Landmark Met: 100th Muslim Partnership

On Tuesday, Sister Cities International celebrated its 100th partnership in a Muslim-majority country with the city signing of Houston, Texas with Karachi, Pakistan. Take a listen to NPR’s coverage.

Houston Mayor Bill White and Mayor Syed Mustafa Kamal of Karachi signed the official Memo of Understanding at City Hall. As the largest city in Pakistan, Karachi hopes to focus city-to-city exchanges on business and trade opportunities between the cities, joint learning about how the cities manage terrorism threats, promoting tourism, and sharing cultural understanding programs. Houston, the fourth largest city in the U.S., has more than 80,000 people of Pakistani origin living in Houston and expects a great deal of support for the new relationship.

After 9/11 Sister Cities International's leadership created the Muslim World Partnership Initiative, a program area dedicated to advance long-term partnerships throughout the Muslim World and raise public awareness at the municipal level in the United States.

Karachi represents Houston’s 17th sister city partnership. With the addition of Karachi, Houston’s local program is now distinguished within the sister city network as the U.S. city with the most partnerships in the Muslim World - Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates), Baku (Azerbaijan), Istanbul (Turkey), and Karachi (Pakistan).

There is a driving interest among U.S. cities to establish partnerships in the Muslim world. There's a gap to bridge and our network sees its role to play, just as we have in the past. There were sister cities in the Soviet Union long before the fall of the Wall (now, we have 80 partnerships in Russia and many more in Eurasia and other former Soviet states). We were in Iraq when Saddam was in power (now, we have 9 partnerships and growing thanks to the PRTs), we have a presence in Cuba, Iran, and so on.

The point being, sister city programs don't shy away from zones of conflict, places where democracy doesn't flourish, and regions where people tend to disagree with America more than they agree. I'm regularly impressed by the "average" citizens in our network who roll up their sleeves and directly engage people from around the world with no political motivation except to work collaboratively on a project, to better understand each other, and ultimately to advance world peace.

So, bravo to Houston for helping us reach 100, but I'm eager for 101 and beyond. Our work continues.

(Photo Credit: NPR's website)

Ideas and Action from Peru & Latin America

I was pleased to speak last week at a conference hosted by Ideas Peru in Lima, Peru. The conference looked at how to move forward with international development projects in Latin America. Participants came from across Latin America as well as Spain and Italy and were represented by mayors, local elected officials, city government officials, heads of NGOs, educators, multilateral funding organizations, and passionate citizens.

Ideas Peru is a new organization that is looking to take pent-up energy of the citizens and move it to action. The presenters offered different models on how to engage local government and hometown communities and how to achieve more accountability of government.

The sister cities model fits into this dialogue quite well. They indicated that national governments haven’t always been the best leader or most efficient engine to make progress on community projects, such as water or infrastructure. But as I explored this more it was also clear that others felt local governments didn’t have the expertise to execute projects so money was wasted and progress languished. In both the panel discussion and my plenary speech, I was able to offer tangible examples of how various constituencies within a community work in a private-public partnership. I found the attendees welcomed the ideas and model (even if I based this solely on the # of business cards I got during the conference expressing an interest in starting a sister city program) but moreover, they were ready for action.

It’ll be interesting to see what shakes out from this event, but I sensed a serious intent of the attendees to roll up their sleeves and get moving.

It's as Basic as Water

When many people think of Sister Cities International, they think cultural exchanges. A choir tour from South Africa or a young person visiting Germany for a few weeks in the summer as their first experience abroad. For 50+ years, we've done a tremendous job reaching our hands out across oceans and borders, navigating language differences to being a dialogue using culture as a means toward common ground. These are very valuable, and often life changing, experiences for the individuals or the delegation on the trip. But more and more local sister city programs are being asked to do more for their sister cities abroad and their communities at home. These activities take the shape of "international development," which is a pretty broad moniker for economic development, sustainable development, work on the MDGs, and so forth. I have to share a terrific example on this front that demonstrates how some sister city programs go well beyond culture to deliver on our mission.

For years local sister city programs have been working on water issues with their sister city partners abroad. Last year, P&G provided Sister Cities International a grant to launch a Safe Drinking Water Initiative in Ethiopia and Nigeria. In short, the program taps six sister cities (3 U.S. with 3 African) to provide temporary clean drinking water and public education programs on the importance and impact of safe drinking water. The immediate clean water is made possible using a product created by P&G, PUR-Purifier of Water. Folks in the U.S. will think of the water purifier instrument you might attach to a faucet, but a related P&G product is a packet when dropped in a turbid water, will clean in 5 minutes. I've seen it, I've taken a drink afterward, and the results are visually stunning and more importantly it instantly creates healthy water.

The image above is not uncommon in Africa. You see citizens coming to the edge of a reservoir to draw water for use at home. This water source is also a community gathering place for children who swim and play in the water and animals. Not only is the water source contaminated, but the jugs and containers which the water is transferred to the home are also contaminated.

