Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman is the High Representative to the United Kingdom of a forward-looking emerging democracy that saw its first free elections in 1992. The Kurdistan Regional Government seeks to build a federal, pluralistic, democratic and united Iraq. 

Key to her role as High Representative are strengthening ties between Kurdistan Region and the UK and encouraging inward investment which is important to the revival and stability of Kurdistan and Iraq as a whole. Working with leading British trade associations, Ms Abdul Rahman pioneered trade missions from the UK to the Kurdistan Region. She held a showcase trade and investment conference in London in June 2010 that attracted 600 international delegates. 

Under her leadership, the KRG UK Representation has helped to increase exchanges between the Kurdistan Region and the UK in education, culture, sport, humanitarian and social affairs, as well as to strengthen ties between the Kurdish and British parliaments, various government departments, and with the British political parties. 

Ms Abdul Rahman was an active member of the UK’s Kurdish community from her youth, and continues to support the work of community groups and professional associations in the UK. 

Before her appointment, Ms Abdul Rahman worked as a journalist for 17 years. She began her career on local newspapers in London and won the Observer Newspaper’s Farzad Bazoft Memorial Prize in 1993, which led her to work at The Observer and later at the Financial Times. She worked for the FT in Britain and in Japan, where she was Tokyo Correspondent. 

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 and General Secretary of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Sami Abdul Rahman was killed alongside his elder son Salah and 96 others in a twin suicide bombing in 2004. 

Ms Abdul Rahman was born in Baghdad. Her family briefly lived in Iran in the mid-1970s before moving to Britain in 1976. She is a history graduate from London University. 

For more information, please contact the KRG UK Representation, +44 20 7170 4300, email uk(at)krg.org.