human rights folks would jump up and down anyway emotionally it is a crime against humanity that all of these laws are being broken and people are being confined in these places been stopped. People are dying. Is a very important thing to understand. To talk about after the ration cuts, what was that like . The end of the book was at the beginning of 2015. The last time i saw the central character in the book he was in a really difficult situation because he had tried raising money, marianne who had the first baby in 2011 now had now had two more. He is the father of three. The ration cut last year was for about three or four months and it is cumulative. As each night goes by and you do not get your full rations and if you dont have alternative means of income as he doesnt because hes a newcomer, so hes not established. Then you really need that food. You have to sell a bit of that food if you want things like baby milk, if you want sugar, tea. So by cutting that 30 your shaving off all of your luxuries, all of the other necessities of life, no close, no nothing. Just a very bare minimum of keeping a family of three allies. He is the mind man, he is the strongest and his wife was pregnant again. So when i met him he was very thin and not looking well. We went for a meal because i was going back for my final trip and i wanted to get the agreement to talk about if theres anything that should be changed. He fell asleep while i was trying to read him the story. He would not eat with me, he only wanted to take the food that i bought back to the family because he said its not right, its not fair. He is 23 years old. I noticed little gray, white hair. Hes only 23 years old. Ive known him for four years since he was 18 or 19. So the end of the book is very emotional. So it must be difficult to read their own stories back to them. The book is very powerful. Again in the end this is unfair, the fact fact that he cannot even keep himself awake while you are reading back his amazing story, it also touched me as well. Going back to this broken system that we have is failing then retraumatizing traumatizing people who have already been through so much, or bringing people into trauma so in 2013 kenya, somalia they have an apartheid agreement to begin the process of resettling people back to somalia. Today i think theres about 2000 i think theres 2400 or so so the agreement is set to expire in september of this year, what does that mean . Does a revenue bearing on situation, what does that mean Going Forward . By and large it is irrelevant. Its useful to set numbers against each other. According according to the formal Legal Process, there are around 1000 or 2000 resettlements every year. The u. K. Takes about 100, u. S. Takes rhonda thousand. There is no way that the quota is going to keep place with the birth rate in the camp. There are five or 6000 people who have gone back under the voluntary resettlement program. Even if you add that to the column is still does not keep pace. Last there many new refugees coming because theres terrible flood since amalia. Somalia. It is a political thing because kenya desperately wants to shut the camp i want to see some movement. Instead there telling can yet know it is wrong and illegal we need to wait for the un to say when we can go back to somalia. Angiotensin start on it is by no means but doable solution and everybody is waiting for. It is a sideshow. There are all sorts of issues about protection and responsibility which are not being dealt with properly. As a rule, i would like for them to be seen as an example of a much bigger problem. The reason we have this crisis is because for two decades we have had slow burn of a mismatch between the closest and the burden sherry and the number of refugees rambling. If you look at the historical trend there were moments when it was much better and larger numbers were taken. Especially since 9 11 we have seen rising islamic phobia and closing of the north with the exception of germany and with the United States its a much more desirable option. That closing of the north has meant the numbers keep going. These rounds of political numbers have nothing to do with the underlying pipeline. You have to fix the pipeline. You have to make sure there is a fair and Legal Process sorting out displaced people in the world. You have a crisis in every six months there is a political gunfire about numbers, that is going to keep reoccurring and youre never going to fix it. Im hoping this book and especially in the u. S. , how does the conversation need to change in order to address the problems you have come up with. I am very nervous. I have seen discussions around refugees were at a certain pitch now in the media where big gestures and radical solutions pop up in the book. They talk about high levels that are not large enough for them to come up with. I think it is a good coverage. I think there is some other smaller things were thinking about, excepting the permanence of this. Nobody wants to live there forever but some people given the option might prefer that as a better situation for now. I think we have got to ensure these places are humane, there is no reason why apart from kenya that that could not happen. The roads and sanitation and enough food, rich countries have first and foremost enough to feed everybody. So accepting the permanence maybe allowing them to become an open city where even if you dont want to allow the Free Movement of people you might allow them to come other places. The last thing is to allow and to get the state out of the way in terms of the management of the population of movement. Canada has a very Interesting Program that allows the private sponsorship of refugees. The number of people coming for private channel really expands. The u. K. Is looking into it with some pressure. It would be great if those channels could be opened a bit more so they could interact. My next is looking at climate change. The number of people are going to make these numbers look like change. If we do not have a system that can properly deal