Joost Hiltermann is Program Director, Middle East & North Africa, at the International Crisis Group, an independent NGO dedicated to preventing deadly conflict, for which he has worked in various capacities since 2002. Before that, he was Executive Director of the Arms Division of Human Rights Watch (1994-2002) and database coordinator and research coordinator at the Palestinian human rights organisation Al-Haq in Ramallah (1985-1990). He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz and is author of A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge, 2007), and Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women`s Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 1991). He has been a contributor to The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Middle East Report, and other publications.
