sam van der staak

Sam van der Staak is a Dutch national working at International IDEA, as a programme officer in the political parties team. In this capacity he focuses, among other things, on effective party and parliamentary assistance and political cooperation mechanisms. Before joining IDEA in January 2011, Sam worked as a political advisor at the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) in The Hague, the Netherlands. At NIMD he mostly concentrated on setting up multiparty dialogue programmes, capacity strengthening programmes for political parties and democracy education/democracy schools. In doing so, his main countries of focus were Burundi, Zimbabwe, Georgia and Afghanistan. Prior to his work at NIMD, Sam was employed as a parliamentary assistant to an MP of the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD). In this capacity he produced party policy for various parliamentary standing committees and worked on election campaigns for the national, local and European parliamentary elections. Sam holds an MA in International Relations from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and an MA in Modern Western Literature from Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He speaks Dutch, English and French.

Thematic Areas of Expertise