In 2014, Nadia Murad was captured, alongside many other Yazidi women, by the so-called Islamic State (IS) group in the Iraqi town of Sinjar. She was held hostage, enslaved, tortured and raped, before escaping to Mosul and making her way to Germany. After sharing the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize with Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, she is now a leading global advocate for survivors of genocide and sexual violence. Nadia Murad spoke to FRANCE 24 from the Paris Peace Forum.
Murad said that more needs to be done to prevent sexual violence in conflict.
"Progress has been made on recognising survivors' right to reparations (...) but I think it's time to put political weight and resources behind the words," Murad told FRANCE 24's Catherine Norris Trent.
"Not much has been done to prevent what happened to the Yazidi women and girls," Murad said. More than eight years later, "we still have 2,800 women and children who are missing in ISIS [another name for the IS group] captivity in Syria, Turkey and some parts of Iraq. No effort has been made by the international community or our own government or any international organisations to look for the missing Yazidi women and children and bring them back".
"Sexual violence does not go away when war is over (...) Ukraine is sadly another example of a failure to follow through on commitments to preventing sexual violence in war," Murad continued.
"As survivors, we sometimes feel that we are forgotten already, even though we haven't healed or recovered from what we went through," she explained.
'The culture of impunity must not be an option'
The Nobel laureate stressed the importance of justice, not only following atrocities but also as a deterrent. '"The culture of impunity must not be an option. Survivors want their day in court (...) Justice is the key here to also preventing what ISIS did or what military forces are doing. We must hold them accountable for what they are doing."
"Women's rights were never a priority for the international community to prevent the use of sexual violence," Murad said.
She added: "But what we know now is that the international community can no longer see sexual violence just as a side effect of war. Sexual violence is a weapon of war, it has been used against communities and women over and over again. Warfare today looks completely different from what it was 50 to 100 years ago, but one thing that remains the same is the use of sexual violence in conflict."
