UK Ambassador Alyson Bailes (April 6, 1949-April 29, 2016)

News | May 03, 2016

Alyson Bailes, former director of the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, whose earlier career began at EWI, where she was vice president for security and international Relations from 1996-1997, died on April 29, 2016.

A visionary with bold ideas, she worked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for 33 years, both in London and as a diplomat in Hungary, West Germany, China, Norway and Belgium. She was British ambassador to Finland from 2000-2002, when it was still very uncommon for women to secure such a high position.

She was among the first to recognize the need to engage many more non-state actors as contributors to security building. Her book Business and Security: Public-Private Sector Relationships in a New Security Environment exemplifies this approach. It is still one of the landmark publications in the field.

For full Guardian Obit, read here.

For full SIPRI Obit, click here.