Sofie Rafrafi

Biography

Sofie Rafrafi holds a Masters degree in International Relations (2004) and won the Prize of the Belgian Minister of Foreign Affairs with her thesis on Trans-Atlantic relations.

Sofie worked for four years, between January 2013 and May 2019, for the CSDP mission EUCAP Sahel Niger, once as a head of unit in the operations department (2013-2014) and once as a head of unit in the strategic command department (5/2017-5/2019). Before that, she worked for more than 7 years at the Egmont Institute (2005-2012), mainly as a senior training programme manager with a specific focus on EU civilian crisis management.

In between her field work, she provided her services as a senior consultant for the Egmont Institute, the ESDC, ENA Paris, FBA Sweden, CMC Finland, Pisa Scuola St Anna, CEP Slovenia, European Commission DG Devco, Warsaw University and the Tutzing Academy. She gave lectures and developed and delivered trainings and workshops on:  EU civilian crisis management structures, CSDP missions, the Sahel security challenges (migration, terrorism and organised crime), sustainability and local ownership, MMA & Training, cultural awareness and communication, conduct and discipline, challenges of working in the field and evaluation.

Since May 2019, Sofie works again as a senior consultant. Her aim is to contribute to pre-deployment, advanced, specialisation and high level courses to share the right experiences and knowledge with relevant actors and senior professionals in order to teach and transfer skills, know-how, lessons identified and best practices from the field and strategic level in civilian crisis management.

Since March 2019, she collaborates with the Egmont Education & Training Programme for the two-week Belgian Generic Training in Civilian Crisis Management, for which she is the lead trainer.