Image: Nadia Murad and Yazda deputy executive director Ahmed Khudida Burjus (left), met UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in December 2015 after Ms Murad spoke at the UN Security Council’s first-ever session on human trafficking in armed conflict.
A young woman who has suffered at the hands of the so-called Islamic State will speak at The University of Queensland next week. Two years ago the terrorist organisation massacred 21-year-old Nadia Murad's family before abducting and sexually enslaving her. Ms Murad escaped and now leads a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Yazidi people, to condemn the crimes of the Islamic State (also referred to as ISIS or ISIL). She has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, and says thousands of other Yazidi women have had similar experiences to hers. "ISIL murdered six of my brothers in a massacre on my homeland on 15 August 2014, kidnapped all the women in my family and subsequently separated me from my mother who I believe was also killed in a massacre of women," Ms Murad said during her address to the United Nations Security Council last December. "Rape was used by ISIL to attempt to destroy women and girls and to ensure that they could never again lead a normal life, and the Islamic State has made Yazidi women fodder for human trafficking. "As a Yazidi survivor, I am a descendant of one of the world's oldest religions, which is today threatened with extinction." The Yazidis are an ethno-religious group with an estimated population of 600,000, mainly living around the district of Sinjar in Iraq.
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