United Nations Goodwill Ambassador and sex slave survivor Nadia Murad has won the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize for her campaign to protect her Yazidi people from the Islamic State group, Independent reported. Speaking at the award ceremony in Strasbourg, the 23-year-old human rights activist said a special court to try crimes committed by Islamic State militants was the need of the hour. She also said the 2014 Yazidi attack should be categorised as genocide.

The award, named after the former Czech president, "honours outstanding action in defence of human rights". It includes a €60,000 (approximately Rs 44 lakh) cash prize. She had been named a UN Goodwill Ambassador earlier this year, and is the first survivor of sex slavery to have 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 was 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.