Daniel Ruiz, Director of the Goma Office in the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo

During the course of the academic year 2018/19 IBEI hosts a series of lectures by practitioners in the field of international relations and development.

The practitioner lecture series is intended to give IBEI students and attendees an opportunity to engage with international professionals about their personal work experience, the organizations they represent, and to learn about possible career trajectories in international governmental and non-governmental organizations. Each lecture will allow ample room for questions and inputs from the audience. All IBEI community is welcome.

Use the hashtag #IBEIpracSeminars to share and comment on the social networks.

Daniel Ruiz is the Director of the Goma Office in the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO). He has more than 20 years of professional experience in senior positions in the political, humanitarian and development fields in the United Nations Secretariat and UN Agencies. He has worked in conflict and post-conflict situations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guinea-Bissau, the Cameroon-Nigerian border, Somalia, Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). During his recent posting in the DRC Mr. Ruiz has endeavored to address the root causes of conflict, in particular the illicit trafficking of resources and landgrabbing by contributing to insert them in MONUSCO’s mandates and to establish mechanisms to curb these practices at the local and regional levels.

Daniel Ruiz is also a researcher in Peace Studies and an Affiliate Researcher at the Institute of Law, Politics and Development of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Pisa and has researched and lectured in different universities in Italy, Spain, Slovenia, UK, the Netherlands, South Africa and DRC. Mr. Ruiz has written his PHD dissertation and other publications on the nexus of organized crime and conflict. His thesis, based on his professional and academic experiences, is that transnational financial and environmental crimes, corruption and organized crime are ungoverned spaces which are causing intractable conflicts at the global, regional and local levels.