Assistant Director, Head of Policy & Research Department
Hans Born (PhD) is Assistant Director and Head of the Policy and Research Department at DCAF - Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, and in this capacity he also assumes the responsibility of the head of the Policy & Research Division.
Hans Born has wide experience in managing policy and research projects on security sector governance and reform mandated by, among others, the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the European Parliament. In this context, he has published widely on security sector reform and governance, including parliamentary oversight, intelligence oversight, police accountability, and human rights. Notably, he has published the DCAF – IPU Handbook on Parliamentary Oversight of the Security Sector which has been translated into over 40 languages.
Hans also has experience in implementing operational projects aimed at supporting national actors to strengthen their SSG/R approaches. For instance, he was responsible for a major EU funded police reform project in Myanmar in 2014-2016. He also spearheaded the International Conference for Ombuds Institutions for the Armed Forces (ICOAF) which is currently a global platform convening ombuds institutions of 50+ states annually, aiming at strengthening grievance mechanisms related to the security sector. Hans is a member of the of the advisory board on security sector reform of the United States Institute for Peace (USIP). An overview of selected publications can be found here.
Prior to joining DCAF, Hans served as (conscript) First Lieutenant in the Royal Netherlands’ Army, and worked as a consultant at the management consultancy firm “ODPR” (of the Netherlands Association of Municipalities) and as an assistant professor at the Netherlands’ Defense Academy.
He holds an MA in Public Administration (finance and management) from the University of Twente and a PhD in social sciences from Tilburg University in the Netherlands.