• USAID Administrator Samantha Power in an interview with Indeewari Amuwatte of ‘TV Derana’

United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Samantha Power was in Sri Lanka recently on a two-day official visit, during which she announced that the US would be launching new assistance programmes to help Sri Lanka overcome the ongoing economic crisis. Following is the transcript of an interview conducted on Sunday, 11 September, which aired on TV Derana, hosted by interviewer Indeewari Amuwatte. Indeewari Amuwatte: I’m joining you tonight from the American Centre in Colombo, where I’m joined by the USAID Administrator who’s visiting Sri Lanka briefly. Samantha Power, thank you very much for your time. So much has changed in Sri Lanka since your last visit; what do you observe here? And what brings you to this juncture? Administrator Power: Well normally, I visit Sri Lanka, or in the past, I have visited in circumstances where there have been political fights about this or that. There have been economic challenges for sure, over the years. Obviously, issues related to human rights violations associated with the conflicts brought me to Sri Lanka when I was President Obama’s Human Rights Advisor when I was United Nations (UN) Ambassador, but unfortunately, this trip really is motivated by the gravity of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis. And the privilege that I have in running USAID, of being able to open up the toolbox and say, okay with our resources, which are finite, but what can we do to support the people of this country at this really, really vulnerable time?  And, you know, it’s a particularly difficult time, because it’s sort of the end of the beginning. It’s moving out of one phase into a new set of economic reforms, and political reforms as well, which need to accompany the economic. And this is where people are already tired. They’ve already spent months, maybe, out on the streets; some of them involved in protests, but almost everybody has some period where they’ve been walking or riding bicycles, where they had been accustomed to taking buses or driving themselves. And, this is a period where there’s still great sacrifice that lies ahead in order for the country to get back on a more stable economic footing. And so, President Biden asked me to come and to see up close what more the US can do, and we have come and have identified fertiliser for farmers as one area where – with the infusion of $ 40 million in support for fertiliser and other agricultural and necessities – we can try to help the farmers that are hoping to have a better yield in this next planting season than they have in the one that just passed.  And so, that’s very important, but there’s also an acute humanitarian need of the kind that I’m not accustomed to seeing in this country, except in a time of conflict. And that is, where we have parents who just literally wake up in the morning, or don’t go to bed at night, because all they can think about is ‘how am I going to feed my kids?’. And so, today I announced an additional $ 20 million in emergency humanitarian support, to try to help mothers be able to feed their families and meet those emergency needs for the most vulnerable for that sector, that right now, isn’t being reached with State assistance, and that haven’t been able to identify any other means, really, in keeping families afloat. So, those are just two ways of trying to chip in.  Also, to remind Sri Lankans, there’s an awful lot of solidarity out there with them. The crisis here has generated global headlines, there is a lot of soul searching and a lot of questions in other countries about how we can avoid similar scenarios for ourselves. So, others are learning, unfortunately, the hard lessons that Sri Lanka is learning as well. But, I think that this is a time where if we could combine more global solidarity with the Sri Lankan people with domestic solidarity, where political divisions can give way to some unity to get through this – this really difficult time – and get these reforms on track, then, one would be able to see Sri Lanka getting to the other side. Amuwatte: Your visit to Sri Lanka comes following the International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement that Colombo reached recently. You’ve met the Sri Lankan President, and the assistance you’ve pledged, in addition to $ 40 million, also comes on top of USAID’s assistance pledge in June. But in terms of reforms, what have you discussed with the President? And what more should Sri Lanka do, today, in order to overcome the economic challenges that we’re talking about? Administrator Power: Well, I think the President has made clear his intention of moving forward with a set of reforms that were agreed to with the IMF. And I think, the focus now – on his part and on the part of his team – is also staffing up to be in a position to execute those reforms; very, very challenging, and none of them are easy.  I know that had I come even a month ago, I would have seen a very different picture in terms of the queues at the petrol stations. I met mothers, in fact, who had to bring their kids with them to line up because, of course, they have no childcare for their kids. And so, you have kids sleeping at petrol stations for days on end. So, I don’t have to tell you, even seeing the QR code and the organisation now, the fuel rationing policy at least decreases the sense of chaos as well, that maybe Sri Lankans felt, but also outside investors who want to attract tourists and others. So, kind of tactical reforms like that, these deeper economic structural reforms we discussed.  And then, we stressed – the industrial general and myself – the critical importance of keeping the political and governance reform agenda on centre stage as well. And, this is very, very difficult, because there are so many things that need doing, there is so much to clean up. There’s so much to recover from. There’s so much mobilisation of debt restructuring or external resource mobilisation that is needed, that it can be tempting to just focus on the economy.  But, I know from talking with the private sector, both here and internationally, that investors are also looking for political stability. They’re looking to see the anti-corruption reforms moving forward. There are still, as you know, years of questions about transitional justice, and previous human rights violations, to start to see progress in those areas. The Prevention of the Terrorism Act (PAT) – every visit I have made here for almost 15 years, has involved a discussion, with one of the previous administrations, about the PAT – finally getting that repealed, as the President has committed to doing and putting, again, the country on a more stable, legal foundation that is more in accordance with international standards.  