Henk-Jan Brinkman

Henk-Jan Brinkman has been chief of the Peacebuilding Strategy and Partnerships Branch of the Peacebuilding Support Office in the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs since 2010.  Between 2006 and 2010, he was, subsequently, chief Economic Analysis and chief Food Security Policy and Markets in the Office of the Executive Director of the World Food Programme in Rome, Italy, and Senior Adviser for Economic Policy in the World Food Programme, based in New York.  From 2001 to 2006 he advised United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette on economic, social and environmental issues as a Senior Economic Affairs Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.  Between 1989 and 2001, he was in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, where, inter alia, he contributed to the World Economic and Social Survey.  He co-chaired the Working Group on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding indicators of the International Dialogue on Peacebuilding and Statebuilding in 2012-2013 and has been a member or (co-)chair of several working groups and advisory boards within and outside the UN.  He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in economics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City.  He has written on such topics as the peace and justice in the post-2015 development agenda, socio-economic factors behind violent conflicts, the impact of high food prices on nutritional status, economic adjustment in Africa, multilateral negotiations and human stature as a measure of the standard of living.  He is the lead author of WFP’s World Hunger Series – Hunger and Markets (Earthscan, 2009) and the author of Explaining Prices in the Global Economy:  A Post-Keynesian Model (Edward Elgar, 1999).  He holds Dutch citizenship.