iF October DIGITAL September-October 2020 | Page 32

Liz Schrayer, USGLC
IMPACT 2020 PROFILE
Senator Kamala Harris
Background on the senator’s statements,
positions, and record on diplomacy,
global development, and America’s role
the world
Growing up in California as the
daughter of immigrants, Kamala Harris
has long given voice to the importance
of strengthening America’s
role in the world, calling for a “robust
diplomatic corps” and “principled
engagement throughout the world.”
As a young girl, Harris traveled to India
and has described how those trips
“made me who I am today” and how
she was inspired by her grandfather’s
fight for freedom, democracy, and civil
rights in the country. As District Attorney
for San Francisco and later California
Attorney General, she worked
to combat human trafficking, including
traveling to Mexico with other state attorneys
general to sign a bilateral accord
improving coordination to combat
this transnational threat.
32 iF Magazine |September-October 2020
ances saying “our country is strongest
when we stand together with our allies
and when we rally the world to
act instead of simply acting alone.”
As a senator, she has pushed to elevate
civilian-led tools of diplomacy
to achieve a “strong, progressive foreign
policy that keeps Americans safe
at home and promotes our values
abroad.” On a wide range of global
challenges, she has called for reinvigorating
American engagement in the
world – from addressing terrorism to
nuclear threats to climate change to
infectious disease – stating “we must
do everything we can to protect our
nation and our allies from the threats
we face around the world.” She has
consistently supported resources for
and opposed cuts to the International
Affairs Budget.
As a keynote speaker at NDI’s 2017
Madeleine K. Albright Luncheon,
Harris highlighted the need to “speak
up for full funding” for America’s development
and diplomacy programs
that “while less than 1% of the overall
federal budget... these investments
make us safer and more secure, because
they strengthen vulnerable
societies and help us avoid military
interventions.”
A passionate advocate for women and
girls, Harris traveled to Afghanistan,
Iraq, and Jordan early in her career in
In her 2016 campaign for the U.S.
Senate, her foreign policy platform
called for preventing the need for
military action through “the power
of smart diplomacy” and embracing
multilateral engagement and allithe
Senate, visiting with women in
the Za’atari refugee camp. Reflecting
on her experience, she wrote an open
letter to women around the world,
stating, “There are countries where
women who engage in the political
process face not only slurs or whisper
campaigns or comments about their
appearance — they face rape and violence
and death... You better believe
we’ve got to change that.”
In her 2020 campaign for the Democratic
presidential nomination, Harris
wrote that America’s greatest
foreign policy accomplishment was
the “post-war community of international
institutions, laws, and democratic
nations we helped to build.” In
her 2020 policy platform on climate
change, she highlighted the global dimension
of the challenge and called
on “executive agencies, such as US-
AID, to cooperate with other countries
and international partners to
support climate resiliency, improve
disaster preparedness, and restore the
health of environmental systems in
order to address climate migration.”
Following the outbreak of COV-
ID-19, she introduced new legislation
in the Senate – the Improving Pandemic
Preparedness and Response
Through Diplomacy Act – to designate
a presidential envoy to focus on
global pandemic preparedness. In announcing
the bill, she stated that “No