Hesham Youssef
Ambassador Hesham Youssef is a distinguished, former Egyptian diplomat and international peacebuilding expert, with more than thirty years of experience navigating some of the Middle East’s most complex political and humanitarian challenges.
He began his diplomatic career at Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1985, serving in the Egyptian Embassy in Canada (1988–1992) and the Egyptian Mission in Geneva (1995–1999). Between 1992 and 2001, he worked closely with Egypt’s Foreign Minister, contributing to foreign policy formulation and multilateral negotiations.
From 2001 to 2014, Youssef held senior posts at the Arab League, serving as Official Spokesman, Chief of Staff to Secretary-General Amr Moussa, and later as Senior Advisor to Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby on crisis management and institutional reform. He then became Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian, Cultural, and Social Affairs at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (2014–2019), leading initiatives on humanitarian crises and social policy across the Islamic world — including in Somalia, Israel, Chad, Niger, and Myanmar.
Between 2019 and 2024, Youssef was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace, focusing on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, Iraqi reconciliation, and other regional peace efforts. In 2025, he joined the European Institute of Peace as Senior Advisor, and is a member of the Expert Advisory Group at the Institute for Integrated Transitions (IFIT), contributing to the global Peace Treaty Initiative.
An accomplished scholar as well as a practitioner, Youssef holds a B.A. in Physics from Cairo University and two master’s degrees -in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College (USA) and in Economics from the American University in Cairo. He has also taught at Cairo University, AUC, and Lehigh University in the U.S.
Throughout his career, Ambassador Youssef has been recognized for his measured diplomacy, strategic foresight, and commitment to multilateral peacebuilding, bringing a mix of humanitarian, political, and cultural divides in pursuit of stability and dialogue across the Middle East and the broader Islamic world.
Click the ‘Listen’ button below to hear Dominic Bowen with Hesham Youssef unpack how Egypt’s perception of the Palestinian question shapes relations with Israel, and more broadly with the Arab League. Click ‘Read’ for a more in-depth analysis of the subject, weighing in both Israel’s rights to protect its population and Netanyahu and the current coalition’s violations of Gazaoui human rights, along with Youssef’s view of diplomacy and Europe’s role in the Middle East.
