The Foreign Service Journal, December 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2019 41 dispute. In Nepal, he crafted a transitional justice strategy, triggering the first move- ment on the issue in four years. During a period of intense civil unrest in Basrah, Iraq’s major port city and oil hub, extremists began targeting female leaders who appeared in the media with U.S. officials. After one woman was assas- sinated, others were subjected to online threats in what appeared to be coordi- nated efforts to intimidate them into silence. Urgently seeking avenues to protect them, Mr. Gooch organized a team to identify accounts being used to threaten the women leaders and inform U.S.-based social media companies of these terms- of-service violations. Mr. Gooch also helped provide expedited assistance through the Human Rights Defenders’ Fund—run by the State Depart- ment’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor— enabling activists to shelter safely. His efforts to protect these brave women sent a powerful message of the United States’ support for equal rights and democratic freedoms in Iraq. In another vital human rights area—countering human trafficking—Mr. Gooch acted to overcome Iraqi government resistance to cooperation. He built a coalition of Iraqi allies across its police and bureaucratic structures and used a series of interagency meetings to explain the practical and ethical imperatives for action. Through persistent engagement, he convinced his interlocu- tors to cooperate to develop Iraq’s first action plan to combat human trafficking and to dedicate resources to achieving the goals they identified. Mr. Gooch’s actions enabled Iraq to come into alignment with the department’s approach to combatting trafficking. Mr. Gooch’s work also sparked new optimism in Iraq after 50 years of unresolved conflict in Kirkuk. He showed extraordinary leadership in conflict resolution in a territory where conflict between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen resulted in a political power vacuum and ethnic tension, fuel for a potential ISIS resurgence. His engagement with local political, tribal and civil soci- ety leaders, United Nations representatives and international mediators resulted in an embassy decision to actively foster reconciliation and reanimate moribund negotiations between ethnic groups. In Kathmandu, Mr. Gooch led the Human Rights Core Group and an interagency working group on counter- ing trafficking in persons. He organized roundtables that united U.S. agencies, the Nepalese government, civil society and employment agencies in tangible cooperation, and garnered specific commitments from the Nepalese government to address trafficking-in- person action-plan recommendations. Mr. Gooch’s groundbreaking report- ing on the problem highlighted a previ- ously unrecognized form of trafficking in persons—“orphanage trafficking”— providing a more complete picture to inform programming and advocacy. Christopher Gooch currently serves as refugee coordinator in Jerusalem. He has previously served tours as a political officer covering human rights in Baghdad and Kathmandu, and as a consular officer in Riyadh. He received a bachelor’s degree in international politics from Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and conducted post-graduate Arabic study at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient in Aleppo, Syria. Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, he speaks Arabic, Nepali and Spanish. Dr. Sushma Palmer (left) presents the Mark Palmer Award to Foreign Service Officer Christopher Gooch at the AFSA Awards Ceremony Oct. 16. AFSA/JOAQUINSOSA COURTESYOFCHRISTOPHERGOOCH Christopher Gooch.