Expertise: Diplomacy, international relations, development policies, political transitions, civic engagement, gender equality and women’s empowerment

Languages: Arabic, English and basic dutch

Bio: Sahar Ghanem (@GhanemSahar) is the Yemeni ambassador to the Netherlands alongside the non-resident ambassador to Norway and Sweden. She is also the Permanent Representative of Yemen to the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and Yemen’s Governor to the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC). 

She was the coordinator of the Women Ambassadors Group in the Netherlands in 2020. Her role was to coordinate activities of the group which includes more than 30 women diplomats and she successfully expanded the network to include women leaders from various walks of life, establishing a structure and annual plan as well as social media platforms designed and implemented, including the group’s logo. Because of her passion and hardwork the group successfully implemented a social media campaign and improved the network’s visibility and connectivity in the Netherlands. She led the organisation of many prestigious activities for the diplomatic community of the network including training courses.

Ms. Ghanem held multiple roles and positions prior to serving as an ambassador; She started her career with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) then made a lateral move to United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) where she was a coordinator of a project aimed in empowering Yemeni women through delivering their voices to the decision makers in the Transitional Process and National Dialogue that followed the 2011 Uprising in Yemen. Ms. Ghanem’s latter role, her expertise, and activism qualified her to be selected to represent the revolutionist youth in the National Dialogue Conference in (2013 – 2014), as member of the State Building Group. After the Conference concluded its sessions, Ms. Ghanem sustained her affiliation to the transitional process. She was appointed to manage the Civic Engagement Unit that ran a national campaign aimed at engaging Yemenis with the political transitional process, raising awareness on outcomes of the National Dialogue Conference and encouraging civic engagement in the public consultations on the draft of the “Constitution of the New Yemen”.

One of Ms. Ghanem’s last roles in the Government of Yemen was an advisor on women, Youth and Civil Society Affairs at the former Prime Minister’s bureau. 

Ambassador Sahar Ghanem is known for being a political activist and feminist; She is a member of several national and regional networks and she has actively participated in various programs, seminars, interviews and conferences nationally and internationally, including a 3-year Dutch program “Female leaders from the MENA Region” and the sixtieth session of the Commission on the Status of Women (UN). Sahar also participated as a speaker at the 2016 Oslo Peace Forum, in which she presented a panel discussion on the status of the Yemeni peace consultations with the assistant of the UN Secretary General’s envoy to Yemen at the time. The Oslo Forum is a high level event in which senior conflict mediators, high level decision makers, key peace process actors, analysts and experts from all around the world, come together in an informal and discreet retreat to share their experiences, identify challenges and reflect on mediation practice.

She has a degree in Computer Engineering from Jordan University.