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Affiliated Adviser and Expert

Robert Van Leeuwen

Senior Associate (Non-resident), Post-Conflict Reconstruction Project and Commission on Smart Power

Associated Research Focus:

International Security
 Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Associated Programs:

CSIS Commission on Smart Power
 Post-Conflict Reconstruction

Expertise:

International crisis management; Muslim states and non-state groups; postwar reconstruction; United Nations; human rights, refugees, and displaced persons; the Balkans, Europe, Iraq, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Sudan

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Robert Van Leeuwen is a nonresident senior associate with CSIS. A veteran diplomat, he held senior crisis management positions with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) from 1976 to 1995, including chief of mission and representative of the secretary general in Hong Kong, where he led the international effort to bring an honorable end to the Vietnamese exodus, and chief of mission in Pakistan, where he worked closely with the Organization of the Islamic Conference and launched a new peace initiative for Afghanistan. He shared in the 1981 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to UNHCR with its emphasis on the Southeast Asian refugee crises. He also worked on immediate postwar reconstruction as director of the UN-affiliated Independent Bureau for Humanitarian Issues and as consultant to the UN Development Program in Bosnia and principal officer with the UN Mission in Kosovo. From 2003 to 2006, he taught human rights and related international law at the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University. He worked on economic development with the Ford Foundation in Indonesia from 1970 to 1975 and did Ph.D. dissertation research on Islam and modernization in the Special Region of Aceh. Mr. Van Leeuwen has appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and numerous other television programs, in many print media stories, and has published a wide range of articles on international affairs. A decorated Vietnam veteran, he earned a B.A. cum laude from Yale University, where he also received the Hatch Prize for contributions to the peaceful resolution of international conflict, and a M.P.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He speaks eight languages.

 
For a list of publications, click here.
 

 

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