Lauded for efforts to end sexual violence
A human-rights activist who survived being enslaved and raped by jihadists has been named as the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nadia Murad, 25, shared the prize with Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist treating victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The Nobel Committee said they had been awarded the prize in recognition of their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
“Both laureates have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes,” the committee said.
Murad is a member of Iraq’s persecuted Yazidi minority and campaigns for refugee rights and women’s rights.
She was enslaved and raped by Islamic State terrorists in Mosul in 2014. Six of her brothers and her mother were killed by the jihadists.
Many have viewed the 2018 joint Nobel recipient choices as a nod to the #MeToo movement.
Murad, who fled Iraq and now lives in Germany, is a United Nations goodwill ambassador for human trafficking survivors. She campaigned with human rights lawyer Amal Clooney to get the UN to recognise the crimes committed against the Yazidis as genocide.
She is the second youngest recipient of the prize after Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani woman shot by the Taliban, who was 17 when she won the prize in 2014.
Mukwege, 63, leads the Panzi Hospital in the eastern city of Bukavu in the DRC.
The crusading gynaecologist has spent more than two decades treating appalling injuries inflicted on women. His work was the subject of a 2015 film, The Man Who Mends Women. — Daily Telegraph