FACTBOX: 2018 Nobel Peace Prize Winners

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th October, 2018) The 2018 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Congolese gynecologist Denis Mukwege and Iraqi human rights defender Nadia Murad for efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict.

Mukwege was born on March 1, 1955, in the city Bukavu, in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

He received his Primary medical education in Burundi and returned to his homeland to work in a hospital in the village of Lemera. Mukwege initially specialized in pediatrics, but then, facing numerous cases of post-partum complications among rural women, he turned his focus on obstetrics and gynecology. He went to France to study gynecology at the University of Angers.

In 1989, Mukwege founded an obstetric and gynecological service in Lemera.

In 1996, during the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the hospital in Lemera was completely destroyed and Mukwege moved to Bukavu, where in 1998 he founded the Panzi Hospital. He became director of the hospital and the chief surgeon.

In 1999, he launched a campaign against sexual abuse of women in the time of war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mukwege and his colleagues helped about 40,000 women, who were victims of violence.

He subsequently created the Panzi Foundation, which is providing legal and psychological assistance to victims of sexual violence.

Among the numerous awards received by Mukwege are: the United Nations Human Rights Prize (2008); Olof Palme Prize (2008); The Legion of Honour (2013).

Mukwege also received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 2014.

Iraqi human rights defender Murad was born in 1993 in the small village of Kojo in northern Iraq.

Murad is a follower of the Yezidi religion, which is indigenous in northern Iraq. The Yezidis repeatedly faced genocide and discrimination for many centuries.

In August 2014, militants of the Islamic State terrorist group (IS, banned in Russia) captured the Kojo village. Thousands of Yezidis were killed, including Nadia's mother and six of her nine brothers. Murad herself was abducted and forced into sexual slavery along with other women.

She was brutally tortured and raped, many times trafficked and sold.

In November 2014, Murad managed to escape from the militants. In December 2015, she spoke at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council on the issue of human trafficking.

Murad actively promotes the rights of the Yezidis, especially women, who were enslaved by IS militants.

She published her memoirs called The Last Girl, that are available in several languages.

In September 2016, Murad was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

In October 2016, she was awarded the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

She was also awarded the prize of the former US President Bill Clinton, the Clinton Global Citizen Awards (2016). Time magazine included Murad in the list of 100 most influential people (2016).