with and share our burden and to fix that system now then we will be in for a long bumpy ride. The last point is we probably need to think a bit more sophisticated and humanely about the nationstate. I think canada and the United States has had progressive interest in the nationstate where we have seen a much more utilitarian turn. Now in europe we have a different history, bloodied history. What europe is needing to confront is the idea of less nation and more state. Seeing these are the places we live theyre not homogenous ideas. So that is one quote that stuck out to me towards the end of the book talking about the permanence,. [inaudible] it served the need for the hospitals and the safety net and it rubbed it exhaustion of war. The city now had a life of its own beyond the refugees and it would not be so easily destroyed. So if thats we will wrap up our conversations and open up questions from the audience. Before we do i hope you will join me in thanking karen [applause]. Also as we switched to questions please wait for the microphone. I will be Walking Around with it, i dont know if ben if you want to call on people and i will walk around. Please introduce introduce yourself and state any affiliation. [inaudible] high. My name is joseph, i work on a campaign for transparency issues. I have not had a chance to read the book but i was curious if you would talk about the background of how the camps came about. What cause the refugees . What were . What were the structural factors at work . We can take a few questions. My name is bill, editor of africa focus bulletin. I have a question related to the flow of monetary resources from around the world. One is obviously the official humanitarian agencies, the budgets that never get totally committed and then get cut. But another very important flow is actually impeding is a remittance. There is families around the world, if you dont let people move at least let them send them funds without it being stopped. You have banks being shut down, the channels because of suppose it security regulations. The whole question, people find ways to get around it. It raises the cost. Im wondering if actually even if one is not willing to accept the fact that people should be able to travel as freely as money, which which in terms of human rights seems fundamental. But theyre not willing to go that far say people should be able to move freely then at least ask people who are making it out get a tax break from sending funds back to their relatives rather than in having problems doing it. I will try to answer both questions quickly. At the beginning the majority of refugees are from somalia and they came from 1991 and then in successive waves since then as the civil war has taken various turns. The largest influx recently was in 2011 when about 200,000 people came as a result of the famine. That is connected to the war. I would refer you to human rights. Org somalia, there are loads of support about the different contacts about why people flee some all yeah. They examine it much more detail. There also large numbers of from southern ethiopia. Many became somali identity even though they came there. The the back story is in the book which is that one quarter of traditional somalia is southern ethiopia. One quarter of traditional somalia or another piece of traditional somalia is a quarter of northern kenya. So a quarter kenya, quarter ethiopia used to be somalia. Part of the reason why the politics of somalia was difficult and the war was irresolvable is because kenya and ethiopia had deepseated interest in meddling in somalia. Somalia politics are on a much larger scale beyond its own border. It is a problem that has a colonial route as do many other current wars. The refugees it is a big issue, theyre very annoyed about the restrictions on remittance he. Many people survive on it to some extent. The coping mechanisms we have spoken about, informal work, the rations, and remittance and remittance is the pillar of that. Generally you have all three, if sometimes you have to but if you only have one of those things the rations then you are on the bottom of the pile. I have a question about the mix of the population, i didnt realize that there are 40000 kenyas also come to take advantage of the services that there government doesnt provide. The official refugee population now is about 350,000, down from half a million from 2012. The informal estimates on the size of the camp put it at well over half a million because there are many kenyans from the region who are living there. There are canyons from other part of the country who came to work. It is the biggest economy, is the largest urban for thousands of miles. It works. In its own dysfunctional way. Thank you for this book. I look for to to reading it. I want to go back to your mention of getting the state out of the way strategies and the crisis. In a scenario like like that and certainly in the u. S. More and more recently we are hearing those conversations which dangerously go in the direction of cherry picking. Leg will take refugees but maybe not muslims will take christians, so how does one ensure equal protection if the private sector gets involved . I am jackson with voice of america. Mike question piggybacks on the last point you may. What is the interest in kenya given that it is selfsustaining economy the house morphed into its own with an ecosystem around it. What is the interest of the kenya enclosing it . On from George Washington university. Two questions, first it ill show bob, the kenyan government is rather paranoid about the infiltration. That may be exaggeration but i am interested to know your opinion as to how effective he has penetrated and if their operatives in the cant. I cant conceive that it is nonexistent. Then the second question im rather skeptical about the viability of opening up all show bob to the wider region, it is in such an isolated and area parts of kenya that the bimodal degradation that that would result could be catastrophic. That within a short period of time you would actually see