Lara Scarpitta

Dr Lara Scarpitta (Italy) joined the OSCE on 1 May 2022 as the new OSCE Senior Adviser on Gender Issues and Head of the Gender Issues Programme in the Office of the Secretary General. She is an expert on peace mediation and Women, Peace and Security (WPS) with over a decade of experience in promoting the role of women in conflict and post-conflict countries in South East Europe and in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region especially Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syria, Yemen and Libya. 

Prior to joining the OSCE, she worked for over 15 years for the EU (European Commission and the European External Action Service) and served in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2008-2012), Turkey (2012-2017) and Brussels (2017-2019). From 2020 to 2022 she worked as Political Adviser on Peace, Mediation and Gender at the EU Delegation to the United Nations in Geneva, focusing on the MENA region. While working for the EU she consistently integrated gender issues and women’s political participation in peace processes within the work on mediation and peacebuilding. She was instrumental in the creation in 2018 of the Syrian Women Platform (also known as the Gaziantep Women Platform), an EU-supported initiative linking Syrian grassroots female activists with negotiators in the UN-led Syria Peace Process.

She is a member of Women in International Security (WIIS) – Italy and since 2019 Dr Scarpitta has also been advising the Centre for World Religions, Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University on Gender and Women, Peace and Security. As a trained mediation expert she has also delivered extensive capacity-building on mediation, negotiations, conflict resolution and peace-building to grassroots activists and human rights defenders from countries in conflict. 

Born in Sanremo (Italy), she was educated in the UK and holds a PhD in Russian and East European Studies and an MA in  European Studies from the University of Birmingham.