David Yang

May 1, 2017–July 31, 2017 As an appointee of the Obama Administration at the US Agency for International Development (USAID), David Yang served as founding Director of the Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance, and later as Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance. He oversaw USAID’s work in human rights, democratic governance, fragile states and peacebuilding (including “women, peace and security”). He served as USAID’s representative to the Atrocity Prevention Board, and co-chaired the Governance Network of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. Previously, he was Senior Advisor in UNDP’s Washington office; Senior Coordinator for Democracy Promotion in the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor; and a speech writer for Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. He has a BA in politics from the University of California, Santa Cruz; and an MA and PhD in international relations from the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University.

Fellowship Project

Based on his experience at USAID, Dr. Yang researched how to advance the integration of atrocity prevention and the “Responsibility to Protect” into the mainstream of international development. He focused on the need to connect the respective analytical methods and programmatic agendas of the atrocity-prevention community and the fragile-states community.

Read his report, "The Responsibility to Protect" and International Development: Connecting the Atrocity-Prevention and Fragile-States Agendas (PDF).