Peacebuilding
BUILDING PEACE A sampling of RPCVs on the front lines of peacebuilding by Erica Burman while he concurrently directed the State Department’s Office of West African Affairs. Smith was Ambassador to Guinea (1990-1993) and Senegal (1996-99). He served as President of the National Peace Corps Association from 1999-2003. Julie Demichelis was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana from 1982 to 1984 and while there became interested in disaster preparedness. In the intervening years, her career has included work with Liberian refugees during some of the worst years of the crisis in that country, directing emergency food relief operations for refugees in Macedonia and to direct a multi-ethnic team to reestablish community services in wartorn and ethnically split communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. More recently, she has worked in the post-conflict
UNAMID - Olivier Chassot
Dane F. Smith, Jr. was called out of retirement in December 2010 and named the U.S. government’s Senior Adviser on Darfur, a region in western Sudan where a prolonged civil war has claimed thousands of lives and forced millions into refugee camps, causing a humanitarian crisis. Smith was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Eritrea, then part of Ethiopia, in the early 1960s. Beginning in 1967 he pursued a long and distinguished career with the U.S. diplomatic corps. Smith was Deputy Chief of Mission in Sudan (1986-89) and in Botswana (1984-86). He directed the African Economic Policy Staff (1989-90) and was Chief, Food Policy Division, in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs (1979-81). President Clinton appointed him to serve as the Special Presidential Envoy for Liberia from 1995-1996
SPECIAL ENVOYS RETREAT 20 October 2011: Ambassador Dane Smith - Senior Adviser of the United States on Darfur (center) and Professor Ibrahim Gambari, UNAMID Joint Special Representative (right) meet with Darfuri in Mukjar, West Darfur, following 4th Special Envoys Retreat in El Geneina, West Darfur. The purpose of the Fourth Retreat was to take stock of recent developments in Darfur, and generally in Sudan following the independence of South Sudan, and to agree on next steps for international support for the ongoing Darfur peace process.
26
WorldView Summer 2012
environments of Iraq, Somalia and Southern Sudan. Demichelis is the 1999 recipient of the Sargent Shriver Award for Distinguished Humanitarianism. Anthony W. Gambino first went to Congo (then called Zaïre) in 1979, where he served for three years as a Peace Corps Volunteer. From 1997 to 2004, he worked for USAID on the Congo and other countries in the region, including two and half years as USAID Mission Director for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He returned to the Congo in 2006 to monitor presidential and National Assembly elections. He has worked on international development issues for the House of Representatives, the State Department, and nonprofit organizations. He presently works as an independent consultant on international development and foreign policy issues. Leila Abu Gheida started her development career with Peace Corps and was part of the first group to serve in Guinea Bissau (1989-1991). She stayed on in Guinea Bissau to work with Africare in coordinating assistance to an influx of refugees from the Casamance region of Senegal and took a shortterm assignment with UNHCR in Mozambique, working on resettlement issues and food distribution to excombatants and villages affected by the conflict. After earning her master’s degree, she began working as the International Red Cross Emergency Coordinator in Guinea Bissau during the war there. Abu Gheida has since worked at USAID/Nepal as Senior Conflict Advisor and then Director of the Democracy and Conflict Mitigation team, and now with USAID/Indonesia as their Senior Peacebuilding Advisor. National Peace Corps Association