13/01/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19ZeY58dLu/
# She Was Bought and Sold Seven Times in Three Months. Then She Stood Before the United Nations.
August 3, 2014. Kocho, Iraq.
Nadia Murad was 21 when ISIS arrived in her Yazidi village. They declared her people “devil worshippers.”
They separated the men and boys from the women and girls.
Nadia’s six brothers were shot at the village edge. Her mother was executed with the older women, likely buried alive.
The younger women and girls were loaded onto buses. They were being taken to become sabaya. S*x slaves.
Over the next three months, Nadia was held in Mosul. She was in a building with hundreds of other Yazidi women and girls. Some were nine years old.
ISIS fighters came to choose sabaya like shopping.
Nadia was bought and sold seven times. She was r***d repeatedly by multiple men. Beaten when she resisted. Burned with ci******es. When she tried to escape, she was caught and gang-r***d by six men as punishment.
In November 2014, she found an unlocked door. She ran. A Muslim family risked their lives to help her escape.
She reached Germany. She was safe.
And she had a choice.
Most survivors of sexual slavery choose silence, especially when “honor” culture stigmatizes r**e victims.
Nadia chose differently.
In December 2015, at 22 years old, she stood before the UN Security Council.
She didn’t use euphemisms. She didn’t speak in generalities.
“They took our women and girls as spoils of war. They r***d us. They traded us like cattle. Girls as young as nine years old were r***d.”
She described being bought and sold. Being r***d. Being beaten. Watching friends die.
Then she made her demand: recognize this as genocide. Prosecute ISIS. Don’t let the world forget the Yazidis.
The impact was immediate. In 2016, the UN officially recognized ISIS’s treatment of Yazidis as genocide.
But Nadia didn’t stop. She kept speaking. Testifying. Meeting with world leaders.
In 2018, she co-founded Nadia’s Initiative, rebuilding Yazidi communities, helping survivors access trauma care, documenting atrocities for prosecution.
In October 2018, she received the Nobel Peace Prize at 25 years old.
In her acceptance speech, she spoke about the 3,000 Yazidi women and children still missing, still in captivity or dead in unmarked graves.
She used the world’s most prestigious peace prize not to celebrate her survival but to demand action for those still suffering.
She could have accepted the prize and moved into private life. Instead, she continues traveling the world, testifying, knowing every speech means reliving her trauma.
She does it because 10,000 Yazidis were killed. Because 6,800 women and children were kidnapped. Because mass graves are still being discovered. Because justice remains incomplete. Because the world has largely moved on.
“I didn’t want to be a symbol,” Nadia has said. “I wanted to be back home with my family. But that’s not possible anymore. So I decided to use my voice for those who cannot speak.”
Her courage doesn’t erase her pain. She still has trauma. She still grieves her family.
But she chose to transform that pain into advocacy. To refuse erasure. To insist the world not look away from atrocity.
Nadia Murad is 32 now. She continues her work. Thousands of Yazidis remain missing. Communities remain destroyed. Justice remains incomplete.
Her legacy isn’t that she survived, though survival took courage.
Her legacy is that she refused to let survival be enough.
She demanded, and continues to demand, that the world acknowledge, prosecute, and prevent the atrocities committed against her people.
And she does it by speaking the truth that many would prefer to forget.
*The Yazidi genocide continues to demand justice and accountability. Nadia’s Initiative works to rebuild communities and support survivors: nadiasinitiative.org*
