OPERATIONS DEPARTMENT

AFRICA

Pascal Bongard, Programme Director, studied history and social communications at the University of Fribourg and Paris. After graduating from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, he obtained a Master of Science in Politics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). From 1999 to 2000, he worked at Bern in the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs. Before joining Geneva Call in October 2000, he collaborated with several media and NGOs, such as the Swiss Campaign to ban landmines, and worked with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Somali refugee camps of Eastern Ethiopia.

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Nicolas Florquin, Programme Officer since August 2006, has previously worked as a researcher with the Small Arms Survey, and recently took part in the United Nations Panel of Experts on Liberia established pursuant to Security Council resolution 1760 (2007). He has carried out extensive field research on non-State actors and the impacts of armed violence, notably in West and Central Africa. Mr. Florquin has also collaborated with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR, Geneva), the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs (UNDDA, Geneva), the Centre for Non-proliferation Studies (CNS, Monterey), the Programme on Security and Development (SAND, Monterey), and the Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA, Nazareth). He holds a Masters of Public Administration in International Management from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

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Maj (Rtd) Mohamed Noor Ali, Project Officer, is a retired Kenyan Army Major specialized in logistics, disaster management and peacekeeping operations where he carried out mine advisory and conventional munitions disposal. He graduated from the Lanet Military Academy and studied disaster management in Kenya Army School of Ordnance, Nairobi. He also studied ammunition and explosives technology as well as conventional ammunition disposal and improvised explosives disposal at the Army School of Ammunitions in Cad Kineton, Royal Leamington SPA, Warwickshire, UK. He served as Liaison and Coordination Officer in MINURSO and in the United Nations AOZOU strip observer group in Libya and Chad. He also headed the Kenyan Army Bomb disposal team for four years. After leaving the Kenyan Army in 2001, he worked with a local NGO in Somalia - International Somali Peace Development Action - as Project Director. Prior to becoming Project Officer for Somalia, he had been a consultant with Geneva Call for three years.

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