Yazidi-Iraqi Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad took to the Center for the Arts mainstage Thursday night as the second speaker in UB’s ‘24-25 Distinguished Speaker series to discuss her advocacy for sexual violence and genocide survivors, drawing from her own experiences during the Yazidi genocide in 2014.
Murad, also the first United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking, established “Nadia’s Initative,” a nonprofit organization dedicated to advocating for women, from raising awareness about sexual violence to lobbying governments and global leaders to give reparations to survivors.
Before the presentation, Murad sat down with The Spectrum, emphasizing the importance of redefining herself as a survivor, pursuing education and continuing advocacy despite challenges.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Spectrum: You've been through a lot, so to be able to talk about that — what you've been through — you'd have to be able to openly confront it. So as a woman's advocate and an author, how did you personally confront your trauma and redefine yourself outside of the labels of trauma?
Nadia Murad: Well, I think everyone deals with trauma differently. I know in my family, for example, more than 40 members of my family were taken into captivity by ISIS. And even though we were taken from the same family and by the same group of terrorists, we still deal with trauma differently. I feel like, for me, [it’s] being able to share my story and the stories of so many other women and girls who didn't make it and to share an experience of how after surviving captivity, you deal with the shame and stigma that is associated often with rape. But none of it made me feel for a second that I was a victim. From day one, I was displaced after I survived captivity. But I never tried to let anyone see me as a victim because I survived something. I survived a group that governments and the international community couldn't stop. I am just trying to tell a story, but at the same time to tell the world that before what happened to me and my family, I had a life. I was a student. I grew up poor in a small village, but I was loved and surrounded by many people who supported me, who sent me to school, who believed in me. And those things that are important that I try to remember and focus on and not just to let the world to see me as a story.
TS: You are part of a group that is going through a genocide: the Yazidis. How do you remain connected to that? How do you continue to make sure Yazidi stories and history and culture live on, despite everything that guys have been through?
NM: Unfortunately what Yazidis went through, it’s not unique. It’s not unique to our community. It's not unique to our country or our region. If we look right now, there are so many communities that are fighting for their survival every single day — from Sudan to Ukraine to Congo, Syria, Iraq — the list goes on. And for me, I think it's so important that the Yazidi people know how far we've come. Sometimes the aftermath of genocide is even more difficult, because I can tell you from my experience that right now, my family is spread all over the world. We have people still displaced. Some went all the way to Australia, Canada and Germany, like anywhere. When we were displaced, we were just looking for anyone that was generous enough to take us because we just couldn't heal and recover in displacement camps. There was no privacy, no education, no job opportunities. Now it's been 10 years [since the genocide.] It's been difficult to come together as a family — for example, for holidays and stuff — but we try to be connected. When [UB] published that I was coming here, we received so many calls from around 20 Yazidi families in Buffalo. I didn't know, but they read that we were coming here, and they were just so happy. I don't know them personally. They're not from my village, but that happens all the time. Wherever I go, when they see it, they will reach out and say, “You're coming. We have 10 families here. Can you stop by?” That is something so strong within the Yazidi community.
TS: You were the first person in your family to attend high school, but you weren't able to complete it, but you did end up graduating from American University. So what does your education mean to you?
NM: My education means so much to me. It's very personal. You know, for my mom, I was the youngest of 11. For my dad, I was the youngest of 22. He had many more children, and none of them made it to high school. School was free, but the materials were not. At the same time, my mom was a single mother, so she would try to send my siblings to school, but soon she would just take them out of school because they needed to help her on the farm. It was also a lot of the times my siblings’ decision to help my mom on the farm, to be able to put food on the table. Even though she didn't succeed with my 10 siblings, she tried to send me. By the time I was in elementary school, my mom and my siblings were doing better on the family farm, so it was something that was really important [since] for generations, none of my family members went to high school. I studied Arabic at school, and I was really good, and I tried to remember every morning, even though it was so cold. The education was not like here. For example, what I learned was what the government wanted me to learn. I never learned about the Holocaust. I never learned about other communities. It was mostly what the government thought was good for kids to know. I never learned anything in my 11 years of school about my own community, in any of the books that we read. But I was happy and I was hopeful that I was going to, because all the doctors in the region were Arabs, and many times I would go with my mom and my sisters-in-law to translate for them when seeing a doctor. And that was so important and rewarding to be able to give it back to my family. But unfortunately, I was not able to finish because of what happened. But I never gave up on finishing school. I try my best to go to college and learn English as my third language to make my family proud. But I also have many nieces and nephews, and I really want to be an example for them so that they can also pursue their education.
TS: We are in a very tense, shifting, sociopolitical climate. So what do you think is the best method for advocacy, for anybody, any group?
NM: Advocacy is really important and it is also difficult. I mean, as an activist, I feel sometimes there is just a lot of times when you feel like things are not changing, and you just go on and knock on doors and talk to people, and a lot of the times, your message is ignored, or people try to just listen, but then they don't do anything. But it is important. I've seen the impact of activism. When I started, I didn't know anything but my story. There were not even people who I could just go and talk to them. People were not even listening. But I tried with people next door in the camps, drivers, doctors, friends. It started all there until I made it to the UN. Years later, we have seen some progress. So I feel like in advocacy work, sometimes, especially with younger people, they want to see change the next day. But it's not that easy. I think it's so important to know that you may put a decade of work into activism, and then later you might see some change, because you're fighting for something so big, something so powerful, and something that so many forces are always trying to take us down and take us back. And that is why it's difficult, but it's worth it.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor and can be reached at mylien.lai@ubspectrum.com.
The news desk can be reached at news@ubspectrum.com.
Mylien Lai is the senior news editor at The Spectrum. Outside of getting lost in Buffalo, she enjoys practicing the piano and being a bean plant mom. She can be found at @my_my_my_myliennnn on Instagram.
Photo: Ryan Hagen | UB Athletics
