At the end of the Wednesday General Audience of May 3, Pope Francis greeted young Yazidi Nadia Murad Taha, survivor of the trafficking in human beings.
Nominated last year for the Nobel Peace Prize, she is the first UN Ambassadress of Good Will for the dignity of survivors of the trafficking in human beings. The United Nations Office against Drugs and Crime (UNODC) bestowed this honor on her.
Made prisoner in the summer of 2014 by ISIS militiamen, like so many other women of the Yazidi minority, the young Iraqi woman was sold several times as a slave, becoming the victim of rapes and repeated torture and violence. After three months she was able to flee from her jailers.
On December 16, 2015, during the course of her first session, dedicated to the topic of the trafficking in human beings, Nadia Murad, class of 1993, recounted her distressing experience before the UN Security Council in New York.
On that occasion, the then UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, exhorted the UN Member Countries to ratify and implement in toto the United Nations Convention against Trans-National Organized Crime and the related Protocol on the Trafficking in Human Beings, as well as all the fundamental international humanitarian rights and humanitarian instruments. In addition, Ban Ki-moon requested governments, businesses and organizations to support the voluntary fiduciary fund of the United Nations for the victims of the trafficking in human beings.
The two winners of the 2016 Sacharov Prize, Nadia Murad and Lamiya Aji Bashar, both belong to the Yazidi minority, a Kurdish ethnic group that professes a monotheist religion, Yazidism, perhaps of Iranian origin, which includes ancient Kurdish beliefs, as well as elements of Sunni Islam and Sufism, and even of Christianity.
