Ambassador Bolewski Interviewed by The Paris Globalist on the Syrian Crisis and International Law

Ambassador Wilfried Bolewski, professor of Diplomacy and International Law at AGS, participated in an interview with the online international affairs magazine The Paris Globalist (November 26th, 2013), giving his expertise on the ongoing crisis in Syria through the lens of international law.

In his interview, Ambassador Bolewski states that the preconditions for intervention under Responsibility to Protect (R2P) were met, with “more than 100,000 people killed by the Assad Regime in conventional civil strife, 4 million internally displaced, 2 million trans-border refugees and 1,400 people (were) killed through attacks by government activities.” He emphasizes that “the use of chemical weapons is a crime against humanity in international customary law” as Syria previously ratified the 1925 Geneva Protocol on the Protection of the use of Chemical Weapons in war and signed the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993. As for the success of the proposed Geneva II peace talks, Ambassador Bolewski claims that the negotiations will depend on “a ceasefire, inclusive participation of all regional fractions, protection of minorities and eventually, an out-of-the-box, innovative approach including a rethinking of the State in the Middle East along ethnic, linguistic and sectarian communities.”

Read Ambassador Bolewski's online interview

The Paris Globalist is an online publication managed by students at the Paris-based international affairs school Science Po (Institut d’Etudes Politiques), featuring analyses from experts and professionals aiming to bridge the areas of economics, culture and politics worldwide.

A lawyer by training, Ambassador Wilfried Bolewski worked as a Legal Advisor to CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) in Geneva before starting a diplomatic career that led him to serve in Italy, Poland, Australia, Cameroon and Pakistan. Dr. Bolewski also served as German Ambassador to Jamaica, Belize and the Bahamas, and Deputy Chief of Protocol under Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel’s governments.

Parallel to his diplomatic career, Ambassador Bolewski pursued an academic career, teaching at the Free University in Berlin, at Science Po Paris, at AUP and at the American Graduate School in Paris. His areas of expertise include corporate diplomacy, protocol, international law and the diplomatic decision-making process, political psychology in foreign policy and conflict analysis.

Dr. Bolewski has published widely in German, English and French including Diplomacy and International Law in Globalized Relations (Springer : Berlin-Heidelberg-New York, 2007).