Photo: Nadia Murad © Courtesy of Nadia’s Initiative
By Raye Mocioiu
There is a stark difference between living and surviving. Iraqi human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad has done both, and for the last decade, she’s been working to help the rest of the world understand the difference.
In 2014, ISIS attacked her Yazidi community in northern Iraq, killing members of her family and abducting Murad along with thousands of other Yazidi women and girls. She endured captivity and sexual violence before escaping. In the years since, Murad has become one of the world’s most prominent advocates for survivors of genocide and conflict-related sexual violence, using her own story not only to demand justice, but to challenge the systems responsible for helping survivors rebuild.
“People often speak about my courage, but survival was not a choice I made—it was something that happened to me,” Murad shared. “The choice came afterward: whether to carry my story in silence, or to use it.”
She chose to use it.
Her Testimony in Action
Murad went on to serve for more than eight years as the United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking—the first survivor of atrocities appointed to the role. She stepped down in 2024 while committing to continue her broader human rights advocacy.
In 2018, Murad and Congolese physician Denis Mukwege were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict. But recognition, she has repeatedly stressed, is not enough.
Through Nadia’s Initiative, the organization she founded and leads, Murad has focused on helping communities devastated by war and mass atrocities rebuild while advocating for stronger responses to conflict-related sexual violence, and, ultimately, the belief that survivors should help shape the decisions that affect their futures.
“What this journey has taught me is that lasting change does not come from sympathy,” Murad said. “It comes from survivors being trusted with power over their own recovery, their own communities, their own futures.”
In 2025 alone, Nadia’s Initiative completed 18 projects in Sinjar, each developed in response to the needs of survivors and returnees.
Among the most significant was the Sinjar French Medical Center, a purpose-built hospital in a region where healthcare infrastructure had been devastated by ISIS. The NI Women’s Center also served more than 1,300 women, girls, and survivors of conflict-related sexual violence, while Nadia’s Initiative reached more than 16,000 people through its programs in 2025.
“Recovery is never only about responding to what was destroyed,” she said. “It begins with recognition of what happened. It requires justice and accountability for the crimes committed—because justice for survivors today is prevention for those who might suffer tomorrow.”
In November 2025, a Belgian court convicted an ISIS member of genocide and crimes against humanity against the Yazidi community. Nadia’s Initiative supported the process and also helped train 220 women and survivors to advocate for justice and reparations.
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“My greatest hope is that the world stops treating survivors as symbols and starts treating them as leaders,” Murad said. “Too often, we are asked to tell our stories and then step aside while others make the decisions. I want Nadia’s Initiative to help end that pattern—to show that survivor-led recovery, survivor-led justice, and survivor-led policy are not idealistic notions but the most effective path we have.”
I Choose My Beginning
What comes after survival? For Murad, it’s using her voice.
On September 15, 2026, she will publish her new memoir, “I Choose My Beginning: A Story of Courage and Activism”, with a foreword by Gloria Steinem. The book follows her bestselling first memoir, “The Last Girl”, and turns toward the decade that followed her escape.
“That, to me, is what it means to turn pain into change: not to forget what happened, but to refuse to let it be the end of the story,” she said. “It is why I titled my new book, ‘I Choose My Beginning,’ because that choice belongs to every survivor, and it is a choice the world can help make possible.
“If a young woman somewhere decides to raise her voice because she saw that survivors before her were heard—and that speaking out led to real change—then our work will have mattered,” she said. “But my deepest wish is simpler than that. I hope the next generation of leaders will not have to be survivors at all. Until then, we keep working.”
