Speaker – Ms Maartje Peters
Ms Maartje Peters
Head of the Taskforce International Cyber Policy
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kingdom of the Netherlands
Biography
Maartje Peters is Head of the Taskforce International Cyber Policy since August 2021. Prior to this position, she was the Coordinator of the Corona Vaccination Programme targeting those embassies where no EMA-approved vaccines were available. Ms. Peters was Deputy Head of the Migration Policy Bureau from 2018 - 2020. In 2014, she started as deputy Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Jordan where she was responsible for setting up a Dutch assistance programme focusing on stability through job creation, education and protection of the Syrian refugee population and other vulnerable groups in the Jordanian society. Prior to this position, she was Senior Policy Officer at the Middle East Department in The Hague, dealing with the Israeli – Palestinian conflict (2010 – 2014). Between 2002 – when she started working at the ministry of Foreign Affairs - and 2010 Ms. Peters worked at the Human Rights Department in The Hague, at the Political Department of the Netherlands Embassy in Bangkok and at the Department of Water & Climate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Before her career at the MFA, she worked at UNIFEM Regional Office of Arab States in Amman and of the International Labour Organisation’s Regional Office of Arab States in Beirut (1998 – 2002). In those years, she covered women’s rights, violence against women, informal economy and migrant workers’ rights. She started her working career (1995 – 1998) in development cooperation at BILANCE (a NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security) and as applied researcher for HIVOS and NOVIB in Mali and in Cambodia.
Ms. Maartje Peters holds a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and a Master’s degree from the Centre for International Development Issues at the Radboud University in Nijmegen with a specialization in gender and Dutch development policy.