Taban Shoresh OBE — Genocide Survivor, Women's Rights Activist and Aid Worker

The Learning Bridge with Richard Gerver

Taban Shoresh OBE (born 1983) is a British aid worker, women's rights activist and founder of non-profit organisation: The Lotus Flower. She is also a Kurdish genocide survivor.

Due to her father's involvement with the Peshmerga (Kurdish Military) and prominence in Kurdish Literature, Taban's family were one of many Kurdish families persecuted by Saddam Hussein's regime. When Shoresh was four years old, the Iraqi Intelligence Service arrived at her home and arrested her mother along with her paternal grandparents. Shoresh was imprisoned for two weeks along with her family and many other Iraqi Kurds. In 1986 Shoresh's family narrowly escaped a mass live burial after the drivers of the vehicle transporting her and her family were changed; at the time some Kurdish people working for Sadam Hussein were in fact working for Kurds.

She founded The Lotus Flower charity in 2016. The organisation offers support to displaced female victims of conflict in the Middle East.

The organisation is registered in London and has set up three centres in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The centres help vulnerable females access education and helps them with their wellbeing and mental health, which in turn helps refugee women reintegrate back into their communities.

In this extraordinary and deeply moving episode we hear about Taban’s own story and how she has gone on to use it to drive real change for women and girls in some of the world’s most dangerous places. She talks with real openness about her own struggles, about integration, finding a voice and having the courage to become an activist.

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