Shayda Hessami is French-Kurdish expert in human rights and specialist in media and art who founded (2017) and currently runs the French-based organization Humanitarian Aid and Journalism (AHJ). 

 

Educated in Sanandaj  Kurdistan Iran, Shayda emigrated from Iran to Iraqi-Kurdistan in 1995 and started her career in journalism in 2000 as a manager of two intellectually-stimulating pages of the Media and Cultural Center for Woman in Al-Sulaimaniyah city. 

 

In 2005 with support from American funders, she worked for a Radio NAWA as founder and director of publication departement , maneged the magazine supporting women, of which the three publications were recognized for their aesthetic quality and content. 

 

In 2008, she obtained her Bachelor’s Degree in Media from Sulaimaniyah University. Then, as part of a women empowerment programme sponsored by Bristol University and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), she was granted a scholarship to obtain her master’s degree in Cultural Journalism at the Sorbonne University in Paris. 

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She returned to Irak in 2013, to denonce Isis terror, as the manager of Research and Development Organization (RDO). 

 

She worked as communication consultant for the UN and went on to develop creative projects with the UNICEF to assist the Iraqi and the Syrian refugees, especially the Yazidi minority. She made 10 documentary films for UNICEF, UNDP, UPP, UNFPA.

 

Shayda was also a media consultant at UNFPA in 2015, and a member of the UNAMI consultant committee and other media and communication agencies incorporated with the United Nations. 

 

One of her projects has been the extraordinarily successful “Emanicipation of Yezidi girls through photojournalism”, supported by the Italian Government and UNICEF Iraq. 

 

In the name of Zina Hamu, AHJ's ambassador for Women and Medias in the Conflict Zones, the project won awards at the Festival Premio Ischia Journalism and ANSA Italian News Agency. She was the speaker in International Journalism Festival in Perugia and the first International assises of journalism in Tunis.

 

In 2017 she founded the Association Aide Humanitaire et Journalisme AHJ,  she continues these and other projects such as the art project for refugee children in the camp of Ivry sur Seine in France for UNICEF France #BackToSchool, or the inauguration of the House of Artists in Domiz Camp run by the Roberto Cimetta Fund and UNFPA.

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In 2018, she received an honorary prince by ANSA News Agency in Italy.

 

She is courrently the general diector of the French Association AHJ and supervise the CFI programme for Yemen and Iraq