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On March 26, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings hosted an expert consultation on the development of the World Bank Group's new Education Strategy. The consultative meeting brought together a small group of experts from diverse fields. The purpose of the discussion was to gather input and suggestions aimed at strengthening the World Bank Group's work in the education sector.

Elizabeth King, Director of Education in the Human Development Network at the World Bank, opened the event by providing an overview of the Bank’s current approach to education, and how it has evolved over the last several decades. She described the Bank’s priorities as reconnecting education to the broader development agenda, supporting more equitable access, ensuring better learning, and strengthening education systems. The Bank’s main operating principals are taking a whole-sector approach, building the evidence base in education, and measuring the results and impact. Beginning with this extensive consultation process, the Bank is demonstrating its willingness to work with others in the development community to build a larger and more robust evidence base from which to draw lessons to improve the quality of limited staff to maximize the impact of Bank activities, to underscore its commitment to partnerships with other organizations and civil society groups, and to move toward improving the measurement of results so as to be able to further improve the Bank’s education programs around the world.

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There are currently an estimated 3 million people living with HIV/AIDS in Nigeria, making it the second most infected country worldwide. In light of these stark figures and the general failure by African countries to curb the HIV/AIDS pandemic, how can Nigeria expect to achieve a breakthrough in dealing with its HIV/AIDS epidemic? What policy actions should the global public health community, international donors and the Nigerian government take to help end this health crisis?

The Research Alliance to Combat HIV/AIDS (REACH), a joint collaboration between Northwestern University and the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, has sought to answer these questions. Since 2006, REACH has engaged social scientists in community-based research to explore the attitudes and behaviors related to HIV/AIDS prevention in four Nigerian states and advance strategies to reduce infection rates. On May 27, Global Economy and Development at Brookings and the Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies at Northwestern University hosted a discussion on REACH’s most recent findings and policy recommendations. The first panel focused on the current state of the epidemic in Nigeria. The second panel examined a preventative approach to HIV/AIDS in Nigeria and other African countries.

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Being able to read and write is the most basic foundation of knowledge accumulation and further skill development. Without literacy, there can be no quality education. Presently, 1 in 5 adults is illiterate, two-thirds of whom are women. At the current pace, over 700 million adults worldwide will still not be able to read in 2015. [1] In global education discussions, literacy rates are most often reported for adolescents and adults, an ex post facto measure of the failure of primary school systems to impart basic skills in the most formative schooling years. It is clear that much needs to be done to provide these adolescents and adults with access to successful literacy programs. But we must also ensure that children with access to schooling are not growing up to be illiterate.

Children enrolled and regularly attending school for the first three grades should be able to read basic text. Evidence shows that acquiring this ability to read sets students up for further learning, enabling them to read and comprehend progressively more advanced materials and acquire additional knowledge.

As explained in our earlier policy brief, data from numerous countries show that children in school are failing to acquire the most basic of skills, measured as the ability to read words of connected text. We called for a global paradigm shift that places learning at the center of the global education discourse. This shift requires the major bilateral and multilateral actors to refocus their own efforts on supporting learning in the classroom and measuring progress by increased learning outcomes. There has been some progress here, such as USAID’s goal to improve reading skills for primary school children in its new education strategy and the World Bank’s Education Strategy 2020, Learning for All: investing in people’s knowledge and skills to promote development.

This shift of focus also requires substantial changes on the ground, including encouraging and supporting a culture of literacy and learning at the community level. For example, Gove and Cvelich highlight some main factors contributing to low reading levels, including a lack of support for teachers, limited instructional time, poorly resourced schools, the absence of books in the home and policies regarding the language of instruction. [2] In Mali, a recent survey found that three-quarters of grade 2 students did not have a textbook and no student had supplementary reading books at school. [3] In The Gambia, the vast majority of students who demonstrated a level of reading fluency said that they had books at home. Globally, in both developed and developing economies, a relatively consistent proxy for “parental commitment to education” is the number of books in the home. A 20-year study of 27 countries found that children growing up in homes with many books get three years more schooling than their peers who come from homes without books. [4] There is no one-size-fits-all solution to improving the quality of education in developing countries. However, there is plenty of room for innovation to address some of the biggest barriers to improving reading levels, including availability of appropriate reading materials at school and at home. In disadvantaged communities, where there are relatively few books and even fewer books in local languages and that deal with culturally-relevant topics, innovation is needed to help develop a robust culture of literacy.

One such innovation is Worldreader.org’s iRead pilot in Ghana, which has put hundreds of e-readers into children’s hands. A lot has been written on similar classroom technology in developing countries, which cite examples of supplying hardware to schools without plans for its educational use, promoting technology from a single company, insufficient planning for sustainability, and inadequate investment in time to train teachers and administrators who will be the purveyors of the technology initiatives in the classrooms. [5]

However, the important difference between this e-reader program and similar projects focused on putting computers in classrooms is that e-readers usually operate on the mobile phone system, which has exploded in developing regions over the last few years. In Kenya, more than 80 percent of the population has mobile phone network coverage and more than half of the population has purchased a mobile phone subscription. The GSM compatibility of e-readers allows for downloading of new reading materials wherever there is mobile phone coverage and sufficient funds available to purchase new texts. E-readers also have relatively low levels of energy consumption (a one-hour charge can last more than a week). In addition to gaining the support of community leaders and teachers from the beginning, the pilot began with intense in-service training for teachers in how to use e-readers to complement their existing curricula. While Worldreader.org has not solved all of the challenges posed by technology initiatives in education, it has taken some important steps toward addressing the barriers to project success. [6]

The organization has also tackled specific challenges that are impeding reading success in the early primary grades:

• Additional support for emergent readers. E-readers provide additional support to teachers in teaching children how to read, an important supplement in primary school classrooms in low-income countries where there may be 40 or 50 students per teacher. In such cases, students are required to work independently or in small groups while the teacher is working with other students. The text-to-speech feature on e-readers can read books aloud to the student, exposing her to the written text as she hears it read aloud. Students can also use the downloaded dictionary while reading to look up unfamiliar words and continue to read without adult assistance.
  
