Muntaha Ghazi Sahib: a Journey to Success

Throughout our activities within the Women Talking Peace project we met a number of incredibly strong, brave and ambitious Iraqi women. One of them was Muntaha Ghazi Sahib, a 39 year old civil engineer from Nasiriya who is participating in our leadership programme over the course of six months. The programme aims at equipping Iraqi women to take on leadership positions, work on conflict resolution and participate actively in the social and political life in Iraq.

Muntaha’s goal at the start of the programme was to gain enough expertise and strength to run for an administrative position in her job. Despite her hard work, ethics and motivation, a field such as civil engineering in Nasiriya is still male dominated and like many other capable women, Muthana had to stand by as someone else got promoted. However, during the last change of governor in Nasiriya there was a province-wide call for people of Nasiriya to nominate capable men and women for the governor’s Advisory  Council of Fourteen. Muntaha’s name was suggested and she has been chosen as the Investment Authority Advisor, a position that was approved and authenticated in late  April 2021. She is one of the very few women who had this position and is confident in her work as she believes she now has the skills to   become the leader she wants to be.

Muntaha expressed how much she benefited from elbarlament’s leadership programme that equipped her with knowledge and skills ranging from  gender and self awareness, conflict resolution and negotiation to transitional justice, knowledge of Iraqis legal context to women’s participation and civic education. We hope to see more women like Muntaha rise throughout our and other leadership programmes and wish her all success.

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