Twenty-three year old Nadia Murad Basee Taha, a survivor of sex slavery at the hands of the Islamic State group, has been named a Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations. The Iraqi was made the UN’s ambassador for survivors of human trafficking. This is the first time a survivor of these crimes has been given the role.
Murad was kidnapped from her home, a village called Kocho near the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar, in August 2014. She said she bought and sold by traffickers and gangraped several times. Murad, a member of the Kurdish minority group Yazidis, was named one among TIME’s 100 Most Influential People earlier this year.
She has called for the release of around 2,300 Yazidi women who are still being held captive by Islamic State militants, AFP reported. She said, “I was used in the way that they wanted to use me. I was not alone... My real fear is that once ISIS is defeated, ISIS militants, ISIS terrorists will just shave off their beards and walk the streets of the cities as if nothing happened. We cannot let this happen.”
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime said that during her time as ambassador, Murad will “focus on advocacy initiatives and raise awareness around the plight of the countless victims of trafficking in persons, especially refugees, women and girls.”
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