Heidi Tagliavini

Heidi Tagliavini (* 1950 in Basel ) is a Swiss diplomat. She is since 1982 in the diplomatic service of the Department of Foreign Affairs ( DFA) and known internationally as a leader delicate missions of international aid and peacekeeping. The "outstanding diplomat of Switzerland " examined as Special Representative of the EU, the reasons for the war between Russia and Georgia in Abkhazia and South Ossetia and wrote lent their name to Tagliavini report.

Life

Heidi Tagliavini was born in 1950 in Basel. Her father is an architect with Italian roots, her mother a painter from the Lucerne patricians. Her cousin is the State Secretary Franz Blankart. She grew up as second-oldest of four siblings on and attended schools in Basel and Basel-Land. Their studies in Romance languages ​​and Russian in Geneva and Moscow, she graduated with a degree in philology. In Geneva, she was also an assistant for Russian literature. Today Tagliavini speaks eight languages ​​and conducts negotiations in Russia, Chechnya and Georgia without an interpreter in Russian. At the historic meeting between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 in Geneva, she spontaneously translated from Russian for the former Swiss President Kurt Furgler.

Career

After twelve years left Heidi Tagliavini Geneva and joined in 1982 the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs ( DFA), where it was first used as internships in Bern and Lima. In 1984 she returned to Bern and was assigned as a diplomatic assistant to the Political Secretariat. In 1989 her transfer to Moscow, where it was in 1992 appointed Counsellor. In the same year she was transferred as a councilor and deputy head of mission to The Hague.

When she was sent in April 1995 as the only woman a six-person assistance group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE ) for the first time to Chechnya, this was the beginning of her career as Krisendiplomatin. Photographing processed Tagliavini, the suffering of the people, which they saw in the ruined capital Grozny, and published your photos on the picture book signs of destruction.

She was Deputy Head of Mission of the Swiss Embassy in Moscow, deputy in March 1998 to 1999 head of the observer mission of the United Nations in Georgia (UNOMIG in the rank of Ambassador ) 1996. She was only the second woman, who was taken up by the UN in the management of a peacekeeping mission.

After returning to Switzerland in 1999 Tagliavini was head of the Political Affairs Division IV ( Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs ) in the EDA.

After working as Personal Representative for the Caucasus the Austrian OSCE Chairman in 2000 Tagliavini was appointed from 2001 to 2002 as Ambassador of Switzerland in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 2002 appointed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Heidi Tagliavini at the head of United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia. In 2006, she returned as Deputy Head of the Directorate of Political Affairs and Deputy Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bern. Late 2009 and early 2010 led Tagliavini the OSCE election observation mission during the Ukrainian presidential elections of 2010.

The Tagliavini report

With its decision of 2 December 2008 put the outside of Ministers of the European Union, an independent international investigation, which should work up the broken in August 2008 conflict in Georgia and appointed in consultation with the Swiss Department of Foreign Affairs Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini as Head of Mission.

The independent international fact-finding mission handed to the EU Council on 30 September 2009 the report. The Tagliavini report concluded that Georgia had probably triggered the larger armed conflict in August conflict of 2008 that but bear all sides, Russia as well as Georgia and the two breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, the responsibility for the escalation of the conflict. The Commission could find no evidence for the assertion of a previous Georgian Russian invasion. According to the fact-finding mission, both Georgia and Russia negotiated international law in the conflict. The more than 1,000 -page report is in accordance with its mandate in detail on the causes and context of the conflict and sets with its detailed treatment of international, humanitarian and human rights issues new standards in politically highly topical issues. The report also releases all supplied by the parties documents for the investigation.

Awards

  • 2010: Honorary doctorate from the University of Basel
  • 2010: Honorary doctorate from the University of Bern

Works

  • Signs of destruction. The other view - reminiscences from Chechnya ( picture book ). Bern: Benteli, 1997, ISBN 978-3-7165-1144-2.
  • Caucasus - Defence of the Future. 24 authors in search of peace. Vienna: Folio, 2001, ISBN 978-3-8525-6161-5.
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