Photo Credit: USAID/Albania   Officials from USAID, the Department of State, and the Office of Defense Cooperation formed a working group at the workshop to discuss ways their organizations could collaborate to improve health care in Albania.

US Mission Hosts Workshop to Improve Civil-Military Affairs in Albania

TIRANA, March 12, 2009     On March 11th-12th, the U.S. Mission in Albania hosted a special two-day workshop on U.S. civil-military relations in Tirana. The U.S.-Albania mission was selected as a focus country in order to enhance the strategic focus and coordinate resources among U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC), and the State Department. 

To support this initiative, the mission welcomed the leadership and expertise of several officials from USAID headquarters in Washington, D.C., the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the United States European Command (EUCOM) headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

In his remarks at the opening of the workshop, U.S. Ambassador John L. Withers II underlined the importance of utilizing the resources, expertise, and talents of all agencies and departments working in Albania to more fully maximize the impact of our assistance to Albania in the coming years.

Workshop participants identified sectors where Department of Defense and USAID objectives overlap and then discussed activities that can be undertaken jointly.  It was decided that Albania’s health sector, demilitarization, and disaster and emergency response could benefit from this type of cross-cutting approach.

The “Whole-of-Government” approach to planning and execution of development, defense, and diplomatic initiatives is a means to more efficiently use of U.S. Government resources to meet foreign policy goals.

Following the workshop, the U.S. Mission in Albania and the Department of Defense will sign a Memorandum of Understanding committing the organizations to continue meeting and coordinating with one another to see these initial proposals through to completion, to assess their impact/success, to generate future joint activities, and to collaborate more closely in the development of future country-level plans.