Born: June 4. 1950 in Best, The Netherlands
After secondary school (Gymnasium-B) and military service, he studied political sciences at the Radboud University of Nijmegen (KUN). After finishing his study, he took a post-doctoral course on popular science journalism.
Since 1978 he worked at the Third World Centre, now Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen (CIDIN) at the same university, first as an scientific assistant, later – between 1980 and 1986 – as lector and coordinator of the Latin America Programme.
Between 1986 and 1991 he worked as policy director and study co-ordinator for the Interchurch Centre on Development Education (IKVOS, later OIKOS) in The Netherlands: an institute financed by nine Dutch churches and denominations. He worked with a team of ten development education workers, who gave courses and organised campaigns and advocacy in Dutch society and churches.
From June 1991 to August 2003 he has been working for the European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD) in Brussels as its co-ordinator. Eurodad is a network of the major development NGOs (about 50) in sixteen European countries, which co-ordinate their work on issues such as debt, structural adjustment/poverty reduction strategies, financial markets and World Bank, IMF, European Union and Commission policies in the interest of human sustainable development.
Between August 2003 and August 2004, he worked as an independent consultant in short assignments for a range of organisations, such as the Dutch agency SNV, the Netherlands based Training and Consultancy Firm Context and the World Bank’s Annual Conference on Development Economics ABCDE.
In August 2004 he joined Oxfam Novib, as its project manager on Millennium Development Goals and was in this capacity co-founder of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) and the Dutch MDG campaign ‘Armoede de Wereld uit, Maak het Waar’ In this capacity he developed amongst others a programme on participatory monitoring and budgeting/budget tracking, contributed to the development of a MDG-scan for transnational companies and the Oxfam work on Essential Services.
In end 2007 Oxfam Novib seconded him for one year to what became the Dutch EEN (ONE) Campaign, a popular campaign for bringing the concerns to achieve the MDGs to a broad public. In 3 months EEN managed with free support of RTL, the major Dutch commercial TV channel, in the form of 3 to 4 commercials and Friends site Hyves (Dutch facebook) to collect support from more than 100.000 people, a.o. through their email addresses to mobilize political support and changing consumption patterns.
In 2008 he developed for Oxfam Novib a programme on migration. Since the outbreak of the financial crisis, in 2008/2009, he became Oxfam Novib’s representative in the Oxfam International Global Economic Crisis Team (GEC), took up again the coordination on budget work in Oxfam Novib and developed work on this with IBP, developed its agenda on tax justice (with the Tax Justice Network) and also the banktax/financial transaction tax and similar proposals. He represented Oxfam Novib in the Platform for a Sustainable and Solidary Economy (PDSE), which built an broad alliance in the Netherlands for a Fair Green Deal, also internationally. In 2010, he became responsible for the internationalisation of the Dutch Fair Bank Guide, a joint project of Oxfam Novib, the labour confederation FNV, Amnesty and Friends of The Earth Netehrlands. In September 2010, after the work on budgets was consolidated in the new Oxfam Novib 2011-15 Business Plan, he transferred responsibility on this to another colleague.
From 1980 to 1999 he was co-founder and editor of Derde Wereld, the major Dutch review on development. He published two books on Central America and numerous articles on debt and financial flows, structural adjustment and poverty eradication, development cooperation, World Bank and IMF policies, EU policy etc. in books, magazines and as Eurodad. Under his responsibility EURODAD published two volumes of the World Credit Tables, Taking Stock of Debt and a range of other papers, documents and articles.
In 2001-02, he had an advisory role on the re-organisation of the cooperation and centralisation of Brussels based development networks and related development NGOs in one, new coordination structure, which became Concord.
Contact: Tel. +31 (0)24 355 54 35; cellphone: +31 (0)6 53 18 75 97