Nadia Murad

Nadia Murad Basee Taha (Kurdish: نادیە موراد بەسێ تەھا; Arabic: نادية مراد باسي طه; born 10 March 1993) is an Iraqi-born Yazidi human rights activist based in Germany. In 2014, during the Yazidi genocide by the Islamic State, she was abducted from her hometown of Kocho in Iraq. Much of her community was massacred. After losing most of her family, Murad was held as an Islamic State sex slave for three months, alongside thousands of other Yazidi women and girls.

Murad is the founder of Nadia's Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to "helping women and children victimized by genocide, mass atrocities, and human trafficking to heal and rebuild their lives and communities". Its establishment was prompted by the Sinjar massacre.

In 2018, she and Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for "their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict." She is the first Iraqi and Yazidi to have been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

In 2016, Murad was appointed as the first-ever Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Early and personal life

Murad was born in the village of Kocho in the Sinjar District, Iraq, populated mostly by Yazidi people. Her family, of the Yazidi minority, were farmers.

Murad is the youngest of 11 children, not including her four older half siblings. Murad's father married her mother after the death of his first wife, with whom he had four children. Both of her parents were devout Yazidis, though Murad did not know much about the religion growing up. Murad's father died in 2003.