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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