ZIEGLER, Stefan

Stefan is a Swiss national with over 15 years of experience in the fields of research and advocacy related to humanitarian action. He currently works as an independent trainer and facilitator. Recent assignments include: communications training at the Kofi Annan Peacekeeping Training Centre in Accra, Ghana. He designed training courses for IFRC and UNDP. In spring 2015 he returned from a mission to eastern Ukraine with the OSCE where he was the head of the regional reporting office. Until 2013 he managed the Barrier Monitoring Unit (BMU) a research unit of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the West Bank. He was in charge of researching the humanitarian impacts of the Wall on Palestinian communities directly affected by its route.

Previously Stefan has served as Operations Support Officer for the UN, facilitating access of movement and participating in protection work. Prior to the UN, he worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), where he developed on-the-ground humanitarian aid experience and promoted sustainable handover of development projects in Georgia, Abkhazia, Palestine and the Balkans.

Stefan is an Affiliate Trainer with RedR in London. He is a member of the Irish and Swiss Emergency Response Teams, as well as the Swiss Foreign Affairs’ Expert Pool. He figures on the rosters of the German Development Agency (GIZ) and UNDP’s Early Recovery Advisors. He previously held the position of Strategic Planning Associate at the Irish Peace Institute in Limerick, Ireland where he had lived for over ten years prior to his career in humanitarianism.

He is a guest lecturer at a number of universities, among them EPFL in Lausanne, the Politecnico di Milano and is a faculty member of the Geneva School of Diplomacy. Stefan has given presentations at the EU Parliament, the UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva.

Stefan holds a Masters with distinction in International Studies from the University of Limerick, a B.A. in Sociology of Development from University College Cork, both in Ireland and a Postgraduate Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance from Fordham University in New York. He further holds training certificates, such as “Project Management in Field Operations” and “International Civilian Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding” from the Austrian Study Centre for Peace and a recent executive training course for Advisors in Peacebuilding Contexts implemented by Interpeace and the Swiss federal department of Foreign Affairs.

Stefan’s latest publication, “Communicating the Community” appeared in the journal Humanitarian Asistance in West Africa and Beyond. The “West Bank Wall – Impacts on the environment, agriculture, water supply and waste management” was published in the Swiss Urban Landscape and Architecture Magazine, Athos. He co-authored the chapter “Academic Cooperation to Foster Research and Advocacy Competences in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (West Bank)” published by Springer in 2013. He published widely with the United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and UNRWA on issues of advocacy in relation to the West Bank Wall.

Stefan now lives near Geneva in Bellegarde sur Valserine, France.