major demographic and environmental problems. It survived as an isolated bubble because it said plied from our times. The wider political economy of northeastern kenya and the wide echo system, its not sustainable in the the force of 350 or 450,000 people being absorbed into the political economy of northeastern kenya ics and nonstarter. So you can see the kenyan government about that kind of strategy. Its imperative for the canyons i think, probably sensibly to try and preserve. I would be interested in your opinion. That is perhaps the answer to your question. That talks about environmental degradation and talks about the security threat. I think connecting the two questions i think it is present in the camp but only as far as its on the main road to somalia. Its not a congenial place to plan anything you have this creative street, you have these blocks of very tightly knit they work very hard to strengthen and show up in due stuff. Now i am sure there are certain blocks where they have been sympathizers and seizures of weapons and so on. But but generally its much easier to police the monitor then easily which is a very dense area so theyre very static most people are not going very far. So kenya is certainly exaggerated in that threat. I dont think there are legitimate reasons for security reasons for closing it. The reason my kenyas hostile wants to close it along with our bit more complicated. I think its also scape goading that instead of addressing the chronic corruption and incompetence of the Kenyan Security services. Its much easier easier and political argument to make. I think it more cynically there is intent on the part of some politicians to talk about divide and rule. So is this provincial list Community Politics that kenyan politicians are very adept at. They they escape goat one community against another. Its also very convenient scapegoat to avoid looking too closely at what the Kenyan Military is up to inside somalia. One of the issues i discovered in the book is a person called me so who works in the market who on loads and loads of sugar and there is a very big business and smuggling sugar from smalley into kenya because their people in kenya who have controlled the sugar market, suppressed the production and are selling the sugar. Its around around 400 million per year, the military is involved. There are competing interests in kenya and that is one piece of that puzzle. The the way i look at the state in kenya, from spending that time there is actually these competing cartels. Sometimes sometimes their interests overlap and sometimes they dont. There are some cartels where its an asset and theyre getting contracts from the un, their Community Community is represented among the refugees because the Northeastern Province which is historically they go across the border. Its very complicated picture. Talk about the private sector question, the thing to do is how canada manages it. They have been doing it for long time. They have a have a government track and the private sector track. As far as i can tell they manage each one so they complement each other so that they cover the protection. They work quite closely and are still drawn through the un. The un is still in control of the system. In system. In a way, canada is working with the system, as part of the solution. Other countries are taking similar numbers and has similar processes i think we would not have the kind of crisis we have now. Thank you for your talk. I work at open society. Monday and if youll talk about the distribution of refugees between two bob and other urban areas. How refugees in urban areas are faring. I was struck by your observation earlier that being in suchs short supply everyday manufacturer their own hope. What what does that hope consistent for these System People . Few have voluntarily, most of not, what would it take for a good portion of the population to go to somalia or to alternatively as the prevalent hope perhaps in the camp that at some point they will be able to integrate into canyons sizable somalia population. In terms of urban refugees, kenya has a Large Population of refugees as well. Twice in recent years it has tried to brown those people up and send them back. The only thing i can think of is felt check their papers or just rip the papers out. Some people went to mogadishu. Thousands of people were in the National Stadium in cages for weeks. On the pretext that they were undocumented migrants. Eventually most of those people were released. Its an ongoing tension kenyan has. It is harsh and general lives. Most of the situations are urban but i dont think its necessarily the case. Jordan has tried to put people in camps, they are not going. It tried to look, hook work people and into camps but that has not worked. Like gaza, supplied from outside still existing, supposedly attending attending some International Settlement that never arrived. That is the situation we are heading into with the camps in sudan, maybe the refugees will still be there in ten years. Every situation is different but there are common themes. In terms of manufacturing hope, as youll see in the book people make up Different Things every day. One day they are looking for to a football match, the next they are talking about moving to canada, the next of the next theyre talking about going back to somalia because of something positive they heard on the news and their trying to parlay that into a story about how its going to be okay to go back there or italy. That we did not get a chance to talk much about. Europe is that the most way out which is really why a lot of them now spend much of a time dreaming and talking about europe. They can actually get there over land. It cost around 10000. The main reason we are seeing more serious other than somalia as part of the mix cross in the mediterranean is that it is cheaper. Only about 2000 to go from syria to europe. To the heart of africa it is 10,000. People is 10000. People who dont have that money. We are seen increasing the extended families investing in one persons