Pierre Hazan

Pierre Hazan is an author and peacebuilding expert known for his work in transitional justice, conflict resolution and mediation. He started his professional life as a journalist.
==Early Life and Education==
Pierre Hazan was born in Alexandria, Egypt. His parents left to Switzerland when he was 4 years old. He pursued his higher education in the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies (Geneva), the Center for Strategic Studies (Aberdeen University, UK) and his PhD at Geneva University.
==Career==
===Journalism and Reporting===
Pierre Hazan began his career as a journalist, covering a wide range of conflicts as well as humanitarian and human rights issues. He mostly worked with Le Temps (Geneva), Libération (Paris), and the Swiss Radio and Television (RTS, Geneva/Lausanne). His work took him to numerous conflict zones, where he reported on the ground and documented the impact of war on communities, in particular in the Balkans, the Great Lakes and the Sahel region in Africa, and in the Middle East. With Reed Brody (Human Rights Watch), Pierre Hazan discovered in 2001 the archives of the Chad political police of the former dictator Hissène Habré. This discovery constituted key evidence of the crimes committed by Habré and led to the establishment of the Extraordinary African Chambers (EAC) in Dakar. The EAC sentenced on 30 May 2016 Hissène Habré to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, war crimes and torture, including sexual violence and rape. 
Pierre Hazan is the founder of JusticeInfo.net, an independent website in French and English covering justice initiatives in countries dealing with serious violence. It is a media outlet of Fondation Hirondelle based in Lausanne, Switzerland and financed by its readers and private and public donors. 
===Research and Academia===
Building upon his experiences as a journalist, Hazan delved into academic research, focusing on peace processes and the challenges of post-conflict reconstruction. He lectured in different institutions, including the Graduate Institute for International and Development Studies (Geneva), the Paris Institute of Political Studies and the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD). From 2010 to 2014, he chaired with Catherine Queloz a research on Politics of Memory and Artistic practices: The Role of Art in Peace and Reconstruction Process [PIMPA/PPR] with the support of the strategic fund of HES-SO (2010-2012), then, by the Swiss National Fund (2012-2014) . The research studied the representations of massive human rights violations in public space. It was based on case studies (Bosnia, Israel/Palestine, Berlin, Derry/Londonderry) since 2000. It analyzes forms of representation of mass crimes, and examines the role of artists, governments, political parties, human rights activists and victims' associations in decision-making processes.
===Peacebuilding and Mediation===
Pierre Hazan provided expertise and guidance to governments, international organizations, and civil society actors involved in conflict resolution processes. With Brian Currin, Silvia Casale, Raymond Kendall, Nuala O'Loan and Alberto Spektorowski, he was a member of the International Contact Group on the Basque conflict leading to the Aïete peace conference which took place in Donostia-San Sebastián (Basque Country) on October 17, 2011. In 2014, Pierre Hazan started his collaboration with the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, one of the main private organizations in mediation in armed conflict. As a senior advisor, he worked mostly in Central Africa, in the Sahel region (Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso), and in Ukraine.
===Truth Commission and Reparation===
Hazan was a Commissioner (2021-2022) of the French Independent Commission for the Recognition and Reparation of alleged Sexual Violence committee by members of religious institutes. This Truth Commission led by Antoine Garapon has the mandate to listen to the victims, offer reparation, identity the causes that allow sexual violence to be perpetrated and prevent further abuses and crimes. 
===Awards and Recognition===
Pierre Hazan was a fellow at Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School (2004), a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington DC (2005) and a Richard von Weizsäcker fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin (March 2022- July 2023).
