The character arc of Nadia Murad
A life drawn by Character Arc from the public record
Born 10 March 1993 in Kocho, a Yazidi farming village in the Sinjar district of northern Iraq. Between then and now sit the attack on that village on 15 August 2014, in which her mother and six of her brothers were killed and she was among thousands of Yazidi women and girls taken, an escape through a door left unlocked, refuge in Germany in 2015, and an address to the United Nations Security Council that December. The line below draws the story so far, in order.
Tap the line to pluck it. Hover or tap any mark for its card. Drawn from the public record of her life; the sources are at the foot of the page.
Who is Nadia Murad?
She could have stayed a witness, and she gave her name.
She was born in 1993 in Kocho, a Yazidi village of farmers in Sinjar, in northern Iraq, one of a large family. The Yazidis are a small religious minority with a long history of being persecuted for it. On 15 August 2014 Islamic State fighters attacked the village. Around six hundred people were killed, among them her mother and six of her brothers, and more than six thousand Yazidi women and girls were taken. She was twenty one, and she was one of them.
She escaped from Mosul when a house she was held in was left unlocked, reached a camp at Duhok, and in 2015 was among about a thousand women and children admitted to Baden-Wurttemberg in Germany under a refugee programme. At that point she was safe, anonymous, and twenty two years old, and the ordinary and entirely defensible thing to do would have been to stay that way.
On 16 December 2015 she addressed the United Nations Security Council about human trafficking, the first time that council had received such a briefing, and she did it under her own name and her own face. In 2016 she became the first UNODC Goodwill Ambassador for the dignity of survivors of trafficking and founded Nadia's Initiative to help survivors rebuild. Her memoir appeared in November 2017. On 5 October 2018 she and Denis Mukwege were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She married Abid Shamdeen that August, was named on the BBC 100 Women list in 2024, and received France's Legion of Honour in 2026. Her line is worth reading because of the decision in the middle of it: she had anonymity and she gave it up.
The moments
Nadia Murad's timeline.
The 2010s
The day Kocho was attacked
Setback, and it changed everything. Her whole village, in a day. She was twenty one, and she was among those taken.
She got out
Milestone, and it changed everything. A door that somebody forgot to lock, and she walked out of it.
Germany took her in
Milestone, and it changed everything. Safe, at twenty two, in a country where nobody knew who she was.
Stay anonymous, or give her name
Crossroads, decided.
The paths laid out: testify publicly, under her own name, taken, or stay safe and unnamed. She addressed the Security Council in December 2015, founded her own organisation in 2016, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.
She addressed the Security Council
Milestone, and it changed everything. Under her own name, with her own face, to the fifteen governments that can actually do something.
A United Nations ambassador
Milestone, and it changed her direction. A formal role created for the first time, and given to somebody who had survived the thing it was about.
Nadia's Initiative
Milestone, and it changed everything. Not advocacy alone. An organisation that rebuilds Sinjar, where the village was.
The Last Girl
Milestone, and it changed everything. Her own account, in her own words, which is where the detail belongs and not on a page like this one.
She married Abid Shamdeen
Milestone. Four years and four days after the attack on Kocho.
The Nobel Peace Prize
Milestone, and it changed everything. At twenty five, four years after the village, shared with a surgeon who treats the same crime.
The 2020s
On the BBC 100 Women
Milestone. Still named among the women of the year, a decade after Kocho.
The Legion of Honour
Milestone. France's highest distinction, at thirty two.
The line reaches today still adding to itself, which is why it is drawn now rather than at the end. What it has set moving is partly in law and partly in a village: sexual violence in war is now prosecuted as a weapon rather than treated as a by-product, and Sinjar is being rebuilt by an organisation she started.
What she wrote
Books by Nadia Murad
- 2017
The Last Girl
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Sources
- Nadia Murad, English Wikipedia biography.
- The Nobel Peace Prize 2018, NobelPrize.org (facts and press release).
- Nadia Murad, The Last Girl, 2017.
- Nadia's Initiative.