Are prosecutions to pursue coming out of the committee. In partnership with the eleanor cook foundation, i am pleased to extend an invitation to todays event, a keynote address from usaid administrator cement the power. I am kit administrator samantha power. Today i am also the responsible officer for this event. In that spirit, before we begin, i want to share with you some information about our buildings safety precautions. Overall we feel very secure, but as a convene or, we must prepare for any eventuality. Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with our emergency exit pathways for this room, which are behind me to the right and in the foyer behind you in the back corner. Should the need arise, please follow my instructions and move towards these exits. One second announcement before we begin, following todays keynote address, we will welcome questions from the audience in person and online. If you would like to ask a question, please submit it on the event page which can be accessed using the qr code on the screens. We encourage questions and look forward to addressing them in a short while. Without further ado, it is my pleasure to introduce the csis trustee for todays event. [applause] on behalf of the center for strategic and International Studies board of trustees, welcome to those of you in the room and many more of you attending online. We have a terrific meeting before us. Our topic is the state of global Food Security and tradition. It is an important meeting for three reasons. First, the topic. It is essential for the world to focus on nutrition for our youngest citizens. Wasting is far too prevalent in the world. 45 million children in 2020, more than double the 2030 global target of less than 3 . This challenge has been exacerbated by the brutal war in ukraine and other conflict, the converging challenges around Climate Change, drought, food systems from covid19, with supply chains snarled or impeded. Conflict and drought are forcing the migration of populations of families moving from one village and crowding into another, and this number is likely to increase. The second reason is that the United States leadership is essential, and i would say indispensable to solving this crisis. The Current Crisis could affect generations of children. In the longer term, a global malnutrition crisis could lead to lifelong effect on education, dietrelated chronic diseases, and a decline in peoples capacity to thrive and contribute to their countrys economic growth. When coupled with immunization gaps, we are faced with a Child Survival crisis around the world. At unicef we begin to make this case that in our world today, there is no time to waste. The third reason why this meeting today is important is the leaders involved. You will see very capable Women Leaders before you in executive director Catherine Russell and administrator cement the power, and their agencies have been in the forefront of nutrition for decades. They are exceptionally strong partners throughout the world, and along with the eleanor cook foundation, we have the chance to change the trajectory of millions of lives. They are issuing a call to action for every one of us today , so may i introduce my friend, the h executive director of unicef, who has one of the most heartbreaking and rewarding jobs in this world. Her first trips were to pakistan and afghanistan and she is developing innovative policies and programs for underserved communities around the world. Please join me in welcoming executive director Catherine Russell. [applause] thank you all so much. It is so great to be back at csis, and it is fantastic to follow henrietta. It is becoming habit for me. I am really happy to see her face and hear her voice, which is such a strong, important voice in this world for children. Im delighted to follow her. I also want to thank cement the power and our friends at csis, and the eleanor cook foundation, for bringing us here today, and not for a small thing, but for taking urgent action to address the global and growing nutrition crisis. As henrietta mentioned, we are seeing the harsh impact of this crisis in a rapidly increasing number of children under five who suffer from severe wasting. One child has become severely wasted every minute of every day since the beginning of this year. In the 15 hardest hit countries, over 8 million children under the age of five may die from severe wasting unless they receive immediate therapeutic care. If you have ever seen a severely wasted child, that image will never leave you. I have seen that many times, but most recently i saw very fragile children in recent missions to ethiopia and afghanistan, and those are things that you would rather forget, but i am glad that i saw it and i am glad that others around the world are seeing it as well. Those children are among millions suffering from wasting around the world today. Children suffering from severe wasting two week and to sick to eat ordinary food. They cannot be saved with bags of wheat or soy. To survive, they need urgent therapeutic attrition therapeutic nutrition. The conditions that created this crisis, the crushing Economic Impact of the pandemic, war in ukraine and other parts of the world, and climate driven drought are putting children at risk every single day. Rising rates of severe malnutrition are serious enough, but this is coinciding with sharply decreased rates of immunization against childhood diseases for children around the world, and that is truly a lethal combination for malnourished children. This could quickly become more than a nutrition crisis. Without rapid action which we could be facing a Child Survival crisis. Ahead of the g7 Leaders Summit in june, unicef appealed for 1. 