Alex de Waal

Alexander William Lowndes "Alex" de Waal (born 22 February 1963), a British writer and researcher on African issues, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Previously, he was a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative at Harvard University, as well as program director at the Social Science Research Council on AIDS in New York City.

Considered one of the foremost experts on Sudan and the Horn of Africa, his scholarly work and practice has also probed humanitarian crisis and response, human rights, HIV/AIDS and governance in Africa, and conflict and peacebuilding.

He is the son of Esther Aline (née Lowndes-Moir), a writer on religion, and Rev. Dr Victor de Waal, Dean of Canterbury from 1976 to 1986. His siblings include barrister John de Waal, ceramic artist and writer Edmund de Waal, and Caucasus expert Thomas de Waal.

In 1988, de Waal received a D.Phil in social anthropology at Nuffield College, Oxford for his thesis on the 1984-5 Darfur famine in Sudan. This research formed the basis of his book, Famine That Kills: Darfur, Sudan (1989). The following year he joined the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, only to resign in December 1992 in protest for HRW's support for the American military involvement in Somalia. He was the first chairman of the Mines Advisory Group at the beginning of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

He set up two independent human rights organisations, African Rights (1993) and Justice Africa (1999), focusing respectively on documenting human rights abuses and developing policies to respond to human rights crises, notably in Rwanda, Somalia and Sudan. His field-changing book, Famine Crimes: Politics and the Disaster Relief Industry was published in 1997. Foreign Affairs described the book as "A powerful critique of the international humanitarian agencies dominating famine relief in Africa."

From 1997 to 2001, he focused on avenues to peaceful resolution of the Second Sudanese Civil War. In 2001, he returned to his work on health in Africa, writing on the intersection of HIV/AIDS, poverty and drought. As the conflict worsened in 2004, he returned to his doctoral thesis topic of Darfur. During 2005 and 2006, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur. In 2008 he became well known as a critic of the International Criminal Court's decision to seek an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omar al Bashir.

During 2005–06, de Waal was seconded to the African Union mediation team for Darfur, and from 2009–12 served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan. He was on the list of Foreign Policy's 100 most influential public intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic Monthly's 27 "brave thinkers" in 2009.

He is an editor of the African Arguments book series published by Zed Books with Richard Dowden, Director of the Royal African Society. de Waal also writes and published regular commentary on contemporary Sudan through his World Peace Foundation blog Reinventing Peace.

• Famine that Kills : Darfur, Sudan, Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1989, ISBN 0-19-827749-0 (Revised edition, 2005, ISBN 0-19-518163-8)
• War in Sudan: An Analysis of Conflict, London : Peace in Sudan Group, 1990
• Evil days : thirty years of war and famine in Ethiopia, New York: Human Rights Watch, 1991, ISBN 1-56432-038-3
• Facing Genocide: The Nuba of Sudan, London: African Rights, July 1995, ISBN 1-899477-04-7
• Famine crimes : politics & the disaster relief industry in Africa, London : African Rights & the International African Institute, 1997, ISBN 0-253-21158-1
• Who fights? who cares?: war and humanitarian action in Africa, editor, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000, ISBN 0-86543-864-1
• The Phoenix State: Civil Society and the Future of Sudan, Editor with A.H. Abdel Salam, 2001, ISBN 1-56902-143-0
• Demilitarizing the mind: African agendas for peace and security, Editor, Trenton, NJ & Asmara, Eritrea : Africa World Press, 2002, ISBN 0-86543-988-5
• Young Africa: realising the rights of children and youth, Editor with Nicolas Argenti, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002, ISBN 0-86543-842-0
• When peace comes: civil society and development in Sudan, Editor with Yoanes Ajawin, Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2002, ISBN 1-56902-164-3
• Islamism and its enemies in the Horn of Africa, Editor, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-253-21679-6
• Darfur : a short history of a long war, With Julie Flint, New York : Zed Books, 2005, ISBN 1-84277-697-5
• AIDS and power : Why there is no political crisis—yet, New York : Zed Books, 2006, ISBN 1-84277-707-6
• War in Darfur and the search for peace (edited), Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 2007, ISBN 978-0-674-02367-3

• Transcript of Seminar Eight – Discussion with Alex de Waal, Bard College, 11 March 2000
• "'New Variant Famine': AIDS and Food Crisis in Southern Africa," The Lancet, 11 October 2003, [1]
• "Counter-Insurgency on the Cheap", London Review of Books, 5 August 2004
• "Who are the Darfurians? Arab and African Identities, Violence and External Engagement", SSRC and GEI, Harvard, 10 December 2004
• "Review of Gerard Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide, Hurst and Co.", The Times Literary Supplement, 8 August 2005
• "Chasing Ghosts: Alex de Waal on the rise and fall of militant Islam in the Horn of Africa", London Review of Books, 18 August 2005
• "Sudan's chance", Prospect, August 2005
• "Personal View on Darfur Peace Talks", United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 4 May 2006
• An Imperfect Storm: Narratives of Calamity in a Liberal-Technocratic Age 11 June 2006
• "Darfur’s fragile peace", opendemocracy.net, 5 July 2006
• "The Book Was Closed Too Soon on Peace in Darfur, The Guardian, 29 September 2006
• "´I will not sign´", London Review of Books, 30 November 2006
• "The Wars of Sudan", The Nation, 1 March 2007
•