VIDEO & PHOTOS: Reed & Amo Discuss Visit to Liberia & Ghana
CRANSTON, RI – U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and U.S. Representative Gabe Amo (D-RI), the Vice Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, traveled to Liberia and Ghana this week to meet with foreign leaders and top U.S. officials in the region to bolster partnerships, strengthen international development, and discuss a host of economic, humanitarian, trade, and security issues.
The full transcript of Senator Reed and Congressman Amo’s remarks follows:
SEN. REED: Good afternoon. I had the privilege and honor of traveling with Congressman Gabe Amo to Ghana and Liberia.
We were interested in seeing the current situation there, but particularly the impacts on proposed cuts to the USAID agency, the National Institutes of Health, many other federal agencies, including the State Department.
In Ghana, we met with the Charge of Affairs, Rolf Olson, and representatives of the Embassy staff, we were briefed on the current situation there.
And then we moved to Liberia, which was the focus of our trip. The United States and Liberia have a long, close, and very, very solid relationship. As most of you know, Liberia was sponsored by the United States. It was literally American citizens, African Americans who left the middle of America and went to Liberia to set up the country. And they've modeled their country on our system of democracy and the ties are very strong.
And it's evidenced by the number of Liberian-Americans who are here in Rhode Island, and they composed an incredibly useful and productive group in our state.
We had a chance to meet the leaders of Liberia, the Vice President Jeremiah Koung, the Minister of Defense Geraldine George, and National Security Advisor Kofi Woods.
We also had a chance to get out and look at the non-governmental organizations that are so critical. Plan International, which is headquartered, the U.S. Division, in Rhode Island, and has a wonderful facility, which I'll talk about in a moment there. We got out to see that.
We also had a chance to sit down with the representatives of the World Food Program from the Catholic Relief Services. And in all of these we were asking what would be the impact of the proposed cuts and their answers across the board was significant.
In fact, you know they were very pessimistic about the impact. And one of the things that I think is important to point out is that a great deal of our aid to Liberia goes for education, feeding children, and health. And those are three critical areas.
Liberia has a very poor educational system and this aid, along with other international parties, is designed to improve it.
Also, Liberia has been a source of Ebola viruses, they suffered through COVID, Malaria, and HIV is still current and present in the country. And our efforts to control these benefit not only Liberians, but they benefit the whole area and also the world. Epidemics move very quickly from one country to another. All you have to do is get on an airplane.
So what we're doing is preemptively ensuring that we do not face some of these pandemics. We support a lot of research that they're conducting in Liberia on treatments, vaccines for these different diseases. But the impact is going to be very, very significant.
We moved, we had a chance to go and visit Plain International, about a two hour ride outside of Monrovia and was so impressed. They're focusing on helping to improve the quality of life for women and young women and girls. They are actively trying to erase, cultural tendencies that diminish women in that society.
And they're doing very innovative things. They have an operation where they harvest cassava, which is a vegetable fruit. They grind it up, they prepare it for distribution, and they get it all over the country as a food. And it's very, very helpful.
They also had a very ingenious system of banking that they were teaching the women, which is anonymous. So that if their partner decides he wants the money, it's difficult to kind of impossible to get it.
And that is giving women now not only a productive role, but also some financial security. And they emphasize, Plan international, the overall impact of gender respect so that women are treated as they should be treated – and that's something that's critically important.
Once again, I think they'll suffer from some of the problems that we've seen with the extraction of the USAID money. One thing we have to recognize is that this is not just charity for Liberia. We have critical issues here. China is trying to move into that whole part of West Africa.
So far the Liberians have not been very receptive because of their close ties to us. But when they're faced with the loss of education funding, food for children, many other things, the Chinese I think were quite willing to step up.
We also have another issue here, which is an aspect of global climate change, which is the cultivation of rubber, which is one of the most important industries in Liberia and it will become more and more important because we're seeing through climate change a significant diminishment of rubber production in areas of Asia and the Pacific.