72 billion to prevent and treat severe wasting in millions of children in desperate need. G7 collectively pledged support for the crisis, but it is still unclear how much of the support will help us reach children with lifesaving foods while there is still time to save their lives. The United States has consistently played a pivotal role in addressing malnutrition, and we are incredibly grateful for their leadership in addressing the growing crisis. U. S. Support has been instrumental in helping unicef and our partners scale up early expansion, detection, and treatment policies and programs. I want to thank administrator power for being such a powerful advocate for children at all times, and certainly in this crucial time. We need other governments to follow suit. We need everyone to affirm that childrens lives actually matter , for if we dont, we will see decades of progress in Child Survival slip through our fingers. None of us should or can tolerate that. Not when we know what to do, and we know how to do it. We really dont have a moment to waste. So i want to thank you all for your attention here, for being here, for caring about this issue. I would now like to hand over the podium to our wonderful colleague and supporter, wil l moore. Thank you so much. [applause] thank you, executive director russell. It is pretty cool to follow two unicef executive directors. I should probably just retire after this. I dont know if i can top that. Just 10 days ago, i traveled with members of congress to a wasting treatment clinic in unity state, south sudan. That center has seen a fourfold increase in the number of severely malnourished kids just in the last six months. As edie russell said, if you have ever spent time with a wasted child, you know it is a godawful thing. Severe wasting is a state of multiple organ failure, loss of brain mass, loss of vision. Your hair becomes brittle and your skin starts to peel. You lose your appetite. You become exhausted, eventually unable to move. Although i have made many visits to clinics like this over the years, it still takes everything ive got to keep it together. You smile to the children who have recovered enough to move their heads and make eye contact. You nod to the mothers whose eyes speak of struggle you cant imagine. You ask a nurse some questions. How old is this child over here who looks like he could not be overdriven eight once could not be older than eight months . She tells you he just turned two. As we boarded the cargo plane back to our lives and places where death from wasting is ancient history, one in our group said i dont understand how there could be a god on this earth with suffering like that. Right now, tens of millions of children are suffering from wasting. But this packet offers hope. Rutf is a relatively complicated name for what it is. He nuts, milk powder, oil, sugar, a blend of micronutrients. That is it. But these simple ingredients combined to offer a potential revolution in Child Survival. Before rutf was invented, families were forced to travel tens, sometimes hundreds of miles to regional feeding centers, where there was very little to be done. Mortality rates in these centers were often upwards of 90 . Rutf changed all of that. It contains all of the nutrients a childs body needs to recover. It is portable, longlasting, heat resistant, and it can be administered to wasted children right in their own homes. And it is highly effective. At that treatment clinic, of the hundreds of local wasted children who have come in since the start of this year, just one has died. In life, there are no sieve or bullets no silver bullets, but when it comes to stopping kids from dying from wasting, rutf is as close as one comes. But we have not invested in it. Up to 50 million wasted children in the world today, less than one in four currently receives treat. So millions died. Severe malnutrition is estimated to cause a child to die every 11 seconds. Those who survive face lasting damage to their health, their body, their brains. Today we will hear from administrator power only truly historic steps usaid is taking to finally scale up treatment of wasting. Thanks to their leadership, next year is poised to the make to be the most transformational year in the history of wasting treatment since rutf was invented. I am also proud that the Eleanor Crook Foundation is here today to represent a whole group of philanthropies who are investing in this Historic Initiative right alongside usaid. There are many problems in this world that will take a cage to solve sustainably. Ending child deaths from wasting is not one of them. This is something we can do now3. Do now. It is now my honor to introduce where she now serves as the acting director of the bureau for humanitarian assistance. Over to you. [applause] thank you. It is an honor for me to be part of this event. Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, good morning. I am working at usaid in niger. Niger is at the heart of the region of the world buffeted by the climate impact, the pandemic , and increasing conflict. The food crisis created by russias war on ukraine is making this crisis even worse. However, nigerians are resilient, and every day through my work, i see inspiring stories. Let me share with you some of the numbers. Last years Agricultural Production dropped by 39 . The people who are hit the hardest when there is no nutritious food are women and children. Our latest data showed over 12 of Young Children are suffering from acute mountain attrition that translates into 1. 