Ouafae Sananès worked as a teacher and researcher for the United Nations Population Fund and for the “Institut National de Statistique et d’Economie Appliquée” (INSEA) in Rabat, Morocco, from 1995 to 2002. Since then, she has pursued a career at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development as the foreign aid service attachée and high-level technical expert in Pakistan, then Haiti, and in Lebanon.
On her return to Paris as an advisor on gender development studies and analyses, she was put in charge of piloting a gender and development strategy; through this, she has participated in numerous international organizations and worked on various initiatives in these fields (UN Sustainable Development Goals, Paris climate accord, developmental finance, Open Government Partnership, UN Commission on the Status of Women), facilitated working groups on various subjects (radicalization and violent extremism, youth and development, migrations, gender and climate), developed and implemented projects (Gender and social cohesion: for youth employability, Egyptian women pioneers for the future, Women of the future in the Mediterranean), and finally, monitored the “Fonds de solidarité prioritaire” (FSP), the development project wing of the French Ministry of International Affairs.
Recipient of a doctorate in social sciences (social anthropology and ethnology) from the “Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales” (EHESS) in Paris in 1994, Ouafae Sananès possesses a truly international background, specifically in the fields of gender, population, and sustainable development, which complements her experiences in teaching, research, managing studies on land and public policy in such diverse regions as sub-Saharan Africa, North and Middle-Eastern Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean.