Kurdistan Regional Government High Representative to the UK
Based: London
Languages: English, Kurdish, Japanese
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman is the appointed High Representative to the UK of the
Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq.
She is the representative in Britain of a forward-looking and democratic administration that saw
its first free elections in 1992. The Kurdistan Regional Government seeks to build a federal, pluralistic and democratic Iraq.
Before her appointment, Bayan worked as a journalist for 16 years. A history graduate from
London University, she worked in a number of British newspapers, including The Observer and
the Financial Times.
Bayan was born in Baghdad in 1965. Her family briefly lived in Iran in the mid-1970s before
moving to Britain in 1976. Her late father, Sami Abdul Rahman, was a veteran of the Kurdish movement, joining the
Kurdistan Democratic Party in 1963 and playing a critical role in the Kurdish and Iraqi opposition
to Saddam Hussein’s regime. He held the post of Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan
Regional Government between 1999 and February 2004, when he and his elder son were killed
in a suicide bombing.
Bayan travels back to Kurdistan regularly and took an active part in this year's historic elections in Iraq, in which the Kurds played a pivotal role.
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