Author/Research Director: Kurt Bassuener

Kurt Bassuener is co-founder of the Democratization Policy Council (www.democratizationpolicy.org), a transatlantic initiative for accountability in democracy promotion.

Along with fellow DPC co-founder Eric Witte, he has advocated in numerous publications a no-fly zone over Darfur as a method to press Darfur to accept a UN protection force for the Darfuri civilian population.  He is also working with the Public International Law and Policy Group on behalf of the Open Society Justice Initiative on efforts to ensure the transfer and trial of indicted Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic. 

He served as Strategy Analyst at the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo from May 2005-December 2006.  Previous positions and projects include serving as Political and Campaign Analyst for the OSCE-ODIHR’s Election Observation Mission in Ukraine in 2004-2005, co-founding and co-directing the Democratization Policy Institute with Eric Witte (2000-2002) (see www.anonime.com/dpinstitute), researcher and writer with Ambassador Mark Palmer for his book „Breaking the REAL Axis of Evil – How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025“ (2001-2002), acting Assistant Director for Government Affairs at the International Rescue Committee (2001), Program Officer for the US Institute of Peace’s Balkans Initiative (2000-2001), Associate Director of the Balkan Action Council (1998-2000), and Policy Analyst at the Balkan Institute (1997-1998).