We talked about all of that, but that is a very big agenda. And making sure that, again, as the Government now gets constituted, and as the ministries get filled out, and as responsibilities get allocated, we at USAID, are looking to see where we can provide the technical support and technical capacity, and on these priority reforms that the President and the people are hoping will unlock more of Sri Lanka’s economic potential. Amuwatte: You just spoke about human rights, and we are also speaking at a time when Sri Lanka is preparing to face the Geneva sessions, and there are concerns raised about economic crimes on top of violations against human rights. At the same time, in Sri Lanka there are concerns and there are questions such as why Sri Lanka is not allowed to do what Sri Lanka can, to allow Sri Lanka to be able to present what Sri Lanka can without our own means. How do you react to this? Administrator Power: Well, I think maybe stepping back from Sri Lanka, you know, the reason that when the UN was founded, Eleanor Roosevelt and a team of international specialists from all around the world came together and crafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was because of the core recognition – after the Second World War, especially – that governments can’t always be trusted to respect the rights of their people, and that the people in society sometimes need to be able to have recourse to universal rights, which they may not be able to enjoy in their own societies.  And so, that’s how international law came into existence. That’s why we have a United Nations. That’s why we have a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). And the goal of these instruments and the goal of these bodies is not to meddle in somebody else’s country or dictate what should be done. It is to say, here are the universal human rights. The people in this case who have suffered human rights violations, may not feel that they have the power within their own societies, but they can feel empowered by the knowledge that these international instruments exist, and that this is the same as, what happens, actually, in the US, where when our national laws are not delivering, you will see people appealing.  For example, for a long time, we didn’t have a right to healthcare and a lot of the debate about healthcare, people say, well, actually, in other countries, and in these international instruments, there’s a right to healthcare. So, how come we don’t have health insurance? And so, in countries around the world, it’s a set of standards against which we are all measured. And I think, our hope over many years, and I’ve been active in engaging, again, Sri Lankans of different governments, for a long time on accountability and transitional justice, the hope has always been that the momentum for looking into past allegations of human rights violations, the momentum for tracking down missing persons, and giving families who’ve lost loved ones closure, that momentum would come from within and it has.  There would never have been a Human Rights Council resolution in the first place but for the anguish and pain of the families and the support of civil society, and some politicians, in order to help justice be done. But every time something is set up here, it seems like something else gets in the way of the kind of implementation or the kind of follow-through that those families have been seeking for a long time.  So to be clear, it’s very much within Sri Lanka’s sovereign control to shape the form of transitional justice that takes hold here, and what the Human Rights Council offers is a whole host of technical expertise about how transitional justice has been managed in other settings. And our hope, at some point, is that that would be seen as a resource. And it has been, at different times. There have been periods where it really looked like, for example, the Office of Missing Persons was going to get traction and resources. There have been times when it looked like a truth commission really would be set up and there’d be some momentum behind it. And certainly, the new Administration has made promises in those directions. And so, in Geneva, again, there are the standards, the sort of – the keeper of the Human Rights flame, is the Human Rights Council, and then there is the expertise for when there is the kind of political will that is needed to meet the aspirations of people who underwent that violence. Amuwatte: In 2015, you did mention this progress made. But right now, the US Treasury also announced that they will support Sri Lanka to restructure debt and discuss with potential creditors who will potentially help Sri Lanka come out of this situation. What effort will USAID put into this? Again, another question that is there has been regarding a lot of scepticism about US funding in Sri Lanka, whether there are any strings attached to it. So, will there be any strings attached going forward? Administrator Power: I think a distinguishing feature of US assistance in Sri Lanka is that we really look to see how our assistance can empower our partners, Sri Lankans, on the ground. And I can say just from meeting with the farmers to whom we’re providing the fertiliser, our goal is for them to have bigger yields in the next rice planting and harvesting season, full stop. Our goal is not for them to have bigger yields so that we can take a cut of the yields, or so that we can then say ‘hey, we gave you that fertiliser money, now you better do this for us’. That’s really not the American approach.  And, I think that when you talk about debt and USAID, I think what we’re focused on now, because we work at the grassroots level, or try to, is there are a lot of Sri Lankans now who are carrying debt that, had the economy continued to function as it had in years past – maybe not perfectly, but nonetheless, functionally – they would have been able to, for example, produce the kinds of crop that would allow them to pay back the people that they borrowed from, in order to buy the fertiliser to be able to plant and nourish the crops in the first place.  But now with the economic collapse, it’s not clear how a lot of Sri Lankans are going to be able to repay their debt. And so, one of the things that we are looking at as USAID, is at the micro-level – with small farmers, with 10 farmers, with people who borrow just to be able to pay school fees to get their kids to school – what can we do in support of those families.  