• Students and teachers get to choose. While paper books donated by schools, libraries, and individuals from around the world have helped to get written materials into low-resource schools in developing countries, e-books allow students and teachers in developing countries to choose which books they teach and read. Although choices now are restricted by the dominance of English in the e-book market, the potential for the expansion of the digital market represents a step toward greater agency for teachers and students.
  
• Working with local publishers to increase access to books for emergent readers. Children learning to read need access to the types of books that engage their imagination and spark their interest. For children learning to read, this means stories with simple sentences in their local language. Yet, traditionally children’s books are not a good economic bet for publishers, particularly in developing countries. The high cost of printing the books are not recouped since so many families cannot purchase copies for their own household use. However, distributing books in e-reader format will actually allow publishers to reach more customers at a lower cost. To bring more books to the developing world through e-readers and e-books, Worldreader.org seeks to support a self-sustaining reading and publishing culture by working with local publishers to digitize books and materials to support local language curricula.
  
• Portability can increase reading opportunities. Anecdotal reports from classroom teachers in the Ghanaian pilot frequently reference how students would not stop reading, pulling out their e-readers in between lessons, during recess and lunch, and after school with friends, parents and siblings. An International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement study on reading literacy in 32 countries found that the amount of voluntary book reading that students did during out-of-school time was strongly positively related to students’ achievement levels. [7]

While the pilot is still in the early stages, the founders of the project are focused on the essential outcomes. Their USAID-funded impact study seeks to find out whether children are reading more than they were before the program and whether children read better than they were before the program. Measuring program success by understanding the impact on learning outcomes is a critical step for shifting the global education paradigm to one focused on learning.

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[1] UNESCO. (2010). EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010: Reaching the Marginalized. Paris: UNESCO.
[2] Gove, A., and P. Cvelich, (2010). Early Reading: Igniting Education for All. A report by the Early Grades Learning Community of Practice. Research Triangle Park, NC: Research Triangle Institute.
[3] Evans, 2010
[4] M.D.R. Evans, Jonathan Kelley, Joanna Sikora, Donald J. Treiman. “Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2010; DOI: 10.1016/j.rssm.2010.01.002
The study controls for education levels, occupations, and socio-economic status of the parents.
[5] For example, Trucano, M. “Worst practice in ICT use in education,” 2010, accessed at http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/worst-practice
[6] Some of the core challenges identified by Worldreader.org and others include the upfront costs of e-readers, need for on-going training and support to teachers, students, and communities, buy-in of school systems and local governments to deploy technology and content, insufficient relevant materials in e-book format, and consistent access to electricity and mobile networks.
[7] Elley, W.B. (Ed.). (1994). The IEA Study of Reading Literacy: Achievement and Instruction in Thirty-two School Systems. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

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Student enrollment and expenditures per student have been on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa over the past decade. Yet, financing gaps still exist for achieving universal quality education throughout the region, especially in countries with strong demographic pressures. Many African countries are facing a dilemma of how best to balance scarce resources and the growing demands to improve education quality for their children and youth.

On April 27, the Center for Universal Education and the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings hosted a discussion of the state of education financing in sub-Saharan Africa. Albert Motivans of UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics presented the main findings of a new report "Financing Education in sub-Saharan Africa," which focuses on the new challenges related to expanding access, equity and quality education. Shantayanan Devarajan of the World Bank and Brookings Senior Fellow Jacques van der Gaag provided commentary, and Senior Fellow Mwangi Kimenyi, director of the Africa Growth Initiative, moderated the discussion.

After the discussion, the panelists took audience questions.

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• Africa’s Education Financing Challenge

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• Motivans UNESCO presentation (.pdf)
• Financing Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (.pdf)

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Editor’s note: In a presentation to the 2011 International Conference on Early Childhood Development in Beijing, China, Jacques van der Gaag makes the economic case for investing in young children. He references the seminal works by several Nobel laureates in economics to demonstrate how development hinges on investments in early childhood, including health, nutrition, and education.

Thank you for inviting me to the 2011 International Conference on Early Childhood Development. I am very grateful to the organizers from the China Development Research Foundation for giving me a chance to make the economic case for investing in young children. While I have been giving these types of presentations for more than two decades in over a dozen countries worldwide, I prefer to have some back-up from a number of serious economists who, over time, have made major contributions to a key finding in development economics: countries prosper if they invest in their people, and the well-being of all people improves in a prosperous country that values equality.

To begin with, I would like to introduce my fellow countryman Jan Tinbergen, who received the first Nobel Prize in Economics, in 1969, for his work on economic development. Being a physicist by training, he pioneered the use of mathematical models to mimic the working of a country’s economy. The equations he used to formulate these models will probably look very foreign to you, but the important point I want to make is that these early models already included people, in the form of labor. People were seen as an input in the production process. Since there was an abundance of people in the developing world, and a shortage of capital, the development process, it was argued, could be sped up by providing more capital to low income countries to invest in infrastructure, factories, and other forms of physical capital. And to invest in human capital -- people. The economy needs all forms of human capital, from unskilled labor to highly skilled labor, and therefore investment in people, through education, was considered an integrated part of the development process.

Another well-known economist (Theodore W. Schulz, Nobel prize 1979) emphasized an important difference between physical capital and human capital: people respond to incentives. Thus, when food prices are being kept artificially low (to allow wages in the cities to stay low), farmers may decide that it is no longer worth their while to produce food, and they may migrate to the cities to work in the new factories. In other words, it is important to invest in human capital to stimulate the economy, but the broad preferences of the (working) population should not be overlooked.
 