===Books===
Pierre Hazan has written several books and articles. His writings have explored topics such as mediation in armed conflict, truth commissions, and international criminal justice, 
•	Negotiating with the Devil, Inside the World of Armed-Conflict Mediation (Hurst, upcoming 1st semester 2024). Originally published in French in September 2021, with the title: Négocier avec le diable, la médiation dans les conflits armés. Anne-Cécile Robert in Le Monde Diplomatique writes: “Pierre Hazan offers a very subtle analysis of the international mediation missions (United Nations, Red Cross, etc.) in which he has participated over the last thirty years, as well as those he has observed (Bosnia, Rwanda, Syria...). At a time when neoconservatism is promoting a dubious "diplomacy of values", Hazan demonstrates that morality can ultimately be the worst enemy of peace”. In Le Monde, Marc Semo wrote: “Pierre Hazan analyzes with finesse what this quest for dialogue means in an increasingly chaotic world where the West is no longer hegemonic”. In Libération, Arnaud Vaulerin says: “In a short essay that leads one to think against oneself, Négocier avec le diable. La médiation dans les conflits armés, Pierre Hazan revisits the last thirty years in the theater of mass crimes from Bosnia to the Sahel, from Ukraine to Afghanistan”. Andrés Allemand Smaller in Le Figaro and in La Tribune de Genève notes: “Negotiating with the Devil, a book that lifts the veil on the dilemmas and pitfalls of mediation in armed conflicts. A little-known world, revealed by the Geneva-based author Pierre Hazan, advisor to the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, one of the main organizations active in this field”. Luis Lema in Le Temps underlines: “Senior advisor to the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, Pierre Hazan has just published an enlightening and stimulating book on mediation in armed conflicts”. In Le Vif/L'Express, Gérald Papy, wrote: “Journalist turned senior advisor to the Center for Humanitarian Dialogue, Pierre Hazan has published Negotiating with the Devil, a fascinating essay on mediation in armed conflicts”. François Bougon notes in Mediapart: “Private mediation in armed conflicts gained momentum in the 2000s, at a time when Western countries were embarking on the war against terrorism and forbidding themselves to negotiate with terrorists. This policy has failed, says Pierre Hazan, and today the war in Ukraine once again raises the question of war resolution, mediation and the inevitable tensions between justice and peace”. In the daily 24 Heures, Corinne Dandric writes: “Reading this essay is heartbreaking and enlightening. A powerful text that can be reread many times in a lifetime”.	
•	Judging War, Judging History, Behind peace and Reconciliation. Thierry Cruvellier says in African Affairs, "In Judging War, Judging history, Pierre Hazan offers an erudite account of the genesis of transitional justice. He tells a compelling tale of how it emerged and rapidly developed over the last two decades”. In Le Monde diplomatique, Jean Ziegler writes: "Pierre Hazan, in a brilliant and erudite book beautifully written, analyzes the fascinating account of the judicial and cultural revolution that started after the end of the Cold War." 
===Exhibition===
Pierre Hazan was the curator of the War and Peace exhibition at the Museum of Martin Bodmer Foundation, Geneva, Switzerland (2019-2020), in partnership with the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The exhibition which shows rare documents and invited the visitors to reflect on the choices they would make in dramatic circumstances was saluted by the media. The catalogue was published by Gallimard.
===Human Rights Film Festival===
With Léo Kaneman and Yäel Reinharz Hazan, Pierre Hazan is one of the co-founders of the International Film and Forum on Human Rights (fifdh.org) in Geneva in November 2002, which became a leading international event on film and human rights. 
===Video===
Faut-il accepter de négocier avec le diable ?, Thinkerview , September 2022 
Negotiating with the devil: Mediation in armed conflicts - Pierre Hazan discusses with Rony Brauman, CRASH-MSF , 2023
===Selected works===
Hazan’s books include:
•	Pierre Hazan, Negotiating with the Devil, Inside the World of Armed-Conflict Mediation (Hurst, upcoming 1st semester 2024). Originally published in French, Négocier avec le diable, la médiation dans les conflits armés, Textuel, September 2022, ISBN-10 ‏: ‎2845979193
•	Pierre Hazan, Judging War, Judging History, Behind peace and Reconciliation, Stanford University Press, 21 May 2010, ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0804769559
•	Rosalind Shaw (Editor), Lars Waldorf (Editor), and Pierre Hazan (Editor), Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass Violence, Stanford University Press, 23 April 2010, ISBN-10 ‏<:‎ 0804761507
•	Pierre Hazan, Justice in a Time of War, the Secret History of the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, with the foreword of Cherif Bassiouni, Texas A&M, 3 September 2004, ASIN : B005IONGZ4
Category:People from Alexandria					
Category:Egyptian people
Category:Author
Category:Peacebuilding
Category:Journalists