Somalis abroad in public life

Zahra Abdulla (Sahra Cabdulla)

Zahra Abdulla (born 1966) is a Somali-born Finnish politician. She was a member of Helsinki City Council from 1997 to 2017 for the Green League. In the 2007 Finnish parliamentary election she came within a few hundred votes of becoming the first Somali immigrant elected to the Finnish parliament.

Last checked 2026-11-12 1 source Reading time: 1 min

Zahra AbdullaSahra Cabdulla · Zahra Abdullah

Lived
1966 to today
Era
The Republic, 1960 to 1991; Rebuilding without a state, 1991 to 2012; Who holds power, 2012 to now
Sources
1 sources

Who is she?

Zahra Abdulla is a Somali-born Finnish politician who sat on Helsinki City Council from 1997 to 2017 for the Green League (Wikipedia, Zahra Abdulla). She was born in Somalia in 1966 and spent her early years in Egypt and Kenya (same source).

From Moscow to Helsinki

She studied medicine in Moscow (Wikipedia). The break-up of the Soviet Union and the start of the Somali civil war led her to seek asylum in Finland, and she became a Finnish citizen in 1998 (same source). She worked for a time as a midwife (same source). See Somalis in Finland.

Politics

In the 2007 Finnish parliamentary election she polled 4,174 votes and was beaten by Green League colleague Outi Alanko-Kahiluoto, who had 4,586 (Wikipedia). Had she won, she would have been the first Somali immigrant in the Finnish parliament (same source). In 2015 she left the Greens' council group, and in that year's parliamentary election she backed Veronika Honkasalo of the Left Alliance (same source).

In short

A Somali-born former medical student and midwife who served twenty years on Helsinki City Council.

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, Zahra Abdulla · en.wikipedia.org

Zahra AbdullaSahra Cabdulla · Zahra Abdullah

Lived
1966 to today
Era
The Republic, 1960 to 1991; Rebuilding without a state, 1991 to 2012; Who holds power, 2012 to now
Sources
1 sources

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