4 million Young Children who need treatment. For those children who survive from acute malnutrition, they see damage because there develop into is compromised. Only 43 of children are stunted, meaning they are not meeting their food potential. This sounds grim. Via but i am also here today hope. I had the opportunity to visit and talk with families participating in our programs. The niger i grew up in was a land of peace. Sadly, for the last decade, we have been hit by insurgencies. Families displaced depend on humanitarian it assistance for their survival and to maintain their dignity. But our work can also transform to achieve their dreams. Let me tell you about a young woman with a plant nursery. She dreamed of she was trained in entrepreneurship and established her own business. Since she started she has produced and sold over 5000 servings of nutritious plants and also saved money for her Household Expenses and also the social events. For those Young Children who are malnourished, providing them treatment saves lives and gives hope to the families. I have visited many centers in my region where i often see mothers bring in their children for treatment because mothers are busy in the village taking care of the other children. These mothers as their children are brought back from the brink of death gives me a lot of emotions. Working with partners gives me great hope because even more families will be able to see their children survive and thrive in niger but also across the world. I hand over to our Agency Administrator samantha power. Thank you. [applause] samantha thank you so much and a huge thanks for her wonderful introduction and for bringing it home, bringing it from niger to us here. If you know anything about usaid you know our local staff, which are more than two thirds of our overseas presence brings everything, they bring so much, they bring tremendous technical expertise, they bring vision and ambition to the work they do every day. We are so lucky at usaid. Mariana oversees the lifesaving humanitarian assistance that far too many hungry people in niger depend upon. Thank you for your more than 11 years of service at usaid. All the years of service you did for other organizations and for everything of done for the people of your country. Thanks for being here. We are really lucky. Thank you to csis for hosting us today and for their continuous thought leadership on strengthening food systems and nutrition and to caitlin, who i look forward to speaking with later, to my friend henrietta fore, caring for individuals in need is the stuff of legend and her pioneering legacy across decades of Public Service is unmatched. As the first woman administrator at usaid she certainly paved the way for me to be here today. She left incredibly big shoes to fill, something i know Cathy Russell can relate to. Kathy, to you, we in the Biden Administration miss you more than words can convey but we also know how incredibly blessed the worlds children are to have you in their corner as their champion. Thank you for your partnership and for your friendship. Finally, thanks to will and the team at the eleanor Kirk Foundation for cohosting this event. For 25 years the eleanor Kirk Foundation with will as its first employee has dedicated itself to combating global hunger. The foundation has fought for the malnourished when the worlds attention was elsewhere. They fought during the black the last global food price spike in 2008. They have fought with friends on both sides of the aisle during republican and democratic administrations. They have fought because they believed what eleanor herself believed, that in her words our elected officials should all share a worldview of justice, a worldview where no one is hungry. That world once seemed so very near. In 10 years, from 2005 to 2015, the number of people going to bed hungry each night fell nearly 30 . From around 805 million down substantially to 590 Million People. Think about what no longer going to bed hungry meant for those individuals involved. Unfortunately, the u. N. , two weeks ago, shed light on just how much ground we have lost. Today as many as 828 Million People are hungry. A decade of progress obliterated with 230 Million People newly hungry, 150 million of whom became hungry and just the past two years since the outbreak of covid19. Today we are confronting something even more devastating. As not only are tens of millions of more people facing the brave hunger, many of them are at risk of outright starvation. The Richter Scale defines the severity of earthquakes. The fuji does scale measures tornadoes. To measure severe hunger the world devised a new scale. In 2000 for the integrated Food Security classifications. At phase one, a is food secure. More than 80 of households can meet their basic food needs. At phase two, they are borderline. Households are skipping meals or liquidating what little they have to feed their families. Malnutrition spikes. Phase 3 is crisis. Hunger prevails so intensely that lives and livelihoods are at risk. It is at this stage the world humanitarian Relief Organization take into overdrive, providing the kind of assistance that for most is the difference between life and death. That is where we find ourselves today, staring down a global food crisis. In 2021, a record 193 Million People in 53 countries across africa, the middle east, asia, latin america faced at least this third crisis phase of hunger. That number reflected many things. Job and income losses and supply Chain Disruption from covid19, climate shocks, long simmering conflicts, governments restricting humanitarian access to people in need, but it did not account for the latest accelerant of human misery. Vladimir putins unconscionable assault on ukraine. We know that last years number of people in food crisis could grow now by as many as 40 Million People. Let in your prudence more has driven millions Vladimir Putins war has driven millions of ukrainians from relative prosperity to destitution and dependence on humanitarian aid. Through his actions he is also waging war on the worlds poor, spiking food, fertilizer, and fuel prices while taking ukrainian grain off the market. Things are going to get worse. The next phase of severe hunger, phase four is what we call emergency. People, children especially, facing severe malnutrition. Their bodies beginning to consume themselves on what