Charles O. (Cob) Blaha is a Senior Advisor for DAWN. He retired from the State Department in 2023 after a 32-year career that included a wide variety of domestic and overseas assignments, including postings in Panama, Cuba, Türkiye, Iraq, Czechia, and the U.S. Mission to UN International Organizations in Geneva, where he focused primarily on the UN Human Rights Council. From 2016 until 2023, he was Director of the State Department’s Office of Security and Human Rights, which was responsible for ensuring that human rights and international humanitarian law considerations were taken into account in U.S. decisions on arms transfers and security assistance, and for overseeing Leahy vetting worldwide.

Before joining the Foreign Service, Blaha was a trial attorney with the Milwaukee Office of the Wisconsin State Public Defender for ten years. He holds a B.A., magna cum laude, from Duke University, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law. He speaks Spanish.