YAZIDI rape and kidnap survivor Nadia Murad was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today, along with anti-rape campaigner and gynaecologist Denis Mukwege.

The winners were announced in the Norwegian capital Oslo yesterday after the committee considered the 331 individuals and organisations that were nominated for the prestigious peace award.

Nobel committee chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said the pair won the award for their efforts to “end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.”

Dr Mukwege spent large parts of his adult life helping the victims of sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo and had treated thousands of victims of such assaults.

The committee said he had been “the foremost, most unifying symbol both nationally and internationally of the struggle to end sexual violence in war and armed conflict.”

Ms Murad was nominated for her “uncommon courage in recounting her own sufferings and speaking up on behalf of other victims.”

She was one of the thousands of Yazidi women kidnapped by Isis and sold into sexual slavery as they swept to power in vast swathes of Iraq. 

Ms Murad was repeatedly raped and abused by the jihadist cult and has spoken of her experiences, bravely waving her anonymity in a 2016 BBC interview.

“Now let the world see what happened to us,” she told reporter Nafiseh Kohnavard after her escape from Mosul.

Thousands of Yazidi women and girls remain missing after their capture in 2014, with around 10,000 believed to have been massacred by Isis. 

The attack on the Yazidi people in Sinjar is recognised by the United Nations as a genocide.