At the age of 19, Murad was a student living in the village of Kocho in Sinjar, northern Iraq when Islamic State fighters rounded up the Yazidi community in the village, killing 600 people – including six of Nadia's brothers and stepbrothers – and taking the younger women and girls into slavery. That year, Murad was one of more than 6,700 Yazidi women and girls taken prisoner by Islamic State in Iraq.
She was captured on August 15, 2014. She was held as a slave in the city of Mosul, where she was beaten, burned with cigarettes, and raped repeatedly. She successfully escaped after her captor left the house unlocked. Murad was taken in by a neighboring family, who were able to smuggle her out of the Islamic State controlled area, allowing her to make her way to a refugee camp in Duhok, northern Iraq. She was out of ISIS territory in early September or in November 2014.
In February 2015, she gave her first testimony to reporters of the Belgian daily newspaper La Libre Belgique while she was staying in the Rwanga camp, living in a converted shipping container. In 2015, she was one of 1,000 women and children to benefit from a refugee program of the Government of Baden-Württemberg, Germany, which became her new home.
On 16 December 2015, Murad spoke to the United Nations Security Council about human trafficking and conflict. This was the first time the Council was ever briefed on human trafficking.
On 3 May 2017, Murad met Pope Francis and Archbishop Gallagher in the Vatican City. During the meeting, she "asked for helping Yazidis who are still in ISIS captivity, acknowledged the Vatican support for minorities, discussed the scope for an autonomous region for minorities in Iraq, highlighted the current situation and challenges facing religious minorities in Iraq and Syria particularly the victims and internally displaced people as well as immigrants".
Murad's memoir, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, was published by Crown Publishing Group on 7 November 2017.
In 2018, director Alexandria Bombach produced a documentary film called On Her Shoulders that featured Murad's life story and activism.
In 2018 Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
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