Professor Dr Nouri Talabany

Professor of Law, Independent MP in the Parliament of Kurdistan Region

• Born in the city of Kirkuk and completed elementary, intermediate and secondary education there.
• Received BSc in Law from the University of Baghdad.
• Received Ph.D. in Law from the Sorbonne, France.
• Taught at the universities of Basra, Baghdad, Sulaimani and Salahadin in Arbil from 1968 until December, 1982, when he was compulsorily retired for political reasons.
• His first articles, in Kurdish, were published in "Hiwa", a Kurdish magazine, while he was a student at the University of Baghdad in the late fifties.

His numerous publications include:
• Textbooks in French, his 1968 Thesis on French Law and his Thesis for the Diploma in Law in 1966 also concerning French Law and many other research studies and articles in French.
• Textbooks in Arabic on Iraqi Law, 1st edition 1972, 2nd edition 1979, and another textbook, also on Iraqi Law, in 1979.
• He was the first person to publish a book on the Arabization of the Kirkuk Region, in Arabic. The 1st edition was published in Sweden and Kurdistan in 1995, the 2nd edition in London in 1999 and the 3rd edition in Arbil in 2004. It was translated into Kurdish and English in 1999 and published in Sweden and, later, republished in Kurdistan in 2004.
• He was also the first person to propose a federal system for Kurdistan in a study written in Arabic, in London, in 1974. This appeared in the Iraqi Academic magazine, Kurdish Section, Vols. 16 & 17, 1987, Baghdad, and in Kurdistan, in a pamphlet, in 1992 and 2005. It was translated into Kurdish and published in 2005 and 2006
• He is the author of the first dictionary of legal terms in Kurdish, assisted by a Kurdish scholar, Tawfiq Wahby, in London in 1974. This Dictionary of Law has been published in Kurdistan in 2004 in four languages – Kurdish, Arabic, French and English, and republished in 2006.
• He has written more than 120 studies and articles in Kurdish, more than 60 in Arabic and more than 30 in English and French, published both in Kurdistan and elsewhere. Some of them have been presented at international conferences in the USA and Europe.
• He was the first person to write, in Arabic, a Draft Constitution for the Iraqi Kurdistan region, which was published in Arbil in 1992. This draft has been translated into Kurdish and English and republished in 1999 and, again, 2002.
• He was a member of the High Legal Committee in the Kurdistan Region in 1992 whose main objective was to prepare the projects of law for the parliament of Kurdistan.
• He was Chairman of the Kurdish Organisation for Human Rights in Britain for seven years from 1993 and Director of the Kirkuk Trust for Research and Studies in London from 2000.
• He was President of the High Electoral Commission of the Kurdistan Region from July 2004 until December of the same year.
• At present, he is an independent MP in the Parliament of the Kurdistan Region.
August, 2007.