Dr. Annyssa Bellal

Executive Director

Dr Annyssa Bellal is an international lawyer with more than 20 years of experience in the area of conflict studies, both at the academic and policy levels, with a particular expertise on the issue of armed non-state actors. She is the Executive Director of the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform and teaches public international law and the law of armed conflict at the Graduate Institute, the University of Bern and the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights.

Dr Bellal was formerly a Strategic Adviser on International Humanitarian Law and Senior Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian law and Human Rights. She also worked as a Senior Legal Adviser for the Swiss NGO Geneva Call, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as well as the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs. In 2011, she acted as the Head of the International Humanitarian Customary Law Project at the International Committee of the Red Cross. She has engaged directly with armed non-state actors in the field, notably in Syria, Iraq and the DRC. In 2019, she was invited to brief the UN Security Council on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, along with the President of the ICRC and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs.

She is the author of numerous publications, including an award-winning article on ‘International Law and Armed Non-State Actors in Afghanistan' (International Review of the Red Cross, 2011, SNIS Geneva Award 2011). Her research was awarded several fellowships and grants notably the UK Research and Innovation and the British Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, the Swiss National Science Foundation, McGill University, New York University and the Graduate Institute of International Studies and Development. She was also an Assistant Professor in public international law at the Irish Centre for Human Rights in Galway, Ireland.

Dr Bellal holds a PhD (summa cum laude) in Public International Law from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies and an LLM in the History and Philosophy of Law from the University of Grenoble. She also holds a Master of Advanced Studies in International Relations and an MA in Law from the University of Geneva.