Irina Liczek

Dr. Irina Liczek is an independent expert on duty of care and people risk, political analyst, author, and former United Nations official with more than 20 years of experience in peacebuilding, governance, conflict prevention and development across Central Asia, the South Caucasus, the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe. She has worked across the UN system on political analysis, early warning, senior leadership advice and decision-making support in complex and politically sensitive environments. Her work examines how power, trust, accountability and institutional dynamics shape political and organizational outcomes. She holds a PhD in Political Science from The New School for Social Research in New York.

Building on this experience, her current work examines duty of care and people risk in humanitarian organizations, addressing the gap between “people risk” as a risk-management concept and “people at risk” as an organizational reality. She explores how internal workplace dynamics, particularly management practices that create additional people risk, can interact with external operational pressures and affect staff voice, professional confidence and operational readiness. Her work aims to increase awareness of these less visible risks, strengthen organizations’ ability to recognize and address them early, and reinforce accountability for the conditions in which humanitarian staff work, with implications for safety, retention, reputation and mission delivery.

She is the author of the forthcoming WTF: Work Trouble Fundamentals. Understanding Toxic Dynamics at Work, a practical guide for value-driven professionals. The book explores how harmful workplace dynamics develop, why they can be difficult to challenge, and how sustained exposure can affect confidence, health, decision-making and professional capacity. These issues are especially relevant in humanitarian organizations, where staff may already be operating under considerable external pressure and where hierarchy, power imbalances and commitment to mission can make internal problems harder to recognize and address. The book brings greater visibility to dynamics that often remain unexamined despite their consequences for staff well-being, organizational accountability and duty of care.