Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan

Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan leads the Institute’s “Global Negotiation Support” initiative building on his expertise in complex multilateral negotiations.

As he served as a European Union diplomat to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Geneva, he chaired multilateral negotiations at the Palais des Nations and led processes on Business and Human Rights as well as a range of other global issues. He was also called to support negotiation teams in other fora such as the World Health Assembly and the Group of Governmental Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems. He was also actively involved in multistakehoder initiative, as a member of the Steering Committee of the Mega-Sporting Events Platform and of the Group of Friends of the co-Chairs (Switzerland, ICRC) of the Montreux Document Forum on the Governance of Private Military and Security Companies.

After he left the EU Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan has held several roles including as Deputy Secretary-General of the International Organisation of Employers, a global federation of some 150 Employer and Business Organisations, which provided him first hand insights on business involvement in multilateral negotiations. He was also called by institutions such as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research and the Organisation International de la Francophonie to design and lead negotiation courses and workshops – with notably a series of joint workshops for for joint workshops for climate, digital and trade negotiators. At the Geneva Graduate Institute, he served as Director of the International Negotiation and Policy-Making Programme.

Prior to Geneva, Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan was posted with the European Commission in Cairo and Jerusalem. He also served as an Arabic-speaking detention delegate with the International Committee of the Red Cross and as a researcher on Middle East and North Africa at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London.

Jérôme Bellion-Jourdan holds a Ph.D in Political Science of Sciences Po. Paris and sits on the Board of Directors of Sciences Po. Grenoble. He authored “The Charitable Crescent. Politics of Aid in the Muslim World” (IB Tauris, 2009) with Jonathan Benthall and, on his own, several other publications. In his person capacity, he is invited to publish opinions for, among others, for SwissInfo: "The United Nations’ Pact for the Future: from negotiation to action?".