London, Oct 5: The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to campaigners against rape in warfare Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege.
Murad is an Iraqi Yazidi who was allegedly tortured and raped by IS militants and later became the face of a campaign to free the Yazidi people, BBC reported.
Mukwege is a Congolese gynaecologist who, along with his colleagues, has treated tens of thousands of victims.
Some 331 individuals and organisations were nominated for the prestigious peace award this year.
The winners announced in the Norwegian capital Oslo on Friday won the award for their “efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war”, Berit Reiss-Andersen, the Nobel committee chair, said.
The pair both made a “crucial contribution to focusing attention on, and combating, such war crimes,” Reiss-Andersen added.
Murad endured three months as a sex slave at the hands of IS militants, being bought and sold several times and subjected to sexual and physical abuse during her captivity.
She became an activist for the Yazidi people after escaping IS in November 2014, campaigning to help put an end to human trafficking and calling on the world to take a tougher line on rape as a weapon of war.
Mukwege has spent decades helping rape victims in war-torn eastern DR Congo.
He and his colleagues are said to have treated about 30,000 rape victims, developing great expertise in the treatment of serious injuries sustained during sex assaults that were carried out as a weapon of war.
