“Bring ISIS to justice as criminals, not as warriors,” says UN Goodwill Ambassador
Nadia Murad, a Yazidi human rights activist who escaped ISIS captivity, spoke at the annual Stanford Global Studies student dinner on April 17. She was accompanied by Haider Elias, co-founder of Yazda Organization.
“If we do not bring ISIS to justice, we legitimize them as a force,” Nadia Murad told a crowded room of Stanford Global Studies students, staff, and faculty this week. Murad, a Yazidi woman in her early twenties, was born and raised in a small village in northern Iraq. In 2014, she was kidnapped and held captive by ISIS, when the militant group invaded her homeland as part of a campaign that displaced thousands of Yazidis — an ancient religious group.
Following her escape, she briefed the UN Security Council in the first-ever session on human trafficking, and in 2016, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime appointed her Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking.
As Goodwill Ambassador, Murad focuses on advocacy and raising awareness of the millions of victims of trafficking, particularly refugees, women, and children. One of her current priorities is to persuade the United States and other world governments to create a protected zone with a peacekeeping force in the area of northern Iraq that the Yazidi people and other minority communities have called home for thousands of years.
Seeking Justice
Another priority, she explained, is bringing ISIS to justice in the International Criminal Court (ICC). Murad has been working with international human rights lawyer Amal Clooney for a year and a half in this effort, but “the Iraqi government is not helping us,” she said, pointing to the fact that Iraq is not a State Member to the ICC. “Now, the UN is telling us that it is going to be very hard to proceed if the Iraqi government is not willing to cooperate,” she added.
When asked by human rights minor student Christina Schiciano (’17) whether bringing the ISIS senior leaders deemed most responsible to be tried at the ICC would feel like justice, Murad answered: “We want to see ISIS in the court as criminals. We want the world to see them talk and confess what they were doing so the entire world can watch and listen to them as criminals, not as warriors. If we don’t bring them to justice, that’s just going to make them warriors. I don’t believe we can end or defeat ISIS by bombing or by fighting, because the ideology is still there. We have to fight the ideology.”
Advocacy
Ibrahim Bharmal (‘18), an international relations major and Handa Center Human Rights Fellow, asked Murad how college students, and people in the U.S. generally, can help. Murad explained that she has recently had success in mobilizing support for refugee resettlement and therapy through encouraging people in Germany, Canada, and Australia to write to their government representatives. “Every single one of you can write a letter to your representatives and ask them to support victims of violence. It would be a great help,” she said.
Murad recently established Nadia’s Initiative to help women and children victimized by genocide, mass atrocities, and human trafficking to heal and rebuild their lives. The initiative is currently working on a number of projects focusing on female empowerment and psychological therapy, as well as education.
Yazidi Culture
In response to a question from Sakurako and William Fisher Family Director of SGS Jeremy M. Weinstein about how conflicts tend to portray groups as victims, giving the international community little awareness of their history and culture, Murad spoke about Yazidi traditions, including their historically peaceful coexistence with neighboring Muslims and Christians alike. While the group traditionally celebrates the New Year on the first Wednesday after April 14, Ms. Murad explained that they didn’t celebrate the holiday last year because they were grieving. Following the event, Stanford students joined her in a video message to encourage the Yazidis to celebrate this year:
Watch the full event video via the Stanford Global Studies YouTube page:
The annual Stanford Global Studies student dinner was inaugurated to foster a sense of community among students and faculty from across the division’s 15 centers and programs. The dinner provides a forum in which students engage a range of influential and thoughtful leaders who are actively engrossed with issues of global importance. Last year’s event featured Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy.
