Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 Iraq |
| Occupation(s) | Diplomat, politician, journalist |
| Years active | 1990s–present |
| Known for | High Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government to the UK and US; member of Kurdistan Democratic Party |
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman previously served as the High Representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government to both the United Kingdom and the United States, and is affiliated with the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The Financial Times once referred to her as "an ambassador without a country."
Raised in Iraq, Abdul Rahman fled to London as a refugee when she was 11 years old. She is the daughter of Sami Abdul Rahman, a prominent leader in the Kurdish resistance against Saddam Hussein. Due to ongoing military attacks on Kurdish regions, her family was forced to move frequently. She shared with The Telegraph, “We would be living in one village when it was bombed, so we had to escape. At one point, we stayed in an abandoned school; at another, in a nomads’ shelter.”
After relocating to Kent, she earned the Observer's Farzad Bazoft Memorial Prize in 1993 for her Kurdistan-related articles published in the Hendon Times. Following the downfall of Saddam Hussein, her father assumed the role of Deputy Prime Minister of the KRG but tragically lost his life along with his eldest son Salah and 96 others in a 2004 double suicide bombing in Erbil.
In 2010, Abdul Rahman was chosen for the Leadership Council of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Transitioning from her journalistic career at the Financial Times into diplomacy, she first represented the KRG in the UK before being appointed as their envoy to the United States in Washington, DC in 2015.