Global Goals Awards honor Nadia Murad with the Global Goals Changemaker Award in New York.
On 25 September 2018, during the UN General Assembly week in New York, Nadia Murad received the Global Goals Changemaker Award at the UN Global Goals Awards. The event recognizes individuals whose work advances the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Murad was honored for her efforts to secure justice for survivors of sexual violence and to rebuild communities devastated by ISIS’s genocidal campaign against the Yazidis, aligning particularly with goals related to gender equality, peace, justice, and strong institutions. Her advocacy helped connect the specific experiences of Yazidi women to the broader SDG agenda, demonstrating how conflict‑related sexual violence undermines development, security, and human rights.
The award reinforced the idea that survivor‑led initiatives are essential to achieving global policy frameworks, not merely supplemental to them. It also drew attention to Nadia’s Initiative, the organization she founded to support survivors and rebuild Sinjar, showing how targeted reconstruction and trauma‑informed services can be integral to sustainable development. For women’s and minority history, the recognition emphasized that addressing sexual violence in war is a prerequisite for achieving many of the SDGs, and that women from affected communities can be central agents of that work.