By Kheng-Liang Tan
A 23 year-old who was kidnapped by the ISIS before becoming their sex slave has since come out to urge world leaders to bring an end to the terrorist group’s atrocities.
Nadia Murad said she was a “villager living a normal life” before the ISIS killed her mother and six brothers in a mass killing. She was held for three months where she was raped and assaulted before she managed to escape.
Since then, she has been campaigning to draw attention to the crimes of ISIS. Due to her activism, she has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, named one of TIME’s 100 most influential people of 2016. Last Friday, she was appointed as the UN’s new Goodwill Ambassador.
“If the kidnapping and slaughtering of women did not affect you, what more has to happen?” Murad asked during the opening of the international body’s Summit for Refugees and Migrants yesterday (20 Sep).
She has since launched ‘Nadia’s Initiative’ which will “focus on advocating for the countless victims of mass atrocities as well as developing and supporting field programs in the areas of healthcare, psychosocial support and education for women and children.”
UN statistics show that Sunni militants enslaved about 7,000 women in 2014 and are still holding 3,500.