Basim Mardan

Basim Mardan is the Training and Development Coordinator at ICORN whose responsibilities focus on strengthening and developing the capacity of ICORN cities to protect and promote persecuted writers and artists. In addition to this, he works closely with both ICORN residents and ICORN city coordinators through advice, support, and training.

Basim’s professional approach is also informed by his personal experience of being a persecuted writer, playwright, translator and human rights activist in Mosul, Iraq, following from which he was the ICORN resident in Skien, Norway between 2006 and 2008. You can read his testimony on persecution and ICORN residency here. Between finishing his ICORN residency in 2008 and joining the ICORN Secretariat as Training and Development Coordinator in February 2022, Basim has served as Researcher and Writers at Risk Protection Officer for PEN International in London as well as freelance consultant and translator for ICORN. In Iraq, he worked as an interpreter for the Joint Civil Authority in Mosul, alongside publishing written work in books and newspapers and being involved with NGOs promoting democracy and human rights in Iraq.

Basim holds a BA in Translation and Linguistics from the University of Mosul, specialising in Arabic into English and English into Arabic translation.