Ms. Asil Sidahmed

Ms. Sidahmed is Strategic Advisor for Advocacy and a member of the ethics committee at Médecins Sans Frontières Belgium. She is a founder and Research Fellow of the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies in Yemen. Sidahmed’s academic background is in legal-anthropology; she completed an MPhil in International Development at the University of Oxford in 2013.

The purpose of her role as strategic advisor is to maximize the impact of MSF's advocacy through reflection on global trends in advocacy, strategic advisory to field teams across 33 countries, and training and talent spotting for advocacy field staff. She works within the Analysis department, a reflection unit that analyses priority humanitarian and medical trends to inform operational direction and advocacy for MSF OCB.

Prior to this role, Sidahmed spent a decade in the Middle East in strategic advisory and operational management roles in the non-profit and private sectors. She continues to take up field positions, such as several months in 2019 as a field coordinator at MSF's sexual and gender-based violence project in a mining town in South Africa.

While Sidahmed started in the aid sector in 2009 in Yemen and developed an expertise in conflict and security in the Middle East, her scope is now coordinating learning on global advocacy efforts. She spends most of her time developing expertise on sexual and reproductive rights, ethics, abuse of power, organizational development to decolonize learning spaces, and building institutional partnerships with universities and aid entities.

She serves on MSF's ethics committee and produces reflections on medical-humanitarian advocacy in the 21st century, which she believes must be patient-centered, connected to social movements, and carry an inclusive, ethical backbone. She co-founded the Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies in 2015, where she serves as a board member. In her position, she connects to specialists in areas ranging from epidemics, HIV/TB, forced migration, counter-terrorism, measles, and grassroots mental health innovations. She welcomes connections that can further MSF's mandate to save lives and contribute to human dignity across borders.