And so climate change is shifting a valuable resource into that area of West Africa.
Of course, we want to prevent any type of conflicts and that's important there, we don't want instability. We want a government that's responsible to us and we want to be responsible to them.
One other point I should make about the loss of USAID, we are literally losing lots of skilled professional in our embassy. There were 24 American personnel that were just summarily dismissed, 99 local citizens were dismissed, and we've lost our outreach. We've lost our ability to communicate in a practical way with the people of Liberia, and that harms our national security.
We need that kind of American presence so that we maintain what has been historically profound loyalty between the United States and Liberia.
With that, let me recognize my colleague, Gabe.
REP. AMO: Thank you, Senator. I'm grateful to have had this opportunity to travel with our senior senator, Jack Reed, to a region that is important to our future and to countless Rhode Islanders.
For me personally, it was an honor to be in two countries that represent my background. My dad, as you may know, was born in Ghana. My mother was born in Liberia, and two hard-working Rhode Islanders like them gave me the opportunity to work for the 550,000 people of the 1st Congressional District.
But I'll tell you this, it was quite apparent, especially in our time in Liberia, the bulk of our trip, that there is a great recognition for the United States and its contribution to Rhode Islanders both on the African continent and here in Rhode Island.
In fact, as I said repeatedly along the trip, that there is no greater friend to Liberia in the U.S. Congress than Senator Jack Reed. And to a person, they nodded their heads in agreement and expressed that gratitude.
And that gratitude is an extension of the hope that I believe we share with Liberia. It's a hopeful nation. It's a young nation.
They have had trials and tribulations from two civil wars in recent memory, to working hard to have successive democratic transitions that have been supported by us here in the United States.
However, in order to fulfill the promise of a good relationship, and let's be clear, this is a very strong relationship. The United States depended on Liberia during World War II.
President Roosevelt even traveled there to ensure that we had the ability to get rubber, to procure rubber for the effort against the powers that were working against all our pursuit of democracy around the world.
And so they have contributed. But in a relationship, we need to have expectations that are reasonable of one another.
And in fact, what we have seen from the State Department under the Trump administration, with the erosion of the support from the State Department, from USAID, and its collapse has really disrupted that long-term relationship.
As Senator Reed said, this connection is historic in its nature, but it also requires investments into the future. And so when we look at our global public health apparatus, our global health security, and to combat things like Ebola, to combat Mpox, to combat diseases that we won't see here in the United States.
We need to participate in a robust public health exchange, surveillance, and making sure that we are training researchers. We have seen that capacity diminish with cuts to the NIH and the CDC.
In addition to USAID, we saw facilities run by people who are trained at American institutions – Liberians, who have gone back to support this incredibly important effort.
Moreover, when you look at all of the range of supports from NGOs, like Catholic Relief Services, like the World Food Program, they expressed the great consequence of even a short gap in support.
That may mean lives that are lost, all of the progress that we have made on HIV and AIDS, that progress will be lost.
That makes their country more unstable, but contributes to regional instability and instability across the continent.
And that is connected to what we see as the looming threat from China to be an alternative, an alternative to the American values that are the customer of choice, that are the places that Liberians want to invest in is American people and American companies. But we create a condition where that becomes even more difficult.
And so to see firsthand, alongside Senator Reed, the impact of these cuts was telling and meaningful. So we have a mission to relate to our colleagues in Washington that this is unacceptable and this is a mere microcosm of what we will see across the world if the United States steps away from its role as leaders on the global stage to not only protect our interests, but to advance the growth and development of our allies as we build forward.
And so I say again, it was a great opportunity to see firsthand, but now we have to take this forward. With all of the capacities that we have, for me on the Foreign Affairs Committee as the Vice Ranking Member, to bring this set of findings to my colleagues and ensure that America's leadership and our support for our allies remains our focus and moves in a direction opposite of what President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and the like have done that has really caused lots of instability across the world.
Thank you for the opportunity to share this information on a very meaningful experience for us both.
SEN. REED: Thank you very much.