journey. Then getting a return on that investment when they get to europe. The stable point of view, the stable idea of yourself with a goal is very hard to come by. People are trying to figure out who they are and where they are going every day. First im not going to ask it i policy question. I i want to make an observation. Im the refugee director at human rights watch. My observation comes comes from during my sabbatical when i lived and worked i was one of the humanitarian agencies. When you were talking earlier about how easy it was to build trusted to talk to people and how willing they were to talk to you i had to reflect on how difficult it was working for humanitarian agencies to be able to talk to people on the human level that you met with them and connected with them and that is reflected in the book. From a humanitarian side whether it be health or nutrition, overwhelmed by these numbers of people coming in. Then theres malaria cases its an Assembly Line basically. There is is no time to talk or to really see much of the living circumstance. I lived in the bubble, i was in a camp and the compound of the ngo. You cannot venture outside without harm to guards, convoys, i had 11 experience being in a convoy going between the camps and seen this white guy on the side of the road walking by himself and it was you. It was amazing to me that the rest of us were in the security bubble, we were in a larger bubble in a sentence that dehumanizes, even if people at the humanitarian these are the beneficiaries workers who are dedicated to working but our distance because you are providing the service. Theres a lot of complex even when we are having meetings with the camp. I think a lot of what has been reflected in the book, its a beautifully written book it captures the humanity of the richness, the detail that you find. I think when you look at the political issues i think it reflects that refugees in that global problem i want this book a really hopefully helps to break through because these are not just numbers, potential terrorists, they are real people with real humanity you have really uncovered that. I think its a beautifully written. Its an important time for it to be written. Thank you. Thank you very much. Just a followup. I was just curious to learn about your methodology to be able to conduct the kind of interview you have done. We have similar experience and try to go to camp and travel in a convoy of theirs now guarded the centers in the camp where refugees come to you. Its in inorganic process. I would be interested to hear how given the safeway and other kidnapping and other threats from the camp. Hi, im Mckenzie Smith a piece of the work that we do is looking at these sorts of crises through gender lens and understanding the ways in which gender affects experiences in these types of prices including human rights, the service need or the lack of access to services. Im curious if you could speak more and i think you alluded to it situations of Domestic Violence and also just talking about multiple childbirths and if you could speak more about the stories in which gender for both men and women has been affected the experience in the camp. Im from the embassy of kenya. Im curious to know about the hope. When we look at the generations i dont know which generation should be more hopeful. Went is at the generation that wasnt the ones who have been born in kenya and about their fragile state . To answer your question in the gender question, everybody is different. It depends on your own circumstances even within a marriage these two people i spoke about they have a different take on whether mogadishu is bad for them are good for them. Youll find brothers and sisters have different opinions based on their ambitions, based based on their relationships, or their material circumstances. The bureaucratic solution that needs to happen needs to provide a forum for people to make their own chases. I dont think there people growing up in the camp who are more timid characters like michelle who will never leave and he declares to me i will probably die here leslie government bulldozed as me out of it. Then there are other who had a very bad experience in the camp. Everybody is different. It is such a vast range of experiences. In in terms of how gender affects the society in the camp, there has been to interesting studies and i urge you to look at the list. They look that he masculine and of male refugees her felt they no longer have a responsibility to to provide for their families because they did not have to work. Also because of the policy of gender mainstreaming from the ngo, most of the incentive work is by internship which you can get with the ngo, its sort of a constellation prize. That does not mean that most of those incentive jobs go to women. Men are then, even even small amounts 70 or 80 per month they go to the women. The what men have less access to cash. Also because of the democratic structure of the you there are elections and that means women are also encouraged and allowed to run. They go to workshops from the ngo showing them how to run. There are disproportionate amount of women in the camp so that traditional structures very much sidelined. It is contributing to problems of drug addiction, depression, but also Domestic Violence as men react against them. Its very interesting. On the the flipside being a woman your views of return are also very different. For women living on the al shabab is much taller order than if your man. There is stricter choices about your partner, how you dress, and the punishments can be severe as well. Your job, theres no way theyre going back to somalia because its an impossibility unless he trains outside and then goes back to mogadishu and nowhere else in the country she could do that. In terms of methodology, i did all sorts of Different Things. I was on an offer for years. My first trip was october 2011, i arrived when workers were kidnapped. My original plan was to live in the camp and not in the un green zone. My plan have been to avoid that and live in