The Iraqi Parliament on Saturday June 6, approved the appointment of Dr. Fuad Hussein as Minister of Foreign Affairs and that of Kurdish judge Salar Abdulsatar as Minister of Justice.

A few weeks earlier, the appointment of Ms. Nazanin Mohammed as Minister of Construction, Housing, Municipalities and Public Works had already been ratified. Thus, the Kurds occupy three of the twenty-two ministerial portfolios of the cabinet of the new Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi. The President of the Republic, Dr. Barham Salih is also a Kurd.

Dr. Fuad Hussein, born in 1949 in Khanaqin into a Shiite Kurdish family, is a longtime activist of the Kurdish cause and resistance. He had, during his studies at the University of Baghdad, joined the Union of Kurdish Students and later the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of General Mustafa Barzani. In 1975, after the resumption of the war against the Kurdish resistance by Saddam Hussein, he joined the maquis of Kurdistan. After the collapse of the Kurdish guerrillas following the Algiers Agreement of March 5, 1975 between the Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein on the back of the Kurds, and like very many Kurdish resistance fighters, he had to take refuge in Europe. He settled in the Netherlands where he completed his curriculum with a PhD in International Relations. In addition to his work as an academic and independent consultant on the Middle East, he campaigned within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) created in 1975 by the Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani who later became president of the Iraq.

In 1984, he left the PUK and chose to continue his action in favor of the Kurdish cause within the Paris Kurdish Institute, the first independent Kurdish cultural institution in Europe bringing Kurdish intellectuals and artists from Europe and the United States together.

In 1987, he was elected as vice-president of the Kurdish Institute, a position he held until his return to Iraq during the American intervention in 2003. During his stay in Baghdad where, appointed deputy minister of National Education, he notably organized the preparation of new "debaathized" textbooks for Iraqi schools. He then moved to Kurdistan where he became Director of Cabinet for President Massoud Barzani, a post he held until the Iraqi elections of 2018.

A time tipped as PDK candidate for the post of President of the Republic, which ultimately returned to rival candidate Barham Salih of the PUK, Dr. Fuad        Hussein was appointed Minister of Finance and Deputy Prime Minister in the new Iraqi cabinet of Dr. Adel Abdulmahdi until March 2020.

His appointment to the Foreign Affairs portfolio crowns a long career in which his knowledge of the Western world and the Arab-Muslim world were highly valued in both Kurdistan and Iraq.

Dr. Fuad Hussein is married to a Dutch Protestant with whom he had two daughters.