The Swiss Government provides the Commission, pursuing to Article 90, Paragraph 1, Sub-Paragraph f of the First Additional Protocol, with the necessary administrative facilities for the performance of its functions. Thus, Switzerland assumes the Secretariat of the Commission and offers the necessary locations for its performance.

The Secretariats tasks are, inter alia, to organise all the meetings of the Commission, its promotional missions and events, attendance to international conferences, to prepare the material and administrate the website of the Commission as well as to advise the Commission if needed. The finances of the Commission are also managed by the Secretariat. The Secretariat is furthermore at the disposal of the President of the Commission for any matter concerning the Commission.

International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission
Federal Palace (North)
CH - 3003 Berne
Switzerland

Telephone: + 41 31 32 50768

Fax: + 41 31 32 50767

E-mail: IHFFC@eda.admin.ch

The Secretariat is composed of:

Ambassador Christine Schraner Burgener, Secretary of the Commission

Christine Schraner Burgener was born in 1963;she went to primary school in Tokyo, Japan, and attended high school in Winterthur, Switzerland. She studied law, gradutating from the University of Zurich in 1988. For the following three years, she worked at the Horgen District Court (Switzerland), among other things as Court Clerk for juvenile criminal law, family law, bankruptcy and debt recovery law, and she chaired the Rents Arbitration Office. She entered the diplomatic service in 1991, working initially in the International Law Section of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, followed by a one-year posting as attachée at the Embassy in Rabat, Morocco. In 1993, she returned to Bern where she took up the post of desk officer in the Human Rights Section of the International Law Directorate, of which she was appointed deputy-head in 1995. In 1997, she was posted to the Embassy in Dublin, where she was counsellor to the Ambassador. In 2001, she returned to Bern and carried out the following functions: from 2001-2002, head of the Human Rights Policy Section; from 2002-2004, diplomatic adviser to the Staff Office of Political Affairs Division IV, Human Security, in charge of communications and organisational questions. From 2004-2006 she was Vice-Director of the Directorate of International Law. Presently, she is deputy-director of the Directorate of International Law, with rank of ambassador, and head of the International Law, Human Rights, and International Humanitarian Law Division. She serves in this capacity as the Coordinator for Counterterrorism on Foreign Policy and as the Secretary of the International Humanitarian Fact Finding Commission. Christine Schraner Burgener is married and has two children.

Véronique Haller

Véronique Haller was born in 1975 in Geneva. She graduated from high school with a maturity in Latin and old Greek. In 1999 she obtained a master in law from the Law School of the University of Zurich. After a stay at the University of Victoria (Canada), she worked for two years as a tax consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Zurich. She then took a break to study Spanish and travel in Mexico and central America. At the end of 2001, she moved to Seoul (South Korea) to work with the sports marketing agency Infront Sports & Media, in charge of administrating the intellectual properties of FIFA for the 2002 FIFA World Cup. After her return she continued to work as a Manager with the department of legal affairs of the same agency in Zug. In 2004, she graduated from Anglia Law School in Cambridge (UK) with an LL.M in international sports law. She entered the diplomatic service in May 2004 and was posted as attaché at the Embassy of Switzerland in Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina). She returned to Bern in 2005 where she took up her current position in the Directorate of international law in the section for human rights and humanitarian law.Véronique Haller played basketball in various first division teams in Switzerland as well as for the Swiss National Team. She is a member of the Disciplinary Commission of the Swiss Basketball League.

Joël Floris