Born into a family of farmers in the village of Kojo in Sinjar, Northern Iraq, Nadia Murad’s life was upended in 2014 when ISIS rampaged across northern Iraq.
At the age of just 19, and hailing from Iraq’s Yazidi minority, she was captured alongside thousands of other Yazidis. While the women were enslaved by their captors, the men were executed. Six of her brothers were killed.
For a year she was held in the city of Mosul, subjected to daily beatings and frequent rape at the hands of her captors. She escaped in 2015 with the help of some neighbours who smuggled her to a refugee camp outside of ISIS-held territory.
Remarkably, within weeks of her flight she recollected the details of her experience to the United Nations Security Council in December 2015. The painful details touched those who heard it and she has retold her story around the world since, in the hope that such a tragedy may never again take place.
Through her advocacy since escaping, she has served as the face of Yazidi suffering at the hands of ISIS. She testified before the British and European parliaments. Her efforts were lauded by former US Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, and former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
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The Nobel Prize Committee said she had demonstrated “uncommon courage in recounting her own suffering”.
She has since founded Nadia's Initiative, an advocacy organisation working to protect the rights of women and minorities in Iraq, and written a memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State. In 2016, she was named the UN's first Goodwill Ambassador Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking.
Now looking for justice, she has joined up with high profile barrister Amal Clooney, with a view to bringing senior ISIS members to trial for their crimes against Yazidi women.
In August, she announced her engagement to fellow Yezidi activist Abid Shamdeen. "The struggle of our people brought us together & we will continue this path together,” the pair stated.
Last year Ms Murad made an emotional return to Kojo. "We hoped our fate would be to be killed like the men instead of being sold and raped by Syrians, Iraqis ... Tunisians and Europeans", she said, standing at the village school where she herself had studied.
Her story is horrifying, but it is all too common among the region’s Yazidi community. Thousands of Yazidis taken by ISIS remain missing and Ms Murad has stressed she will not rest as long as their fate remains unknown.
In pictures: recent Nobel Peace laureates:
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Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege, left, and Nadia Murad Basee Taha is a Yazidi human rights activist from Iraq, have been named as the winners of the Nobel Peace Prize 2018. Photos: Reuters and AFP -
Hiroshima nuclear bombing survivor Setsuko Thurlow (R) touches the hand of Beatrice Fihn, leader of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons during the award ceremony of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. Odd Andersen / AFP -
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos poses with the medal and diploma during the award ceremony of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2016. Haakon Mosvold Larsen / AFP -
2015 Nobel Peace Prize laureates of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet, left to right: President of the National Order of Tunisian Lawyers Fadhel Mahfoudh, the Secretary General of the Tunisian General Labour Union Houcine Abbassi, the Tunisian Human Rights League (LTDH) Abdessatar Ben Moussa and the President of the Tunisian employers union (UTICA) Wided Bouchamaoui. Audun Braastad / AFP -
2014 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai displays her medal during the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony at the City Hall in Oslo. Cornelius Poppe / AFP -
Ahmet Uzumcu, Director General of the Organisation for the Prohibiton of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), receives the 2013 Peace Nobel Prize. AFP -
The European Union won in 2012. John Macdougall / AFP -
The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, right, Liberian peace activist Leymah Gbowee, centrem and Yemeni activist Tawakkol Karman. Odd Andersen / AFP -
Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann reads Liu Xiaobo's text "I have no enemies" next to the The Nobel Peace Prize committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland. Li won in 2010 for his long struggle for human rights in China Odd Andersen / AFP -
US President Barack Obama won in 2009 for his efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation. Jewel Samad / AFP
