Canada PM Justin Trudeau meets Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad in Paris

Nadia along with Denis Mukwege were awarded for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.

Praising Nadia, Trudeau tweeted, ".@NadiaMuradBasee - your courage is immeasurable, and it was a true honour to meet you. Your work on behalf of Yazidi women and girls, and all victims of human trafficking, is an enormous inspiration to people around the world. #ParisPeaceForum"

Story of Nadia Murad:

Nadia Murad is herself a victim of war crimes. She refused to accept the social codes that require women to remain silent and ashamed of the abuses to which they have been subjected. She has shown uncommon courage in recounting her own sufferings and speaking up on behalf of other victims.

Nadia Murad is a member of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, where she lived with her family in the remote village of Kocho. In August 2014, the Islamic State (IS) launched a brutal, systematic attack on the villages of the Sinjar district, aimed at exterminating the Yazidi population. In Nadia Murad’s village, several hundred people were massacred.

The younger women, including underage children, were abducted and held as sex slaves. While a captive of the IS, Nadia Murad was repeatedly subjected to rape and other abuses, her assaulters threatened to execute her if she did not convert to their hateful, inhuman version of Islam.

Nadia Murad is just one of an estimated 3 000 Yazidi girls and women who were victims of rape and other abuses by the IS army. The abuses were systematic, and part of a military strategy. Thus they served as a weapon in the fight against Yazidis and other religious minorities.