Security Assistance Monitor Holds Official Launch Event
Last Monday, the Center for International Policy (CIP) celebrated the launch of Security Assistance Monitor, a new program and web-resource that will track U.S. military and police assistance, arms sales and trainings with a focus on Africa, Central Eurasia, Latin America and the Caribbean and the Middle East. This new initiative will provide U.S. policymakers, media, scholars and civil society (in the U.S. and abroad) with important data and analysis for a more informed debate about U.S. foreign security assistance.
Security Assistance Monitor celebrated its launch at the Open Society Foundations' (OSF) headquarters in Washington, D.C. The event featured speeches from veteran Washington Post reporter Dana Priest and OSF Senior Policy Analyst Lora Lumpe, who spoke briefly to those in attendance about the importance of Security Assistance Monitor in terms of providing the public with accurate and accessible information regarding U.S. foreign security assistance. CIP Deputy Director and Director of Security Assistance Monitor Abigail Poe also took a moment to thank CIP's partner organizations and other supporters for helping to make the project a success.
During the event, Security Assistance Monitor staff provided tutorials on the types of information and data one can find on the website and database to the many attendees. Outside of Security Assistance Monitor’s partner organizations, which are the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Latin America Working Group Education Fund (LAWG) and the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED), U.S. government officials, activists, analysts and many other members of the foreign policy community attended the launch party.
As part of the launch, Security Assistance Monitor published its first in a series of upcoming country profiles on U.S. security assistance. This first one is on Yemen, and it provides an overview of U.S. security assistance to the country and the key challenges to such U.S. assistance in Yemen.
For more information about Security Assistance Monitor, please visit our contacts page or email sam@ciponline.org and follow Security Assistance Monitor on Twitter @SAMonitorOrg and Facebook.