Linda Thomas-Greenfield

The facts on the ground in Eritrea speak for themselves. We are dealing with a situation where we do have strong evidence of violation of human rights in Eritrea.

If given the opportunity to be heard and to fully and freely participate in their government, I truly believe that the people of Eritrea can do great things for their country.

We are encouraged by the small steps toward progress I have outlined above and we would urge the government to take much larger strides forward by ending indefinite national service and releasing political prisoners.

If I were an appropriator, I would be giving more money to democracy and governance.

We are. Swaziland is still not a part of AGOA.

The more we can uplift the African people, the better fight we can have against terrorism.

I would not designate Nigeria as a country because we have huge, huge and very active Christian populations in Nigeria throughout the southern parts of Nigeria into the middle belt and even in northern Nigeria, and we have a huge Muslim…

We cannot draw a line and say we are not going to work with you on terrorism because of human rights violations.

We do. I was in China about 4 weeks ago for our annual consultation with the Chinese.

I would say they are more than that. I think that is part of their ideology, but they have killed more Muslims in the north than they have killed Christians.

We are having a human rights dialogue being led by our Assistant Secretary for Human Rights, Tom Malinowski.

We could use more resources in that area.

Those concerns are that as that committee considers its bill, it not cross some lines into the areas of diplomacy and development.

Their constitution is very clear that his term ends in December, and they must have an election.

The United States is committed to partnering with the people and governments of Africa to promote democracy, peace and prosperity.

They have come to that very strong realization that they have to partner with their neighbors.

I think we have to work with governments to fight terrorism, but we also have to continue to work with these governments to address human rights deficiencies in their countries.

We condemn human rights abuses. We regularly condemn those abuses by security forces and by governments.

I hope that AFRICOM is not folded back into EUCOM because what AFRICOM has meant for us is that we have a military that is more focused on Africa.

We believe the best approach remains a peace agreement, a peace agreement that would end the conflict and establish a transitional government of national unity.

The objective of the resolution was to send sort of an unequivocal signal to the parties that they were at a crossroads, that it is really time.

Its statements, its meetings, its calls, have helped reinforce that message to the South Sudanese leaders that it is time to make compromise.

We have seen some warning signs already.

Having a strong, unified message from the Senate to President Nkurunziza--he looks for divisions within us.

We need to do more to support good governance and build institutions that are strong and that people have confidence in.