Susan
recently returned home to Vancouver after spending the
past two years facing the challenges of promoting a
peace process in the Sudan. She worked for the United
Nations Peace Support Mission and was responsible for
establishing and heading field offices in Darfur during
one of the worst conflicts and humanitarian crisis of
recent history.
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT SUSAN
As a lifelong advocate for peace, democracy and human
rights Susan has spent nearly twenty years working
both in Canada and internationally. She has worked
for the International Committee of the Red Cross,
for the United Nations departments of peace keeping
and political affairs as well as being an associate
faculty member for the Masters program on Human Security
and Peacebuilding at Royal Roads University in Victoria
BC, and a faculty member of the Pearson Peacekeeping
Centre. She has delivered courses on peace operations
for civilians, military and police in Argentina, Canada,
Chile, the Ivory Coast, Macedonia and the USA, as
well as participating in the training of monitors
for the cease-fire agreement for the Nuba Mountains
of the Sudan.
After raising three sons Susan began her professional
career working for the Canadian Red Cross as Coordinator
for the BC/Yukon Division’s International and
Youth Department. She was later seconded, in 1989
to the International Committee of the Red Cross and
began a period of ten years at the end of the cold
war promoting a peace process in Central America.
She headed the ICRC delegation in the Mosquitia of
Nicaragua where they repatriated and assisted refugees
returning from Honduras at the end of the Nicaraguan
civil war and after a brief sojourn in Canada she
moved to El Salvador to join the United Nations peace
verification mission. As a member of the Mission Susan
worked principally in the areas of human rights promotion
and verification, the land reform program established
by the peace accords, and in electoral assistance
and observation.
In 1994, after democratic elections in El Salvador
consolidated peace there, Susan moved to Guatemala
to witness the final days of the 36-year Guatemalan
civil war and the pacification of the last conflict
in Central America. As Regional Coordinator in one
of the principal ex-conflict areas of the country
she was responsible for a multi-disciplinary team
of civilians, police and military who promoted and
verified the implementation of the Guatemalan peace
agreements. Three years later she was incorporated
into the Direction of the Mission as the Head of Area
responsible for the Agreement on Identity and Rights
of the Indigenous Peoples. The beneficiaries of this
agreement were the Mayan people of Guatemala who represent
approximately 60% of the population and were the principal
victims of the war and of the genocide committed against
them.
In 2000 Susan headed to New York where she worked
for the United Nations Secretariat in the Department
of Political Affairs. In the capacity of a political
affairs officer she covered various countries in Central
America and the Caribbean. She monitored and reported
on political developments in the region, and followed
the situation of indigenous movements and rights throughout
the Americas. She also continued to support the United
Nations Peace Mission in Guatemala.
In 2002 Susan returned home where she taught until
leaving once again on a new UN assignment. This time
she was headed to Africa as part of a team to establish
a peace mission in the Sudan, a country divided by
ethnic and religious conflict and that had known peace
for only 8 years since the British withdrew in 1956.
Susan Soux has a Masters degree in Cultural Anthropology
from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver,
Canada.