Robert W. Fogel (Nobel laureate in 1993) underscored the role of workers in the production process by emphasizing the importance of health and nutrition to enhance productivity. Indeed, he calculated that about half of the speedy growth of the British economy during the Industrial Revolution was the result of better health and nutrition conditions of the working population. In turn, of course, the economic growth made the improvements in sanitation and the increased availability of (better) food possible.

A major breakthrough in the thinking about development (note that I am no longer saying “economic development”) came with the work of Amartya Sen (Nobel prize winner in 1998). His work has led to a re-definition of the development process from one that focuses solely on economic growth to one in which the fruits of economic growth benefits the population in terms of higher literacy rates and education levels, better health and nutrition, higher levels of social cohesion and social skills, and more equality. These four broad dimensions of well-being, together with economic growth, are now the building blocks of the Human Development Index. Indeed, human development, as currently understood, has been further specified in the Millennium Development Goals that drive today’s development discussion and policies in every corner of the world.

Before I finish my very brief (and very selective) history of development economics, allow me to mention the work of one more Nobel laureate in economics: Jim Heckman (2000). Heckman understands, of course, the importance of investing in people to increase a country’s human capital. But he also understands both the economics of early childhood development (ECD) and its scientific underpinnings. In recent work, he has extensively referred to the scientific basis that shows the causal link between deprivations early in life and education, social and health outcomes later in life. His economic work on ECD confirms what others have been saying for decades: The highest economic returns to investments in people come from the investments that occur in the early years of life.  

In sum, with an increased understanding of the basic development process, in which people are both the driving force for development and its main beneficiaries, the importance of investing in very young children is now seen as a key factor in the broad human development process of a country.
Taking care of very young children has long been on the development agenda. Immunization programs have been pushed to improve the health status of young children, nutrition programs have been implemented to prevent malnutrition and hunger, schooling has been emphasized as important for prosperity later in life, and as a possible “equalizer” of society. What the recent literature on brain development, on the interaction of genes and the environment, on the importance of cognitive and non-cognitive skill development (“social skills”), and on the link between early deprivations and a variety of problems later in life (from health problems to increased delinquency) has added to these efforts, is a better understanding of the long-term economic implications of these interventions.
 
Simply stated, economists look at investments in human capital as a means to increase lifelong “productivity”. The easiest way to measure differences in productivity is by comparing differences in wage rates (in well functioning labor markets) among workers with different levels of education (skills). Higher levels of education (more and better skills) lead to higher productivity, and this advantage can be maintained during one’s entire (working) life. Of course, not everyone works for wages, but similar results (more educated workers are more productive) have been found in agriculture and other forms of self-employment. Indeed, even the productivity of people who do not work in the labor market can be improved by education. Case in point: women who finished secondary education are much better equipped to address the health and nutrition needs of their children than illiterate mothers (and they have fewer children and make sure that these children go to school).

When economist do the numbers, solely based on increased productivity in the labor market, the economic returns to ECD are impressive (see slides 21 and 22). Integrated ECD programs reduce infant and child mortality, increase children’s nutritional and health status, increase on-time school enrollment, decrease drop-out and repetition rates, and increase progression to higher levels of education. All this leads to a more productive labor force. The economic returns from these ECD benefits alone are estimated to be in the 7 percent to 12 percent range, with some estimates being much higher. When ECD interventions are properly seen as investments in the human development of a country, the benefits are very large indeed.
 
Chances are that you were a little surprised to get a lecture on the “the history of development economics” at a conference about early childhood development. But the organizers asked me to make the economic case for investing in young children. I decided that I could do this as forcefully as possible by invoking the help of no fewer than five Nobel laureates in economics. Development is now understood as a process by people for people. All the evidence shows that investment in the health, in nutrition, and in cognitive and non-cognitive skill development is crucial for a prosperous and equal society. Of all the investments in people one can make, investments in the very young have the highest economic returns.

I congratulate our organizers from the China Development Research Foundation for their work on ECD to benefit the children of poor minorities in western China, providing them with a chance to benefit from China’s impressive growth record. And I thank you again for the opportunity to address this distinguished audience on such an important topic.

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Editor's Note: This article was originally published in Pediatrics, a subscription-only journal. To obtain a subscription or log in to access the full article, click here.

ABSTRACT

Building a strong foundation for healthy development in the early years of life is a prerequisite for individual well-being, economic productivity, and harmonious societies around the world. Growing scientific evidence also demonstrates that social and physical environments that threaten human development (because of scarcity, stress, or instability) can lead to short-term physiologic and psychological adjustments that are necessary for immediate survival and adaptation, but which may come at a significant cost to long-term outcomes in learning, behavior, health, and longevity. Generally speaking, ministries of health prioritize child survival and physical well-being, ministries of education focus on schooling, ministries of finance promote economic development, and ministries of welfare address breakdowns across multiple domains of function. Advances in the biological and social sciences offer a unifying framework for generating significant societal benefits by catalyzing greater synergy across these policy sectors. This synergy could inform more effective and efficient investments both to increase the survival of children born under adverse circumstances and to improve life outcomes for those who live beyond the early childhood period yet face high risks for diminished life prospects.

Read the full article at Pediatrics »

       

The Chinese government has recently made early childhood development a national priority, recognizing the social and economic dividends that quality early learning opportunities reap for its human capital in the long term. As the country with the largest population in the world, 100 million children under the age of six in China stand to benefit from increased access to high quality early childhood education.

The quality of education in a country is indicative of its overall development prospects. Over the past two decades – building on the momentum generated by the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals – there have been significant increases in the number of children enrolled in school. Now, with discussions heating up around what the next set of development goals will look like in 2015, it is critical that learning across the education spectrum – from early childhood through adolescence and beyond – is included as a global priority. Starting early helps children enter primary school prepared to learn. High-quality early childhood development opportunities can have long-term impacts on a child’s later success in school.

