Yazidi activist who survived Isil sex slavery shares Nobel Peace Prize
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 in its citation.
Ms Murad is a member of Iraq’s persecuted Yazidi minority and campaigns for refugee rights and women’s rights in general.
She was enslaved and raped by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) terrorists in Mosul in 2014. After fleeing Iraq, she spoke openly of her ordeal. Six of her brothers and her mother were killed by the jihadists.
With the help of an organisation that assists Yazidis, she joined her sister in Germany, where she lives today.
She has dedicated herself to what she calls “our people’s fight”, becoming an advocate for sexual abuse survivors even before the #Metoo movement swept the world.
Many have viewed the 2018 joint Nobel recipient choices as a nod to the #Metoo movement.
The bookies’ favourites for the prize had been US president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un for their attempts at reconciliation.
Ms Murad is a United Nations goodwill ambassador for survivors of human trafficking. She campaigned alongside 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 peace prize after Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani woman shot by the Taliban on her way to school, who was 17 when she won the prize in 2014.
Mr 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.