About the Author: Anne C. Richard serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees, and Migration.

2012 was a challenging year for humanitarians trying to help displaced people around the world. The following summarizes some of the challenges addressed by the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) last year.

Inside Syria, 40,000 people have been killed and over two million are displaced. Over half a million people have fled to neighboring countries. The U.S. government (the State Department and USAID) is providing $210 million in humanitarian aid to the region, and this aid is reaching millions.

Last year, refugees fled violence and drought in Northern Mali and… more »

About the Author: Janet Heg serves as a Cultural Affairs Assistant at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

As Christmas approaches, my husband and I are almost halfway through our year-long assignment to Kabul. Serving at an unaccompanied post was not something we had to do, but something we chose to do. We expected the work to be interesting and rewarding, but we had no idea how many special, rare, and unique moments were in store for us.

I consider myself enormously privileged to have the opportunity to meet a wide variety of Afghans, many of them students and many of them incredibly brave. I value the brief glimpses into the lives of others, the few moments when I learn a little about the difficulties that other people face daily.

In a provincial capital, women talked about some of the obstacles that prevent girls getting an education. In one village, for example, girls cannot go to school after sixth grade because there is no female teacher and adolescent… more »

About the Author: Siriana Nair serves as Senior Economic Officer in the Office of Regional Affairs in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.

My journey on the road to Samarkand brings me to the Navoi International Airport and cargo facility, where I am met by airport executives who brief me and my colleagues on the joint venture cargo operation between Uzbekistan Airways and Korean Air. They give us a tour of the site, noting that Korea is Uzbekistan’s fourth largest trading partner, after Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. Trade with the United States, on the other hand, is a mere two percent of Uzbekistan’s total trade, highlighting the enormous potential for future growth. On the tour, I learn that weekly flights from New Delhi, Mumbai, Dhaka, and other South and East Asian cities use the facility for shipping their goods to Europe, Russia, and the Middle East — a very modern incarnation of the ancient Silk Road.… more »

About the Author: Kris M. Balderston serves as the Special Representative for Global Partnerships within the Office of the Secretary of State.

We can achieve more together than we can alone.

That simple statement underscored the premise of the first Global Partnerships Week, which we marked December 9-15, 2012. I saw the power of partnerships firsthand in Dubai, where I participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and our Partners for a New Beginning initiative, while our embassies and missions around the world, from Japan to Brazil, spotlighted the value of partnering with the private sector.

Through educational and media events, competitions, and challenges, we’ve seen the State Department recognize the importance of collaborating with the private sector. In Honduras, for example, the Embassy launched a partnership with a local telecommunications company to provide Internet, cable, and phone access at youth outreach centers. In Haiti, Ambassador Pamela White hosted a reception for businesses… more »

About the Author: Siriana Nair serves as Senior Economic Officer in the Office of Regional Affairs in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs.

Samarkand, Bukhara, Kabul, Aktau, Dushanbe, Kashgar…the road signs we pass just before leaving the tree-lined streets of Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital city, remind us that we’re following the well-worn trails of the ancient Silk Road. At the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, Central Asia was once a global center for the exchange of goods, ideas, and people. Today, the region is among the least economically connected areas in the world. I’m visiting Uzbekistan to explore how the United States can help promote what Secretary Clinton has envisioned as a “New Silk Road,” restoring transit, trade, commercial, and people-to-people linkages between Central and South Asia, with Afghanistan at its heart. 

The idea behind the New Silk Road vision is to use economic… more »

About the Author: Dawn L. McCall serves as Coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs.

The Internet may be important, but it’s not everything. In rural Afghanistan, courageous and talented young women who have never heard of the Internet are using skills today often associated with social media users — initiative, resourcefulness, and social connections — to make tangible contributions to their community.

During a recent visit to the Guzara district outside Herat, near Afghanistan’s western border with Iran, I saw teenage girls training themselves in English and leading language classes for their younger peers. These women worked with the Afghan Women Educational and Professional Improvement Organization, an ambitious organization housed in a sparsely furnished three-room office. This organization provides curriculum planning resources for teachers at a nearby girls’ school, study space for that school’s students, and — as the young, aspiring English… more »

About the Author: Seth McNayr serves at the U.S. Mission to NATO.

On December 4, 2012, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in Brussels for her ninth and final NATO Foreign Ministers Meeting, began a typically industrious day by meeting with Department of State staff and families downtown at the U.S. Embassy in Belgium. Next, she moved across town to NATO Headquarters, arriving at mid-day and meeting immediately with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. She then conducted her first bilateral meeting with her Bulgarian counterpart, Nikolay Mladenov.

Secretary Clinton then joined other NATO Foreign Ministers for a working lunch of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), including Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, where many topics of strategic interest were discussed. Afghanistan, in particular, is an area where NATO and Russia have found ways to cooperate in recent years, through such initiatives as joint counter-terrorism and… more »

About the Author: Ivo H. Daalder serves as U.S. Ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Our goals at this Ministerial are clear and simple: to support our ally Turkey by moving toward a deployment of Patriot Missiles to augment their air defenses, to help them protect their people and population; to broaden our cooperation and political dialogue with Russia; to strengthen our partnerships with other countries, including Georgia; and with all our ISAF partners, to monitor our progress toward successful transition in Afghanistan by 2014.

In addition to the goals, however, this Ministerial is noteworthy, because of Secretary Clinton. This is her 38th trip to Europe since becoming Secretary of State; and her ninth and last NATO Ministerial.

She has left… more »

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will travel to Prague, the Czech Republic; Brussels, Belgium; Dublin, Ireland; and Belfast, Northern Ireland December 3-7.

Secretary Clinton will travel to Prague, the Czech Republic, December 3 to meet with Czech officials on strengthening Czech energy independence, as well as advancing human rights and supporting democratic transitions around the world.

Secretary Clinton will visit Brussels, Belgium, December 4-5 to participate in a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. The Secretary and her counterparts will discuss current security challenges in the Western Balkans and NATO’s global partnerships. The Secretary will participate in a foreign ministers’ meeting of the NATO-Russia Council on December 4 and of the NATO-Georgia Commission on December 5. NATO foreign ministers will also meet with their non-NATO partners… more »

About the Author: Janet Heg serves in the Cultural Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Just like any other American family, our pre-Thanksgiving discussions involved the question: “Your family or mine?” Yet the question was not whether we would go to his parents or my parents, but whether we would share the holiday with his office family (the Pol-Mil section) or mine (Public Affairs). In true State Department fashion, we reached a compromise and brought both sections together to create a memorable Thanksgiving celebration in Kabul.

At other overseas posts, my husband and I have delighted in sharing the Thanksgiving tradition with non-American expatriates and host country nationals. In Kabul, by contrast, everyone was able to indulge on the “giving” part of the day by preparing something for the meal.

Creating a family atmosphere at Thanksgiving is particularly important at an unaccompanied post, where so many people are living on their own… more »