Last month, the Chinese Ministry of Education, in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund, launched its first national early childhood advocacy month to promote early learning for all children. The campaign, which includes national television public service announcements on the benefits of investing early in education, builds on a commitment made by the government in 2010 to increase funding for early childhood education over the next decade. The Chinese government pledged to build new preschool facilities, enhance and scale up teacher training, provide subsidies for rural families for access to early learning opportunities, and increase support for private early childhood education centers.

A new policy guide by the Center for Universal Education outlines recommendations that education stakeholders, including national governments, can take to ensure that all children are in school and learning. These steps include establishing equity-based learning targets for all children, systematically collecting data for tracking progress against these targets, and allocating sufficient resources to education beginning in early childhood. The policy guide, based on a report calling for a Global Compact on Learning, is available in Mandarin, as well as Spanish, Portuguese, French and, soon, Arabic.

The success of China’s productivity and growth over the last few decades is attributable in part to its commitment to building a robust education system. As international attention mounts around the post-2015 education and development agendas, the priorities of national governments must be a central organizing principle. When national governments take bold steps to prioritize early childhood development, the global community should take its cue and integrate early childhood development into the broader push toward access plus learning. There is an opportunity for the global education community to push toward reaching the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals while ensuring that the post-2015 agendas include a focus on the quality of education, learning and skills development, beginning with the youngest citizens.

       

In the developing world, more than 200 million children under the age of five years are at risk of not reaching their full human potential because they suffer from the negative consequences of poverty, nutritional deficiencies and inadequate learning opportunities. Given these risks, there is a strong case for early childhood development (ECD) interventions in nutrition, health, education and social protection, which can produce long-lasting benefits throughout the life cycle. The results from the 2012 round of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)—an international, large-scale assessment that measures 15-year-olds’ performance in mathematics, reading and science literacy—demonstrate the benefits of ECD: Students in the countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) who had the benefit of being enrolled for more than one year in preprimary school scored 53 points higher in mathematics (the equivalent of more than one year of schooling), compared with students who had not attended preprimary school. Although there is much evidence that ECD programs have a great impact and are less costly than educational interventions later in life, very few ECD initiatives are being scaled up in developing countries. For example, in 2010, only 15 percent of children in low-income countries—compared with 48 percent worldwide—were enrolled in preprimary education programs. Furthermore, even though the literature points to larger beneficial effects of ECD for poorer children, within developing countries, disadvantaged families are even less likely to be among those enrolled in ECD programs. For instance, in Ghana, children from wealthy families are four times more likely than children from poor households to be enrolled in preschool programs.

One of the major barriers to scaling up ECD interventions is financing. In order to address financing issues, both policymakers and practitioners need a better understanding of what is currently being spent on ECD interventions, what high-quality interventions cost, and what outcomes these interventions can produce. If stakeholder groups are made more aware of the costs of ECD interventions, they may be able to support decisionmaking on investments in ECD, to better estimate gaps in financing, and to work toward securing stable funding for scaling up service provision and for quality enhancement. One of the weakest areas of ECD policy planning is in the realm of financial planning.6 Good data are scarce on ECD spending and the costs of ECD interventions that are useful for program budgeting and planning; but these data are valuable for a number of reasons, including the fact that they support analyses of what different inputs cost and thus can facilitate considering various alternative modalities for service delivery. In this paper, we focus on what data are available to gain a clearer picture of what is being spent on ECD and what it costs to deliver basic ECD interventions in developing countries.

ECD interventions come in many varieties, and therefore we first define the package of ECD interventions that have been deemed essential. Then we outline a framework for better understanding ECD financing, which combines a top-down approach analyzing expenditures and a bottom-up approach analyzing the costs of delivering individual interventions. We comment on the general methodological issues stemming from these approaches and the limitations of the data that have been produced. Next, we delve into the available data and discuss the different funding sources and financing mechanisms that countries utilize to deliver ECD services and what patterns exist in spending. We provide a brief overview of how many public and private resources in both developed and developing countries are invested in young children, and in which specific subsectors. Although these data on spending illustrate the flows and help us understand how much is being allocated and by whom, the data are limited, and this top-down approach still leaves us with many unanswered questions. Therefore, we turn our attention to the actual costs of individual ECD interventions, which help us further understand what ECD spending can “buy” in different countries. We identify some trends in the actual costs of delivering these services, although there are a number of methodological issues vis-à-vis costing and the services delivered, which lead to wide variations between and within countries and make it difficult to compare programs over time.

Finally, we look at a number of initiatives that are currently under way to collect better data on ECD costs and expenditures, which will be useful for countries in planning programs and identifying funding sources. These initiatives are sponsored by organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Given the gaps in the available data that we identify and the interventions currently under way, we conclude with recommendations for increasing the knowledge base in this area for use in policymaking and planning.

       

      

      

      

      

      

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

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On December 4 to 6, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted its 12th annual Saban Forum, titled “Israel and the United States: Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” The 2015 Saban Forum included webcasts featuring remarks by Israel’s Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon, Chairman of the Yesh Atid Party Yair Lapid, National Security Adviser to President George W. Bush Stephen Hadley, Secretary of State John Kerry, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (via video), and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The forum’s webcast sessions focused on the future for Israelis and Palestinians, Iran’s role in the Middle East, spillover from the war in Syria, and the global threat posed by the Islamic State and other violent jihadi groups.

