Prime Minister Edi Rama, on a visit to the United States of America, attended the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative that took place in New York.
Established in 2005 by President Bill Clinton, Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) convenes global leaders to create and implement innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. It brings together established and emerging global leaders to create and implement solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. CGI works with partners to develop commitments to action, new, specific, and measurable actions in climate resilience, health equity, and inclusive economic recovery and growth.
The CGI 2023 meeting focused on efforts to maintain and take forward progress made in this respect, despite the difficulties, undertaking concrete commitments to disaster response, recovery and resilience. Prime Minister Rama took part in one of the panels of the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you! I believe I wouldn’t have been invited here if it was not actually for what we happened to do as a country for the Afghan evacuees in that moment of chaos, and also for what we are trying to do in the Security Council, where Albania is a non-permanent member and where, believe it or not, but for the first time in the history of the Security Council, a question was raised by us about the potential coordination and cooperation in a much more systematic way between the public and the private sector to forge humanitarian partnership and alliance.
As a matter of fact, we have drummed up very important support for this idea from an organization called “Meet Future” that we got to know during the Afghan crisis and with them we are now getting on board a number of several other big players as we are trying to give life to a platform, with everyone involved in this realm of donors, non-governmental organizations, companies and volunteers having the opportunity to receive complete information regarding the needs, about who is doing what, where help is needed and, of course, through this platform more funding can be mobilized, because what we have come to realize during this exercise is that, as a matter of fact, the needs at a humanitarian level are more than 55 billion dollars this year along and what has been already put together is less than 11 billion dollars. So the gap is huge and the need for coordination is immense.
Going back to the moment when we were exposed to this chaotic situation in Afghanistan, I have to tell you that it was shocking for me and for us, because we couldn’t imagine how all these big countries, not only were they leaving Afghanistan, but they were also leaving everyone and everything behind, not even thinking what would happen with all these women, who had exposed themselves to danger, all these individuals who had been working for us – and I say us because Albania is a NATO member country and it has been part of the international mission there – and what would happen to all of these people, who had exposed themselves as the future enemies of the new regime there by believing in the dreams we sold them and by believing in the future that we made them dream about. Later on, all of a sudden, we received some requests from the organizations involved in this aspect, “Meet Future” included, also from the former Secretary Clinton, as well as many others, to host these people in Albania. And, yes we are not among the biggest and we are not among the wealthiest of countries, yet we told ourselves we have to open the doors to these people, because it is a shame to leave them in the hands of these barbarians. From then we learned how important it was to build something more systemic, readier to respond and not just to witness this total chaos. We believe we in Albania are chaotic, but when I saw how chaotic the United States could be, I told myself: “Oh my God, we are so good.”
-I am just curious about your experience when Albania experienced its own disaster. How this new initiative that you are trying to develop helps address some of the challenges?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: We actually hope this initiative will develop and we hope that this kind of needed bridge between all these goodwill people, goodwill companies, goodwill NGO-s and the United Nations will be built also by overcoming the prejudice, which is not totally baseless, by the way, that the United Nations is too slow regarding the red tape, which is true, but we hope this will develop. When we were hit by the earthquake, we were lucky enough and blessed to have friends that didn’t leave us alone, namely the European Union, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates and many other countries that supported us since the very beginning. It was amazing to see all the rescue teams coming from throughout Europe, and even from Israel to help save people who were still alive under the rubble. It was also amazing to see Albanians themselves from all over the places they live, because we represent a very special case as a small nation living in two states, Albania and Kosovo and with Albanians basically living everywhere and you certainly know better than me that if you want to really have a good dinner, you may go to an Albanian restaurant in new York. And they were all helping and this was amazing.
– Prime Minister, do you think that as you try to use this private-public sector initiative to mobilize more funding you are going to be able to direct it towards the frontline groups?
Prime Minister Edi Rama: Listen, we are humbly doing our part and we are taking advantage of this opportunity we have been trying to make use at maximum by being a member of the UN Security Council. However, it is about Albania and not the United States of America. So, although I am too tall, we are too small to impose anything or to guide the world in anything. We simply believe we have succeeded so far to create the right synergies with much bigger organizations than us, as I already mentioned, “Future” and “Google” that has also joined this start-up alliance and hopefully more others will join. Everyone can bring not only money and the donations, but also the knowhow, because Google can contribute a lot, for instance, via the technology side. Someone else can contribute significantly through the distribution side and so on and so forth. So it is about establishing a platform with everyone having access to information, with everyone being able to transparently see who does what and what are the needs to be channelled somewhere and the need to spend in another country. It is quite a good thing to build something systemic, because it is not always the same situation repeating itself, when the disaster strikes and everyone rushing to help, but without knowing what others are doing and what others can do too. So, in the world we are living in, it doesn’t seem is going to be better. On the contrary, it looks like things will become worse and therefore we need to better prepare so that we can have a chance to deal with this disaster.
