In post-conflict environments, development organizations often face a difficult paradox: their goal is to help build a more open, transparent government, but in the face of threatening violence information that in the wrong hands can become a liability.
How do donors like the U.S. Agency for International Development manage that tension, between transparency and openness on one side and the need to protect their staff and partners on the other? We spoke with Rob Jenkins, deputy assistant administrator for USAID’s Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, to find out.
Jenkin’s branch of USAID oversees programs in some of the most troubled, tumultuous places on earth, from Syria to South Sudan. The bureau’s long term goal is to facilitate transitions towards peaceful and legitimate institutions. Its more immediate goal is keeping people alive to do their work.