Over the past twelve years, the Saban Forum has become the premier platform for frank dialogue between American and Israeli leaders from government, civil society, business, and the media. As a result, the Saban Forum is a seminal event, generating new ideas and helping shape the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

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• A conversation with Moshe Ya’alon, Israel’s minister of defense
• How to restore order in the Middle East
• Keynote address: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry
• Address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (via video)
• Keynote address: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

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• Saturday, December 5, 8:00pm - How to preserve Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state

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• Uncorrected Transcript--Keynote address: Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--Address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--How to preserve Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state (.pdf)
• U.S. Department of State Release--Remarks by Secretary of State John Kerry (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--How to restore order in the Middle East (.pdf)
• Uncorrected Transcript--A conversation with Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's minister of defense (.pdf)

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• Uncorrected TranscriptKeynote addressFormer Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
• Uncorrected TranscriptAddress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
• Uncorrected TranscriptHow to preserve Israel as a Jewish and Democratic state
• US Department of State ReleaseRemarks by Secretary of State John Kerry
• Uncorrected TranscriptHow to restore order in the Middle East 2
• Uncorrected TranscriptA conversation with Moshe Yaalon Israels minister of defense

      

Editors' Note: U.S.-Israeli relations have taken a hit in recent years as the United States has become increasingly frustrated with the Netanyahu government's lack of initiative on advancing a peace process with the Palestinians. Tamara Wittes examines the domestic Israeli and American trends poised to further strain relations if the countries' leaders do not address these challenges head on. This article originally appeared in Haaretz on December 3, 2015—before the annual Saban Forum.

The past year brought unprecedented tensions in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, with many arguments and counterarguments about who is to blame. Beyond the tactical debates—about personality clashes, or the propriety of Israel parachuting into arguments between Congress and the U.S. president—are deeper challenges facing these two close allies. Last weekend, the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings convened the Saban Forum in Washington to address these issues and to understand the future trajectory of the U.S.-Israeli relationship.

The first question that needs to be asked is why a bilateral relationship that for so long was kept above politics has now become a subject of bitter partisanship—in Israel, as well as in the United States. How did distasteful personal rhetoric become politically acceptable in a relationship that used to be carefully protected? Why did politicians lose their self-restraint about using the U.S.-Israel relationship as a wedge issue against their opponents? Why were opponents of the Iran nuclear deal, in Israel and in the United States, prepared to drag the American Jewish community and Democratic friends of Israel into the fray and force them to choose between supporting Israel and supporting their president?

Some argue that these trends result from differing levels of public support for Israel among Democratic and Republican voters. Polls show that Democratic voters are less supportive of the current Israeli government’s policies than Republican voters. If voters in the United States are splitting on partisan lines, the theory goes, then their elected representatives should follow. But polls that ask simplistic questions produce crude results.

A more detailed survey by my colleague Shibley Telhami shows us something deeper: the lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time. Today, Americans increasingly look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the lens of human rights—and this is especially true for younger Americans, African Americans and Hispanic Americans. This makes them sensitive to the suffering of Palestinian civilians, and to heavy handed Israeli counter-terrorism policies. These groups form a larger proportion of the voting public than they have in past, and a growing proportion of the Democratic Party’s core constituency. Likewise, American Evangelical Christians look at Israel through a lens of prophetic fulfillment, which combined with their conservative political preferences puts them squarely on the side of more hawkish Israeli policies. And Evangelicals are a core constituency for the Republican Party. These underlying changes in attitudes have shifted the calculus for American politicians. But that doesn’t mean a partisan split on “support for Israel” is inevitable. It does point to specific aspects of Israeli policy that affect how Israel is viewed. As American society becomes “majority-minority,” where no group, including Americans of European origin, constitutes a majority of the population, Israelis should keep these underlying lenses in mind.

[T]he lenses Americans use to evaluate Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians have changed over time.

A second issue to examine is Israelis’ combination of vulnerability and national pride. Even in a post-9/11 era, Americans have a hard time appreciating the sense of vulnerability and fear that Israelis face from ongoing terrorism and rocket fire. The Gaza War last year brought this vulnerability into sharp focus—the war went on longer than any in Israel’s history other than War of Independence, and the rocket threat affected most of the country’s civilian population. The large numbers of Palestinians killed and wounded led some in America to question Israeli tactics.  U.S.-Israeli cooperation on Iron Dome produced impressive results and was trumpeted in the American media—but when you are walking outside and an air raid siren goes off, your faith in Iron Dome does not erase your sharp sense of fear.

Israelis’ sense of vulnerability is compounded by the asymmetric nature of the threats Israel is facing, and by the sense among many Israelis that their effort to reach a resolution of their conflict with the Palestinians has reached a dead end. The fear of another war and a sense that the neighborhood has turned deeply hostile, weigh heavily, in a way Americans have trouble understanding. Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

Paradoxically, though, this sense of vulnerability coexists for Israelis with a sense of greater self-confidence about Israel’s military strength, its economic dynamism, and its wider relationships with the world. Particularly on the Israeli political right, there is today a stronger strain of nationalism and national pride (as evidenced in the “No Apologies” slogan of the Jewish Home Party in the last elections). In many countries around the world, including U.S. allies, the rise of right-wing nationalism is marked in part by politicians thumbing their nose at the global superpower: the United States. Israel, it appears, is no longer an exception to that rule.

Israelis become all the more anxious when they sense that their most important international ally might not see their security threats the same way they do.

These issues—Americans’ perceptions of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians, and Israelis’ combination of fear and self-confidence—go beyond the personalities of leaders or the choices of politicians. To bridge these gaps, the U.S.-Israel dialogue must reach beyond government meetings and Israel-Diaspora engagement— instead, Israelis and Americans must commit to understanding one another’s societies better than we do today.

Finally, and unavoidably, there is a policy problem driving U.S.-Israeli tensions—but it’s not what you might think. The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. After the Oslo Declaration was signed in September, 1993, Americans, Israelis and Palestinians shared an approach to settling the conflict: direct bilateral negotiations mediated by the United States. But after the failure of the Kerry talks last spring, the two leaders in Jerusalem and Ramallah have no inclination to return to direct bilateral talks, and each of them in their own way emerged from the latest effort with questions about the role of the United States.

