Finnbogi Rutur Finnbogason

In the spring of 2017 I concluded my studies at Sorbonne and handed in my research paper Depuis l’intervention militaire en Syrie l’Hezbollah se transnationalise ou démontre-t- il un plus grand symptôme des évènements dans l’espace régionale et politique? The study was the result of a research trip to Lebanon in October 2016. It concentrated on the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and their participation in the Syrian civil war from 2013 onwards. More precisely it aimed to identify the methodology applied by Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to garner support for their involvement in the Syrian conflict. Because of the close economic and geopolitical alliances between Syria, Lebanon and Iran, the extent of Iranian influence in the region and my own travels there in 2010 and 2015 I enrolled in an intensive Farsi course last summer from July to October. My previous experience with Arabic enabled me to quickly adapt to the Persian alphabet, which only differs by a few letters. Following Iran, I obtained a position as an Iraq Analyst. I analysed data to provide insight into developments on the ground in Iraq and guided data collection for weekly and monthly monitoring, reporting and analysis. My principal responsibilities where on foreign-backed militias in Iraq, ISIS activities, political developments and general atmospherics in liberated and contested areas. In April I interned for UNRWA in Beirut for the Human Resources and Administration Department where I created an induction e-course for new international and local staff for the Lebanon Field Office. In the summer of 2018 I was nominated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Iceland to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs programme where I was selected as a Fellow. During the programme’s ten weeks I was introduced to disarmament agencies in Geneva, Vienna, Brussels, Berlin, den Haag, Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo. The programme ended in New York monitoring the United Nations First Committee on Disarmament and International Security. Since January 2019 I have been employed by Doctors Without Borders as an expatriate working for the Oslo Bureau. My first mission was to the Greek island of Lesbos where I was HR and Finance Manager for ten months. In 2020 I was sent to South Sudan as Administration and Finance Manager and had my mission end prematurely due to Covid-19 related complications. Since September 2020 I have worked as a Senior Analyst both in Cameroon, Greece, Thailand, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sierra Leone, Chad, Uganda, Ivory Coast and currently Central African Republic collecting data for Country Finance Reports submitted to MSF HQ. I speak English, French and Icelandic fluently, Danish and Arabic at an intermediary level and Farsi the least, although I hope to elevate it to Intermediary soon.