Murad: Refused to be silenced
Nadia Murad was 21-years-old in 2014 when Daesh terrorists attacked the village where she had grown up in northern Iraq. The terrorists killed those who refused to convert to Islam, including six of her brothers and her mother. Along with many of the other young women from the Yazidi minority in her village of Kojo, she was taken into captivity by the terrorists, and sold repeatedly for sex as part of Daesh’s slave trade.
She escaped captivity with the help of a family in Mosul, then Daesh’s de facto capital in Iraq, and became an advocate for the rights of her community around the world.
Whereas the majority of women who escaped the Daesh refused to be named, Murad insisted to reporters that she wanted to be identified and photographed. She embarked on a worldwide campaign, speaking before the UN Security Council, the US House of Representatives, the House of Commons in Britain and at numerous other global bodies.
In 2017, Murad published a memoir of her ordeal, The Last
Girl. She recounted in harrowing detail her months in captivity, her escape and her journey to activism. “Nadia refused to be silenced,” the international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, who represents Murad, wrote in the foreword to Murad’s book.
In 2016, Murad was named the UN’s first goodwill ambassador for the dignity of survivors of human trafficking.