Sonya Zayneb Ouertani

Sonya Zayneb Ouertani studied international politics and public administration in Germany, France and Canada. She has various working experiences in the field of international cooperation with German governmental and EU-institutions in Thailand, Burundi, Jordan, North Macedonia & Pakistan. Sonya currently works on the promotion of human rights, rule of law and access to justice in post-conflict and fragile settings.

Additionally, she is socially engaged in different fields, mainly in strengthening a diverse Muslim community in Germany based on an anti-patriarchal and gender-inclusive approach and in Jewish-Muslim dialogue formats. In this line, Sonya co-published a handbook on Jewish-Muslim dialogue. She aims at analyzing current political developments in critical, decolonizing and intersectional ways and creating spaces for active solidarity among marginalized groups.

Sonya participated in the DialoguePerspectives Programme in 2017/2018 and in the European Leadership Workshop 2021/2022. At the Autumn Seminar 2022, she will be one of our panelists.

˝The programme makes possible something that is all too rare in our society these days: speaking and having discussions across borders, not about each other, but with each other. That can be a hard slog at times, but at the same time the format makes space for follow-up questions and deeper conversations that are only possible through trust on all sides.

Felix, DialoguePerspectives alumnus