Nadia Murad Biography

Nadia Murad Basee Taha is an Iraqi Yazidi human rights activist who lives in Germany. In 2014, she was kidnapped from her hometown Kocho and held by the Islamic State for three months.

Murad is the founder of Nadia’s Initiative, an organization dedicated to “helping women and children victimized by genocide, mass atrocities, and human trafficking to heal and rebuild their lives and communities”.

This man is a fucking joke.. she’s talking about how dangerous her country is and how it’s not safe and instead of trying to help he’s talking about a Nobel prize and why they give it to her

This is America’s president https://t.co/hNeMKCAqaC — KAYMA?KEMAH (@kaymaballah) July 19, 2019



In 2018, she and 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 be awarded a Nobel Prize.

Nadia Murad Age

She is 26 years old

Early life and capture by ISIS

This man lacks any capacity for empathy or feeling for the suffering of other human beings. Look this woman in the fucking eye dude. She doesn’t care about her Nobel Prize you asshole, she wants to go back home and keep her people safe. Outlandish. #UnfitForOffice https://t.co/FMhGk7F0qj — Canon Manley (@CanonManley) July 19, 2019



Murad was born in the village of Kocho in Sinjar District, Iraq. Her family, of the Yazidi ethnoreligious minority, were farmers. At the age of 19, Murad was a student living in the village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq when Islamic State fighters rounded up the Yazidi community in the village killing 600 people – including six of Nadia’s brothers and stepbrothers – and taking the younger women into slavery. That year, Murad was one of more than 6,700 Yazidi women taken prisoner by Islamic State in Iraq. She was captured on 15 August 2014. She was held as a slave in the city of Mosul and beaten, burned with cigarettes, and raped when trying to escape. Nadia was able to escape after her captor left the house unlocked. Murad was taken in by a neighboring family, who were able to smuggle her out of the Islamic State-controlled area, allowing her to make her way to a refugee camp in Duhok, northern Iraq. She was out of ISIS territory in early September 2014 or in November 2014.

Nadia Murad: “They killed my mum, my six brothers…”

Trump: “Where are they now?”

NM: “They killed them. They are in the mass grave in Sinjar…”

Trump: “I know the area very well.” https://t.co/rRvI6Dxr9w — Philip Gourevitch (@PGourevitch) July 19, 2019



In February 2015, she gave her first testimony to reporters of the Belgian daily newspaper La Libre Belgique while she was staying in the Rwanda camp, living in a container. In 2015, she was one of 1,000 women and children to benefit from a refugee program of the Government of Baden-Württemberg, (Germany), which became her new home.

Career and activism

On 16 December 2015, Murad briefed the United Nations Security Council on the issue of human trafficking and conflict. This was the first time the Council was ever briefed on human trafficking. As part of her role as an ambassador, Murad will participate in global and local advocacy initiatives to bring awareness of human trafficking and refugees. Murad reached out to refugee and survivor communities, listening to testimonies of victims of trafficking and genocide.

.@realDonaldTrump Why not get briefed before you meet with Nobel Prize winners, you fucking buffoon? — John Levenstein (@johnlevenstein) July 19, 2019



As of September 2016, Attorney Amal Clooney spoke before the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) to discuss the decision that she had made in June 2016 to represent Murad as a client in legal action against ISIL commanders. Clooney characterized the genocide, rape, and trafficking by ISIL as a “bureaucracy of evil on an industrial scale”, describing it as a slave market existing both online, on Facebook and in the Mideast that is still active today. Murad has received serious threats to her safety as a result of her work.

In September 2016, Murad announced Nadia’s Initiative at an event hosted by Tina Brown in New York City. The initiative was intended to provide advocacy and assistance to victims of genocide. That same month, she was named the first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human trafficking of the United Nations (UNODC).

Nadia Murad tells President Trump her mother & six brothers were killed. He responds, “where are they now?” She again says they were killed. He turns away & grunts.

His final response is not “I’m sorry” or encouragement, he asks how he can win the Nobel.pic.twitter.com/ohu5qFjSrl — Rev. Travis Akers (@travisakers) July 19, 2019



On 3 May 2017, Murad met Pope Francis and Archbishop Gallagher in the Vatican City. During the meeting, she “asked for helping Yazidis who are still in ISIS captivity, acknowledged the Vatican support for minorities, discussed the scope for an autonomous region for minorities in Iraq, highlighted the current situation and challenges facing religious minorities in Iraq and Syria particularly the victims and internally displaced people as well as immigrants”.

Murad’s memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, was published by Crown Publishing Group on 7 November 2017.

In 2018, director Alexandria Bombach produced a documentary film called On Her Shoulders that featured Murad’s life story and activism.

Personal life

In August 2018, Murad became engaged to fellow Yazidi human rights activist Abid Shamdeen.

Nadia Murad Donald Trump

Well there is one thing we can be sure of Donald trump will Never receive the Nobel peace prize he so covets. — Rosanna Arquette (@RoArquette) July 19, 2019

President Donald Trump is under fire — this time, for video of an exchange with Yazidi activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad, who visited the White House on Wednesday to ask for America’s help in saving her people, an oppressed Iraqi ethnic minority group. Critics online are slamming Trump for his seeming indifference to her pleas for help, and for only showing interest in why she won the Nobel Peace Prize.

“You had the Nobel Prize?” Donald Trump learns of Yazidi activist Nadia Murad. Here’s how the interaction unfolded https://t.co/erNKthlc0p pic.twitter.com/FseKccjemZ — The National (@TheNationalUAE) July 19, 2019

Nadia Murad tells the president of the United States her heartbreaking story of having to survive genocide and mass rape and violence but Trump shows no compassion, interest or empathy, and only wants to know how and why she won a Nobel Prize. Sigh. https://t.co/HcMff534kP — Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) July 19, 2019

“Nadia Murad tells the president of the United States her heartbreaking story of having to survive genocide and mass rape and violence but Trump shows no compassion, interest or empathy, and only wants to know how and why she won a Nobel Prize.

Trump’s body language as this woman speaks emotionally of her torment displays complete disinterest. When she mentions she has a Nobel Prize however, he practically turns into Homer Simpson: “OOOH you have a SHINY?!” https://t.co/VUJunHCAnn — Jonathan Pie (@JonathanPieNews) July 19, 2019

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