Dr Nemam Ghafouri was born in 1968 in what is now the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Her family fled Saddam Hussein’s assault on the Kurds, seeking refuge in Iran before finally settling in Sweden. Nemam studied medicine and qualified as a cardiothoracic surgeon. During her career she participated in aid missions to India and Ethiopia. When ISIS launched its genocide against the Yazidi minority in 2014, Nemam was one of the first aid workers to arrive to help refugees on the front line. She founded the NGO Joint Help for Kurdistan with the aid of providing relief refugees and displaced people throughout the region. JHK continues to provide education and health services to from its base of operations in Bajed Kandala 2 IDP camp. During the last years of her life, Nemam campaigned tirelessly for the rights of Yazidi women who had endured slavery at the hands of ISIS. During her last mission to Syria in 2021 to reunite mothers and children who had been forcibly separated, Nemam fell ill with coronavirus. She passed away on April 1 2021.

Media coverage of Nemam’s life an work

Obituary in The New York Times, by Jane Arraf.

Obituary in the The Jerusalem Post, by Seth Frantzman.

Article in The Guardian on Nemam’s role reuiniting survivors with their children, by Martin Chulov and Nechirvan Mando.

Interview with ILTV.

‘When nobody else listened, Nemam Ghafouri was there’. Editorial in Dagens ETC by Somar Al Naher. (Swedish)

‘Nemam Ghafouri: a tornado of hope’. Report by Cecilia Uddén on ‘Godmorgon världen’, Sveriges Radio. (Swedish)

Obituary in Dagens Nyheter. (Swedish)