Golriz Ghahraman

Ghahraman revealed that she has multiple sclerosis in an interview in February 2020.

Ghahraman entered legal practice in New Zealand working as a junior barrister specialising in criminal defence, describing it as "the most frontline human rights area of law you can work in practice in in New Zealand; every day you are applying the Bill of Rights Act and you’re dealing with unlawful detention, searches and discrimination."

In early March 2019, Ghahraman submitted her Electoral Strengthening Democracy Bill that proposes lowering the country's Mixed member proportional (MMP) threshold from 5% to 4%. Both Winston Peters of the governing coalition member party New Zealand First and Simon Bridges of the opposition National Party have criticised Ghahraman's bill as opportunistic. Ghahraman has also advocated giving prisoners the right to vote and banning foreign donations to political parties as part of her bill.

In early March 2019, Ghahraman suggested that the New Zealand Government cooperate with any potential Kurdish and United Nations process to bring home captured New Zealand Jihadist Mark John Taylor, who had joined the Islamic State in 2014.

In mid-May 2019, ACT Party leader David Seymour generated widespread criticism when he stated in a radio interview that Ghahraman was a "menace to freedom in [New Zealand]". This statement drew immediate responses from all sides of the New Zealand Parliament and the general public in strong condemnation of Seymour. The general consensus among opponents of Seymour's statements appeared to be that the implicit equating earlier in the interview of Ghahraman with authoritarian figures such as Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong was completely spurious, and that Seymour's words could be interpreted as a suggestion that harm should come to the Green MP.

In mid-July 2019, Ghahraman was accused of anti-Semitism by New Zealand Jewish Council spokesperson Juliet Moses after she published a tweet on 11 July describing Mary and Joseph as Palestinian refugees. Moses alleged that Ghahraman was denying the Jewish connection to the land by not recognising Jesus was Jewish. Ghahraman apologised that her comments had caused offence to the Jewish community, thanking the Jewish community for their support for refugees. A Green Party spokesperson responded that Golriz had apologised for her "poorly worded remarks" and said that Ghahraman was going to work with Jewish communities to improve dialogue. In response, left-wing blogger Martyn "Bomber" Bradbury defended Ghahraman and the Green Party from accusations of anti-Semitism, arguing that this was an attempt to deflect from Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian land.

Ghahraman was selected as a Green party list candidate in January 2017 for the 2017 general election. On the provisional results on election night the Greens did not attain a high enough party vote for Ghahraman to enter Parliament, though a slight increase for the Greens in the special vote would see her allocated a seat. After the Greens gained 0.5% of the vote in special votes she was duly elected to Parliament, in so doing becoming New Zealand's first refugee MP.

In November 2017, it was revealed that, along with prosecuting war criminals, Ghahraman had also volunteered as an intern for the legal defence team of accused war criminals such as Radovan Karadžić, as part of her work with the United Nations. She defended her role in this work, claiming that her role was necessary to "maintaining a fair and robust trial process," that she was "proud to have been involved in that tradition of fair and transparent international justice," and that, given the choice, she would "do it again".

Ghahraman has spoken out against United States President Donald Trump's travel ban, saying in 2017: "I wouldn't travel to America right now. I wouldn't want to face what people are facing – held in handcuffs and being interrogated by security forces, [...] I wouldn't want that [border detention] for anyone."

Ghahraman returned to New Zealand in 2012 and worked as a barrister, specialising in human rights law and criminal defence. She appeared before the Supreme Court of New Zealand in a case which ultimately led to the police overhauling their rules about undercover operations.

In 1990, following the end of the Iran–Iraq War, nine-year old Ghahraman and her family left Iran for Malaysia, ostensibly for a holiday. From Malaysia they booked flights to Fiji, with a stopover in Auckland, where they sought political asylum and were accepted as refugees. Her parents later set up a restaurant and a gift shop in Auckland, and did not work in their earlier areas of expertise.

Golriz Ghahraman MP (Persian: گلریز قهرمان ‎; born 1981) is an Iranian-born New Zealand politician and member of Parliament. The former United Nations lawyer was a child asylum seeker, and became the first refugee elected to New Zealand's Parliament. Ghahraman is a member of the New Zealand House of Representatives for the Green Party.

Ghahraman was born in Iran in 1981. Her family lived in Mashhad, Iran's second largest city, where her father, an agricultural engineer, worked for the Ministry of Agriculture on the research and development of plant-based alternative fuels. Her mother studied as a child psychologist but was ethically opposed to "psychologists having to pledge allegiance to a religion" so refused to sit the Islamic examinations required for her to practice and never worked as such. Her father was Shia and her mother a Kurdish Sunni, though neither parent was religious. Ghahraman describes herself as "agnostic—some days I would say atheist", noting that "It was important for me to get up and say I’m actually not religious at all, because the Middle East also has diversity within it".