Heba Saadieh is going to become the first Palestinian woman to be a referee in a World Cup tournament at the Women’s World Football Championship that will start in Australia and New Zealand in two days. No Palestinian (male or female) has ever refereed a World Cup.
She is a 34-year-old Palestinian woman who grew up in Syria. She decided to join the sport in 2010, when she was studying sports studies at university, when she realized that no women were taking part in referee training.
After the outbreak of the Syrian war, she moved to Malaysia in 2012 and started working as a judge there. She immigrated to Sweden with her family in late 2016 under the United Nations Resettlement Program and is now a leading referee in Sweden’s women’s league and second tier in the men’s league.
Heba Saadieh has refereed the Women’s AFC Cup and Asian Cup matches, World Cup qualifiers and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.