{"id":23792,"date":"2019-12-20T21:48:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-20T21:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jww.org\/?p=23792"},"modified":"2019-12-20T21:48:02","modified_gmt":"2019-12-20T21:48:02","slug":"trump-signs-global-fragility-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/trump-signs-global-fragility-act\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Fragility Act signed into law: A monumental victory for atrocity prevention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier today, on December 20, 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law the bipartisan Global Fragility Act ushering in a new era of prevention-focused foreign policy to tackle the alarming and ever-increasing levels of violence around the world.  This landmark legislation was passed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020, approved by the House in a 297-120 vote on Tuesday and by the Senate in a 71-23 vote on Thursday. After making its way through both chambers of Congress, the federal funding package \u2014 with the Global Fragility Act included \u2014 was signed into <\/span>law<\/span><\/a>.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The Global Fragility Act (GFA) establishes the first-ever comprehensive U.S. government approach to preventing global conflict and instability.  Since the GFA was first introduced in 2018, Jewish World Watch has been working in coalition with nearly 70 organizations to ensure that this game-changing legislation would become law.  It has been a critical piece of our <\/span>advocacy work<\/span><\/a>, which is centered on making atrocity prevention a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy.<\/span><\/p>\n

JWW has advocated for the adoption of the GFA as a complement to the Elie Wiesel <\/span>Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Act (GAPA)<\/span><\/a> signed into law one year ago.  GAPA established the prevention of genocide and other atrocities as a national security interest.  The Global Fragility Act operationalizes the commitment enshrined in the Elie Wiesel Act, creating a government-wide pilot program to test and evaluate various atrocity prevention methodologies in a number of fragile countries.  It essentially gives the green light to implement a coordinated prevention strategy and backs up the initiative with critical analytical and financial resources.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Global Fragility Act aims to accomplish what many of JWW\u2019s on-the-ground projects seek to do, as well: address the underlying structural causes of violence and mass atrocities, rather than the symptoms.  Washington\u2019s response to large-scale violence has primarily been reactive, costing enormous taxpayer dollars and the lives of military personnel. The GFA aims to limit the need for costly military interventions by mandating the President \u2014 in close coordination with the Secretary of State, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Secretary of Defense \u2014 to establish a comprehensive, integrated 10-year strategy addressing the drivers of instability and mass violence.  <\/span><\/p>\n

The GFA sets aside more than $1 billion over the next five years to test a coordinated, government-wide approach to prevention in at least five priority countries.  This would begin with identifying places where fragility poses the greatest threats to human security, and selecting those countries where the U.S. can pilot innovative diplomatic and programmatic action to reduce those threats.  The GFA would then support ways to improve the evaluation of the effectiveness of such programs and encourage new cross-sectoral partnerships among academia, government, and civil society to hone in on what combination of diplomatic, development, and peacekeeping strategies work to extinguish the propellants of mass violence.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Fragile states<\/span><\/a> are those where the systems of government and society have broken down, heightening the risk of violent conflict, criminal activity, corruption, and extremism.  These dynamics have multiplier effects across borders, destabilizing entire regions and posing direct national security threats to myriad other countries, including the United States. The world is currently in the midst of the worst displacement crisis since World War II, with a staggering 70.8 million people displaced due to persecution, conflict, violence, or related human rights abuses.  Fragility is at an all-time high. This groundbreaking prevention-focused initiative couldn\u2019t come soon enough. <\/span><\/p>\n

Eighty percent of U.S. humanitarian funding currently is used for countries experiencing violence, including fragile states like Syria and South Sudan.  Prevention remains woefully underfunded in these contexts, however, despite <\/span>research<\/span><\/a> by the Institute for Economics and Peace showing that $1 spent on peacebuilding would reduce the costs of conflict by $16.  We can and should do a better job of ensuring that the resources the United States is investing in these fragile environments are being used more strategically and effectively, so that the cycles of violence that jeopardize the lives of countless civilians, including our own, are finally broken.   <\/span><\/p>\n

The GFA responds to the national security threat of mounting global fragility by requiring interagency coordination in the implementation of prevention strategies; enhancing monitoring and evaluation of operations on the ground in order to gauge best practices; and, robustly seeding this prevention work with the establishment of a Global Fragility Fund to leverage and coordinate public and private funds.  The end goal is figuring out how the United States can do prevention better to get ahead of atrocities <\/span>before <\/span>they unfold, saving lives and resources as well as protecting our country from the threats that ever-increasing global instability poses.  If we can appropriately immobilize what we empirically understand to be the drivers of mass violence before they devolve into full-blown crises, we can orient our resources more towards sustainable development and peace rather than costly and ineffective containment.<\/span><\/p>\n

We thank leaders in Congress from both sides of the aisle for their vision and perseverance in getting this pivotal legislation passed.  A bipartisan group of 26 senators and 20 representatives co-sponsored the bill, and their support was key to the GFA\u2019s success.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier today, on December 20, 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law the bipartisan Global Fragility Act ushering in a new era of prevention-focused foreign policy to tackle the alarming and ever-increasing levels of violence around the world.  This landmark legislation was passed as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2020, approved by the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":21933,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[176,188],"tags":[177,425,403,534,535,536,160,537,321],"class_list":["post-23792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-news-features","tag-jww","tag-elie-wiesel","tag-gapa","tag-genocide-and-atrocity-prevention-act","tag-gfa","tag-global-fragility-act","tag-jewish-world-watch","tag-united-states-agency-for-international-development","tag-usaid","category-176","category-188","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jww.org\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}