Cory Booker Urges Blinken To Make Key Investments In U.S.-Africa Relationship

4 months ago

At today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) questioned Secretary of State Antony Blinken about U.S.-Africa relations.

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Transcript

00:00 difficult for them to extract themselves from the domination of the Russians and come back to us.

00:04 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

00:05 Senator Booker.

00:06 Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary, thank you very much for being with us today. I

00:12 have appreciated your commentary on everything from the situation in Gaza to the situation in

00:17 Haiti. I want to pick up where Senator Barrasso did on issues regarding Africa. You know,

00:24 I've been traveling across the continent, and the thing that always affects me is the enormity of

00:31 the potential. I know we're dealing with the crises of today. The truth of the matter is,

00:35 by 2050, as you know, one out of every four human beings on the planet will be on the African

00:40 continent. One out of every three working-age humans will be on the African continent. It is

00:47 a continent with vast resources, vast human potential, and it is in many ways the investments

00:55 we make today will help to deal with a lot of the challenges when it comes to democracy and,

01:01 unfortunately, the global competition with countries like China and Russia that do not share

01:06 the world orders rules clearly. And I was appreciating what you said to the Senator

01:14 about what it is to do, how we're trying to deal with the democratic threats. Obviously,

01:19 the backsliding in Burkina Faso, in Niger, in Mali, all in the Sahel region has me very,

01:26 very concerned. And seeing the challenges that are now in Togo, Benin, Ghana, and the north of

01:32 those countries, including Nigeria, it's very sobering to me when it comes to the challenges

01:38 of democracy. I was very affirmed by your fiscal year 2025 budget request that includes $411 million

01:47 for democracy, rights, and governance programs in Africa. It's a sizable increase from the $284

01:55 million allocated in fiscal year 2023. Could you just talk a little bit to how the administration

02:01 is adjusting regional assistance programs and priorities in response to the democratic

02:07 backsliding that I've discussed and clearly others?

02:09 SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you very much. And look, exactly as you've said, Senator, and as I know

02:14 you've been deeply engaged on, we see the extraordinary positive potential in Africa,

02:20 not just the challenges of the moment. And for us, when we have a continent that's going to have one

02:27 out of every four people on Earth on that continent, when we see the fastest-growing

02:32 populations on Earth – before COVID, actually, the fastest-growing economies, as you know –

02:37 we want to make sure that we are supporting that positive solution and particularly making sure

02:43 that young people with growing populations have positive outlets and positive opportunities.

02:48 But you're right, we also see this democratic backsliding, particularly in the Sahel,

02:54 and that's where we've had these recent coups. So we have to be – and our budget reflects this –

02:59 committed to longer-term stability, opportunity, human development,

03:05 making the investments in health and education, in economic empowerment, in democratic governance

03:10 in these countries. We're working to do that. Obviously, in the countries that have been on

03:15 the receiving end of coups, there's some limits that we have to abide by when it comes to the

03:20 assistance we can continue to provide, but we're trying to make sure that when it comes to what's

03:23 vital, we're providing it. But then on democracy more broadly, we just came from our third Summit

03:30 for Democracy that Korea hosted, and this was not exclusive to Africa, but I think there's a very

03:36 positive affirmative agenda for the kinds of things that we can do and are doing to try to

03:42 shore up democratic governance, to try to shore up the institutions, to try to combat corruption,

03:47 which saps at – Absolutely, and I'm encouraged by that, the focus on corrupt. A lot of people

03:52 are focusing just on elections. It seems that the administration's making such a significant

03:57 investment in anti-corruption efforts as well as other things that make for a vibrant democracy,

04:02 and I'm grateful for that. I just want to obviously, as you can imagine, talk about Sudan.

04:08 It was perhaps one of the most – the enormity of what I saw when I was at the Chad-Sudan borders,

04:16 like nothing I've seen before, and I've traveled to refugee camps from the Syrian-Jordanian border

04:22 to even the camps at the border in Mexico right now, but I've just never seen a scale

04:28 of human suffering like that. I'm grateful for Tom Perriello and the President's appointment

04:34 of a special envoy, but is the department providing that special envoy the kind of budget

04:41 they need or the authority over any Sudan program funds to support his work?

