Dr. Daniel Stauffacher + Partner is a consulting firm based in Switzerland that helps governments, international organisations and private-sector entities communicate with a common language, thus enabling them to reach the appropriate level of mutual understanding. It is specialised in the design, promotion and implementation of strategies for innovation – especially in the fields of sustainable development, information and communication technologies for development.
Dr. Daniel Stauffacher + Partner is able to assist these various and diverse partners, particularly in identifying the challenges of globalisation issues and in developing relevant international responses and appropriate policies.
Curriculum Vitae
Academic Background and Career Highlights
Daniel STAUFFACHER, a former Ambassador of Switzerland, has a Master’s degree in International Economic Affairs from Columbia University, New York and a Ph.D. in law from the University of Zürich. He worked for the district court of Zurich and the Swiss private sector before joining the United Nations.
In 1982 he joined the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in New York and subsequently the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Laos (1984) and China (1987). In Laos (as UNDP Assistant/Deputy Resident Representative a.i./Officer-in-Charge), he was responsible for UNDP’s rural development and poverty alleviation programmes and in China for managing UNDP’s technical assistance support to the economic and administrative reform program of the Chinese Government.
In 1990 he joined the Swiss Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs (Bawi), where he was in charge of Swiss Mixed Credit Financing Programmes for investment projects in India, Pakistan and China.
In 1992 he became a Division Chief of the Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs, Division for Financial Cooperation with Central and Eastern European Countries, responsible for financing of investment projects (mainly in the environment and infrastructure sectors), balance of payment support programmes, credit guarantees for private sector financing of investment projects, debt for environment swaps, technical assistance projects and the elaboration of first Swiss law on Economic and Financial Cooperation with Central and Eastern European Countries.
In this position he was also instrumental in organizing on behalf of the Swiss Government the Luzern Conference “Environment for Europe” 1993, which called for the elaboration of an Environmental Action Plan for Europe.
In 1995, he was posted to the Swiss Mission to the European Union in Brussels as the Counsellor for Economic and Financial Affairs responsible for financial services, investment policy, Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), Energy Charter Treaty, EU Enlargement.
In 1999, he became an Ambassador of Switzerland to the United Nations in Geneva and the Delegate of the Swiss Government for the preparation and organization of the World Summit on Social Development in June 2000 in Geneva www.un.org/esa/socdev/geneva2000.
In 2002 he was a member of the Swiss Delegation to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa.
On behalf of the State Secretariat for Foreign Economic Affairs www.seco.admin.ch he was the co-convener of the first Global Compact Meeting in Switzerland (2002): The UN Global Compact and Swiss Business: Making Global Responsibility Work for Business and Development, 29 October 2002, Palais des Nations, Geneva.
Daniel Stauffacher was also the Swiss Ambassador and Delegate of Swiss Government for the diplomatic preparation and organization of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) that was held in Geneva in 2003. He was a Co-Chairman of the Bureau of the WSIS preparatory Committee and Chairman of one of its subcommittee (http://web.archive.org/web/20040403164916/www.wsisgeneva2003.org/home.html).
He was subsequently Switzerland’s Ambassador to the WSIS in Tunis in 2005 and an advisor to the Government of Tunisia and the UN in this regard. During that time he launched the ICT4Peace project (www.ict4peace.org) which resulted in the adoption of paragraph 36 of the WSIS Tunis Commitment. He was a member of the former UN ICT Task Force (www.unicttaskforce.org), the former UN Task Force on Financial Mechanisms for ICT4D, the Strategy Group on Information Society of the Swiss Government.
In December 2005 he left the Swiss Government after 15 years of Government service. He became President of Wisekey (Switzerland) SA, an internet security company (2006 -2007). In 2007 he created his consulting firm: Dr. Daniel Stauffacher + Partner (www.stauffacherconsulting.ch).
Present Positions
Presently Daniel Stauffacher is a Special Advisor to the UN Undersecretary-General of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA, (www.un.org/esa/desa) for the UN Global Alliance on ICT and Development (www.un-gaid.org). A member of the Board, Earth Council USA, a co-founder and President of the Geneva Security Forum (www.genevasecurityforum.org) and co-founder and Executive Coordinator of the GenevaNetwork, Geneva (www.genevanetwork.net).
He is the Founder of the ICT4Peace project and Chairman of ICT4Peace Foundation, (www.ict4peace.org), a Member of the Board of Directors, World Wide Web Foundation (www.webfoundation.org), a Senior Advisor, Gulf Research Center Foundation, Geneva (www.grc.ae) and a Special Advisor for Business and Environmental Technology Cooperation, Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs – seco.
Publications
Der Sendevertrag, eine rechtstatsächliche Untersuchung, Diss. Zürich.
Europäische Union: Vor einer neuen Erweiterung (Die Volkswirtschaft 1997, 6/18); Europäische Union: Beginn des Erweiterungsprozesses im Frühjahr 1998 (Die Volkswirtschaft 1998, 3/17); Elektronisches Geld und Finanzdienstleistungen im EU-Binnenmarkt – Chancen und Herausforderungen (Die Volkswirtschaft, 1998, 3/37); The Challenges of financial services on the Internet. AGEFI: Finance and Technology, April 1998; Arbeits- und Sozialnormen für das Global Village (Stephan Brupbacher und Botschafter Daniel Stauffacher, Die Volkswirtschaft, 1999, 11/20); Geneva 2000: Der nächste Schritt in der Weiterentwicklung der sozialen Dimension der Globalisierung (Die Volkswirtschaft, 2000, 6/6); Erster Weltgipfel über die Informationsgesellschaft vom Dezember 2003 in Genf (D. Stauffacher und Alain Modoux, Die Volkswirtschaft 2/2003); The First World Summit on the Information Society, Al-Siyassa, Egyptian quarterly periodical, December 2003, (Englisch); The United Nations World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva: A report (D. Stauffacher und T. Schneider, Die Volkswirtschaft 6/2004).
The World Summit on the Information Society: Moving from the Past into the Future, edited by Daniel Stauffacher and Wolfgang Kleinwächter, with and opening statement by Kofi Annan and preface by Yoshio Utsumi, UN ICT Task Force Series 8, New York (http://www.ict4peace.org/articles/WSIS%20Past2Future%20ebook.pdf).
Information and Communication Technology for Peace. The Role of ICT in Preventing, Responding to and Recovering from Conflict, A Report by Daniel Stauffacher, William Drake, Paul Currion, Julia Steinberger, with a preface by Kofi Annan and a foreword by Micheline Calmy-Rey, UN ICT Task Force Series 11, New York, November 2005 (http://www.ict4peace.org/articles/ict4peace_ebook.pdf).
International Geneva: Thoughts for the Future. Blaise Godet and Daniel Stauffacher, September 2006. International Geneva: Time for Action. Blaise Godet and Daniel Stauffacher, August 2008. (www.genevanetwork.net).
ICT for disaster management in least developed countries and small islands in the Asia Pacific Region, June 2008 (http://www.ict4peace.org/view_files-1-v-133.html). Interim Report: Stocktaking of UN Crisis Information Management Capabilities, February 2009 (http://www.ict4peace.org/view_files-1-v-165.html. Haiti and beyond: Getting it right in Crisis Information Management, March 2010 (http://ict4peace.org/view_blog_posts-1-v-213.html) (all papers co-authored with Sanjana Hattotuwa).
