Safwat Rashid Sidqi

Mr. Safwat Rashid Sidqi "is a former election commissioner with the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, a government body established to oversee elections throughout Iraq. As co-founder of the Kurdistan Human Rights Organization (KHRO), Mr. Sidqi has helped to document and monitor human rights violations in Iraqi Kurdistan and mediate conflicts between the region’s two former rival political parties. A lawyer by training, he has dedicated more than forty years to a career in public administration and private practice. He has also worked with the Bar Association, the Jurists Union, and the KHRO to reverse gender discriminatory articles in Iraq’s legal code and promote the rule of law in post-Saddam Iraq. His written works include an Arabic translation of the UN Standard Rules for Equalization of Opportunities, a Kurdish translation of Elections in Iraqi Kurdistan: An Experiment in Democracy (1992), and an essay entitled “Accountability in a Post-Saddam Iraq,” published in How to Build a New Iraq After Saddam (2002). During his fellowship, Mr. Sidqi completed a study of Iraq’s prospects for national reconciliation through democracy, the results of which will be produced in the form of a booklet in English, Arabic, and Kurdish."

• 2007–2008, NED Past Fellows