Yazidi activist Nadia Murad and Congolese physician Denis Mukwege have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for their influential campaigning and dedicated work against the use of rape and sexual abuse against women in times of war.
Murad, a Yazidi Kurdish human rights activist who was among thousands of women in her community kidnapped and subjected to horrendous sexual abuse at the hands of the Islamic State, has since become an internationally-recognised campaigner while Mukwege has treated thousands of people affected by war-time sexual violence in his native Democratic Republic of Congo.
"Both laureates have made a crucial contribution to focusing attention on and combating such war crimes," said Berit Reiss-Anderson, chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee at the announcement in Oslo.
"Denis is the helper, who had devoted his life to defending these victims. Nadia Murad is the witness, who tells of the abuses perpetrated against herself and others. Each of them, in their own way, have helped to give greater visibility to war-time sexual violence," she added.
The committee described Mukwege as a unifying symbol of the struggle to end sexual violence in conflicts, not only in his native DRC, where civil war has killed over 6 million people, but also within the international community.
He is a vocal campaigner and critic of governments, including his own, that fail to tackle the use of sexual violence against women as a strategy of war.
Murad, who won the European Union's prestigious Sakharov Prize in 2016, was kidnapped by IS alongside her family from her native Sinjar in northern Iraq.
She has gone on to courageously detail her ordeal on a global stage and has campaigned for greater protection for the ethnic Yazidi people, who were brutally persecuted by the extremists who in 2014 captured swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
The IS slaughtered hundreds of Yazidis and took an estimated 3000 women and girls as sex slaves. During her time as an IS captive, Murad was subject to systematic rape and sexual torture for three months.
At 25, she becomes the second youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize after Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.
"They have both put their own personal security at risk by courageously combating war crimes and securing justice for victims," chair of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told reporters in Oslo.
The award ceremony for the peace prize is set to take place in Oslo's town hall on December 10, the anniversary of the death of the Nobel Prize founder, Alfred Nobel.
