Alex de waal biography of donald

War and Humanitarian Action in Africa, Edited by Alex de Waal". It convened workshops on the peace and security challenges facing Africa.^[25]

Pandemic Expertise

De Waal left Justice Africa to work on HIV and AIDS in Africa, playing a leading role in the UN Economic Commission for Africa's Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa,^[26] the Social Science Research Council report on AIDS, Conflict and Security,^[27] and the Harvard University-led Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS.^[28] De Waal later reflected on how the worst predictions for political and security crises arising from the HIV and AIDS epidemic in Africa had turned out to be erroneous.^[29]

At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, de Waal wrote an essay for Boston Review drawing lessons from the politics of the 1890s cholera epidemic in Hamburg, which he later expanded into a book, New Pandemics, Old Politics, arguing that each pandemic should be seen also as a societal 'pandemy', with subtle but far-reaching social and political implications.

African Rights hit the headlines for its exposure of human rights violations by the international forces in Somalia.^[20]

The United Nations military attorney for the UN Operation in Somalia accused de Waal of 'supporting the propaganda efforts of the USC [United Somali Congress]' when he was researching a report, 'Somalia: Human Rights Abuses by the United Nations Forces.' The report caused particular controversy in Belgium, where the Belgian army first denied that its paratroopers were responsible for any abuses, and later admitted that they had occurred when photographic evidence emerged.^[21]

African Rights took a lead in documenting the genocide in Rwanda, publishing a report Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, with scores of first hand testimonies within weeks of the atrocities.

He has worked on the Horn of Africa, and on conflict, food security and related issues since the 1980s as a researcher and practitioner. reliefweb.int. "Alex de Waal | Starvation as a Method of Warfare". PMC 11603759. "Writing Human Rights and Getting It Wrong". His next book is Negotiating the Sudans: The African Union High Level Panels 2009-2014, (with Willow Berridge, forthcoming Cornell University Press 2025).