the camp but that plan was quickly squashed by the kidnap. Un forbade me from doing that because the worst thing that you could do is get kidnapped because the un then shuts down other services and so i had to abide by the un. I was in the town where the five camps are, but the town itself is relatively safe, although there are lots of people in the compound i would tell you otherwise. So when i was in the camp i would go to peoples houses, i would leave the policeman across the street, they would have some tea and i would sit down and chat with people. At the beginning the time window that the police allowed the un allowed me to spend in one place was two hours. By the time i researched the time got down to half an hour. Pleased with start start wrapping on the door saying we have to go. So im asking my questions are meant to have to back the next day. So it took a long time. But it worked. I think peoples willingness to talk it depends on the capacity in which you arrived. When it went to the congo i made that trip on foot and bicycle and canoe. If you arrive at a place on a bike or in a canoe and you have nothing to hide, youre not in a car its clear you have nothing worth stealing, i had a very different experience also because i was speaking swahili and i was addressing myself in their language. I could not have better after in those circumstances. Perhaps the same because when i was in the convoy people are coming, theyre expecting a particular kind of discussion in the fun times i hadnt human rights which was always after we talked about, i was remember one particular girl we had the most harrowing interview. She describes being gang raped and imprisoned in ethiopia. Ethiopia. Afterwards we finished and we went outside and she had made hopscotch in the compound. Theres five men and her and her mother and some other people all playing hopscotch for half an hour while we are waiting for the vehicle. She she was chatting and talking about going to school. You see another side of people and thats really what i wanted to get that. I wanted to find out more about that side of things not just the top stories but the human stories as well. These issues you come in their ways that people enjoy themselves. Yes, of course. Do we have to stop there or do we have time . I heard you on the radio this afternoon and it piqued my interest. Im with a utility contractor. I have a fundamental question. You touch on this afternoon. The utilities, electric, water, you spoke about a generator that was being used. I was interested in doesnt make sense to even talk about an electrical grid in the camps . If so, how is that sustain, who that sustain, who built it, can we speak more about that . One more question. I was a little alarmed when youre saying you wanted to replace the nation anyone should be overcome into anyones border and now you mention europe. There is an alarmist story that just happened out of hamburg, germany where women were massively groped by large hordes of refugees. The mayor of the city was a woman woman try to blame the women, its your fault. Then there is a case where a guy wandered into a Police Station with a knife. So what is your opinion bringing people and who are so culturally different . I love that question because thats the short answer. All countries should take their fair share. What im arguing for is a system that is with every country stepping up. I think what we have at the moment is not working and it is not fair that youre been the United States should have to take care of more when theres other countries who could take more of them. But maybe less equipped because i have more than and the more intolerance. I dont think those people grow the ladies because their refugees. I think they did it because theyre badly behaved people and laws should apply to everybody. The idea of which we have had for decades in britain that if someone is raped from their country of origin their crime is somehow less than a similar crime by a national. If you live in a place where everybody lives according to the law, its the law that matters. In terms of the utilities, the story about the generator is in response to the fact that there is no electrical grid. There are no Permanent Services in this place. Theres no plumbing, no roads, no sanitation. Everybody uses the latrine which are holes in the ground. The water comes from holes drilled into the ground and its groundwater that comes up and taps and then every block has a tap. Everybody who lives in that block fills their container. Then you carry that back home and you decant it bit by bit by whatever you need if you want to washer cooker so on. There are only some areas where there is electricity that is were enterprising people have bought generators and have started a business they see a need. The un refers to them as middleclass, theyre not really, their refugees who have a bit more than the others who can afford electricity for things like television, for radios, mostly tvs. If there was an ability to create more access to utilities who would support that . It would not be allowed because the kenyan government does not want permanent structures in the camp. So the kenyan government wants this place to remain temporary. As this one story, the the un spends a lot of money developing what it called stabilized blocks which were these grits made of soil not clay which they hope the kenyan government would agree to because theyre not so permanent as the bricks. They made some houses out of these and refugees were happy, they kenyan officials came along and said they looked too much like houses so youre going to have to knock them down again. Theyre not allowed to use these bricks anymore where every buddy is using things like Primary School thought a corrugated iron and two by fours. Its part of the politics that they dont want anything politics. The kenyan government does not want that to happen. Thank you so much for your time. This this is an amazing book. [applause]. On behalf of politics and prose i want to think ben and karen for being here today