Tuesday, September 14th, 2010 - 7:30PM at the Venice Home of Writer/Director/Producer Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, The Informant, An Inconvenient Truth)
How can Afghanistan and other failing nations turn themselves into a success? And how can Hollywood actually help?
In 2001, Clare Lockhart, a former London-based investment banker and Oxford/Harvard trained human rights barrister, was asked to join the UN team that negotiated the Bonn Agreement, giving control of Afghanistan back to its people post U.S. invasion. From there, Clare worked closely with the Afghan team that crafted a policy framework of governance for rebuilding Afghanistan, including with Ashraf Ghani (TEDGlobal Keynote & recognized as best finance minister of Asia 2003) who implemented some of the most innovative policies of the last century as finance minister from 2002-2004.
In 2005, as an agenda of building accountable institutions encountered insurmountable roadblocks, Clare and Ashraf left to collaborate on "Fixing Failed States" to share their learnings and lessons of what does and does not work when countries attempt to transform from instability and conflict to a different future. Based on their experiences in dozens of countries across the world, they founded the Institute for State Effectiveness and they are currently consulting many countries on their turnaround into more successful states. She has now been called back to Afghanistan to work on a non-military solution to the conflict.
All during this time, Clare has watched the coverage and efforts of the international community - and Hollywood - in the most unstable and poverty-stricken parts of the world on both their messaging through media and financial contributions through NGOs and has her own critiques of what Hollywood should be doing differently to aid these efforts. Please join us for an intimate afternoon discussion with one of the most high-profile advisors to nation states - Clare Lockhart.