Arlette Zakarian

Arlette Zakarian is a French and Austrian lawyer specialized in international law. She has been the elected state spokeswoman (Landessprecherin) for Austrian expatriates who are members of the Austrian liberal political party NEOS since 2024.

Early life and education
Of Armenian origin, Arlette Zakarian was born in Tehran, Iran and raised in Austria. After studying law and obtaining a doctorate in international law at the University of Vienna, she obtained a DEA in public international law at the Paris-Panthéon-Assas University, an LLM in American law at Boston University, and an Executive master's in international Negotiation and Policy-making (INP) in Geneva.

Career
After working as a research assistant at Harvard University and Boston University, Zakarian worked as a lawyer for the car manufacturer Renault-Nissan. She was a policy analyst for the OECD in the Middle East and North Africa region. She has also held several positions at Sciences Po, including Dean of Undergraduate Studies at the Paris campus, and at ESSEC Business School, where she taught international business law. She was a visiting lecturer at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She has also worked as a litigation lawyer in the international insurance law department of the Bank of Scotland. Zakarian is a member of the bar in Strasbourg, France and a European lawyer based in Vienna, Austria, Zakarian has published commentaries on Armenia and on territorial issues in this region of the Caucasus,   and is the co-author and co-editor of a book providing a legal analysis of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Political involvement
Between 2017 and 2023, Zakarian was the ombudsman for all 2700 NEOS members. As a member of the Extended Board of NEOS, Zakarian is responsible for the first and only autonomous national body established by an Austrian parliamentary party to defend and promote the interests of more than 613,000 Austrians living abroad, including 462,000 in Europe. Since January 2024 she has been elected state spokeswoman (Landessprecherin) for NEOS X – International,   the separate state-organization of NEOS. She is also the official representative of NEOS, in particolare of NEOS X - International in Strasbourg. Zakarian is a candidate in the next 2024 Austrian parliamentary elections scheduled for September 29.

Publication

 * Gurgen Petrossian/Sarah Babaian/Arlette Zakarian (Hrsg.): Berg-Karabach – Eine völkerrechtliche Analyse des Konflikts um Arzach, Nomos Verlag, Baden-Baden 2022, ISBN 978-3-8487-8514-8