USAID Democracy, human rights and governance programs

Democracy, human rights and governance programs of one type or another existed throughout the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) long and storied history.  During the first 30 years of the Agency’s operations, these programs were subsumed under various bureaucratic units and seldom referenced as an independent sector.  The “third wave of democracy,” and particularly the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, however, heralded a new era for recognizing democracy as a core element of sustainable development.  

Responding to this changed environment, USAID formed a dedicated, agency-wide unit to design, implement and evaluate work in the Democracy and Governance (DG) sector, and to provide a home for the training and deployment of experts in a wide array of DG sub-sectors.  From a small group of less than 10 staff at its birth in 1994, USAID’s team of democracy experts, based in Washington and overseas, and including a well-respected cadre of Foreign Service Nationals, grew to several hundred by the time the Agency was dismantled in 2025.  

The unit’s name and bureaucratic placement within USAID changed several times during this 30-year period:

The unit, however denominated, served as the hub of Agency efforts in the Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) sector.  Reinforcing the unit’s work were the complementary efforts of USAID’s regional bureau democracy offices, field mission democracy units, the Office of Transition Initiatives (also established in 1994), the Office Conflict Management and Mitigation (established in 2003), the agency’s policy bureau, and the contributions of various units in the Department of State, most notably the Bureau of Democracy, Human Right and Labor (DRL).  Outside the US Government, USAID’s DRG activities supported numerous partners, who not only implemented programs but significantly enhanced the intellectual capital of the DRG sector.  

Oral Histories

This landing page provides links to the oral histories of those who led the agency’s principal unit for implementing democracy and related programs during this period.  The pages in parenthesis cover the interviewees specific tenure as head of the DRG Bureau/Center/Office, although their broader reflections regarding the sector are contained throughout their interviews.

Larry Garber, Co-Interim Director, 1994-95 (pp. 28-35)	*Jennifer Windsor, Co-Interim Director, 1994-95, Deputy Director, 1995-98, Director 1998-2001
Chuck Costello, Director, 1995-1998 (pp. 116-125)	Jim Vermillion, 2001-2003 (no oral history – deceased January 2025)
Gerald (Jerry) Hyman, Director, 2003-2007 (pp. 44-56)	*Dorothy Taft, Director, 2007-2009 (pending publication)
*Sarah Mendelson, Deputy Assistant Administrator, DCHA, 2010-2013 (pp. 6-16)	*David Yang, Director, 2010-2013 (pp. 7-15)
Neil Levine, Director, 2013-2016 (pp. 59-67)	Tim Meisburger, 2017-2020 (no oral history – currently serving as political appointee)
*Shannon Green, Assistant Administrator, Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Governance, pp. 14-19	*Laura Pavlovic, Deputy Assistant Director, Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Governance, pp. 6-13.

[*The asterisks denote oral history interviews conducted specifically as part of an ADST initiative to provide first-hand perspectives on USAID’s contribution to the evolution of DG programming and its mainstreaming as part of a multi-sector development agency.]

USAID DRG CONTRIBUTIONS

The oral history interviews linked to this landing page provide a wealth of detail regarding the evolution of the sector and address the breadth of challenges that those working in the sector faced.  They serve as a testament to the enormous contributions that DRG programs made to promoting U.S. national security interests, to enhancing individual freedom and liberty, and to improving the lives of people across the globe.  As would be expected, there are significant points of both convergence and divergence regarding topics covered in the interviews.  These include: 

• Developing Agency-wide DRG strategies/policies in 1994, 2013 and 2024 and delineating sectoral objectives, priorities, and programmatic activities
• Building the sector’s programmatic capabilities to operate in diverse political and geographic settings 
• Responding to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Arab Spring, and USAID’s expulsion from Russia
• Contributing to policy debates regarding sensitive national security issues such as ending the conflicts in Bosnia and South Sudan 
• Ensuring meaningful consideration of DRG equities within USAID’s development agenda and as part of inter-agency policy deliberations
• Creating state of the art tools for conducting assessments on strategic direction, political economy, anti-corruption, rule of law, gender equity, and other issues
• Highlighting the efficacy of DRG programming through systematic evaluations and reflective learning exercises
• Promoting a robust DRG budget within USAID and with the Congress
• Collaborating with diverse USAID and US government bureaucratic units, and with governmental and nongovernmental partners
• Advocating for a proactive DRG agenda at the Development Assistance Committee, the United Nations and other international fora
• Ensuring Agency initiatives — such as local-led development, anti-corruption, gender and disability sensitive programming, and crisis prevention — were well-integrated into DRG activities 
• Training and sustaining a cadre of well-respected professionals, many of whom ultimately assumed Agency leadership positions outside the DG sector, including as Mission Directors and in Washington Bureau front offices.