In the international community and the region, meanwhile, the loss of faith in the U.S.-led bilateral process has led to experiments with other modes of shaping the conflict, from economic pressure on Israel to new proposals for action by the UN Security Council. Netanyahu’s controversial words before Election Day last spring— that there would be no Palestinian state under his watch—were less of a unilateral declaration than a recognition of reality. The White House now more-or-less agrees, with Obama aides telling reporters that they did not expect peace on Obama’s watch. The longstanding, bilateral negotiating process was Washington’s main leverage in pushing back against other international efforts—and now that the negotiating process has ended, these efforts will inevitably escalate. Without U.S.-Israeli agreement on a way forward, further policy gaps are likely.

The Israeli and American governments are both struggling to deal with the disintegration of a twenty-year-old framework for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This begs a question many American officials and analysts are asking: If there is no prospect for renewed bilateral talks toward a two-state solution, what is Israel’s Plan B? Does the Israeli government have a clear vision for its future relationship with the Palestinians? Israel expects American understanding as it takes steps it deems necessary to protect its citizens and ensure their future security. But American patience with Israel’s control over the West Bank is predicated on that control being temporary. There is impatience in Washington that Israel’s leadership has not tried to articulate a path forward beyond the immediate crisis—indeed, my colleague Natan Sachs argues that the current Israeli leadership has embraced “anti-solutionism” as a strategy. That's a very difficult position for any American administration to support.

If their modern history is any guide, Israelis will not remain passive before the forces now reshaping the Middle East; instead, they will insist on charting their own path into the future. When Israelis finally do develop a clear view of their chosen road, their first stop to explain it and seek support will inevitably be Washington. But Washington may not wait forever—especially as the stalemate is generating sustained violence. The time is now to lay the foundations for that crucial policy discussion, by updating American and Israeli understandings of one another’s dynamic societies, and by building on the Saban Forum and similar platforms to enrich our bilateral dialogue.

      

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2016 Richard C. Holbrooke Forum

On February 5, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted the American Academy in Berlin for the 2016 Richard C. Holbrooke Forum for a two-part public event focusing on the global refugee crisis. Brookings Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy Leon Wieseltier delivered featured remarks on the moral dimensions of the refugee crisis. Wieseltier is currently completing an essay on certain moral, historical, and philosophical dimensions of the refugee crisis. Michael Ignatieff, Edward R. Murrow professor of practice at the Harvard Kennedy School, moderated a question and answer session following Wieseltier’s remarks.

The second panel featured experts addressing the first-step policies needed to ameliorate the crisis. Bruce Katz, Brookings centennial scholar, Tamara Wittes, director of Brookings’s Center for Middle East Policy, Elizabeth Ferris, research professor at Georgetown University and Brookings nonresident senior fellow, spoke to the multiple aspects of the refugee crisis. Brookings Executive Vice President Martin Indyk moderated the panel discussion.

Bruce Jones, vice president and director for the Foreign Policy program, provided introductory remarks.

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A conversation with Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken

One year after the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, the United States continues to adapt its efforts to blunt the appeal of violent extremism. As part of this effort, the State Department is launching a series of new initiatives to better coordinate the U.S. response to terrorist propaganda and recruitment.

On February 16, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings hosted The Honorable Antony J. Blinken, deputy secretary of state, for a discussion of the United States’ civilian-led initiatives to counter the spread of the Islamic State and other violent extremist groups. Blinken will chart the path forward, to include partnerships with industry and civil society, and outlined the challenges that lie ahead.

Brookings President Strobe Talbott offered welcoming remarks. General John Allen, senior fellow and co-director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings, introduced Deputy Secretary Blinken, and Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, joined Deputy Secretary Blinken in conversation following his remarks.

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Editors’ Note: In a recent interview with Foreign Policy Interrupted, Tamara Wittes was asked about how the situation in the Middle East has changed since she published her 2008 book Freedom’s Unsteady March. Five years after the Arab uprisings and the start of the Syrian civil war, and a year and a half after the Islamic State captured Mosul (along with the world’s attention), Tamara says that many of the same fundamental dynamics in the Middle East are still at work.

The situation in the region has changed so dramatically since then, but I think that the fundamental insights that informed that book remain true. The underlying drivers of change in the Middle East are still there in terms of the demographic drivers, the economic drivers, the technological drivers that I described in the book; they are all still present.

Although there’s a lot of disorder and a lot of violence, and that leads people on the ground to prioritize security and to search for security in different ways, that doesn’t mean that they’re going to be satisfied. It doesn’t mean that the, “well, at least it’s not ISIS” line is going to suffice for governments in the Middle East for very long.

The underlying drivers of change are still present, the pressure for change is still present, and a lot of those pressures are about the simple fact of individual empowerment. Expectations shifted, and people, individuals, have the ability to act in ways that they didn’t before. States and governments have to accommodate that. It’s affecting politics all over the world, and the Middle East is not immune.

So the question becomes: how are governments going to learn to accommodate that and turn it into a strength? I think that the United States does have a really important role to play there. There were mistakes that the Bush administration made—setting aside his vision of Iraq, which has of course been very thoroughly discussed and assessed. But even in terms of non-military intervention to try to advance reform, the critique I made in the book is that the Bush administration was overly focused on political process and elections in particular. I think that one of the other lessons that has come of recent years is that the United States and other Western countries get very focused on political institutions and think, well, if we set up a judicial system, and we set up a parliament, and a constitution, then the gears in the machine sort of start to turn, the states start to function. Look at the rebuilding efforts in Afghanistan, for example.

