Aziz Sherif

Born 1904 in Anah, Iraq. Public and political figure of Iraq. A jurist by education and profession.

In 1946, Sherif founded the Party of the People (Hizb al-Shaab), which stood for the true independence and democratization of Iraq’s political life; in the same year he established the newspaper Al-Watan. The party and the newspaper called for a struggle against British supremacy, and in 1947 both the party and the newspaper were banned. Sherif helped found a peace organization in 1949 and the National Council of Partisans of Peace in 1950. Persecuted by the authorities, Sherif emigrated to Syria in 1954. In 1958, after the Iraqi revolution of the same year, he returned to his homeland and was elected general secretary of the National Council of Partisans of Peace. He became a member of the Bureau of the World Peace Council in 1959. In December 1969, Sherif was appointed minister of justice, and he later became one of the ministers of state; he held the latter post until the end of 1975.

Sherif received the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Nations in 1960, and he was awarded the Order of Friendship of Peoples in 1974.