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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Nobel Peace Prize goes to Congolese doctor and former IS hostage

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OSLO: Denis Mukwege, a doctor who helps victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi rights activist and survivor of sexual slavery by IS, won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.


They were awarded the prize for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.


“Denis Mukwege is the helper who has devoted his life to defending these victims. Nadia Murad is the witness who tells of the abuses perpetrated against herself and others,” it said in its citation.


“Each of them in their own way has helped to give greater visibility to war-time sexual violence, so that the perpetrators can be held accountable for their actions.” Mukwege heads the Panzi Hospital in the eastern Congolese city of Bukavu. Opened in 1999, the clinic receives thousands of women each year, many of them requiring surgery from sexual violence.


Murad is an advocate for the Yazidi minority in Iraq and for refugee and women’s rights in general. She was enslaved by IS fighters in Mosul, Iraq, in 2014.


“Rape in war has been a crime for centuries. But it was a crime in the shadows. The two laureates have both shone a light on it,” said Dan Smith, Director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).


“Their achievements are really extraordinary in bringing international attention to the crime,” he said.


Murad was 21-years-old in 2014 when IS militants attacked the village where she had grown up in northern Iraq. Along with many of the other young women in her village, she was taken into captivity by the militants, and sold repeatedly as part of IS’s slave trade.


She eventually escaped captivity with the help of a family in Mosul, the de facto IS capital in Iraq, and became an advocate for the rights of her community around the world. — Reuters


In 2017, Murad published a memoir of her ordeal, “The Last Girl”. She recounted in harrowing detail her months in captivity, her escape and her journey to activism.


Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al Abadi congratulated her on the award, and Vian Dakhil, a Yazidi member of Iraq’s parliament, said: “It is the victory of good and peace over the forces of darkness.” Murad, who is also a Sakharov Prize winner, is the second youngest Nobel Prize laureate after Malala Yousafzai.


The award of the prize follows a year in which the abuse and mistreatment of women in all walks of life across the globe has been a focus of attention.


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