Relief and Development workers in the 21st century are facing challenges unlike any we have seen before. Instability constitutes the greatest tax on our development investments and threatens human progress. It is critical to our national security that relief and development, diplomacy, and defense agencies work effectively together. AAI has a long tradition of cooperation with the Department of Defense (DoD) and local embassies (the Department of State or DOS) for humanitarian response. Our cooperation has now expanded to include all aspects of development activities in pre- and post-conflict and disaster environments where security conditions affect the type and scope of development programs.

It is in this spirit that AAI has become one of the first signatory NGO’s for the Civilian-Military Cooperation initiative of the U. S. Army, the Humanitarian Aid Division (HAD). This new Policy, and Division, complements the concepts contained in National Security Presidential Directive-44 and DoD Directive 3000.05 on stability operations. The Policy establishes the foundation for NGO-DOS-DoD cooperation in planning and implementation. At the same time, it ensures that these new initiatives do not divert signatory NGO’s from their core sustainable aid relief and development mission. It also authorizes the U. S. Department of State, through USAID and the DoD, to pursue and support organizational changes required to support civilian-military cooperation.

Since AAI’s experience in Bosnia, El Salvador, Kosovo and later during Hurricane Katrina in 2004, we started working more intimately with military components to bring coherence to this whole-of-government planning effort, particularly at the level of the military’s theater security cooperation planning and the country team-driven Country Assistance Strategy. It is critical that we adopt a coordinated approach across regions and countries in order to avoid fragmentation of our efforts. Identifying ways of working together will ensure that our joint development efforts can be maximally effective.

SANYO DIGITAL CAMERA