Ezidi activist awarded Václav Havel Human Rights Prize

STRASBOURG, France (Kurdistan24) – A Kurdish Yezidi (Ezidi) woman and one-time sex slave of the Islamic State (IS) was awarded a prestigious human rights prize on Monday.

The €60,000 Václav Havel Human Rights Prize 2016, which honors outstanding civil society action in defense of human rights, was awarded to prominent Ezidi activist Nadia Murad at the Palais de l’Europe in Strasbourg.

The award is presented in memory of the Vaclav Havel, the former president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, and replaces the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Human Rights Prize.

Honored to be 2016 Václav Havel Prize Winner. I dedicate this Recognition to 3400 Yazidi women/children in captivity & victims of terror. pic.twitter.com/vJ4R8u3sgn

— Nadia Murad (@NadiaMuradBasee) October 10, 2016

Speaking at the awards ceremony in Strasbourg on Monday, Murad urged the international community to appoint a special court for the crimes against victims of IS sex slavery.

In August 2014, IS invaded Sinjar (Shingal) kidnapping women and girls and selling them on markets as sex slaves. The insurgents also executed several thousand other Ezidis.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces with the help of US-led coalition airstrikes successfully liberated the city from IS in November 2015.

However, there are still a large number of victims still held captive by IS insurgents.

Murad denounced the fact no one had been punished so far for the horrific crimes.

“There hasn’t once been an attempt to collect any evidence,” Murad said. “No one is willing to document all of this.”

For the past two years, she has been lobbying to assist the Ezidis and other sex-trafficking victims.

Her work eventually led to her appointment as the United Nations (UN) goodwill ambassador in September.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Murad’s story brought tears to his eyes when she first shared it at a UN Security Council meeting in 2015.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany