Nobel Peace Prize Winners 2018

DENIS MUKWEDGE- The Nobel Peace Prize 2018

LIFE- Denis Mukwege was born in Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His father was a Pentecostal minister. Mukwege received the opportunity to study medicine in Bujumbura at the University of Burundi and graduated with a medical degree in 1983. To help women injured during childbirth, he continued his education in gynecology at the University of Angers in France. In 1999 he founded Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, where thousands of victims of sexual violence during armed conflicts have been treated.
WORK- Sexual violence is any sexual act or attempt to obtain a sexual act by violence or coercion, acts to traffic a person or acts directed against a person's sexuality, regardless of the relationship to the victim. Sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict constitutes both a war crime and a threat to peace and security. As a surgeon Denis Mukwege has helped thousands of victims of sexual violence in armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both on a national and an international level he has repeatedly condemned impunity for mass rape and criticized the Congolese government and other countries for not doing enough to stop the use of sexual violence against women as a strategy and weapon of war.

LIFE- Nadia Murad was born into a farming family in Kojo, Iraq. She belongs to the Yazidi ethnic and religious minority. When she was 19 years old, the Islamic State attacked her village and killed 600 Yazidi men, including several of her family members. Murad and other young women were taken prisoner and subjected to beatings and rape. She managed to escape, however, and make her way to a refugee camp. There she was offered the opportunity to move to Germany, where she now lives.
WORK- Sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict constitutes both a war crime and a threat to peace and security. Nadia Murad is a member of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq, and in 2014 the Islamic State (IS) launched a brutal attack on her home village. Several hundred people were massacred, and girls and young women were abducted and held as sex slaves. While a captive of the IS, Nadia Murad was repeatedly subjected to rape and other abuses. After three months she managed to flee. She now works to help women and children who are victims of abuse and human trafficking.

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