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Borderless humanity Fotini Rantsiou (MPhil 1996), humanitarian affairs officer with the UN, talks to Leah Keogh (BSS 2020) about her extraordinary personal journey, and navigating borders and crises to provide aid Adiyaman, Turkey 2023 Bambari, Central African Republic, 2019 I sat down with Fotini Rantsiou, a humanitarian affairs officer in Niger with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), to catch a glimpse into the world of humanitarianism. A Greek national with more than 20 years of experience in the field, Fotini felt a call to action when she observed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the wars in the nearby former Yugoslavia in the late 80s and early 90s. It was soon afterwards that Fotini parked her biology degree and boarded a plane to Ireland, ‘I had an affinity with Ireland’ she said. Fotini described Ireland as a place she felt connected to because of its historical parallels with her own country, including forced migration and civil unrest. A Trinity graduate, Fotini secured an MPhil in Peace Studies in 1996 and more recently received a Trinity College Alumni Award for her profound impact on a global scale. ‘Everything came together doing the Peace Studies Masters at Trinity’ she said, and credited her time at the university as a contributing factor to landing her first opportunity with the United Nations, where she would go on to build a career. Having spent some time abroad as an election observer in Bosnia and Serbia, Fotini returned to Ireland to find a newspaper advertisement calling for seven United Nations volunteers to assist the United Nations Mission in Guatemala as human rights observers, post-conflict. Fotini’s career has since taken her across the globe: the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia. Fotini has served in 20 countries and assumed a variety of posts. Fotini’s contributions include coordinating and negotiating humanitarian access for populations in need, the development and execution of emergency relief programmes in the field, the observation of elections as an election expert and reporting on missions as well as advocating for support at a high level.
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Zacapa Guatemala, 1998 It is in Palestine where Fotini feels she made the most impact. Serving the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for I know that the work that I do is far agency has faced, citing allegations of staff affiliation with Islamist militant groups and the withdrawal of funding by some member Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in the West Bank between 2002 and 2005, Fotini worked as an operations support officer negotiating from enough, but it is the best we can states that this has provoked. Fotini praised Ireland as a country that increased its aid contributions to UNRWA despite this humanitarian access with Israeli officials, as well as the release of detained Palestinian staff and also facilitated the safe evacuation do and that is more than nothing criticism and described the allegations as a ‘concerted attack’ and ‘not something new’, crediting the organisation for 75 years of of Palestinian people from military zones. essential services to Palestinian refugees. ‘The feeling of fulfilment that I had when I was on the frontline with UNRWA is something that I didn’t have before or after that’ she said. Fotini returned to UNRWA at their Headquarters in Amman from 2019 to 2020. Here, she ensured that the humanitarian principle of neutrality was being respected in all five UNRWA fields and that no UNRWA installations such as schools and medical centres were being abused by any parties to the conflict. When questioned on the challenges associated with a life of international service, Fotini highlighted ‘challenges on the personal side, especially if you are a woman’. Speaking to the unpredictability of this line of work, Fotini asserted that ‘your work as a humanitarian does not depend on you, it is decided by others’. She explained that because humanitarians are responding to the world’s happenings, this is not a career that you can clearly map out. Given societal structures that place Unsurprisingly, Fotini is monitoring the current war on additional caring responsibilities on women, she said that it is Gaza closely and is frustrated by the recent criticism the often more difficult for women to move freely between posts
