Günther Baechler

Günther Baechler holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Studies from the University of Bremen (on the conflict in Rwanda) and was Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Peace Research and Security Studies at the University of Hamburg, where he focused on issues related to the East–West relations. He was the founding director of the Swiss Peace Foundation (swisspeace) between 1988 and 2000 and established the Conflict Prevention and Transformation Division at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in 2001 at the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA). He worked as a mediator in several conflicts, among others, in Nepal, Sudan,  and Cameroon. In 2010, he was appointed by the Swiss Federal Council as Ambassador of Switzerland to Georgia, where Switzerland also held a mandate for the Good Services between Georgia and the Russian Federation. From January 2016 until August 2018 he was the Special Representative for the South Caucasus of the Chairmen of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). From 2020 till 2023 he was a Special Envoy of the Swiss Federal Government for the conflict in the English-speaking regions in Cameroon.