Huda Jawad is a WLUML networker based in London, United Kingdom. She recently spoke at the Inspiring Migrant Women Conference in London. Below is the text of her speech, which drew partly upon the reflections she wrote for our 16 Days of Activism in 2013. The text of the speech was originally published on Huda’s website www.hudajawad.org
Text of Migrant Woman Conference Speech 2 May 2015 Huda Jawad ©
I was born in Baghdad and left Iraq at the age of two. I grew up in the United Arab Emirates and Syria before coming to settle as a teenager in London in the late eighties. My parents were political activists during the time of Saddam Hussein and fled Iraq after the death sentence was imposed on them in absentia. We travelled throughout the Middle East and seemed that we were constantly on the move.