But what we see in the Middle East today is that formal institutions aren’t enough. People have to have trust in the institutions, and people and communities have to have sufficient agreement on the basic rules of the game to make those institutions legitimate and authoritative. And that’s what’s missing in a lot of places around the region right now, that there isn’t enough dialogue and debate and ultimately negotiated agreement on the basic rules of the game. So I think that the challenge for the United States and others who care about stability in the Middle East going forward is how to help cultivate platforms for that kind of dialogue, and how to help cultivate the skills and the mechanisms for resolving very fundamental questions about how government should be organized and what should be the role of religion and politics, and what’s the balance between individual rights and collective identity.

These are big, big, questions, and right now, in too many places, they are being fought over violently. But the questions still have to be answered, and so the challenge is helping develop ways to do that, to do it peacefully.

       

Editors’ Note: On March 23, the Working Group on Egypt sent a letter to President Obama urging him to publicly and privately object to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s accelerating crackdown on human rights and civil society organizations. Brookings senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy Tamara Wittes was among the letter’s signers, and she explains her decision to do so. The letter was originally published by the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED).

Tamara Wittes: In a disordered Middle East, America needs anchors of stability and reliable partners to help it achieve its goals. Both are in sadly short supply. 

For more than thirty years, Egypt was an anchor of stability and a reliable American partner in regional security. From the time Sadat expelled Soviet advisers and broached peace with Israel, ties with Egypt have been a core pillar of American Middle East policy. But, as my colleague Steven Cook presciently noted way back in February 2012, Egypt’s revolution accelerated the launch of what he calls a “long goodbye” between these two formerly indispensable partners. He argued back then that shifting from a “special relationship” to something more transaction would have four concrete benefits for Washington:

First, Washington will no longer be in the unseemly position of providing taxpayer largesse—however small in the grand scheme of things—to a government that resents the United States and clearly does not share its values. Second, it will provide an opportunity for a much-needed change in military-to-military relations in which the United States merely pays for the services it needs like expedited transit through the Suez Canal. Third, it is consistent with this moment of empowerment and dignity for Egyptians many of whom do not want U.S. assistance either because they believe it actually stands in the way of a democratic transition or accept Aboul Naga’s argument along with those who couldn’t care less about U.S. assistance because it doesn’t touch their lives. Finally, it will free up funds for the United States to help others who actually might want Washington’s help, perhaps the Tunisians, Moroccans, or some sub-Saharan African countries would be grateful for development assistance.

Since that blog post went up, Egypt has had three different governments and lost its place as a diplomatic and security leader in the region; while the United States has withdrawn from Iraq and begun to do the same in Afghanistan, while emphasizing burden-sharing in its new fight against ISIS. All of these shifts strengthen the argument for a more distant and transactional U.S.-Egyptian relationship. 

Moreover, since his accession to power (first in a military coup in July 2013 and then in a highly constrained election in 2014), President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has made decisions that are undermining both Egypt’s domestic stability and key American policy goals in the region. 

• Sisi’s failure to move forward on economic reforms (recommended by leading Egyptian voices, regional supporters, and international donors) has left his country in a spiral of shrinking cash reserves, capital flight and currency devaluation that together threaten the government’s ability to import needed food and medicine and to carry out core government functions. 
• Sisi’s counterterrorism campaign in the Sinai has succeeded in “making the sand jump,” as one regional security official told me, but it seems to have stoked more than tamped down the fire of violent extremism threatening both Egypt and Israel; meanwhile, its alleged military abuses have sparked a Senate request for investigation.
• The intense political polarization and relentless repression of post-coup Egypt are producing other destabilizing effects, which are detailed in the Egypt Working Group’s newest letter to President Obama posted below (I am a member of the Working Group). 

To top it all off, the Egyptian government continues to throw obstacles in the road of U.S.-Egyptian cooperation. Its military resists learning from the hard-won American experience in effective counterinsurgency. Its leadership has resolutely refused to allow core bilateral aid programs, like those supporting higher education, to move forward. And at the same time, the Egyptian government continues to promote conspiracy theories about the United States to its public through media smears and show trials, and now, apparently, to its newly elected parliamentarians. 

It’s long past time for the United States to undertake a strategic review of its approach to the Middle East, one focused on building anchors of stability and sustaining reliable partners in pursuit of American priorities. Egypt, as I told The New York Times, no longer qualifies as either one. That doesn’t mean the two countries can’t continue to work together in those narrow areas where they agree on interests, priorities, and approaches. 

But Secretary of State Kerry’s public embrace last week of Egyptian Foreign Minister Shoukry cannot hide the facts—there is no “back to business” option for the U.S.-Egyptian relationship, and it seems increasingly clear that even direct White House engagement would not shift Egypt’s leadership off of its self-destructive trajectory. Egypt's looming instability demands that the United States take steps now to safeguard itself from reliance on a country we cannot rescue, not least from its own leaders' worst impulses. 

---

March 23, 2016

Dear Mr. President,

We are writing to urge you to speak directly with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and to express both publicly and privately your objection to his accelerating crackdown on human rights, including recent moves to prosecute civil society organizations. You were correct to declare in September 2014 that “America’s support for civil society is a matter of national security,” and nowhere is that more true than in Egypt today.

President el-Sissi’s campaign against civil society takes place against the backdrop of unprecedented abuses by Egyptian security forces, including extrajudicial killings, the detention of tens of thousands of political prisoners, the widespread documented use of torture, and the forced disappearances of hundreds of Egyptians. The killing of Italian student Giulio Regeni, whose tortured body appeared on a roadside near Cairo a week after his abduction in late January, has come to international attention, but many Egyptians have shared his fate since President el-Sissi came to power.

On March 24, an Egyptian court will hear a request to freeze the bank accounts and other assets of two internationally-respected human rights defenders, Hossam Bahgat and Gamal Eid, along with members of Eid’s family. Mr. Bahgat and Mr. Eid and other activists may soon be indicted and face trial for illegally accepting foreign funding—a criminal charge that violates their right to free association and could carry a sentence of up to 25 years in prison.

