Bono made his appeal at a Senate subcommittee hearing on violent extremism and foreign assistance, telling his audience that the aid is vital in order to “head off the rise of violent extremism” in the region.
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“I’ve got my pink friends to back me up”, he said later, when talking about the urgency to help with global funding efforts.
While Bono sees the situation as dire, he said he thought the United States had the “good ideas” necessary to succeed.
“The worldwide community, though it means well, is having a lot of meetings about the crisis, and I believe it is issuing a record number of press releases”.
“On this stuff, this is like the one thing you all agree on and it brings out the best in you”, he said. A foremost authority on the Middle East, the Irish rocker proposed an unusual way of combating extremist groups such as ISIS and Boko Haram: the mighty weapon of … comedy.
Towards the end of his testimony, Bono also warned congressional leaders not to turn away from Africa.
The U.S. proved more than $532 million in humanitarian assistance to reach more than 4 million Ethiopians since October 2014. “Our programs in Africa are at a breaking point”, she said, noting that her agency is able to meet only 35 percent of the continent’s needs.
Graham said providing aid to refugees is crucial to striking down the spread of extremism in Middle Eastern and African countries.
Bono has always been nearly as famous for his advocacy as for his music, vocally supporting groups such as Amnesty and Greenpeace before establishing his own charitable organisations such as (RED), which fights Aids and HIV, and ONE, which tackles poverty and disease. The rejection of protecting refugees – evidenced by xenophobic hate speech and hate crimes – has not been this high since before World War II, Clements said.
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“I know this sounds counterintuitive, but the people I met-especially the military-told us it is critical that these countries not only survive but that they thrive. But what it’s not doing is cutting checks”, Bono said, adding that he sympathized with lawmakers’ need to prioritize limited resources. Limiting resettlement would be a mistake, and “all countries need to take more”, Bono said. “After 37 visits to Iraq and Afghanistan, I can assure the American people that they’re not buying what these insane people are selling”, he said.
