Water Environment & Human Development Initiative

Laurent Guye has Master’s Degree in political sciences from the Graduate Institute for International Studies. After post-grade studies at El Colegio de Mexico (Mexico DF), he joined the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in 1978 where he held different positions before being appointed in 1985 as Head of the Cooperation Office in Lima with responsibility over the cooperation programmes in Peru and Ecuador. In 1989, he was appointed in the same position to Delhi, supervising what was at the time the largest country cooperation programme supported by the Swiss Government.

 

In 1994, he joined the Federal Office for Foreign Economic Affairs (today, SECO) as Head of the Investment Promotion and Mixed Credits Division and eventually, as Head of Operations. In 2001, the Swiss Federal Council appointed him as Executive Director at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London where he represented seven countries from Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans in the Board of Directors. In 2007, after two years in Brussels as the Director of the Economic Table of the Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe, he was nominated by the five Nordic countries, India and Switzerland as Executive Director at the African Development Bank in Tunis. In 2010, he became the Regional Director for Cooperation in the Kyrgyz Republic and Uzbekistan and eventually, the Ambassador of Switzerland to the Kyrgyz Republic, position he held till end 2013.

 

Back in Switzerland early 2014, he got several mandates from SDC and SECO for a mission in Ukraine and conceptual work on the cooperation with former socialist countries, the transition concept and development cooperation challenges in 2030. Since June 2014, he chairs the Committee of « Enfants du Monde », a Geneva based NGO active in the field of maternal & neo-natal health and basic education with field activities in Western Africa, Central America and Bangladesh.