Conciliation Resources is pleased to announce the appointment of new Africa director, Nicola Dahrendorf. Nicola will begin her new role on 6 January 2014. With over twenty years of experience in policy, practice and research in the international arena, Nicola has a wide spectrum of experience working in conflict regions in support of peacebuilding.

Nicola is an expert on sexual violence, human rights and security sector reform. She has worked with the United Nations (UN) and British Government in East/Central and West Africa and is also former UN Special Advisor on sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and West Africa Regional Conflict Adviser to the British Government.

More specifically, Nicola’s focus has been on conflict transformation through managing engagement and developing policies on humanitarian, security and justice issues and sexual and gender based violence in conflict-affected environments. 

She cites that her interest in Conciliation Resources stems from a passionate enthusiasm and long experience of working in Africa and the belief that an innate understanding of politics, anthropological context and relationships fuels better dialogue:

I am convinced that well-researched, expertly crafted and joined-up processes allow for more focused responses, alleviate tensions and create a better platform for more sustainable outcomes in conflict and post-conflict environments. I have long admired and respected Conciliation Resources’ approach in combining many of these elements.

Nicola also likes to connect the dots of complex conflict and post-conflict processes in her own work. While exploring the context of sexual and gender based violence in the DRC, she came to the conclusion there is an intrinsic cultural cause for violence that is separate yet at the same time inextricably linked to the gender issue:

Sexual and gender based violence in the DRC is to my mind not only a gender issue but rooted in a complex culture of violence, with strong political/ethnic overtones and the complex psychology of trauma and pressures placed on communities who have lived with conflict over a long period.

Nicola’s peacekeeping work with the UN has involved six operations in Haiti, DRC, Rwanda, East Timor, Bosnia and Cambodia. She has also worked at UNICEF Headquarters as Chief of Humanitarian Policy and Advocacy and with UNHCR for seven years on refugee law and protection issues in a number of conflict and post-conflict situations. This included co-drafting a chapter in the Dayton Peace Agreement on refugee return and reintegration to Bosnia and Herzegovina. An experience she claims enabled her to gain first hand knowledge of the complexity of a peace process.

Most recently Nicola has worked on a consultancy basis for the UK Government Stabilisation Unit and DFID Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs Department in the DRC, South Sudan, Somaliland and Nepal. In the DRC, Nicola developed a strategy for negotiating access for humanitarian assistance to insecure parts of Somalia, ensuring application of humanitarian principles of Good Humanitarian Donorship, thus gaining her familiarity with conflict prevention and resolution in both theory and practice. 

Nicola states:

Geographically, since 1994, my work and interest have brought me to Africa. I have travelled extensively throughout the continent and have a good understanding of the politics, the people and the cultural complexity especially in border areas.

Nicola has an academic background in social anthropology and law and she has held positions at Kings College London and School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. But she is keen to point out she is not a theorist, or an ‘Africanist’ in an academic sense:

At heart I am a practitioner. My interest is in people and politics and above all in understanding the anthropology of the situation on the ground.