Drago Pilsel was born in 1962 in Buenos Aires, in Argentina. He has of very mixed roots: German-Czech-Croatian on his father side and Hungarian-Austrian-Croatian on his mother's. During the Second World War, his father's family was involved with the Ustaše movement, which was the reason for his father fleeing to Argentina after the War. In Argentina, his father socialized intensely within the Croatian diaspora, and he was also Ante Pavelić's personal bodyguard. Drago Pilsel spent his childhood in Patagonia. He grew up with a pronounced feeling of Croatian national identity, only to later, during his youth, discover his Latin-American identity. He participated in the Falkland War in 1982, after which he started to question the social reality in Argentina, and begun to cooperate with human rights associations and Christian initiatives and to work in journalism. Simultaneously, he became increasingly close to the Franciscan community and contemplated becoming a priest. He came to Croatia for the first time in 1989 when the political turmoil was at its height. He lived in a seminary and he studied theology. However, the intensifying conflict and the fact that his brother was killed as a volunteer in the Croatian Army in October 1991 led to him joining the Croatian Army. He left the Army in March 1992. Subsequently, he got intensely involved in journalism and human rights protection. In 1993 he was one of the co-founders and the first secretary of the Croatian Helsinki Committee. As an activist and field researcher for the Helsinki Committee, he witnessed numerous human rights violations in the area of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina He was excluded from the Croatian Helsinki Committee in 1997 after he publicly disagreed with Ivan Zvonimir Čičak, the then-president of the organisation, whom he accused of financial misconduct. Drago Pilsel continued to work in journalism as a prominent journalist and columnist. He also acts through various organisations, councils and associations, and he has been present on the Croatian social scene for a number of years.