Working in Conflict Areas
From 1987-1990, Hoskins lived and worked in Sudan providing humanitarian relief to Ethiopian refugees in eastern Sudan, and to displaced civilians in southern Sudan. In 1991, Hoskins co-founded the International Study Team, and led a group of international experts to examine the impact of war on the civilian population in Iraq. The study provided a detailed humanitarian assessment of post-Gulf War Iraq.
Having seen the impact of war on Iraqi children, Hoskins lobbied the Canadian government to release over 2 million dollars of frozen Iraqi assets held in Canadian banks, and spent the following two years overseeing the purchase and distribution of food and medicine to tens of thousands of at-risk Iraqi children.
In 1997, Hoskins was asked to join the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lloyd Axworthy, as his Senior Policy Advisor. While at the Department of Foreign Affairs, he was responsible for contributing to Canadian foreign policy in the areas of human rights, human security, humanitarian affairs, peacebuilding, war-affected children and Africa. He later also served as an Advisor to the Office of the Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict at the United Nations, and has been involved in setting United Nations policy on issues concerning the protection of children living with war.
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