Congolese gynaecologist, Iraqi rape victim win 2018 Nobel peace prize

Denis Mukwege, a gynaecologist helping victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Nadia Murad, a Yazidi rights activist and survivor of sexual slavery by Islamic State, have won the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize.

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

“Both laureates have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes,” the committee said in its citation.

Mukwege is the head of the Panzi Hospital in the eastern Congolese city of Bukavu. The hospital, which was opened in 1999, receives thousands of women each year, many of them requiring surgery from sexual violence.

A citation from Nobel committee adds that Mukwege has devoted his life to defending these victims.

On the other hand, Murad is an advocate for the Yazidi minority in Iraq and for refugee and women’s rights in general.

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She was enslaved and raped by Islamic State fighters in Mosul, Iraq, in 2014 when she was 21. She was a witness who tells of the abuses perpetrated against herself and others, the citation said.

“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,” the committee said.

Murad was 21-years-old in 2014 when Islamic State militants attacked the village where she had grown up in northern Iraq. The militants killed those who refused to convert to Islam, including six of her brothers and her mother.

She, alongside many of the other young women in her village, was taken into captivity by the militants, and sold repeatedly for sex as part of Islamic State’s slave trade.

She was able to escape from captivity with the help of a Sunni Muslim family in Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, and became an advocate for the rights of her community around the world.

The prize will be presented in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of the death of Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who founded the awards in his 1895 will.

 

 

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