René Wadlow is President and Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). He is also the editor of Transnational Perspectives, a journal of world affairs he has edited since 1977 focused on ideas and currents that cross frontiers.
Wadlow studied at Princeton University in a special program in European civilization, sociology, and political science, and completed graduate work in international relations at the University of Chicago. Early in his career he served as an adviser to the Ministry of Education in Gabon, and he later became Professor and Director of Research at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
His expertise spans world federalism, United Nations reform, international humanitarian law, human rights, refugee and migration policy, conflict resolution, and disarmament. During the Nigeria, Biafra War (1969 to 1971) he was a member of an International Committee of the Red Cross working group and helped prepare a teaching text on international humanitarian law adapted to African contexts. He is a frequent commentator on global governance and crisis response, and his analytical essays appear across international affairs outlets, including the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. A longtime advocate for strengthened global institutions, he has contributed to Mondial on themes of international humanitarian law, world federalism, and environmental governance.
