United States | Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, USAID
Former Director, Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program, Inter-American Dialogue
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Michael Camilleri served as the Director of the Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program at the Inter-American Dialogue from May 2017 until April 2021. He serves as acting Assistant Administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean. He was previously a Senior Advisor to Administrator Samantha Power and led the Agency’s Democracy Delivers Initiative and its Northern Triangle Task Force.
An international lawyer and former diplomat, he served in the Obama administration from 2012 to 2017 as the Western Hemisphere adviser on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as Director for Andean Affairs at the National Security Council.
Prior to joining the US government, Michael was a human rights specialist at the Organization of American States and a senior staff attorney at the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). He also worked with a coalition of civil society organizations in Guatemala and at a large international law firm.
Camilleri’s commentary and analysis on legal and policy issues in the Americas have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Americas Quarterly, BBC, Fox News, Univision, NTN24, and CNN en Español. Michael is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and he has been an adjunct professor of law and international affairs at the George Washington University, American University, and the University of Baltimore. He holds a B.A. in history from the University of Notre Dame and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.
Dialogue alumnus Michael Camilleri joined the Biden-Harris Administration as a senior advisor to Administrator-designate Samantha Power at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He will lead a new USAID task force on the Northern Triangle of Central America.
After a divisive campaign season and unprecedented election year marked by the Covid-19 pandemic, Joe Biden will be sworn in today as the 46th president of the United States of America. What implications will his presidency have for US foreign policy, particularly in Latin America? Our experts share their opinions in these quotes, op-eds, interviews, and Q&As from the Latin America Advisor.
En diálogo con El Espectador, Michael Camilleri, director del Programa de Estado de Derecho Peter D. Bell del Diálogo Interamericano, habla sobre lo que vendrá para la implementación del Acuerdo de Paz en Colombia, y cómo responderá Joe Biden a la crisis migratoria en América Central.
With the formal political space [in Venezuela] so stuck, it’s increasingly the various actors of civil society who are coming together to address people’s real problems and to consider the big questions like ‘How do we move forward from here?'
Joe Biden brings a deeper knowledge of Latin America and the Caribbean to the presidency than any US leader since the end of the Cold War.
