Murad’s purpose enables her healing

Nobel laureate and human rights activist Nadia Murad’s voice almost faltered each time she got close to the unutterable details of her capture by ISIS while a young girl in Iraq — how she was forced into sexual slavery after Islamic State terrorists slaughtered her mother, siblings and much of her rural community; the indifference and sometimes betrayal of her neighbors; watching her life and family disappear from the back of a truck as she and thousands of other Yazidi girls and women were taken away to be held as sex slaves.

Her eyes came close to tears.

Now president and chairwoman of Nadia’s Initiative, Murad meets with global leaders to shed light on the continued plight of the Yazidi people and the need for justice for survivors of sexual violence. 

On Thursday, as the second speaker in UB’s Distinguished Speakers Series for 2024-25, Murad’s soft, steady voice held the audience in the Center for the Arts transfixed in silence. As moderator Kari Winter, professor in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies who has taught Murad’s bestselling book for years, predicted, “I dare say tonight is a night you will never forget.”

With her slight, almost shy presentation and an unflinching composure, Murad lived up to the billing. She gave UB at least two hours of brief prepared remarks, thoughtful and at times brutally honest answers to questions, and an extended one-on-one chat at a small table outside the CFA’s Mainstage Theatre.

A long line deferentially waited for her to sign her bestselling book, “The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State,” her memoir of her three months as an ISIS spoil-of-war sex slave before she narrowly escaped in the city of Mosul when her captors left a door unlocked. It’s a book that reveals many details of her enslavement that she deftly omitted from her UB presentation.

Even stopping short of the unspeakable details, Murad described the atrocities of the Islamic State’s attempt at genocide, rounding up the Yazidi community in the village, killing 600 people — including her mother and six of Nadia’s brothers and stepbrothers — and taking the younger women and girls into slavery. That year, Murad was one of more than 6,700 Yazidi women and girls taken prisoner by the Islamic State in Iraq.

It's a chilling tale best told by Murad with as few interruptions as possible.

“In August 2014, I was working with my 10 siblings and my mother on our family farm in northern Iraq,” she began. “That summer was supposed to be special for me and my family. I was preparing for my final year of school. I would be the first in my family to graduate from high school. But we heard the news that ISIS was coming and close to us.

“We heard (from a neighboring village) ISIS had given them two options: either pay a tax or leave. But we doubted we would be offered even those options. Yazidis had been discriminated against for centuries and targeted by radical groups because of our religion. We soon realized that ISIS discrimination would be no different from discrimination that other groups had committed against our Yazidi ancestors.

“The world watched in August 2014 as thousands of ISIS members, including many of our own people, brutally attacked Yazidis, village by village.”

Thousands of innocent men and elderly women, including her mother and six of Murad’s brothers, were quickly murdered.

“Young women, including myself, my sisters, my nieces, my cousins, along with over 6,000 other Yazidi women and girls, were forced into sexual slavery. ISIS imposed brutal policies on Yazidi women, viewing them as spoils of war. Women and girls, some as young as 9, were separated from their families, forcibly transported to ISIS-held territories and subjected to unspeakable abuse.

“The troops established a slave market where Yazidi women were bought and sold and repeatedly assaulted by different men. Many were forced to convert to Islam, while others were forced to bear children for ISIS fathers.

“The sad truth was that ISIS members were neighbors and teachers They were educated citizens connected to families and communities. I was one of the lucky girls who managed to escape captivity. But once I escaped my captivity, my world became a displacement camp, crammed with thousands of people, where I now had to wait in line for food and clothing because we had lost everything.

“I soon realized my survival carried with it a responsibility: to share with the world what other women and girls had gone though in captivity.”

Since then, Murad’s courage has inspired countless people, including a generation of young women who cheered her accomplishments.

In 2016, Murad became the first UN Office of Drugs and Crime Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. That year, she was also awarded the Council of Europe Václav Havel Award for Human Rights and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. In 2018, she won the Nobel Peace Prize with Denis Mukwege. Together, they founded the Global Survivors Fund. In 2019, Murad was appointed as a UN Sustainable Development Goals Advocate.

“At least 2,500 Yaziki women and children remain in captivity, including my niece, my nephew, my sister-in-law and my cousin,” Murad told the UB audience. “We urgently need the international community to come together to bring them home and to ensure every woman with a story like mine has hope.”

She found her path to healing when she became disillusioned with working with a psychologist and mental health experts. She realized healing could better come when she found her purpose: finding the courage to tell others her story that still seems too horrible, and then too courageous to be true.

“It’s not a life I could ever imagine for myself 10 short years ago,” Murad said.

“I told my social worker I am never going back. I needed purpose. Dealing with trauma and trying to find my own way — I think that is important.”

She can now add the hundreds at UB who listened in absolute silence as she told her story to those accompanying her on her journey.

“In the times we’re living in now, you have a lot of women who are concerned about what lies ahead,” Maria Buchanan-Sidorski, a 1995 graduate of the UB School of Law, told UBNow after the event.

“Her incredible advocacy, with having to learn German and English in order to do it. That in and of itself is impressive. But the fact she survived so much trauma and is able to speak on it and write so elegantly and draw such global attention is so impressive.

“As a student of the law you think advocacy,” Buchanan-Sidorski said. “That’s the most moving part about this. Especially now, people can choose to be advocates for whatever they believe in. I have experienced trauma, very different from hers. But when she speaks about the lasting effects of trauma, it’s the multigenerational impact it will have. There is a lot to that.

“And she faced others trying to erase an entire culture, an entire religion. These are things we studied in history, and history repeats itself. We’re supposed to learn lessons from history and not repeat them.”