Hesta Groenewald

Hesta Groenewald is a conflict and peace specialist with 20 years’ experience in programme delivery and management, technical advice and policy advocacy on conflict-sensitive development, gender and conflict and broader peace and security issues. She has particular expertise on conflict-sensitive approaches to aid and has designed, implemented or managed several mechanisms that aimed to improve conflict-sensitive practice through guidance, learning and organisational support. These include two international NGO consortia in the UK that produced seminal guidance documents on conflict sensitivity; a conflict sensitivity mechanism for civil society, government and private sector actors in Uganda; and the multi-donor Conflict Sensitivity Resource Facility supporting donors and NGO implementing partners in South Sudan.

Hesta is an experienced facilitator and trainer and has developed and delivered training sessions and guidance documents to donor and aid recipient governments, UN agencies, local and international civil society on conflict analysis, conflict sensitivity, gender and conflict, and community-based policing. She also has significant people and programme management experience and has twice served on the Organisational Management Team of international peacebuilding NGO, Saferworld – as Head of Region (Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan) and Head of Research and Programme Support.

Originally South African, Hesta has lived and worked in the Netherlands, the UK, Uganda and France. She is therefore used to working in diverse and multi-cultural contexts. Currently, she works as an independent consultant and as Associate Consultant with the PeaceNexus Foundation in Switzerland.

Hesta holds a Masters degree in International Relations from the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa and a post-graduate diploma in International Relations and Development from the Institute for Social Studies in the Netherlands.