Murad, Nadia
▶ Watch on YouTubeCoverage note: full (a short speech of about five minutes; minor transcription errors in names and one garbled passage)
Core ideas
Murad opens by identifying herself as a survivor of the Yazidi genocide, now a refugee, who was "ripped from a life of freedom and dreams" in her village and turned into a slave under the so-called Islamic State. She says ISIS fighters killed men and enslaved women, killed her mother along with about 80 older women who "were not wanted for sexual enslavement," killed six of her brothers, and took her with 6,500 Yazidi women and children; she describes slave markets operating "before the eyes of the international community" and says she wished for death so as not to see her loved ones killed or enslaved. After escaping she became an internally displaced person in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where about a million and a half refugees live in difficult conditions, and later a migrant in Germany.
She asks the leaders to imagine being refugees in camps with tents "drenched with water," unable to feed or educate their children, and recalls that her happiest days were not honours or speeches but working on her mother's farm and mountain picnics. She quotes a refugee in Greece ("there is no life here and no place to return to") and says "we are living a third world war without naming it as such." Her central message to heads of state is that their decisions — whether war or peace, hope or suffering — directly shape the lives of ordinary people; she calls for ending war, bringing perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity to justice, eliminating terrorist organizations such as ISIS and Boko Haram "once and for all," not closing borders to women and children fleeing violence, and standing with persecuted minorities: "the world has only one border, and it is called humanity." She ends by pleading that leaders "put humans first" and asking what it will take to make the world act if beheadings, sexual enslavement and child rape do not.
Excerpts
“You must know, as leaders, that whatever you do will impact either positively or negatively on the lives of simple people. You decide whether it is to be war or peace. You decide to give hope or suffering. You are the ones to decide whether another girl just like me in a different part of the world will be able to lead a simple life or be forced to live in suffering and bondage.”
“We should not close our borders to innocent women and children who flee from violence. We must stand with persecuted minorities. The world has only one border. It is called humanity. The differences between us are small compared to our shared humanity.”
“Do you know when the happiest day in my life was? It is not today, speaking to world leaders. It is when I was working my mother's farm, planting vegetables, or when we would go for a picnic to the mountain. Those indeed were the happiest days.”