Strong Angel III – Interview with Ambassador Daniel Stauffacher

ICTs in general 1 Minute

Daniel Stauffacher

I recorded this conversation after dinner with Ambassador Daniel Stauffacher, Chairperson of the ICT4Peace Foundation today, who is a fellow participant at SA III. I first met Daniel in Geneva last week, when I visited him to explore possibilities for collaboration and exploration in the theory and practice of ICT4Peace between my own work in Sri Lanka and that of the ICT4Peace Foundation in Switzerland.

Daniel, during the course of the conversation, critiqued SA III and said that greater emphasis should have been placed on locating the pandemic scenario in a context sans the infrastructure and levels of stability and calm that governed the scenario in San Diego (or any first world city for that matter). However, he recognised the deep impression SA III had made in exposing technologies that could be used in humanitarian aid and more importantly, people who could champion ICT4Peace.

He also spoke of the need for practice to inform policy, but also on the need to concentrate on how policy could inform better practice in the field. This symbiosis he said was central to the strengthening of humanitarian aid and peacebuilding through the use of technology.

Listen to the full conversation, from one of the most senior and experienced international diplomats present at SA III, here. Always the diplomat, Daniel’s constructive criticism and analysis of SA III are useful not just for the participants who were part of the exercise, but for anyone interested in humanitarian systems design.


It is a silent testimony to German engineering that this recording took place on a busy highway driving back to our hotel after dinner in a Mercedes S500 the good Ambassador had been loaned by a friend of his. If only all technology was as sublime as driving or being driven in one.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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