Jakob Kellenberger (born 19 October 1944 in Heiden, Switzerland) is a former Swiss diplomat and former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Since 2013 he has been the president of swisspeace. [1]
Jakob Kellenberger (born 19 October 1944 in Heiden, Switzerland) is a former Swiss diplomat and former president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Since 2013 he has been the president of swisspeace. [1]
Jakob Kellenberger was born in the Swiss canton of Appenzell in 1944.
Kellenberger studied French and Spanish literature at the University of Zurich. He also studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva between 1974 and 1975. During his studies, he spent time in Tours, France, and Grenada, Spain. He wrote his undergraduate dissertation on Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his doctoral thesis on the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca. He completed his studies with a doctorate in literature from the University of Zurich.
While still a student, Kellenberger married Elisabeth Jossi. They have two daughters, Eleonore and Christina.
In 2013, Kellenberger was appointed as President of the swisspeace Foundation Board which establishes and oversees the annual and longer-term strategic work program for swisspeace and accepts the annual financial statements and budget. It also formulates and develops the guiding principles for swisspeace's work. [2]
Jakob Kellenberger entered the Swiss diplomatic service in 1974. [3] He was posted to Madrid, then to Brussels and subsequently to London. From 1984 to 1992, he headed the joint office of the Swiss Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Economic Affairs in charge of the relations to the European Union and EFTA, and in 1988, he was promoted from the diplomatic rank of minister to ambassador. From 1989 to 1991, he headed the transport (transit) negotiations with the European Community on the Swiss side. In 1992, Kellenberger was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. From 1992 to 1999, he held the posts of Secretary of State and head of the Directorate of Political Affairs within the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. From 1994 to 1998, he was also coordinator and chief negotiator for Switzerland's sector-by-sector bilateral negotiations with the European Union. [4]
On 1 January 2000, Jakob Kellenberger was appointed president of the ICRC, a humanitarian organization that, as of July 2011, has some 13,000 staff and a network of over 200 delegations. The scope of the ICRC's operations expanded considerably during his term in office.
The ICRC's large-scale operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and the Near East had and partly still have a particular impact on Jakob Kellenberger's job, as also reflected by his field visits and efforts in the sphere of humanitarian diplomacy. Kellenberger made a decisive contribution towards more intensive cooperation in several spheres between the ICRC and the European Union and its member States. [5] Managing the ICRC's relationship with the United States after the September 11 attacks in the areas of law and humanitarian diplomacy was one of his greatest challenges. In difficult conflict situations, he considered it important to get first-hand experience of the reality on the ground, as witnessed by his trips to southern Lebanon during the war of summer 2006 and to Gaza in January 2009, and his numerous visits to Afghanistan and Darfur.
He stated on 5 April 2007 that the United States had inadequate procedures to guarantee the human rights of foreign detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. He demanded a "more robust" system to determine whether to release hundreds of men who probably will never face trial. [6]
Jakob Kellenberger set great store by a clear strategy for the organization and the adoption of clear positions in a rapidly changing environment. He made a major contribution to achieving those goals.
Jakob Kellenberger lectures at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the University of Salamanca, and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. He also sits on the Board of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), a private diplomacy organization based in Switzerland. President or Swisspeace.
Armed Conflict, Oxford 2014, p. 20-34
International Law Review, Volume 28, Number 2, Washington 2020, p. 355-371
Madrid 2010
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement is an international humanitarian movement with approximately 97 million volunteers, members and staff worldwide, which was founded to protect human life and health, to ensure respect for all human beings, and to prevent and alleviate human suffering. Within three distinct organizations that are legally independent from each other, but are united within the movement through common basic principles, objectives, symbols, statutes and governing organisations, there are the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), that is a private humanitarian institution founded in 1863 in Geneva, Switzerland, in particular by Henry Dunant and Gustave Moynier. Its 25-member committee has a unique authority under international humanitarian law to protect the life and dignity of the victims of international and internal armed conflicts. The ICRC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on three occasions.
Henry Dunant, also known as Henri Dunant, was a Swiss humanitarian, businessman and social activist. He was the visionary, promoter and co-founder of the Red Cross. In 1901 he received the first Nobel Peace Prize together with Frédéric Passy, making Dunant the first Swiss Nobel laureate.
Heiden is a village and a municipality in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden in Switzerland. Its Biedermeier village around the church square is listed as a heritage site of national significance.
The International Committee of the Red Cross is a humanitarian organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, and a three-time Nobel Prize Laureate. State parties (signatories) to the Geneva Convention of 1949 and its Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005 have given the ICRC a mandate to protect victims of international and internal armed conflicts. Such victims include war wounded, prisoners, refugees, civilians, and other non-combatants.
Pierre Krähenbühl has served as Commissioner General for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from March 2014 to November 2019. Before that, he served from July 2002 as Director of Operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
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The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, or the Graduate Institute, abbreviated IHEID, is a government-accredited postgraduate institution of higher education located in Geneva, Switzerland.
Alexandre Hay was a Swiss lawyer. From 1966 to 1976 he was Vice President of the Board of the Swiss National Bank. Later, from 1976 to 1987 he was President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Carl Jacob Burckhardt was a Swiss diplomat and historian. His career alternated between periods of academic historical research and diplomatic postings; the most prominent of the latter were League of Nations High Commissioner for the Free City of Danzig (1937–39) and President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (1945–48).
The International Institute of Humanitarian Law (IIHL) is an independent, “non-profit, humanitarian association having social values as its objectives”, founded in 1970 in Sanremo, Italy. Its headquarters are situated in Villa Ormond, while a liaison office of the Institute is established in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for humanitarian treatment in war. The singular term Geneva Convention usually denotes the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the aftermath of the Second World War (1939–1945), which updated the terms of the two 1929 treaties, and added two new conventions. The Geneva Conventions extensively defined the basic rights of wartime prisoners, established protections for the wounded and sick, and established protections for the civilians in and around a war-zone. The treaties of 1949 were ratified, in their entirety or with reservations, by 196 countries. Moreover, the Geneva Convention also defines the rights and protections afforded to non-combatants. The Geneva Conventions are about soldiers in war; they do not address the use of weapons of war, which are the subject of the Hague Conventions, and the bio-chemical warfare Geneva Protocol.
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Jean Simon Pictet was a Swiss citizen, jurist, legal practitioner working in international humanitarian law. First as a secretary-jurist, and then as a senior executive and Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Pictet was instrumental in drafting the 1949 Geneva Conventions for the protection of victims of war, their Commentaries, and negotiating the 1977 Additional Protocols. He also proposed the Red Cross Movement’s seven Fundamental Principles, which were adopted at Vienna in 1965: Humanity, Impartiality, Neutrality, Independence, Voluntary Service, Unity and Universality. In 1989, an international humanitarian law competition for students was founded and named after him.
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