Speeches

Already, 21 million people across that region face crisis levels of hunger, including around 300,000 who face famine levels in Somalia. I visited Somalia over the summer – late summer – and heard from farmers, as so many of you have as well, whose crops and livestock had shriveled, mothers who have traveled long distances to bring their children to malnutrition clinics. Babies, just a few months old, born into hunger and too weak to cry.

I arrived in Beirut yesterday to get a better picture of what has taken shape here in Lebanon, and to discuss the United States role in supporting the Lebanese people during a very, very trying time. Since being here, I've had the chance to hear from many people and I've heard similar stories almost no matter a person's background, about how the economic devastation and mismanagement in Lebanon is manifesting itself in nearly every facet of people's lives. Food has rapidly become unaffordable. 

I will say right off the bat that the Congress put the United States in an incredible position to lead in the response – the humanitarian response – because with the Ukraine supplementals that passed earlier this year, they actually gave us flexibility to provide humanitarian assistance also to those crises that were indirectly affected by Putin and his gratuitous and horrific invasion of Ukraine.

Today, in 56 countries around the world, people are silenced, persecuted—or subject to worse—for their religious beliefs. And religious freedom overall is on the decline; two billion more people live in countries with high restrictions on religious freedom than just a decade ago.