Seraina Eldada is a Senior Project Officer for the Mediation and Peace Support Department, where she supports dialogue processes among Track 1 and Track 2 actors. Her work includes project design, planning and coordination, monitoring and evaluation activities, research, analysis and conceptualisation of new avenues of work in various fragile and conflict-affected settings. Her main geographical areas of focus are the Middle East, North Africa and Eurasia.
Seraina has a background in field-based humanitarian operations and advocacy in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Europe. Previous thematic areas of focus include frontline access negotiations, operational strategy, migration, counterterrorism and criminalisation of humanitarian actors, acute health crises, and health and medical needs in armed conflict settings. Before joining the GCSP in 2020, Seraina worked for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as a Humanitarian Affairs Officer and a Cultural Mediator. She had multiple deployments to Search and Rescue in the Central Mediterranean off the coast of Libya, during which she also supported advocacy efforts in Tunisia, MSF’s operational centre in the Netherlands, and the European Parliament in Strasbourg. She also completed deployments to the Colombia-Venezuela border for an exploratory assessment of migratory movements and health needs, Ebola response and internal displacement support in two separate deployments to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Ituri Province), malnutrition and malaria response in Niger, and remote work from Dakar, Senegal on counterterrorism and criminalisation of humanitarian actors in close collaboration with the MSF team on the ground in Borno State, Nigeria.
Seraina is fluent in English, French, German, Arabic and Spanish, with basic knowledge of Russian, Hebrew and Italian. She holds an MA and a BA in International Security and Diplomacy with a focus on the Middle East from Sciences Po, and a BA in Political Science and Human Rights from Columbia University.