The imminent proceedings are a major step in Egyptian authorities’ campaign to crush the last remnants of Egypt’s independent civil society and human rights community. Egypt’s media has recently reported that dozens of organizations are under criminal investigation, essentially for their peaceful work to monitor abuses and to hold Egypt’s government accountable to its own constitution and international human rights commitments. In recent weeks, Egyptian authorities have ordered the closure of a prominent anti-torture organization, the Nadeem Center; summoned staff from several human rights organizations for interrogation; banned prominent rights activists and advocates from traveling outside Egypt in violation of the Egyptian constitution; and harassed and threatened human rights activists with arrest and violence. The media regularly propagate vitriol against human rights defenders, portraying them as traitors and security threats.

If this crackdown is allowed to reach its conclusion, it will silence an indigenous human rights community that has survived more than 30 years of authoritarian rule, leaving few if any Egyptians free to investigate mounting abuses by the state.

The current attacks on Egypt’s rights advocates are a continuation of the same criminal prosecution of American and German NGO workers in Egypt that began in 2011. That prosecution, driven by senior members of the Egyptian government still in high office today, resulted in the June 2013 criminal convictions, in a deeply flawed trial, of 43 Egyptian and international NGO staff, including 17 American citizens. President el-Sissi, who was the head of military intelligence in 2011 when Egypt’s military government launched the investigation, has refused repeated requests to overturn the convictions.

While the current crackdown is primarily targeting domestic organizations, there are indications that international NGOs may also face increased pressure, including some that currently do not even have offices or staff working in Egypt. On March 20, the newspaper Al Masry Al Youm published the names of more than 150 individuals and civil society organizations reportedly under investigation for receiving foreign funding, including prominent American and European organizations such as the Center for International Private Enterprise, the Solidarity Center, Transparency International, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, CARE, AMIDEAST, the National Democratic Institute, and the International Republican Institute.

Mr. President, in your September 2014 Presidential Memorandum on Civil Society, you pledged that the United States government—including you personally—would stand firmly with those in civil society facing pressure or harassment from their governments. While the past five years have been tumultuous and challenging for U.S. policy toward Egypt, this is another defining moment for the United States, a moment that tests your pledge to “stand with civil society.” Secretary Kerry’s March 18 statement of concern was welcome, but further action is urgently needed. Past practice demonstrates that when the United States government speaks clearly, in one voice, and consistently on NGO freedom and human rights in Egypt, the government in Cairo listens.

It is essential that you act to stand up for human rights, freedom of association, and the rights of both Egyptian and international civil society organizations to work together on behalf of common goals. You must make crystal clear to President el-Sissi that continued assaults on civil society, including harassment of U.S. organizations, will make it difficult for the administration to cooperate across a range of issues, including your administration’s efforts to promote American investment in Egypt and to provide financial assistance to the Egyptian government and military. If Egypt’s government continues down a path to destroy its own civil society, American support and assistance will become, in both principled and practical terms, impossible.

Sincerely,

The Working Group on Egypt

       

“When I go to meetings today, I see more women, and I see many more younger women coming into the field.  But what’s really struck me, as I’ve been thinking about this issue of women in foreign policy in the last couple years, is the difference between presence and voice.  There are many more women working in foreign policy today, but you don’t see the same proportion of women prominent in foreign policy speaking in the media, in senior positions, or even when you’re all in the room together sitting at the table and speaking as the lead speaker at a conference.  It’s that distinction between presence and voice and what accounts for that gap.  That’s what I find both fascinating and frustrating.”—Tamara Wittes

“I think it is getting better. I think women are starting to see examples of other women who are  at the table, who are speaking up, who are volunteering, who are being more confident and starting to learn that just because you might not think you are the greatest expert on something, doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to give your opinion and start speaking up.”—Sarah Yerkes

In this week’s episode of “Intersections,” Tamara Wittes, senior fellow and the director of the Center for Middle East Policy, and Sarah Yerkes, a visiting fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy, discuss their experiences as women working in foreign policy, both in and out of government. They also shed light on progress regarding the active participation of women in foreign policy, while looking forward to potential improvements in order to promote more equality for women’s representation in government.

Show Notes

The Absence of Women from Middle East Policy Debates: An Update

Women still overlooked in vital peacekeeping process, study finds

An All-Women Symposium: The Missing XX-Factor

Foreign Policy Interrupted

Women Are Underrepresented In Cable News Segments On Foreign Affairs, National Security 

With thanks to audio engineer and producer Zack Kulzer, Mark Hoelscher, Carisa Nietsche, Sara Abdel-Rahim,  Eric Abalahin, Fred Dews and Richard Fawal.

Subscribe to the Intersections on iTunes, and send feedback email to intersections@brookings.edu.

       

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With the violence in the Middle East continuing, and further attacks on American soil in the name of Islam, the election campaigns have paid significant attention to policy issues related to the Middle East. But as both Republicans and Democrats prepare for their national conventions, how do Americans prioritize Middle East issues compared with other global priorities? Have public attitudes shifted in light of recent ISIS-inspired attacks overseas and at home and in response to heated campaign rhetoric? If so, in what direction?

On July 11, Brookings launched two new public opinion surveys focusing on American attitudes towards the Middle East, conducted by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami: One was conducted just two weeks before the Orlando shooting, the other taken two weeks after—thus providing an opportunity to evaluate any shift in public attitudes. In addition, some of the same questions were asked in Telhami’s polls the previous two years, thus providing a further opportunity to evaluate trends. One of the polls also includes a significant oversample of millennials (18-34) for further demographic analysis.

Telhami was joined in discussion by William Galston, the Ezra K. Zilkha Chair in Governance Studies at Brookings. Tamara Cofman Wittes, senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

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