Elena Rafti
Elena Rafti is a career diplomat with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cyprus, currently serving as Diplomatic Advisor to the Minister of Defence.
Ambassador Rafti joined the Cypriot diplomatic service in 1998 and has served in different positions at headquarters and abroad. Nationally, she served as Security Policy Director and Head of the Task Force for the first National Security Strategy of the Republic of Cyprus. More recently she served as Director of the Global Agenda Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2022 to 2023. Elena served served in several diplomatic missions abroad, both in bilateral and multilateral settings, including in the Permanent Representation of Cyprus to the EU.
From 2018 to 2022, Ms. Rafti was the Permanent Representative of Cyprus to the United Nations, the OSCE and other International Organizations in Vienna. She also served as Ambassador of Cyprus to Austria with concurrent accreditations to Croatia, Slovenia and Liechtenstein.
Elena is an alumni of the Vienna hub of the UN International Gender Champions Network.
She holds a BA (Hons) in Politics and International Relations from the University of Kent and a Masters of Philosophy in Politics and Sociology from the University of Cambridge.