Transition Initiatives Recommendation: $57.6 million

The Transition Initiatives account funds the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) at USAID to implement quick-impact political and economic reconstruction programs. OTI provides fast, flexible, short-term assistance to support political transitions and address stabilization needs.

Justification: Funding this office at the level requested by the president would provide flexible, short-term funding for countries emerging from crisis. Most recently, OTI has implemented projects in Ivory Coast in the aftermath of the early 2011 post-electoral violence and in Haiti, providing assistance to Haiti’s government following the January 2010 earthquake.

InterAction continues to advocate for a more robust funding of programs that help bridge the gap between emergency aid and long-term development—ideally through a new account that would enable funding of recovery and transitional development assistance in post-disaster and post-conflict settings. OTI has the transitional mandate in theory, but in practice has focused on a limited scope of interventions, leaving major gaps in transitional assistance. Other funding sources, such as the Conflict Stabilization Initiatives, similarly do not deal with the fundamental transition gap, so USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) is often forced to further stretch its already limited budget to fill the holes. In order to better meet the needs of populations coming out of crisis and lay the foundation for long-term development, InterAction urges both the administration and Congress to address this shortcoming in U.S. assistance programs.

Other Key Transition Accounts

InterAction also supports funding for the following accounts, which help bridge the gap between crisis and development:

• Conflict Stabilization Operations (State and AID)• Economic Support Fund – Transition Funding

Bridging the gap between

Relief and Development

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