Kurdish woman plans to run for seat in Mexican Congress

Mexican Kurdish Politician

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - A Mexican, an American, a Kurd; three dearly-held identities, one woman.

Meet Hanna Jaff Bosdet.

Hailing from a diverse racial and cultural background, the US-born Jaff is an enthusiastic humanitarian, ambitious activist and aspiring politician who resides in Mexico.

Kurdistan24 recently sat down with Hanna who is currently on yet another philanthropist mission of hers in Erbil, Kurdistan Region, her fatherland to which her words evidently reflect a deep attachment.

Jaff, Hanna's surname, is the name of her father's tribe - one of the biggest in the Greater Kurdistan.

Bosdet is her Mexican mother's family name, who has Spanish and French roots.

Speaking over a cup of green tea in a high-class Erbil hotel lobby on a spring evening on Tuesday, Jaff revealed that she was planning to run for a seat in Mexico's bicameral Congress of the Union in the 2018 general elections.

She hopes to represent the northwestern state of Baja California where she was raised in the city Tijuana, right on the border with the US where she was born in the cross-border neighbor city of San Diego.

"More than a politician, I am a humanitarian. I am an activist," Jaff says, asserting politics is merely a means for her to have a voice.

She already is the Deputy Secretary of Relations with the Civil Society in Mexico's ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (IRP).

Holding a master's degree in International Relations from Harvard University along several other academic titles, Jaff is a firm believer in benefits education can create in people's life.

Upon completion of her studies, she moved to Mexico City, a place she initially knew nobody, four years ago and managed to unlock opportunities thanks to her academic background.

Jaff was previously an official dealing with immigrant affairs for the IRP.

One of the issues she most cares about is migrant and refugee rights, herself being a second generation through both her parents who met and married in the US.

In 2013, she launched the Jaff Foundation to help refugees, IDPs, and migrants in Mexico as well as those in Kurdistan.

Jaff Foundation has in a campaign distributed English-teaching books to some 80 thousand speakers of Spanish and indigenous Purepecha language along camps in northern Mexico.

When asked whether her campaign was not an incentive for people to leave their home countries behind, often in illegal and dangerous ways, she states that she is "very pro-stay."

"I know it is not something that we should help them do, but they are going to do it anyways," but she would give them 'something' with which they could defend their rights, or get a job once they arrive at a destination in the US.

But her foundation, which is registered with the World Federation of UNESCO Clubs, Centers and Associations (WFUCA), focuses more on children's education.

"I don't think that anyone chooses not to attend school when [they] are ten-years-old," Jaff tells Kurdistan24.

The English-teaching book Jaff Foundation distributes is also available in Kurdish.

Her humanitarian work aside, Jaff is proud of serving as a liaison between her two ancestral homelands, Mexico and Kurdistan.

Mexican Kurdish politician and humanitarian Hanna Jaff
Mexican Kurdish politician and humanitarian Hanna Jaff

She boasts of having organized in Mexico City the largest ever Kurdish event in which 80 thousand Mexicans attended for the duration of four days.

"Mexicans had never heard of Kurdistan," she adds.

"In Mexico, Kurdistan is in the news a lot. Really. When people see, they call me as if I am the ambassador or representative telling me 'oh guess what Hanna? I saw the Kurds on TV."

"Mexicans tell me that they cannot believe the only people that have been able to fight against the Islamic State (IS) are the Kurds whose Peshmerga and woman fighters are at the front," she continues.

The hopeful lawmaker resented the fact that Kurdistan Region does not have a diplomatic mission in Mexico and vice versa.

Being a member of Kurdish diaspora, her views on retaining one's cultural and linguistic roots are resolute.

"One of the reasons I am a confident woman is because of knowing who I am," Jaff answers to a question about Kurdish generations born, and those yet to come, in Europe and North America.

During her stay in Kurdistan, she has been visiting IDP camps and hospitals and meeting students at colleges.

Jaff wants to create "contagious inspiration" in Kurdistan not only to tackle societal problems but also to help achieve national liberation.

"The south, north, east and west [of Kurdistan] should be working as a team to achieve independence," she passionately observes, referring to Kurdish people's homeland divided between the states of Iraq, Turkey, Iran, and Syria.

"If we manage to be one single Kurdistan, if we work for a cause which is an independent, united, prosperous, peaceful Kurdistan, we have to be together. One person can't do that."

"My job is very small compared to an entire 40 million Kurds that we are in the world," Jaff concludes.

 

Editing by Ava Homa