Stefan G. Ziegler was born in 1966 in Zürich, Switzerland. He graduated with a BA from University College Cork (1996-99), an MA in International Studies from University of Limerick (1999-00), and an International Postgraduate Diploma in Humanitarian Assistance from Fordham University (2007). He had to abandon his advanced PhD thesis at The Open University, UK (2015), due to health reasons in the family.

Fluent in English, French and German, Stefan has had a long career centered on humanitarian action. He worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross (2001-5) in Jenin, Abkhazia, Western Georgia, Geneva, Serbia and Montenegro; for the United Nations Relief and Workers Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (2005-13) in Gaza, Jerusalem and Ramallah; for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (2014-15) in Eastern Ukraine, and as an election observer for the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (OSCE) and for the EU (since 2017) in over sixteen countries.

He is currently working as an independent humanitarian trainer and lecturer with international clients and has been a featured speaker at panels and conferences worldwide. He is a Visiting Professor and Faculty Member at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights as well as Associate Professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy (since 2014).

Throughout his career, Stefan has witnessed firsthand the urgent need to strengthen democratic and judicial institutions and in 2015 he founded AdvocacyProductions in Geneva to create films with impact that focus on issues of international justice. He is the producer of the 2018 film BROKEN – A Palestinian Journey Through International Law, winner of seven international film festival awards. AdvocacyProductions’ series of testimonies by international law experts have been his first experiences as a film director. THE MANDATE is his second feature documentary project.