Taban Shoresh, born in Erbil and founder and CEO of non-profit organization The Lotus Flower, was awarded the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) by King Charles III before the New Year in recognition of her work supporting refugees and displaced conflict survivors in the Kurdistan Region. The OBE is one of the highest forms of recognition in the UK.

UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated that the New Year’s Honors List acknowledges the outstanding accomplishments of UK citizens who have demonstrated the utmost dedication to altruism and compassion. 

“To all honorees, you are the pride of this country and an inspiration to us all,” he said

The UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office said in a separate statement that they recognized Shoresh “for an exceptional and sustained contribution to supporting refugees and displaced conflict survivors in the Kurdistan Region.”

“Being honored with an OBE is a great recognition of all the hard work that we do,” Shoresh said. 

Shoresh added that she does not know exactly how she was picked. “But obviously, being Kurdish, British, and a genocide survivor, my lived experience has allowed me to take pain and trauma and turn it into something positive to impact the community in a positive way.”

The Lotus Flower

Taban Shoresh was imprisoned when she was just four years old and narrowly escaped being buried alive during the genocidal Anfal Campaign. Her family moved to the UK in the 1980s after her father, Sami Shoresh, a poet and peshmerga fighter, fled abroad with the help of Amnesty International.

“I’m a genocide survivor and was imprisoned when I was a child. I escaped with my family and have seen what it’s like to be a refugee. As refugees we see things in childhood that we shouldn’t really see. We spent months, years even, fleeing.”

Shoresh said this experience convinced her to work with refugees and displaced people in the Kurdistan Region. In the UK, she worked with several charities, before she set up The Lotus Flower. “That experience gave me valuable insight into the charity world and how charities function.”

In 2014, she returned to the Kurdistan Region. That same year ISIS attacked the Kurdistan Region, carrying out a genocide against the non-Muslim Yezidi minority, with thousands killed or enslaved.

“I worked closely with the women survivors of the genocide and when I came back to the UK in 2015 I could not go back to a normal job; I had to do something. I had all of that lived experience and there was no way that I could go back to a normal nine-to-five job.”

As a result she set up The Lotus Flower in 2016 her own living room, with no connections. “I slowly built it up, which led to recognition in the EU. I built an organization from zero income, and now we have 200 staff, impacting 60,000 people in the Kurdish community.”

“We are UNHCR Child Protection partners, which is really important for me, as Child Protection is something very close to my heart,” she added.

Shoresh added that she set up The Lotus Flower while grappling with illness as a single mother. Her sickness was so severe that it brought her close to death.

“The odds were against me, and I still managed to do it. It’s my hard work and my team’s hard work that brought us to where we are.”

“I think that’s why our work was recognized for its exceptional impact on the community. It started from really humble beginnings and grew through sheer hard work. It’s an example for anyone who wants to make a difference – you don’t need to be rich or have connections.”

“There are ways of making an impact on the world. I figured out how to do it in my own way and I have been recognized for that,” she concluded.

Expanded reach

The Lotus Flower operates both within and outside of camps in the Kurdistan Region. The autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, despite its budget being cut by the federal government in Baghdad, currently accommodates over one million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees. Moreover, Baghdad closed its IDP camps and is trying to force Erbil to shut down their camps as well.

“We focus on women and girls, but we do work with men and boys as well. We’ve had many men and boys projects and I’m a big believer that it takes a community to support women and girls,” Shoresh said.

“So we work in accordance with four pillars that are aligned to the UN sustainable development goals of education and livelihoods, peacebuilding and human rights, health and safety. We’ve added climate change recently as well.”

“Under each pillar we have projects. Under education, we have adult literacy, computer literacy, any kind of educational programs. Adult literacy is very popular among women that have never gone to school, because it gives them the opportunity to read or write.”

“We help run a women’s business incubator, in which we train women to set up their own businesses and help them register the business with the government. We give them a small grant, as well as training and equipment.”

Moreover, The Lotus Flower focuses on health and safety, gender work, child protection, and health support. “We’ve run men’s trauma projects and youth suicide prevention projects, and we offer mental health support for all women at the centers we operate.”

The Lotus Flower is also planning to set up a Women Peace Institute with support of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s High Council of Women’s Affairs. “Women’s peace and security is a big priority. It’s a way to enable more research, discussions, and training at the center. That’s a really exciting development for this year.”

Moreover, The Lotus Flower now focuses on climate change, since Iraq is ranked 61st out of 163 countries on UNICEF’s Children’s Climate Risk Index, and the UN Global Environment Outlook 6 ranks it the fifth-most vulnerable country to water and food shortages and extreme temperatures. The Kurdistan Regional Government has focused on water conservation, having completed four dams as of the end of 2023 and working on 13 additional ones.

The Lotus Flower has also worked on projects focused on food security, and climate change for schools.

“We’ve built school gardens to try and encourage our students to think about the future and start looking after these gardens. They’ve cultivated an understanding of agriculture, food security, and climate change. We have another program called Earth Sisters, where we basically do capacity building around climate change.”

Shoresh noted that women and girls are highly impacted by climate change, be it through displacement, or violence. “We’re starting a project called Swimming Sisters. When there are floods, not just in the Kurdistan Region, but many places around the world, women and girls are more likely to drown because they don’t know how to swim.”

“In the cultures that we work in, it is not a priority for women and girls to know how to swim, but it’s a life-saving skill. That’s a great example of how climate change impacts women.”