Rukaiyah Rafik is a woman who was born into a family of oil palm smallholders in Jambi. Rukaiyah Rafik, better known as Uki, was born on November 1, 1977. She has been working in the palm oil sector since 2000, when she joined WALHI Jambi as a volunteer supporting and assisting local and indigenous communities.
From 2002 to 2004, Rukaiyah Rafik worked at Sawit Watch as a Corporate Campaigner. Later, from 2007 to 2017, she served as the Director of the Setara Jambi Foundation, with a primary focus on supporting independent oil palm smallholders in implementing sustainable palm oil standards and strengthening farmer institutions.
Since 2018, Rukaiyah Rafik has been working with FORTASBI (the Indonesian Sustainable Palm Oil Farmers Forum). In 2022, she was appointed as the Head of the FORTASBI Secretariat. Currently, she also serves as a member of the RSPO Board of Governors (BoG), representing independent smallholders.
Rukaiyah Rafik has strong expertise in sustainability standard implementation such as RSPO and ISPO certification for smallholders and is also a Master Trainer in the RSPO Smallholder Training Academy.