December 3, 2018

Colleagues,

As the Action Alliance for Preventing Sexual Misconduct at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) nears its nine-month anniversary, I would like to remind our partners of the importance of sustaining our commitment to building a respectful, safe, healthy, and inclusive aid environment, with zero tolerance for sexual misconduct and other toxic behaviors. As I reminded USAID staff at a recent agency Town Hall, this is not a one-off effort. Just as I called upon our own staff to continue the drumbeat on these issues, I call on all of you to continue your work to build greater protections and safeguards for your employees and beneficiaries.

I am pleased to announce that the AAPSM has completed a review of the Agency's policy, and, as a result, is developing a comprehensive-policy approach to Preventing Workplace Sexual Harassment and Protection from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. We will release policy updates in early Calendar Year 2019, and will provide updated Agency standards and guidance for managers, employees, and our partners in the implementation of our zero-tolerance policy.

USAID continues to lead on these issues. Last month, Acting Deputy Administrator David Moore led the U.S. Delegation to the Safeguarding Summit 2018 in London, where USAID and 21 other donors signed on to political commitments designed to increase coordination and strengthen protections for our beneficiaries. Recently, in October 2018 during USAID's Global Mission Directors' Conference, we charged our Mission Directors to continue leading and engaging with you, our partners, on these issues.

We also continue to explore ways to prevent and address these issues better, both internally and externally. We recently unveiled a new Manager's Toolkit, available on our public website, which aggregates critical policies and resources for managing sexual misconduct within USAID. Parallel to this on November 2, 2018, the Agency hosted an innovation workshop that explored methodologies to further international best practices on reporting sexual exploitation and abuse in international aid. USAID's Office of the Inspector General also recently issued an updated version of its Compliance and Fraud Prevention Handbook [PDF], which addresses the handling of investigations into sexual exploitation and abuse.

As I have said before, USAID takes these issues very seriously, and I am confident you do as well. Please encourage your staff at headquarters, and on the ground, to tackle these issues and move us toward our collective goal of ending the blight of sexual misconduct within international aid. Mark Green, Administrator