Nine Kurdish women compete to be named Miss Iraq 2021

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iraq’s national beauty pageant will include nine Kurdish women representing the autonomous Kurdistan Region’s provinces as well as other parts of the country.

The pageant is scheduled to take place later this month in Baghdad with 20 women competing to be named the country’s most beautiful.

Amera Atto, a Yezidi living in an internally displaced camp in the Kurdistan Region, is one of the contestants. She is also Miss Zakho, the Kurdish town where she resides.

Atto is a member of a social affairs committee in the IDP camp where lives with her family, and supervises a small library in the camp.

The competition was first launched in 1947, suspended in 1974, and reinstated in 2015.

Another Kurdish woman, Naz Alan, will participate in the contest as Miss Baghdad. A graduate of nursing, she currently lives in the Netherlands.

“I want Kurdish girls to be famous and people know that we are smart and brave,” Alan, 23, told Kurdistan 24. She said if she wins she would support orphans who lost their parents in recent wars. 

A committee of international judges will decide the winner on July 29.

Shivan Jabari contributed to this report from Baghdad.