President-Elect Commen Sense

Nadia Murad was 21 when ISIS overran her Yazidi village of Kocho, Iraq, on August 3, 2014. Men and boys, including six of her brothers, were taken out and killed. Her mother was murdered because she was considered too old to be useful. Nadia and hundreds of other women and girls were loaded onto buses and taken into sexual slavery. In Mosul she was bought and sold seven times in three months. She was beaten, burned with cigarettes, and raped. An escape attempt brought further violence: she was gang-raped until she lost consciousness and beaten so badly she could barely walk. In November 2014 she slipped out through an unlocked door. A Muslim family hid her at risk to themselves and helped her leave ISIS-held territory. She reached a refugee camp and was later granted asylum in Germany. Instead of remaining silent, she chose to speak. In 2015 she addressed the UN Security Council and described the sale of girls as young as nine and the attempt to erase her people. Her testimony helped push the UN to recognize the Yazidi genocide in 2016. Thousands of Yazidis were killed in the 2014 attacks; thousands more, mostly women and children, were abducted. She founded Nadia’s Initiative to rebuild schools and clinics in the region. In 2018, at 25, she became the first Iraqi woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In her acceptance speech she said the only prize she wanted was the release of every person still held captive. She continues to recount what happened to her so that those who can no longer speak are not forgotten.❤️