Michael von der Schulenburg, Member of the European Parliament for the Sahra Wagenknecht party, supporter of the German Peace Movement and a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, grew up in the GDR, fled in 1969 over the Baltic Sea, studied in Berlin, London and Paris, worked and lived for over 34 years in peace and development missions of the United Nations and briefly the OSCE in many countries weakened and torn by wars, by internal conflicts with armed non-state actors and/or by foreign military interventions. Since 1992, he has worked in a leading position in these missions. These included long-term assignments in Haiti, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and Sierra Leone, as well as shorter assignments in Syria, Somalia, the Balkans, the Sahel and Central Asia.
Since his retirement in 2013 Schulenburg gave lectures in many academic institutions and published many articles on UN reforms, international law, intra-state armed conflicts, armed non-state actors, but also about the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Ukraine. This included many speaking engagements in Geneva, London, Oxford, Wilton Park, Reading, Washington, New York, Beijing, Berlin, Hamburg, Dresden, Krems, Alpbach, Freiburg, Turin, Vienna, Guangzhou, etc.
In 2017, he published a book On Building Peace – Rescuing the Nation-State and Saving the United Nations, AUP.