Nobel Committee awards Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize; she becomes the first Iraqi and first Yazidi laureate.
On 5 October 2018, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that Nadia 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." The decision made Murad the first Iraqi and the first Yazidi ever to receive a Nobel Prize.
The announcement represented a watershed in the recognition of conflict‑related sexual violence as a central issue in international peace and security. By honoring a young survivor‑advocate alongside a pioneering doctor who treats rape victims, the Committee underscored both the structural and personal dimensions of sexual violence in war—from prevention and accountability to healing and survivor leadership.
For Murad, the prize validated years of testimony about the Yazidi genocide and ISIS’s enslavement of women and girls. It amplified global attention to the plight of Yazidi survivors, bolstered calls for formal recognition of genocide, and strengthened efforts to create investigative and judicial mechanisms to hold perpetrators accountable. For women’s and minority history, Murad’s Nobel marked an unprecedented elevation of a survivor from a small, persecuted religious minority to the highest global peace platform, challenging entrenched hierarchies of whose suffering and leadership count in international diplomacy.