Dr. José María Arraiza

Dr.

José María Arraiza

(Madrid, 1973) has spent the last two decades working in peace–

building and protection both as a field practitioner and as a researcher. He participated in

the early days of the UN administration of Kosovo (Mitrovica, 1999-2000), the organization

of elections during the transition process in East Timor (Bobonaro, 2001), the human rights

monitoring activities of the OSCE Mission in Kosovo (2002–2008) –with a focus on Housing,

Land and Property restitution– and later the diplomatic work of the Hague-based OSCE High

Commissioner on National Minorities (OSCE HCNM) in Central, Eastern and Southeastern

Europe (The Hague, 2010–2012).

Between 2015 and 2019, he led the Information, Counseling and Legal Assistance (ICLA)

programme of the Norwegian Refugee Council in Myanmar. This included facilitating access

to civil documents through mobile teams in Southeast Myanmar (which provided more than

half a million ID cards to vulnerable persons between 2012 and 2019) as well as information

and counseling on legal identity and Housing, Land and Property rights (HLP) for conflict-

affected communities. Academically, he holds a European Masters’ Degree on Human Rights

and Democratisation (E.MA), an L.L.M. on Peace Support Operations (NUI Galway) and a

PhD in public law (Åbo Akademi University, Turku). He has been deployed in the last four

years as Senior ProCap Adviser to Sudan, Ethiopia and Mozambique.