Rima Hassan Mobarak (; born 28 April 1992) is a French jurist and politician of Palestinian and Kurdish origin, born in the Neirab refugee camp, near Aleppo, Syria. Stateless, she arrived in France around the age of nine and settled with her family in Niort. After obtaining French nationality upon reaching adulthood, she earned a master's degree in international law from Panthéon-Sorbonne University.
In 2019, Hassan founded the Refugee Camps Observatory, an NGO dedicated to the study and protection of refugee camps worldwide. In 2023, she founded the Action Palestine France collective. That same year, she joined La France Insoumise to contest the 2024 European Parliament election on Manon Aubry's list. She was elected to the European Parliament on 9 June 2024.
Early life and education Rima Hassan Mobarak was born on 28 April 1992 in the Neirab camp, near Aleppo, Syria, the youngest of six children. Her mother, Nabiha (1958–2021), was a teacher, while her father, Ahmad, is a former mechanic in the Syrian Air Force. Her paternal grandparents, Palestinians originally from the village of Al-Birwa located near Acre, resettled in Syria following the Nakba in May 1948. Her maternal grandmother came from a prominent Syrian Kurdish family, the Hananu, and married a Palestinian refugee from Salfit; although she came from a prestigious family, she chose to live with him in the refugee camp.
Due to an unhappy marriage, Hassan's mother left the camp shortly after her birth and moved to France, where she reunited with one of her sisters. She spent eight years attempting to regain custody of her children and transfer them to France. After her mother regained custody, Hassan arrived in France around the age of nine. She settled in Niort, in the Deux-Sèvres department (district), with her mother, sister and four brothers.. She was elected to the Niort children's municipal council in 2003. She studied there at Ernest Pérochon Primary School.Centre Presse (Vienne), saturday 27 November 2021, p. 46, Bio express During this time, her mother worked in restaurants to support the family. Hassan suffered from hate speech in school, including ethnic slurs like 'bougnoule' (wog) by her classmates. As a result, she stopped speaking Arabic. She obtained a scientific baccalaureate from La Venise Verte High School in 2011.
Stateless until adulthood, she obtained French nationality in 2010. As soon as she reached the age of majority, she sought to travel to Palestine via Tel Aviv, intending to "finally discover the land of her ancestors", but she was prevented from boarding at Charles de Gaulle Airport. After these events, she pursued studies in law and obtained her bachelor's degree. For this, she spent two years at the University of Évry, then one year at the University of Montpellier, until 2014. She spent a year in Lebanon and completed her master's degree in 2016 at Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1). She focused on the legal comparison between South Africa and Israel in a master's thesis in international law on the issue of apartheid. According to her, obtaining her degree from Panthéon-Sorbonne was a source of great pride for her mother because the university's reputation would have been known even in the Neirab camp.
Career Work Hassan joined the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) in 2016, and after 18 months, she worked at the National Court of Asylum Law for six years until 2023. In 2019, she founded the NGO 'Refugee Camps Observatory'. The following year, Hassan participated in a roundtable organized by Emmaus for the World Refugee Day, on 20 June. In 2022, the Interministerial Delegation for Reception and Integration dedicated a portrait to her as an "Inspirational Woman". That same year, she revisited the notion of "fraternity" from the French national motto in a podcast, along with other participants.
On 3 February 2023, she spoke at the French Senate for the symposium "Israel-Palestine: State of Affairs" organized by Paris Senator Esther Benbassa, in collaboration with L'Histoire and the French Research Center in Jerusalem. Her intervention addressed the issue of apartheid in Israeli society. Following the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023, amid the bombing of the Gaza Strip and the ground offensive launched by Israel, she terminated her contract with the National Court of Asylum Law and declined an advocacy position on migration issues offered by Amnesty International. Instead, she moved back to the Neirab refugee camp, "to be close to her people" and established the Action Palestine France collective on Telegram. Until November 2023, she also advised L'Oréal on diversity and refugee integration issues.
In August 2023, Hassan participated in the summer days organized by The Ecologists, alongside the rapper Médine or the politician Clémentine Autain. Also in August 2023, Forbes ranked Hassan among the "40 exceptional women who have marked the year and who have made France shine internationally". In January 2024, this nomination was contested by Yonathan Arfi, the president of the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France ("Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions"; CRIF) who accused her of "justifying the atrocities of 7 October" by Hamas and by the television presenter Arthur who accused her of "lauding terrorism". Following this controversy, Forbes canceled the awards ceremony. In response, Hassan filed a complaint against Arthur for defamation.