But additionally, since it’s incredibly important that the Sri Lankan Government be providing support to the most vulnerable, and certainly we heard from the President an intention to address food security and malnutrition in the most vulnerable; we can help with programme design, drawing on other social safety net programmes that we have supported in other parts of the world. Again, even though the civil service is very large in Sri Lanka, making sure that there is the human capacity to implement these programmes, and to do so in a way where the intended beneficiaries are reached. And where assistance is not deployed because of some political favour, out of some political preference, but is deployed on the basis of need. That is how we try to operate as USAID.  I’m not saying that we have been perfect over the years in Sri Lanka or in any other country. But, we are always on the ground trying to listen and learn and think about it; if a programme is not producing its desired effects, how do we adjust it? If – and this is true now –if we designed a programme before the economic crisis, how would we now need to think about adjusting the programming because circumstances, as you said, have changed so much?  But, our goal at USAID is for there to be no USAID in Sri Lanka. Because nobody wants assistance or handouts, really; they may need them, and so they want them in the sense that they need some support to feed their families in a crisis. But what every individual that I’ve met in my travels around the world, and here, wants is sovereignty, self-sufficiency, and dignity. And I think, the ethos of USAID’s programming is to think through ‘how can we use our limited resources to catalyse that kind of economic growth, those kinds of economic opportunities, where the next planting season, farmers get themselves back in the cycle that they have been in before, of being able to buy the same supply, the same fertiliser to get the yield and to make the progress they need to make’. Amuwatte: And finally, the China factor has been a massive concern for the US and India as well, speaking about sustainability, or even when we talk about Sri Lanka’s reliance on it. So, how concerned are you now, after your conversations with Sri Lankan parties, and also in terms of IMF negotiations going forward, especially in terms of Sri Lanka’s economic stability and security? Administrator Power: Well, I think all players in the international system should wish to see countries becoming more independent and not more dependent. And so, again, I think that is a really important pillar of the approach that President Biden is taking, as we think about what support we can offer, how it enhances independence rather than dependence.  Debt, unfortunately, is a form of dependence, because you are reliant on the people from whom you have borrowed. In moments like this, especially when you’re not able to pay back your debt in the near term, you’re reliant on them making adjustments and being persuadable. That’s not a good feeling. For any of us who’ve incurred debt in our private lives; it’s certainly not a good feeling for a nation that finds itself suffering significant debt distress.  So, we believe all countries have an opportunity to stand with Sri Lanka at this vulnerable moment. And we believe that Sri Lankans will remember, probably for generations, those of us who are creditors. The US is a creditor, as well, and a member of the Paris Club. Were we willing to roll up our sleeves and work with Sri Lanka in helping support the country on its road out of this crisis? And we would hope that the People’s Republic of China and all other creditors would do the same, putting the interests of this wonderful country and the people of this wonderful country who are incredibly dynamic, incredibly resilient, and incredibly capable of advancing their own economic interests, but where there has been a lot of mismanagement, a lot of corruption, some very poor decisions made over many, many years, but to unlock the potential of those people – those of us who have leverage and have an opportunity to offer support.  We can’t conceive why a country wouldn’t step forward and show that solidarity at this hour of such great need. Amuwatte: In your understanding, how far has Sri Lanka come in solving this issue? And especially with the IMF, and in terms of negotiations, potential negotiations with the creditors? What more do we need to do? Administrator Power: Well, I mean, I do think that it is important to acknowledge that, first of all, the staff-level agreement with the IMF needs to translate into a fully-fledged agreement, but when that agreement is secured, that’s actually when a lot of the hard work begins. Because it’s one thing to agree on a set of reforms, it’s another thing to implement those reforms, and try to rationalise the economy, balance the books, and get the export-import balance more right-sized than it has been in the past.  And so, there are going to be some very difficult sacrifices asked of the Sri Lankan people, and I don’t know how broad-based the understanding is that simply signing an agreement is just the beginning, that the agreement is actually just a piece of paper. It’s the reforms and cutting down on some of the more wasteful programmes – but even wasteful programmes have beneficiaries – and there are winners and there are losers. And so, I think, this is why it is so important to keep an eye on the legitimacy of the entire enterprise and do everything, all authorities to do everything in their power, to be transparent and candid about the difficult choices ahead.  I think the President has tried to do that – to level with the Sri Lankan people – but at every step of the way to be open about the sacrifices that are demanded, and at every step of the way, I hope for countries like the US, to again, be standing with the Sri Lankan people because it’s going to feel lonely, as those tough economic reforms kick in. And that show of solidarity from the outside world I hope will be a source of resources in some cases, but also a source of hope that there is light on the other side. Amuwatte: Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. We have with us Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Samantha Power joining us at Hyde Park, a former journalist and author of award-winning books and a Pulitzer Prize winner, in Colombo, talking about Sri Lanka’s crisis and the way forward.