STATEMENT FROM SAMUEL A. WORTHINGTON, INTERACTION PRESIDENT & CEO
Washington, DC (November 10, 2009)—"InterAction congratulates Dr. Rajiv Shah on his nomination to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). His nomination is definitely a step in the right direction. The alliance of 187 InterAction member organizations looks forward to working with him on the historic opportunities and challenges facing the U.S. on the humanitarian and global development fronts.
Shah's work at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on food security is very highly regarded. It is our hope that he will bring that same energy and management expertise to an agency that desperately needs strong and vigorous leadership especially considering the complexity of issues he'll find in his in-box.
We want to underscore, however, that Shah will face some immediate challenges as he prepares to take on his leadership role at USAID. The Obama administration, in the absence of a USAID administrator, has embarked on establishing major development policies that will have an impact on what Shah will be able to influence and how he does his work. It is urgently important that he play a lead role in each of the following processes:
• The FY2011 budget process.
• The Presidential Study Directive (PSD) on development, which is expected to be completed in January 2010.
• Establishing the framework and pillars of the U.S. State Department's Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR).
• Policies to guide U.S. development and humanitarian work in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The challenges are many, but USAID administrator-nominee Shah has a historic opportunity to shape the way U.S. foreign assistance is done for at least the next 50 years. Rep. Howard Berman (D-CA) and other congressional leaders are looking to the new administrator to help guide discussions around climate change, food security, a rewrite of the outdated 1961 Foreign Assistance Act and countless other issues."
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Visit http://www.interaction.org/foreign-assistance-briefing-book to read InterAction's Foreign Assistance Briefing Book Progress Reports, which examines the state of U.S. foreign assistance, one year after the election of President Obama.
Visit http://www.interaction.org/sites/default/files/1/LETTERS/Memo_to_the_President-Historic_Opportunity.pdf to read a December 2008 memo to President-elect Obama detailing the development community's preferred job qualifications for the USAID administrator-nominee.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
People row a boat across the Mekong river in Kandal province, in the outskirts of Phnom Penh November 6, 2009. A jostle for influence in Southeast Asia's emerging Mekong River region ...
