Mark Salter was born in Paris, grew up in London, Winchester (UK) and Brussels, and studied Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE) at Oriel College, Oxford. For the last 5 years he has lived in Colombo.
A teacher and BBC journalist by training, over the last 25 years he has worked in a wide range of professional settings including international NGOs, research institutes and intergovernmental organizations. His work has focused on issues of democracy, conflict, reconciliation and diversity management. From 2000 to 2010 he was a senior staff member of International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization supporting democratic consolidation around the world. Since then he has been an independent consultant focusing on the same areas of professional concern.
At IDEA he led the Institute’s global work on reconciliation. He was centrally involved in policy and advocacy initiatives with a range of international organizations including the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), as well as regional reconciliation initiatives focusing on Latin America, South Asia – Sri Lanka in particular – West Africa and the Western Balkans.
He led two major research projects: one Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict: Learning from African Experiences, which resulted in a widely-discussed report released in March 2008 (English version) and in French transla-tion (November 2009); the other, a major comparative cross-continental initiative titled Customary Governance and Democracy-Building: Exploring the Linkages.
As a consultant, over the last 15 years his assignments have included:
- a major evaluation of an African women’s international NGO (Femmes Africa Solidarité);
- a Background Paper for the International IDEA Democracy Forum 2011, Democracy For All? Minority Rights and Minorities’ Participation and Representation in Democratic Politics;
- Researching and writing a book assessing Norway’s peace engagement in Sri Lanka (See below); and expert advisory missions for the UN (Iraq); and EU (Sri Lanka).
- Leading a field/nation-wide EU-UN Conflict/Situational Risk Analysis (SRA) of Sri Lanka.
- Advising the UN Joint Programme on Local Governance (JPLG), Somalia; DfID Somalia strategy development; and the Political Affairs Division of the UN Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), Baghdad on revision of Iraqi Justice & Accountability Legislation (JAL).
From August 2019 to March 2020 he served as Sri Lanka Resident Program Director for the International Republican Institute (IRI), and from 2020 – 2022 as a senior analyst and contributor to the annual International IDEA Global State of Democracy Report on the Asia-Pacific region, and produced a set of regional country case studies on Covid-19’s governance impacts. (Taking Stock of Regional Democratic Trends in Asia and the Pacific Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic, IDEA Global State of Democracy Report 2021: Asia-Pacific Region).
From June 2022 to spring 2025 he was a Visiting Fellow at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo, Sri Lanka, where he researched his latest book From Independence to Aragalaya: a Modern History of Sri Lanka (Hurst, London) due for publication in October 2025.
A fuller professional profile is available on LinkedIn.