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| Image: Flickr User - United States Mission Geneva |
By Taylor Dibbert
With a transfer of power in Colombo, the Obama administration looks to put Sri Lanka in the win column for U.S. democracy promotion efforts.
Samantha Power, U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, recently spoke at the Open Government Partnership Global Summit in Mexico City. As she mentions at the outset, this is an initiative that deals with “the ideas of getting governments to work with civil society to create more open, accountable institutions and societies.” Officially created in 2011, the Open Government Partnership is something that merits support.
Surprisingly, Power devotes a noticeable part of her remarks to Sri Lanka, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean that’s still recovering from a twenty-six year civil war that some suggest left 80,000 to 100,000 dead.
Here’s Power towards the end of her speech:
The experience of Sri Lanka, I think, embodies so much of what is at stake in this enterprise. It shows us the profound costs of impunity and corruption. It shows how a determined and persistent civil society that would not give up can swing the pendulum back toward greater accountability and transparency. And it shows how much leaders can achieve, even in a short period of time, when they are willing to engage the people they serve.
To her credit, she adds a dose of realism in the following paragraph when she mentions “all the challenges that lie ahead.” Nonetheless, it’s still peculiar that a speech like this would have referenced Sri Lanka in such detail.
Read the full story at The Diplomat