The Safe Drinking Water Initiative uses with sister city programs (3 pilot programs in Atlanta, Denver & Kansas City this year) that are already working on a long-term water solutions with their sister city partner. In the case of Denver Sister Cities, in 2002 they developed a comprehensive water plan with their sister city, Axum, Ehtiopia. This was done gratis by Denver Water, the professional organization that manages the Denver water systems and resources. In the interim years the local sister city program has been working on the implementation as funding and people-power were available. A number of professionals and engineers are involved from a range of organizations in the community. When the P&G grant became available, Denver quickly jumped on board as they saw this as a good interim step for Axum to provide clean water immediately and a chance to raise the dialogue in Axum about safe drinking water from a society/cultural stand-point to a health issue.

The sister city programs use many channels to make this successful: the mayor's office, the water/sanitation department, hospitals, health clinics, schools, and community centers. One goal is to find way to instruct children and women on the value of clean water. This strategy will bring about change since children and women are traditionally responsible for collecting and carrying the water to the home.

While we've only reported our first set of progress on the program, it's rewarding to see individuals and communities involved in the issue for years reinvigorated by a program. The best outcome can be seen to the left, as children anxiously await a taste of clean water and what it represents to their future.

Photo Credits: The images accompanying this post are from the Denver Sister Cities program, which is working with its partner, Axum (Ethiopia) to create a long-term water solution for the reservoir. For more details on the Sister Cities International program, visit www.sister-cities.org and click Sustainable Development, under Programs & Services.

Re-engaging the World One Interview at a Time

I hope you've seen today's coverage of President Obama's first extensive interview - with Dubai-based Al-Arabiya Network. What a statement. Read some of the coverage of what I'm calling the "we are not your enemy" interview. It will be interesting over the next few days/weeks to see how this plays across the globe.

Odds & Ends
Those interested in the conversations from the Smith-Mundt Symposium I attended. The host of the event now has most of the transcripts online. You'll be most interested in the Doran and Glassman keynotes. The other panels included some good dialogue as well.

I'm looking for images/pictures (still and video) of citizen diplomacy activity in your community for an upcoming publication. Do you have some images to share? Email them to me!

Also, alas, the defense industry event in February which SCI was slated to present, has been changed. They published our white paper but we won't have the opportunity to speak. So the ball bounces sometimes.

Inspired Future

A couple of hours before a new U.S. President takes the office, I am watching another chapter in the American story unfold on TV like millions more in the U.S. and abroad. This moment reminds me of one my first vivid sister cities experiences with 20 Iraqi high school students. Just hours after they arrived in the U.S., I participated in a discussion about their perceptions of the U.S. It was a time of great unrest and violence in Iraq. After creating a long list of words describing their perceptions, two words were noticeably absent: hope and opportunity.

No matter one’s political persuasion, without a word or speech spoken yet I hope those students are watching today – hope and opportunity are now powerful images of the National Mall.

E-Conversations on Public Diplomacy & Wading into the Defense Conversation

A couple of notable items on public diplomacy, the war of ideas (see my previous entry on this phrase), the media, and the military’s intersection with sister cities…

I’ve become a quick fan of the blog Mountain Runner, a blog by Matt Armstrong on public diplomacy and strategic communication in the 21st century. It’s a very smart perspective on the discussion and I encourage you to follow the conversation. I’ve seen some very direct and thought-provoking comments to some of the posts. It’s available via RSS.

Armstrong has organized the Smith-Mundt Symposium. “Smith-Mundt” refers to the original 1948 legislation that formalized America’s promotion of international engagement through information, cultural and educational exchanges. It’s had a few amendments over the years and numerous interpretations, but the gathering hopes to spur some common ground on how best to proceed in the current global environment with a new resident at 1600 PA Ave. It has far-reaching implications for the sister cities network. I’ll be attending and write my thoughts afterward.

Another bit of news is a presentation I’ll be making at the 2009 NDIA SO/LIC Symposium in February. A paper I co-authored with Christopher Dufour from Irregular Warfare Support under the office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Ops, Low-Intensity Conflict & Interdependent Capabilities titled "The Road to Peace, One Person at a Time: Sister Cities International and Its Role in Persistent Conflict" will be a highlight of our presentation. (But, it’ll really be about the power and impact of the sister cities network globally.) It’s a topnotch line-up of keynote speakers with a network of people and perspectives on global engagement that we need to become more fluent in to improve our sister cities work abroad.

2009: Where to Start?

The possibilities for the New Year and the sister cities network seem endless, but I’m conflicted by the discord between the hope for our country’s engagement abroad and current global reality:

• Middle East – Can proactive American diplomacy lead the region toward an enduring peace?
• Iraq – Can the country’s local, provincial, and national governments collaborate effectively with the evolving military departure?
• Russia/Eurasia – Is a regional stew brewing for something more substantive than the Georgian incursion?
• Zimbabwe and other African countries in a fragile state or turmoil – What leadership role will the U.S. play that reaches beyond its humanitarian and health-focus?
• Latin America - Will we rediscover partnerships?
• Iran & North Korea – Can we engage in a consistent dialogue that strikes a balance between security and constructive diplomacy?
• Cuba – Will our formal policy change enough to allow informal influences to warm relations?

These are just a few global challenges (not intended to comprehensive), as well as security and economic issues. Any one of them could consume significant diplomatic energies in good times, but in a year where economic pressures are unprecedented in recent history – can we afford not to engage on all these fronts with a deft hand? Lots to think about in 2009.