Birth of Nadia Murad in Kojo, Iraq

On 10 March 1993, Nadia Murad Basee Taha was born in the village of Kojo (Kocho) in Iraq’s Sinjar region, home to a large Yazidi community. Growing up in a poor family of farmers and shepherds, she experienced a tightly knit rural society shaped by Yazidi religious traditions and repeated episodes of persecution.

This birth in a small, marginalized community would later acquire global significance. In 2014, Kojo was targeted during the so‑called Islamic State’s genocidal campaign against the Yazidis, an event that transformed Murad from a young woman dreaming of becoming a teacher or opening a beauty salon into one of the world’s most prominent survivor‑advocates.

Murad’s origins in Kojo are central to her historical importance. Her later testimony about the massacre of her family and neighbors, and about her own enslavement, rooted her advocacy in a specific place and community rather than in abstract human‑rights language. By insisting that the world learn the name of Kojo and the history of the Yazidis, she challenged a long pattern of erasure of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq. Her birth date and birthplace, documented by NobelPrize.org and other authoritative sources, anchor the story of a survivor who would transform personal tragedy into a global campaign for justice and recognition of sexual violence as a weapon of war.