Member of the European parliament On 30 April 2024, Hassan was summoned by the police for questioning regarding allegations of publicly condoning an act of terrorism. The allegations related to comments she made on social media in the winter of 2023. Hassan said she was "calm, confident, and ready to fully cooperate with the judicial police officers, in whom [she has] complete confidence". She criticised "the political pressures aimed at compromising [her] freedom of expression [at] a crucial political moment for the future of the French", referring to the European elections that year. In the 2024 European Parliament election in France, Hassan joined the list of La France Insoumise (LFI), where she was placed seventh, after also being approached to be on the list of The Greens but in a non-eligible position. She was elected. She explains her political commitment to LFI's list by the "urgent need to act politically now" regarding the situation in the Gaza Strip.
In July 2024, The Left in the European Parliament – GUE/NGL proposed Hassan as vice-president of the Human Rights Subcommittee. The day after this proposal, fellow MEP François-Xavier Bellamy (The Republicans) used his connections to block her election to this position by accusing her of antisemitism. In response, she published several messages on X about Bellamy. Following these messages, Bellamy filed a complaint for "threats and incitement to commit a crime or offence against an elected official", believing that she had "named him for the vindictiveness of Islamist circles". Following Bellamy's complaint, the President of the European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, opened an investigation to determine whether Hassan had breached the institution's code of conduct. In response, Hassan also filed a complaint against Bellamy for "public defamation and slanderous denunciation".
On 22 August 2024, deputies from the presidential Renaissance party announced their intention to appeal to the public prosecutor to have Hassan's parliamentary immunity lifted for having participated in a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Amman, Jordan. Placards held during the demonstration paid tribute to Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas political leader who had recently been assassinated in Tehran. Hassan said the demonstration, which takes place every Friday, was a recurring demonstration in support of the Palestinians and was not pro-Hamas. She said she was not responsible for the actions of others at the demonstration. The Renaissance deputies also accused her of fuelling antisemitism. She stated that those who accuse her are "known for their position of support for a genocidal regime that I fight and that I will continue to fight with or without a mandate of a MEP".
On 23 January 2025, the European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution demanding the immediate and unconditional release of Franco‑Algerian writer Boualem Sansal, imprisoned in Algeria since November 2024 under national security charges. The motion passed overwhelmingly (533 votes for, 24 against, 48 abstentions). Hassan, as member for La France Insoumise, was among 24 MEPs who voted against the resolution. She said she opposed the "instrumentalisation" of Sansal's case by the political right and far‑right, given the already stormy relations between France and Algeria. Her vote, while all French MEPs outside GUE/NGL voted in favour of the resolution, was widely criticised in the French political class. Manuel Bompard responded that "The exclusive focus on the vote of MEP Rima Hassan while other MEPs voted in the same vote or abstained speaks volumes about their racist ideology".
Political positions and activism
Living conditions of refugees and reception of migrants In May 2020, Hassan expressed concern to Agence France-Presse about the health and security effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in refugee camps.AFP, dispatch of Wednesday 6 May 2020, Le coronavirus "ajoute du chaos au chaos", déplore l'Observatoire des camps de réfugiés. (in French) In September 2020, she intervened within a collective and associations to call on the French government and local elected officials to mobilize to welcome refugees and thus help improve the humanitarian situation in the Mória camp in Greece.
Israeli–Palestinian conflict
Hassan has long advocated the creation of a democratic bi-national state as a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. She wrote in November 2023 that "there will be no two-state solution", and that "the solution is a democratic and secular bi-national state." Explaining herself later, she specified that she "dreams" of a bi-national state with peaceful coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis, and is in favor of the two-state solution, a solution defended by her party La France Insoumise.
Hassan uses the pro-Palestinian slogan "from the river to the sea", which she states "has existed for a very long time, and historically has absolutely nothing to do with Hamas." Deploring the fact that Palestinians who have been expelled from their homeland can no longer return there, she also uses the term "apartheid" to describe Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. In May 2024, Hassan faced controversy for a message she posted on X (formerly Twitter) accusing the CRIF of having dictated to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Stéphane Séjourné, a declaration concerning Israel.
Gaza war From the beginning of the Gaza war, Hassan has been critical of the actions taken by Israel. She stated in an online interview following the Hamas attack that it was "morally unacceptable to rejoice in the deaths of civilians". She said the political and media establishment asked her to "transform [this] natural empathy into support for the State of Israel" and questioned "whether a Palestinian life is worth an Israeli life", which she said was "ludicrous". She condemned equally "Hamas' war crimes", "Israel's impunity", and the "genocide" of the Palestinians.