Swisspeace


swisspeace is a practice-oriented peace research institute. It carries out research on violent conflicts and their peaceful transformation. The institute aims to build the peacebuilding capacities of Swiss and international organizations by providing trainings, space for networking and exchange of experiences. It also shapes political and academic discourse on peace policy issues at the national and international level through publications, workshops and conferences. swisspeace, therefore, promotes knowledge transfer between researchers and practitioners.


swisspeace was founded in 1988 as the Swiss Peace Foundation in order to promote independent peace research in Switzerland. Today, the foundation employs about 50 staff members. Its most important donors are the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the United Nations and since 2015 Swisslos Basel.

swisspeace is an associated institute of the University of Basel, member of the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences.

swisspeace accompanied the Swiss OSCE Chairmanship in 2014, supporting projects to strengthen OSCE dialog with civil society.

The annual OSCE Ministerial Council was hosted by Switzerland in Basel in December 2014. Parallel to this event, swisspeace organized the OSCE Parallel Civil Society Conference in close cooperation with the Civic Solidarity Platform. In order to also facilitate domestic dialog, swisspeace is working closely with the Swiss NGO Working Group for the OSCE, which is coordinated by humanrights.ch.

Together with the OSCE institutions, Switzerland organized four regional workshops together with representatives of civil society in the Western Balkans (Belgrade), Central Asia (Dushanbe), the South Caucasus (Tbilisi) and all other OSCE participating States (Vienna). swisspeace assisted the Swiss Chairmanship with these workshops, helping to lay the ground for the above-mentioned civil society conference that was held in Basel parallel to the OSCE Ministerial Council meeting in December 2014.

For more information regarding swisspeace’s OSCE activities please see http://www.swisspeace.ch/projects/osce-chairmanship.html.

Contact:

swisspeace
Sonnenbergstr. 17
P.O. Box, CH – 3000 Bern 7
www.swisspeace.org

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Laurent Goetschel is director of swisspeace and professor of political science at the University of Basel. He studied international relations and political science at the Graduate Institute of International Studies and at the University of Geneva where he obtained his PhD in 1993.

He conducted research and lectured at the Universities of Lausanne and Bern. He was a visiting scholar at the Centre for European Studies (Harvard University, Cambridge MA), at the Centre for international Conflict Resolution (Columbia University, New York), and a senior fellow at the European Institute of Peace in Brussels. He directed a Swiss National Science Foundation’s research program on Swiss foreign policy from 1997 to 2000 and a research module on governance and conflict of the North-South National Centre of Competence in Research from 2001 to 2013.

Outside of academia, he worked as a journalist with the Associated Press from 1989 to 1991 and served as the political advisor of Swiss Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheline Calmy-Rey from 2003 to 2004. He is currently president of the Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries of the Swiss Academy of Sciences.