The Unit­ed States Agency for In­ter­na­tion­al De­vel­op­ment (US­AID) has re-opened an of­fice in Suri­name af­ter 40 years with Wash­ing­ton un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of its pres­ence in the Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­try.

Speak­ing at the of­fi­cial open­ing of the of­fice, Am­bas­sador Robert Fauch­er said that it will sup­port the US em­bassy here in its de­vel­op­ment work and that pro­grammes will be im­ple­ment­ed in var­i­ous ar­eas, es­pe­cial­ly in the agri­cul­tur­al, en­er­gy and pri­vate sec­tor.

He said US­AID will con­tin­ue to work to­geth­er as an equal part­ner to deep­en the re­la­tion­ship and pro­mote mu­tu­al co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the two na­tions.

US­AID/ESC Pro­gramme and Strat­e­gy Of­fice Di­rec­tor, Stephanie Miku­lasek, said that US­AID part­ners with 11 coun­tries in the re­gion, as well as the Guyana-based CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at and the St. Lu­cia-based OECS Sec­re­tari­at to im­ple­ment de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

She said that the Biden-Har­ris ad­min­is­tra­tion has re­newed the US com­mit­ment to the Caribbean re­gion and that new ini­tia­tives were an­nounced dur­ing last year’s Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as which are now be­ing rolled out un­der the US-Caribbean part­ner­ship to ad­dress cli­mate chal­lenges, food se­cu­ri­ty and en­er­gy co­op­er­a­tion.

While this marks the first time that US­AID has had a per­ma­nent pres­ence here since 1982, the agency has nonethe­less re­spond­ed to the need of Suri­name fol­low­ing sev­er­al nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, in­clud­ing pro­vid­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance in the af­ter­math of ma­jor flood­ing in 2006, 2008 and 2013.

Miku­lasek said US­AID’s re­newed pres­ence in Suri­name of­fers the op­por­tu­ni­ty to more deeply en­gage with the Suri­namese part­ners in pur­su­ing de­vel­op­ment ob­jec­tives ben­e­fit­ting both na­tions and peo­ple’s.

“We are very pleased to be back”, she not­ed.

For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter, Al­bert Ramdin in wel­com­ing back US­AID to the coun­try, said there was con­tin­ued co­op­er­a­tion in the field of agri­cul­ture, health­care, en­vi­ron­ment, in­vest­ment and in­ci­den­tal as­sis­tance dur­ing nat­ur­al dis­as­ters.

“This was tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance. It helps us as a coun­try to pre­pare our­selves to im­prove the pro­grammes we roll out to bet­ter the liv­ing con­di­tions in the world and in par­tic­u­lar in Suri­name.

“Our coun­try al­ready has a good co­op­er­a­tion with US­AID in terms of projects in the field of agri­cul­ture, pub­lic health, en­vi­ron­ment and in­vest­ments, but al­so with the floods,” said Ramdin, adding that US­AID is one of the agen­cies in the West­ern Hemi­sphere with enor­mous po­ten­tial “and Suri­name will make very good use of that.”

US­AID is an in­de­pen­dent agency of the Unit­ed States fed­er­al gov­ern­ment pri­mar­i­ly re­spon­si­ble for ad­min­is­ter­ing civil­ian for­eign and de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance. It sup­ports low-in­come coun­tries through pro­grams in var­i­ous ar­eas, such as the well-be­ing of young peo­ple and com­bat­ing pover­ty.

PARA­MARI­BO, Suri­name, Jun 21, CMC

CMC/ic/ir/2023