04:49 The short answer is I believe we are, and Tom Perriello has done an extraordinary job

04:53 getting out of the gate fast and moving to do what we can to tackle this crisis. I agree with you.

05:00 I think unfortunately it's something that's not gotten the visibility that it deserves given the

05:05 amount of suffering that's going on. You've got 8.5 million displaced people. You have 18 million

05:11 people in desperate need of food aid. And of course, you have the violence and atrocities

05:16 that are being committed by both sides against innocent civilians. So

05:21 Senior Envoy Perriello is fully authorized and – by the way, reports directly to me

05:29 and works in close collaboration with our Assistant Secretary for Africa to work to

05:36 press for an end to the war, to make sure that we have unhindered access for humanitarian assistance,

05:44 to stop the violence, to try to get a return to the democratic transition,

05:48 to get a unified civilian approach to this. We think the best vehicle for trying to move forward

05:56 on that is through the JEDA process or JEDA negotiations. And getting all the players – all

06:01 the players – And getting everyone around the table. Same table. Exactly. I want to just jump

06:04 in for my final minute. First of all, thank you for your comments on the ICC recent actions. I

06:11 think you called it wrongheaded. I would completely agree with the administration's comments on it.

06:15 It seems to violate common sense that you have a negotiation going on. It could really undermine

06:21 the resolution of this. When you have a terrorist leader like Sinwar being put in – sort of

06:29 equating them to a leader of – a duly elected leader who actually has regular elections, but

06:34 more importantly, we know that Sinwar is doing everything he can to isolate Israel, to put

06:41 themselves on the same footing. The jurisdictional issues, the challenges we have right now with

06:48 trying to bring this conflict to a resolution, it seems stunning to me that they would take this

06:53 action. I want to just, though, ask you is how is the Biden administration working with Israeli,

06:58 Egyptian, and humanitarian counterparts to implement a deconfliction mechanism to protect

07:03 humanitarian workers and civilians, even if or when a ceasefire is reached, without really a

07:10 mechanism for – the suffering is going to continue. We need a humanitarian assistance at a large

07:16 scale. One of the biggest concerns any caring American should have right now is the scale

07:21 of the humanitarian crisis going on in Gaza. This is not counter to dealing with Hamas, but it is

07:28 urgent right now at levels that have been mentioned by some of my colleagues, or just the scale of the

07:34 human suffering there is stunning, the lack of medical provisions, the lack of food. And so

07:39 there has to be a more coordinated effort amongst the administration to work with Israel, Egypt,

07:46 and other humanitarian counterparts to make sure that ceasefire or not we have the mechanisms to

07:51 get aid there. I would ask that you give a brief response. Simply put, there is, Senator, an

07:57 intensely coordinated effort to work to do just that, and we have a senior envoy. It had been

08:03 Ambassador David Satterfield. Now it's Elise Grande, deeply experienced in these matters,

08:07 working this every single day to do three things. To make sure that we have the aid that is getting

08:15 in and the appropriate crossings – land, sea, air – to get it in. Second, to make sure that

08:22 once it gets in, it's effectively distributed to the places and people who need it. And third,

08:28 and related to that, having effective deconfliction so that the humanitarians who have to move things

08:33 around aren't endangered, as we've seen. And there, I think, progress has been made on having

08:39 this deconfliction and coordination at a sort of 10,000-foot level, but where we continue to

08:46 have problems is at the tactical or unit level; that is, individual military units that have not

08:54 adequately gotten the instructions that they need to have a convoy go through.

08:58 So we're working intensely to get clear, protected corridors, clear times where there's no doubt,

09:09 no ambiguity about people moving humanitarian assistance to the people who need it,

09:14 among other things, as well as better real-time communications between those who are providing

09:18 the assistance and those who are on the ground engaged in combat.

09:22 MODERATOR: Senator Young.

09:23 SENATOR YOUNG: Mr. Secretary, it's great to have you before the committee.

Cory Booker Urges Blinken To Make Key Investments In U.S.-Africa Relationship

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