Nadia Murad
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Founder and President of Nadia’s Initiative
Main Topics:
- The Future of Conflict: Sexual Violence, Accountability, and Global Security
- Survivor-Led Justice and Recovery in a Fragmenting World
- Preventing Genocide and Mass Atrocities in an Era of Geopolitical Competition
- AI, Surveillance, and the New Frontlines: Protecting Women and Girls in Conflict
- Rebuilding Societies After War: From Crisis to Long-Term Stability
- Leadership and Systems Change in Times of Global Uncertainty
WHY NADIA — WHAT AUDIENCES TAKE AWAY
- A new lens on global security. Nadia connects conflict-related sexual violence, accountability, and geopolitical instability in a way that reframes how audiences — from policymakers to business leaders — understand the stakes of inaction in today’s world.
- Proof that systems can change. Through concrete examples from her own advocacy — from the UN Security Council to reparations frameworks — audiences leave understanding not just what is broken, but how change at the highest levels actually happens.
- The power of survivor-led leadership. Nadia challenges audiences to rethink who belongs at the table when laws, policies, and recovery systems are being built — and what is lost when survivors are excluded from those conversations.
Professional Profile:
Nadia Murad is a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and one of the most influential forces reshaping how the world responds to conflict-related sexual violence. She has moved survivor-led justice and recovery from the margins to the center of global policy — changing the standard by which governments, international institutions, and legal systems are held accountable.
In 2014, Nadia was taken captive by the Islamic State (ISIS) during the genocide against the Yazidi community. After escaping, she chose to speak out — not to seek sympathy, but to force a global reckoning with the systems that allowed these crimes to happen and went unpunished.
What followed was not just advocacy — it was transformation. Nadia has driven fundamental shifts in international legal frameworks, pushed accountability mechanisms into existence, expanded access to reparations, and embedded survivor-centered approaches into institutional responses across multiple regions. Where there were gaps in the global system, she has worked to close them.
She has held heads of state, the United Nations Security Council, and governments to account — pushing them to act on justice for survivors and strengthen global responses to conflict-related sexual violence. Her leadership was instrumental in establishing the UN investigative mechanism UNITAD and securing the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 2467 — milestones that have reshaped international law.
Nadia is the Founder and President of Nadia’s Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rebuilding communities in crisis and driving global advocacy for survivors of sexual violence. She has championed reparations access for survivors worldwide.
In 2016, she became the first United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking. In 2018, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her leadership in ending the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
Her work is grounded in an uncompromising principle: survivors must be at the center of the systems meant to protect them — not as symbols, but as leaders shaping law, policy, and recovery.
Selected Works:
- The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State
(Published by Tim Duggan Books, Oct 16, 2018)
Associated Partner
Associated Partner