and speaking with us. Going to switch over to a book signing. Please give us a few minutes to get that set up. You can purchase the book, we have set up a table outside where the book is for sale. After the book signing will go to a reception and i hope everyone will join us. For the book signing will line up in the center aisle. It may be a little chaotic, please bear with us. If you do not have a book to be signed but would like to stay for the reception please exit through those stores and wait in our lobby. Theres some fantastic exhibits on display there which you can look at. Thank you all. [applause]. [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] you are watching book tv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on cspan2. Television for serious readers. Now book to beat we introduce you to nancy sherman. Her book is called at the war. First of all tell us about yourself. , professor of philosophy at georgetown. This is my third book on issues of war. I teach military ethics, teach about the psychological wounds of war. Especially the moral dimensions. Ive been at georgetown for a long time and was the first chair of ethics at the naval academy. What are you writing about in your third book. This book is about the homecoming, 2. 6 million servicemembers coming home. Theyre suffering from injuries that we are not looking at in part because we are a disengaged society. Its not post Traumatic Stress but some have more contraries about the war, self guilt, resentment, folks who say thank you for your service but its reverent but disengaged. They also dont know how to sort out wars. Some built on full promises, others others that seem to reemerge again with new crises in falluja and afghanistan. These are folks that i talked to and got to know for years in the classroom. Theyre my students who came Homeless Veterans and were trying to process their wars. I call the moral injuries but it can go from real quandaries about why i survived or why someone i asked to help committed suicide in my im still here. Students have blown whistles on torture and have had to deal with being betrayed by their commands for making it uncomfortable for others. Is a recent statistic on soldiers coming home for ptsd, seemed really high. How you measure is always up for grabs. I say between 20 and 30 . Interestingly thats clinical. It has to do with a fear based responses like threats. A lot of folks come home with other things too. That is moral doubts about what they did in war, who theyre leaving behind, who they exposed maybe as a journalist, who a journalist, who they were partnered with. In the case of corrupt warlords wasnt worth it . Was it worth it back home . Do . Do people back home feel the sacrifice they may. What is that social contract about that the citizens have with our soldiers. The book is really indepth that narratives of soldiers own voices trying to morley process their wars. It is is a plea for engagement oneonone. Its not enough to talk about the virginia, our veterans jobs, we actually have to say more than thank you for their service. Fancy tell us about one soldier in the book. One soldier is from la. He signs up for the marine and his girlfriend goes to georgetown and she ends up in my class. He ends up in falluja and marcia while she is at georgetown. Hes from a gang. You take care of your baby birds as he says. In one case he is out and there and it Armored Vehicle and he tell his guys to watch their steps but hes not sure and will one guy goes out gets blown up. The guilt that he has is unbelievable. His wife ends up in my class, he marries her, they lope, and she ends up in my class. He comes to my class after returning, he has exchanged his rifle for a mouse as he puts it. People at states i dont quite get it. He starts talking about this incident for the first time ever. Another like it where he gave coordinates but his commander did not clear them on he lost a guy because they command there was a ribbon chaser. He got got a voice in the classroom, it wasnt his but one his wife was. He hes working through some of that moral injury. Hes an amazing guy. Hes going to make it which is the best thing yet. Nancy sherman with her most recent book, after war, healing the moral wounds of our soldiers. This soldiers. This is book to be on cspan2. Every day books are reviewed by a range of publications throughout the country. Here is a look at some recently reviewed books that have or will air on book tv. Former secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano reviewed Peter Bergens book on domestic terrorism. She writes, bergen effectively counters the narrative that barack obama is a weak president and knows that president obama has authorized more military actions in muslim countries than any previous president. Her review continues, he is most limited in his analysis of the institutional changes September September 11 in america. In regards to his sources, theres virtually no mention of the department of Homeland Security, the National Security agency, the director of National Intelligence or the increasing role of local lawenforcement beyond the new york police department. In the wall street journal, senator john john mccains longtime speechwriter and coauthor look set former senator trent lott and tom daschles new book, on addressing artisan politics in washington. They advocate strengthening the role of committees where bar partisan cooperation is more common. Other proposals include shorter campaigns and moving election day to the weekend to increase turnout. Jake lamarr reviewed books on Race Relations in america since brock obama. The ways of engaging in black politics have changed because of the last eight years. You can watch booktv every weekend on cspan2 or the website booktv. Org. And now on the after words, matt lewis, the author of two dumb to fail books at the origins of the conservative movement and argues the Republican Party needs to return to its roots in order to avoid becoming the minority party. He is interviewed by columnist for the news york daily